Marketplace link: ‘Adventurer Pets’ is best described as a ‘competitive arcade style platformer.’ The game is modeled as a mix of classic arcade style single screen platformers (think Donkey Kong or Popeye) and competitive multiplayer party games (Mario Kart, Bomberman). The game features hand drawn original high resolution 2D sprite art, hand painted backgrounds, and music composed originally for the game. It is available now for X-Box Live Community Games. While the game is modern in presentation, it is decidedly old school in design. Your character doesn't move that fast (unless you get the speed powerup, then you move REALLY fast), doesn't jump that high or far, simple jumps over regular old spikes take precision and timing, asnd the object is to simply get to the top of the screen, for the most part. This isn't as much of a "wide appeal release" like some of our other planned games - this is moreso a strictly old school nostalgic affair based on some older titles that we thought a few people of my gaming generation might enjoy due to its throwback nature. We understand that some people will be turned off by the speed or the momentum needed to jump over simple spikes, but others might like the nostalgic nature/challenge of it. Your experience may vary. There are two single player modes available, both mainly based on achieving high scores. The first, the Adventure Mode, takes you through 5 stages in which you collect coins and run to the goal while avoiding various enemies and obstacles on a limited number of lives. The second, Countdown Mode, lets you chose one of 8 stages and race to get a set order/amount of treasures in as fast of a time as possible while avoiding enemies and obstacles in hopes of achieving a high score. The game really shines in its Multiplayer Mode, we think, and that's really what the game is designed for. In this, you and up to 3 friends can get together locally and race for a high score in any of the 5 levels. All players can interact with each other, and there are various powerups scattered around the levels that can either help a player by enhancing them (like added speed or shields), or by giving them offensive abilities that they can use to attack the other players. A lot of people had extensive amounts of fun with coming up with the most inventive ways to screw up other players or avoid getting screwed themselves. If anything, we'd recommend doing the trial with a few friends to get the "real" experience of the game. Like I stated, this is decidely old school and not for everyone, but if you'd like a little time waster/throwback game, it's not a bad use of 200 points (which is the same cost as a theme or some pictures). We would have made it free, but we can't. We're going to be doing a few smaller/party games to test the water before we release our experimental/artsy/large concept games (our next releases will be a Mario Kart-ish kart battle game and a quiz game). So look forward to those.