Dead Pixels is widely considered to be one of the best Xbox Live Indie Games available on the channel these days. With it’s sidescrolling, brawler like mentality fitting in nicely with the zombie/horror genre we’ve all come to know and love over the past decade. Not too mention the lovely retro graphics. Really, it’s a sidescrolling fans dream come true.

I’m a huge fan of Portal. What Valve did with the basic concept was revolutionary, in my opinion, to the puzzle genre. Prior to that most puzzle games refrained from that amount of action. Gateways, is a similar type of game as Portal, but it changes up the equation in a few key areas which help it stand apart.

Firebase Industries, the delightful gents who created Orbitron: Revolution for the Xbox Live Indie Games a few months ago, has officially announced that their Dream.Build.Play finalist game will be heading to the PC. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, though, considering most XBLIG games eventually head to the much greener pastures of the PC game scene. Sorry, XBLIG, but you’re kind of a dead weight…

It looks like our favorite parody/protest shmup game Game Type has received a major update that shoukd make the game much more enjoyable for those who splurged on the indie title. According to the developer, Mommy’s Best games, Game Type “has been updated with a slew of small and large improvements! Most of these improvements are in the shoot’em up portion of the game.”

I’m a sucker for city building games. All types whether they be simulation, strategy, war-strategy or even puzzle games. The idea of managing the livability of someplace really gets me. So when developer Cole Powered wrote me earlier this morning about their new game MegaCity, I jumped right on board.

Sure, we have our Minecraft-likes all over XBLIG these days. I’m not sure you can clear the first page of the best selling anymore without tripping over two or three of em, but Lootfest: Live Design isn’t like that. In fact, despite using blocks as the basic building material, the games are very different and, honestly, the Minecraft-likes really pale in comparison to the ambition seen in Lootfest: Live Design. And before you ask, yes this is a sequel of sorts to the original Lootfest.

Retro Arcade Adventure. Let that title just roll around in your mouth for a little bit. Think about what it means. No, wait, there’s no need for any of that because we know exactly what it means right away. Retro Arcade Adventure is, as the title not-so-subtly suggests, is a retro arcade adventure title… and that just sounds amazing to me.

Here’s something we missed by not visiting Major Nelson’s site in recent days. Apparently he’s gone ahead and put the best selling Xbox Live Indie Games and Xbox Live Arcade games of 2011 on his blog, along with other things that we’re not quite as interested in, being an indie games blog and all.

A heads-up if you’re a 360 owner looking for an experience similar to the Mario Kart series on your Indie Games channel: Citizen 12 Studio has ported over Pangea Software’s popular iOS Kart Racer Cro-Mag Rally onto XBLIG. Unfortunately, the game’s multiplayer component seems to have been lost in translation.

James Silva recently sat down with Joystiq to discuss a myriad of various topics about his studio, the games he has crafted, and where he plans to head next. It’s a really great article that I suggest you read the whole way through. That said, I’ll try and summarize here as best as possible.