Edge Magazine Issue 202

The latest issue of Edge Magazine has a great article about the successes and challenges of Xbox Live Community Games. Along with other XNA creators, Funkmasonry Industries' own Julian Kantor was interviewed for the piece. Groov was described as "a neat spin on Geometry Wars with a nasty habit of stealing half an hour here and there," and even given its own sidebar (the only such sidebar in the article, I might add):

Julian Kantor's Groov, a dual-stick shooter with a musical bent, is one of the service's early highlights. You fly around a rectangle's interior as normal, but each of your shots produces a synth sound effect, and each enemy has their own instrumental effect that plays when they die. Visually it's functional rather than exceptional, but it uses its limited palette cleverly to differentiate live enemies from dead ones (which stick around before exploding on certain beats) and has a neat 'slowdown' special weapon rather than yet another smartbomb. There's a wonderful moment about 45 seconds into your first game - but we won't spoil it, because you're going to try it out, right?

To read the rest of the article, along with tons of other interesting features, check out Edge Magazine Issue 202 on newsstands.