Zeboyd Entertainment | Through the Shattered Lens

Cthulhu Saves the World, an Xbox 360 indie game from Zeboyd Entertainment, the same people who brought us Breath of Death VII: The Beginning.

Once again Zeboyd Entertainment resurrects the feel of an old school 16-bit RPG with the graphics and sound feeling like they’re right out of an old SNES RPG.

The plot of this game is that the evil Cthulhu is defeated in battle and is under a curse that makes him lose all his powers. The only way to regain them is to become a true hero.

Really the first thing that comes to mind is this… what would H. P. Lovecraft think if he were still alive today? First there’s the three-parter of South Park featuring Cthulhu and now this. He’s either rolling in his grave now or if he had a sense of humor he’d laugh. No telling unfortunately.

It features the gameplay and graphics of Breath of Death VII, but with improvements. For starters you can save anywhere but in battle which is a major improvement. It was annoying that you could only save at inns in Breath of Death VII. The game has still image cut scenes which are really cool, and of course there’s the dialogue. Some of the funniest dialogue I’ve seen in a game. Constantly breaking the fourth wall which in parody games is always a nice little treat. In addition to Cthulhu you have 6 other party members you can choose from to form your party having up to 4 characters.

Like Breath of Death VII each time you level up you have two options to customize customize your character, whether it be new spells, new effects for current spells, improving stats and more.

The best part about this game is it’s only 240 MS points ($3). Yeah Breath of Death VII was only 80, MS points, but trust me, the $2 extra is well worth it as this is the superior game.

If you enjoyed Breath of Death VII, I cannot recommend this game enough. Zeboyd Entertainment I look forward to your future games.

Quick Take

So here’s a random little Indie game that I caught wind of a couple months back. I guess I was behind the curve on this one, but I’ve always been in favour of promoting indie developers. We need more people making great games. And not all of those people are going to work for EA. So, in that respect, the Indie Game Marketplace on Xbox Live is one of the greatest inventions of our time. On the other hand, there’s so many bad games being released on there, that it can be difficult to even trust the cost of downloading one of these titles. Well, if you’re afraid of a title that lacks quality, then you have nothing to worry about with Breath of Death VII: The Beginning (which I will hereafter refer to as BoD7).

It’s a satirical (or parody, I suppose) throwback experience, hearkening back to the days of 8-bit RPGs on the NES. You have the true top-down environments with their (mostly) non-interactive terrain. You have your sprite-based characters, your very traditional 8-bit combat screens. Really, you have it all, except for a beautiful score which pays homage to, but isn’t, an 8-bit tracklist. The game is well put together. It has the polished feel that you’d expect from any professional game in its presentation, the way the game plays, and so on. There are no gameplay glitches or issues to be found in BoD7. I guess that reflects the dedication of the developer once again.

So obviously, you’re not playing this game for the graphics. You’re not playing it for the storyline (but you may very well be playing it for the satire of a typical 8-bit storyline) and you’re not, strictly speaking, playing it for the game system. Fortunately, BoD7 doesn’t reflect 8-bit releases in every way. The system is very intuitive. Characters level up quickly, and get access to a lot of cool powers without much difficulty. Don’t be fooled by the ease with which you’ll breeze through the early parts of the game though – in the tradition of 8-bit games, the game gets pretty hard as it goes on. Of course, it’s still far from unplayable, and you should still have fun progressing through the whole world that Zeboyd has presented for you.

The bottom line? It’s definitely worth the couple of bucks it’s going to cost you. Check it out!