Nebulon is an overhead “Geometry Wars” style shooter, that allows you to play the game using either dual-stick controls with independent movement and shooting, or with single stick controls, which means you can only shoot directly in front of you. There are a number of overhead shooters available through Microsoft’s Indie games service, so let’s get right into what this one has to offer.

There are a few gameplay elements that make Nebulon different from many of the overhead shooters you’ve likely played before. You don’t have unlimited weapon energy, so you can’t constantly fire throughout the whole game. It takes only a moment for your weapons to recharge, but it means you’ll have to lay off the attacking now and then. Enemies can also travel beyond the border of the game, even though you cannot. You can still attack them, but they won’t be dropping any power-ups if killed out in the void.

Keep in mind that this video was recorded before dual-stick controls were added,
and that the game looks even better now.

The power-up system is one of the game’s best features. As you kill enemies, some of them will drop upgrade orbs. Once you have enough, you can either cash them in for a new weapon or upgrade, or you can hoard them in the hope of getting enough so you can skip an upgrade or two and jump right to the big guns. First the firing rate of your single shot blaster increases, then you unlock a multi-shot plasma weapon, and finally you can upgrade to a laser. In addition, you can also earn multi-shot missiles and more screen clearing bombs that instantly kill all enemies.

The enemies in the game are all made up of floating orbs that attach to one another and create new enemies. The single orb poses no large threat, and you can hit three of them before your ship is destroyed. Once two orbs attach, they become aware of your location and will attempt to crash into you. When an enemy has three orbs, not only will it hunt you down, but it will eat potential power-ups. And it continues like that up to enemies that have five orbs.

Another strength of Nebulon is the game’s presentation. The music is nicely done, and the visuals aren’t bad either. You won’t mistake it for an XBLA game, but it’s definitely a step above the look of most Indie games. The game also features an auto adjusting difficulty, which allows players of all skill levels to get in there and be able to play the game for a decent length of time without dying.

Here you can see a triple plasma shot with a dual missile upgrade.

While Nebulon is an enjoyable shooter, there are a number of things that I feel could be improved. Microsoft has chosen to burden Indie games with the fact that you have to be online in order to play them. Because of this, only one gamertag can be used to play the game. While that isn’t the developers fault, I do wish they would have combated that fact by allowing you to enter your initials or something after your game ends. As is, no matter which one of your friends or family members gets the high score, it’s saved under your gamertag. Hell, even when playing by yourself, the game doesn’t tell you when you’ve beaten your own previous high score.

Speaking of the high score, I mean that quite literally. There’s ONE single high score saved, it doesn’t show up during the game itself. There’s no leaderboard, so you have to wait before starting a new game to see it briefly display before the game’s credits appear afterward. Arcade style like this live and die from players trying to beat the high score, so it was disappointing to see this aspect of the game not given the attention that it deserves.

My other main issue with the game comes as an unfortunate side effect of the nice looking particle system the game uses for exploding enemies. After the game really gets heated up, there can be a large amount of enemies on the screen at once, and shooting them can create giant white explosions that take a moment to disappear. The problem is that the explosion cloud blocks your view of your ship. Often times I would shoot a bunch of enemies, and then have to make to choice to either go into the cloud and search for power ups, or avoid the cloud and not take the chance of running into an enemy that I couldn’t see. It gets even worse because of those triangle enemies that will fly right into the cloud and steal all the power-ups while you can’t see anything. It’s actually not as bad as it sounds, but it can be annoying.

It's not easy to see your ship in this picture, and that's my point.

Overall, I do feel that Nebulon is a solid overhead shooter. There isn’t a lot to the game, but what is there is fairly well done. A gameplay mode with enemies attacking in waves would have been nice, but it’s not necessary. With a decent local leaderboard system, I could definitely see myself playing this a bit more often. While it’s not the best overhead shooter on the 360, it’s a very impressive title considering that it was developed by such a small team, and fans of the genre should check it out.

Score: 7/10

• Pros:
  • Nice graphics and sound
  • Good power-up system
  • Auto-adjusting difficulty
• Cons:
  • No local leaderboards
  • Hard to see your ship sometimes
  • No volume controls to turn up the music and down the sound effects.
• Random Fact:
  • Nebulon was programmed by 2 people, while another 2 were responsible for the game’s audio.

Nebulon was developed and designed by Dark Omen Games, and is available for 200 points ($2.50) through Microsoft’s Indie Games service.