Lootfest: Level Design

Lootfest: Level Design – Demo Impressions

Lootfest: Level Design is a retro style level editor game featuring zombies, RC Cars and up to 8 players for co-op action. Sounds good huh? Despite me playing practically every type of  Xbox Live Indie Game featuring level editing, mining and zombies i came away somwhat impressed with Lootfest: Level Design’s trial game. Gamefarm are the developers as well the publishers of Lootfest: Level Design. It released January 14, 2012 and retails for 240 msp on Xbox Live Indie Games Marketplace. I’m thinking that 240 msp is a deal considering the depth and quality this game seems to have after playing the trial multiple times.

When you first play Lootfest: Level Design it doesn’t waste anytime in throwing you into its 8-bit visual sandbox world. The in-game menus showed: Creation Mode, Toy, Travel, Shop, Appearance, Network Settings and World 1. The button layout for the sword swinging protagonist via Xbox 360 gamepad: LS-move, RS-camera, A-sword, Back-build, Start-menu. Button layout for editing: LB-remove block, RB-add block, LT-camera mode, Start menu, RT-select, Y-undo and X-pick color. The level editor is basically two lines and a axis one is longitudinal and the other lateral.

You can move the axis up, down, left, right etc. You can pick and choose which type of material you want and where exactly you want it placed. You can stretch blocks horizontally or vertically. The level editor in Lootfest: Level Design is actually noob friendly imo. It doesn’t take long to master it. If you buy the game expect to have a relationship with the level editor. The camera lets you zoom out far enough and close enough as well so don’t worry about vision while creating. Also navigating from in-game to editing the level is seamless. Finding what you want in Lootfest: Level Design is fairly easy.

There is a in-game Shop where you can buy useful items. They sell Apple Pie (refills energy gauge from zombie attacks), RC Tank, Sword Lvl 2 and Set Spawn. All items cost coins to purchase. You get coins and hearts from killing zombies (who doesn’t love that). Speaking of zombies they do spawn up on occasion and a couple swings with the sword usually kills them. When zombies do get the better of you a message from Grampa pops up alerting you to the shop to buy some health items. I did on one occasion buy the level 2 sword but couldn’t tell a difference after killing a few zombies if it was worth it or not.

The RC Car was cool but too bad you can’t detonate it in a group of zombies or can you?  The setting looks like most creation type game’s levels. Its sunny, trees everywhere etc. The visuals reminds me of Zelda when it came out back in 1987 (good old days). The sound design was good but some songs got on my nerves. However i do like how the songs were displayed in the top left of the screen and naturally rotated as your playing Lootfest. Wait let me scratch that i did like “Coding Blind” music that track gave the game a good vibe.

You can change the appearance of the sword swinging protagonist in Lootfest: Level Design. You can change his Hair Color, Skin, Facial Hair, Hat, Hat Main Color and Hat Detail Color. I think its a welcome edition. Who want’s a game with 8 players looking the exact same constructing castles  together? You would get confused to who is who. Some other tidbits of note: Lootfest can be played on a Arcade Memory Stick and must be played on Xbox Live Gold to get the full experience of the game. The protagonist does not jump. This game does have 2-8 players online multiplayer co-op which has to be fun after playing the trial a few times.

One thing i really appreciated about this demo was the fact you could continue off at the world as you left. I played the trial at least five times so much appreciated Gamefarm. You can’t play multiplayer in the demo. However you can create different worlds in the demo and select them at the continue screen. For a demo Lootfest: Level Design is really good. I know its another one of those creation games but you guys should give it a go if your into these type of games. Thanks for reading.