Sometimes, it’s just bad luck. One day, you write about how the indie games you hear about are usually good, the next you’re handed a review code to game that makes you cringe a bit.

Canno-Blast is a game for Xbox Live Indie Games that developer Rascal Haven says is a mix of “Crossfire and Hungry Hungry Hippos, but with a twist.” And I suppose that’s accurate enough. It’s a game designed for four players, like Hungry Hungry Hippos. And you’re basically shooting virtual marbles at a spiked ball, which is a bit like what you did in Crossfire.

And to be honest, the game works as a concept. But it’s ugly to look at and it stumbles in execution.

Gameplay

Four players, either human- or computer- controlled, man four turrets around an arena with one to four spiked balls in the center. Each turret shoots small marbles (I assume they’re actually cannon balls) that are the same color as the turret. When the marbles hit a ball, the ball takes on the color of the marble. When spiked balls hit turrets of different colors, the turret takes damage. The goal is to knock out the other players’ turrets.

In the single player mode, you play four rounds. The first game has one spiked ball, and another one is added each round. I hated the first round. The computer across the arena from me is always the first to go, and the one to my left usually follows. Then, unless the difficulty is set to easy, the ball remains in the upper left quadrant of the arena for minutes on end, until a powerup or randomness takes one of the remaining players out.

That’s because there’s no real strategy to use. Hitting the ball with a marble always has the same effect, changing the color and moving it forward a little bit. Hitting it on the edge doesn’t give the ball a little spin. You can ricochet the marbles off of the arena walls, but then they don’t have enough power to get the ball out of the corner.

The fourth round wasn’t much better. With four balls in play, it was hard to have any kind of strategy, but at least the rounds were over quickly.

The second and third rounds are a little more interesting, and I feel like I have some control. Things aren’t as hectic as the four-ball round, so I could split my fire between the balls. But really, the single-player mode is a pretty big letdown.

The multiplayer mode has a lot more promise. This is, after all, a very simple game that anyone should be able to pick up. Still, because it’s an ugly game, I had a hard time convincing anyone to play with me. I finally got my roommate to play, but he quit after a few rounds.

One big problem we had: Each player gets to pick an upgrade, but you only start with one. By the time my roommate joined, I could choose from a double shield, rapid fire and a more powerful shot. But all he could pick was a single shield. And it takes a long time to earn points to buy the upgrades. To ask one player to unlock all the game has to offer is annoying, but standard practice. To ask the other three players to spend an hour on single player to be on the same playing field kills the game’s casual appeal.

Also, I kept playing in multiplayer mode after my roommate left and I don’t think the rounds ever end. Certaintly not after the seven or eight rounds I lasted. The multiplayer mode randomizes every round, choosing one to four balls and picking between the three arena shapes: a square, an octagon and a circle, which do change the mechanics slightly, but not enough for it to make a huge difference in how you play the game.

In both modes there are powerups that do things like give you a triple shot, or change the other players’ marbles to your color or extra health. They’re helpful, but they’re usually over before you even realize you’ve picked them up. And there are three difficulties, but the only thing that seemed to change was the speed the computer-controlled players could fire at.

Canno-Blast also does a lot of inexplicable things. For instance, sometimes the ball leaves the court, as if dragged off by a tractor beam. It could do this when the ball was against the wall or in the middle of the arena. Also, the game allows you to assign what button you use to fire, but when the only means of input are the analog stick and the fire button, why not just make every button a fire button?

Style

Well, one thing you can say about Canno-Blast is that it has a theme song. The audacity of simply thinking their game was worthy of one earned the developers quite a bit of respect in my book.

Unfortunatly, they would have been better off spending the money on an artist, because the game doesn’t look very good. It’s a mess of bright solid colors, with little thought for how one color compliments another. The combinations that show up on screen are bland at best and ugly most of the time.

It also randomizes the color of the computer players, so sometimes you end up with one player playing orange, and another playing a slightly redder orange.

Story

It’s an arcade game, so it doesn’t have one. At least, I don’t think it does. It’s possible there’s a story in the theme song, but I didn’t spend much time figuring out the lyrics.

Everything Else

I think this game came out before it was ready. The concept is great, but the execution needs a lot of work, and the team needs desperately to hire an artist.

However, it costs just 80 MS points, and there is a unique game under the harsh exterior.

[DIYgamer.com was provided with a copy of this game for review purposes. This in no way affected the outcome of the review.]