First allow me to apologize for the week-long break. Last week I was tied up in motorcycle classes for the entire weekend and was absolutely exhausted at the end of each day to work functionally. As such, today’s Xbox Live Indie Picks will consist of the last two weeks. It actually worked out quite nicely because, well, there weren’t that many games released…

Earlier this year I wrote about Oozi: Earth Adventure, a gorgeous Xbox Live Indie Game platformer that brought not only shiny, modern graphics but some really great platforming mechanics. Seriously, it is still probably one of the best platformers on XBLIG, if you’re interested in that sort of thing (I am!).

Brian Provinciano of Vblank Entertainment has just unveiled another new trailer for his sprawling 8bit open city parody game, Retro City Rampage. This time we’re treated to a sneaky peak at one of the games many hidden bonuses. Take a look at this trailer to see a first glimpse at ‘Splosion Man in Retro City Rampage, both as a retro demake of ‘Splosion Man, and then you get to use his splode attack in the main game.

Each year I’m continually let down by the VGA indie nominations. Not because I feel like the games nominated didn’t deserve it. Last year’s picks were serviceable, in my opinion. However, for 2009 and 2010 I was always left wondering if all Spike really did when nominating a game was find the most popular games with the biggest media budgets and choose them based on that.

Oh no another Minecraft “clone!” Or so I expect to hear from various fans at some point with regards to CastleMiner Z. The fact is, however, that CMZ is actually a bit different than most Minecraft-likes and it’s for that reason that I’ve decided to highlight the game for this week’s Xbox Live Indie Picks.

Dino Patti, CEO and co-founder of the Danish indie studio Playdead has taken to twitter to reveal that the lifetime sales of their hit indie platformer, Limbo, has now exceeded one million. Congratulations Playdead!

One of the more anticipated upcoming indie platformers is finally closing in on release. Fez from Polytron is the perspective shifting platformer all about playing a 2D character interacting with a 3D world, and it’s due out on XBLA early next year. The game’s designer Phil Fish was at GameCity festival to let the groups of the public have an exclusive early hands on with Fez, and I grabbed him for a quick chat too. Here’s how the conversation went down:

We previewed a lot, dare I say a butt-load, of games at IndieCade last month. Playing fantastically weird indies wasn’t the only thing to do though, there was also a lot of discussion going on. We were able to stop by a couple of the panels going on throughout the festival with camera in tow, and are please to be able to pass them along here.

Below are a trio of videos that make up this year’s Well-Played Session II Panel, which included Phil Fish and Hye Yeon Nam going over various development aspects of their respective titles Fez and Kiss Controller. (Special Thanks to the IndieCade folks for allowing us to record!)

Big haul this week for you Xbox Live Indie Gamers out there. Not only did we have DLC Quest come out (which I reviewed yesterday) but also MagicalTimeBean’s newest XBLIG hit Escape Goat which actually takes “Pick of the Week.”

I honestly thought about giving PotW to DLC Quest again, but figured it was probably better to highlight another fantastic indie title… Anyway, enjoy this week’s picks!

DLC. I don’t like it. I remember the “good ol’ days” when my game came to me as a completed product. I know, it sounds pretty crazy these days right? But true enough, I could buy a game for ~$50 (back then) and not have to worry about needing this or that “map pack” just to keep playing with the general populace of gamers. Dark times indeed…

On the bright side, at least we get kick ass satirical games like DLC Quest, a Xbox Live Indie Game platformer which takes the meaning of the acronym “DLC” and envisions a world where DLC is no longer an option but a requirement.