This article is the first of ten Bytejacker writeups on The PAX 10, a selection of the ten best independent games chosen out of over 150 submissions.  These ten games will be on display at Penny Arcade Expo 2009 this September, where attendees will be able to vote on their favorites.

CarneyVale: Showtime is a fantastic vertical platformer from GAMBIT Game Lab, a collaborative project by MIT and the government of Singapore. In CarneyVale, you manipulate a ragdoll circus acrobat around obstacles and into a ring of fire, whereafter you’re immediately rated on your performance and awarded one star for each of five factors (completion, time taken, balloons collected, picking up the bonus star, and whether you achieved a ‘perfect run’ by taking no damage).

You’ll be indirectly manipulating Slinky primarily through the use of Grabbers, which are sort of 360-degree mechanical robot-arm trapezes that you control entirely by pressing the A button. The Grabbers are perpetually aimed at Slinky, and if you activate one when he (she? it?) is within range, it grabs him and begin to spins him in the direction he was already heading. You then fling him further in the level by letting go of the button, and so on until you reach the level’s end. It’s a difficult mechanic to explain, but the concept makes a lot of sense when you see it in action and even more sense when you actually play it. This video illustrates it much better than I could:

CarneyVale is probably the least artful and most game-y game out of this year’s selection. This is absolutely not a bad thing, it just means that the game focuses less on stuff like story or metaphor and more on pure, pretention-free gameplay. That’s not to say that it isn’t stylized; the game is gorgeous and colorful, with a great art style that fits the fast-paced, actiony gameplay.

Maybe the most noteworthy thing about CarneyVale is how it takes physics-based gameplay and makes it approachable and intuitive in a way that you rarely ever see. The game takes a page from the Kirby Air Ride school of control design and has you barely using any of the controller’s buttons at all (unlike Air Ride, though, CarneyVale has been met with significant critical acclaim). For much of the game, you’ll be using just the A button with the left analog stick for gentle flight control, and later in the game, you’ll use the B button for some directional thrusts. That’s it. And that’s all it needs. You can put CarneyVale in the hands of anyone, and they’ll almost instantly “get it”. The game clicks in a natural and very immediate way that I consider the hallmark of great game design. It’s something PopCap has nailed over the past few years and something this game succeeds at just as deftly.

The gameplay isn’t the only thing about CarneyVale that feels immensely polished. The entire game’s presentation is striking from the moment you first load it up.  As an Xbox Live Community Games title, it stands way out. The menus, tutorial, and unlockables all contribute to the experience feeling like a full Xbox Live Arcade game. Actually, it’s much more visually appealing and complete title than the recently-released Blazing Birds, the robo-badminton game that won an Xbox Live Arcade Publishing Contract in Microsoft’s Dream-Build-Play contest  in 2007. Oddly, even though CarneyVale won the Dream-Build-Play Grand Prize in 2008, no such contract was extended to them.

It’s hard to come up with a good reason why CarneyVale isn’t a full XBLA title. In addition to a decently-long campaign, CarneyVale has a full level editor, unlockable concept art, and even 12 built-in “achievements”. At $5 (400 Microsoft Points), only half the price of most Live Arcade games, CarneyVale is a standout title of the community games section and absolutely deserves to be played by any Xbox-owners who enjoy physics, platforming, and well-polished independent games in general.

Download the CarneyVale: Showtime demo: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855014d/?p=1&of=1&bt=0&sb=1#offers

Buy the full version: http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d8025855014d/?p=1&of=7&bt=0&sb=1#offers

GAMBIT Game Lab: http://gambit.mit.edu/