As promised, TheGo is going to break the $1 barrier and take a look at the more expensive recent games to hit the XBOX Live Indie Game platform. But will the increase in price increase the quality in the games? Let's take a look.

Catch22 - AAA Gamez - $3

In this sort of 2D version of Tetrisphere, the gameplay is simple yet can get hectic as the player advances. Y'know, like in all versions of Tetris. But unlike anything that Tetris or its competitor clones have done over the past 20 years, Catch 22 ruins the visual and audio parts of the game by opting for a simple and ugly interface and explosions in an attempt to seem edgy and "Indie." Yes, explosions have ruined Tetris. I never thought I'd see the day.

With so many puzzle games on the platform, it's actually pretty easy to find better (and cheaper) games that do the job much better than this attempt.

OVERALL: SKIP

Platypus - Escapist Games - $5

Typically, I would shun at a port of a PC/iPhone game to the XBLI service, but I make a huge exception towards Platypus. The gameplay mechanics are pretty straight forward, following the tried and true method of slowly adding more and more to the chaos while giving the player opportunites to learn enemy patterns and powerup locations. And with 20 levels, it does the job well to ease the player in and keep the interest going all the way to the end.

This is a fun shooter, but what's really worth the $5 price tag--the highest it goes, mates--is the beautiful Claymation visuals and fun music and sound effects. Just when you realize that everything in the game is made of clay, you've immediately been sucked into the game and its fun mechanics aren't going to let you go. Sure, you could buy the game for $10 on PC through one of the many download sites out there, or you can play it in beautiful 720p for half the price. I think this is an easy choice.

OVERALL: BUY

Txingurri - Ric Games - $3

Truly competitive games are hard to come by on the XBLI platform. There's a lot of balancing that needs to be worked out before releasing, which takes time and money to get all sorted out through numerous playtests...Which is why Txingurri fails to make it work. It gets most of the concepts correct: frantic gameplay, equal footing between four players, and enough elements in the general game to turn the tide at any moment. But where it fails is that it's simply too frantic. Ants crowd the screen, and it's up to each player to send them to their anthill while driving them away from their opponents' anthills. Each player can use three arrows to direct the ants, but the ants come from all sorts of directions, hit wills, and arrows you weren't accounting for. There's a very big Mario Party-style of luck going on here, only it's not much of a party once you get into it.

The lack of polish doesn't do much justice either. There's a fun game hiding behind all of this, so I'm willing to at least recommend a trial download before ditching it completely. Who knows? Maybe you can figure out what's going on.

OVERALL: TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

Balloon Blocks - Creative Cog Games - $3

In a very bouncy and flexible take on the Match-3 genre, Balloon Blocks is a fun diversion that should be looked at before decided on a purchase. Rather than stacking blocks in specific slots, the blocks can be squished, pushed, and bended once they've already been put in place. This can make for some game-changing moves when the going gets tough. A push of the button makes everything "un-freeze," giving the blocks that one extra little push it needs to make the match complete.

In later levels, more blocks and less space are given to you, but the gameplay elements become more or less the same. Unless you've got some good music going on in your 360's Hard Drive, it's tough to get lost in a game like this, so it does make replayability somewhat of an issue. But, again, for a mere $3, it's a pretty good deal.

OVERALL: TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

Gravity - Riddlersoft - $3

Can you say "Metroid wannabe?" No? How about "lame platformer?" Gravity seems to want to be both, thanks to bad platforming and reliance on gravity elements to carry the game forward. As a test subject for some bizarre experiment, you have the ability to manipulate gravity on certain objects in the field--move blocks, make higher jumps, grab objects--and have the ability to power these moves by "leveling up."

But with the visuals lacking any artistic value, the story and characters feel like being talked to by thin cardboard-cutouts, and a guessing game of where you're supposed to be heading, none of that matters. Things will shoot at you with few ways to counter or dodge, hazards are plentiful and difficult to evade, and the overall presentation is a bore.

OVERALL: SKIP

Musicus - Floor - $5

As I'm a fan of Music Games, a new one coming out is always one to look out for on my list, even on the XBLI platform. Musicus does things differently than most music games. Rather than keeping rhythm with the music like most music games do, Musicus goes for the "Producer" approach like in Lumines, and plays the music as you accomplish the task. You need to produce blocks of up to nine pieces and launch them at oncoming tracks, generating one of the three pieces of the selected music to be played. Each of these pieces has a lifebar that goes down at a steady pace, so you need to collect blocks and launch them as fast as you can.

It's a creative concept, but the twin-stick controls don't seem to do it much justice, as the cursors move at a slow pace to begin with, and the player has to navigate them in a 3D environment. The music set list is comprised of Japanese-heavy music, which ironically doesn't tune me into the game even though I play even weirder and more difficult Japanese music games to begin with. There are some vocal-less tracks that sound good and play well, but this is truly a game that's hit-or-miss.

OVERALL: TRY BEFORE YOU BUY

City Rain - Mother Gaia - $5

In what truly amounts to a great amount of polish over a title that wowed audiences earlier this year as a simple student project by a Brazilian university student, City Rain took a great gaming concept and made it better thanks to improved visuals and controls, removal of an annoying announcer in favor of gentle text, and a revamped gameplay modes. Having tried the game on the PC when it was still a small project, I can easily say that this is worth a purchase.

In the game, you play as an environmental activist/city planner on a mission to create Green Communities, making lively and cultural towns while keeping pollution at a possible low. You have to balance economics, the population's demands, crime, diversity, all the while making decisions that impact the environment. To make matters interesting, buildings and trash fall from the sky and you have to arrange them as though they were puzzle pieces, and you have to think fast.

There's a long campaign, a quickplay mode, and a mode where you can forgo the economics and just build stuff in chunks of pieces. Included are worldwide leaderboards and an online community dedicated to the cause at hand. Like Platypus, this is a game you can normally get on the PC for a $10 download, but on the XBLI platform, it's half that, and the controls are solid. This is a great game to clean things up with, and well worth the price tag...and our Game of the Month Award.

So, did the higher price tag warrant better games overall? It's hard to say. We'll come back next month with more Indie Games and a wider variety of games and price tags.