???

About

Video

Reception

Development

After countless years a vast, ancient pyramid has been discovered beneath the desert sands. Already a team of explorers and tourists has been lost to whatever strange guardians haunt the pharoah’s tombs. Are you brave enough to explore its mysteries and recover the relics within?

Relic Raider is an arcade game for up to four players. Uncover the treasures on each level of the pyramid, avoiding the increasing dangers as you descend into its depths. Strange monsters, lost tourists and reckless archaelogists roam the dusty halls, waiting for you to find them!

As well as exploring the pyramid, there are over twenty in-game awards to unlock, and Global highscore tables for players with XBox Live Gold accounts.

Relic Raider was previously available on the now-defunct XBox Live Indie Games - it is not yet available for any existing platforms.
“Intense” – 411Mania

“A lot of fun” – GayGamer

“A great co-op experience” – Co-Optimus

Relic Raider also features in Retro Gamer issue 105, as part of a feature on XBox Live Indie Games.
Relic Raider is my first commercial game, and my first completed game for the Xbox 360. Licensed music aside, it is also my only game for which I can claim full credit, having created the graphics as well as the code. (Hence the cover art making it onto several 'Top 10 Worst Cover Art' lists.) Of course, nothing is created in a vacuum, and everyone who played it during its development had some input into the final product.

The game itself is a retro-style action game, with simple, bold graphics and clear audio effects to support them. Players unlock rooms to find treasure, as well as a means to escape to the next level, while attempting to avoid the assorted monsters that roam the pyramid. Later levels introduce friendly characters that must be rescued, and others that play the game competitively alongside the players, taking treasure and items for themselves.

These AI aspects were perhaps the most challenging of the development; making them work across XBox Live was tricky, but ultimately successful. Playtesting a networked version of the game became ultimately too difficult, however, and the network play mode was removed from the final release.

The game was written in C# and targeted primarily at the .Net Compact Framework for Xbox 360, although a version for the PC was also built for testing - that version is yet to be released, owing to the lack of third party controller support provided by the XNA library used for all hardware interfacing.