Microsoft’s XNA Community Games initiative might not be pulling in the greatest sales numbers, but the developers that are actively producing games for the service are starting to contribute some great work. Of course, most of us Australians can’t sample their work without resorting to making fake US accounts to access the Community Games section. To find the best of the XNA Community games, Microsoft runs a contest called “Dream Build Play”, with the winner receiving a contract to publish their game on Xbox Live Arcade. The first winner of the contest was The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, developed by James Silva.

The minimalist story puts you in the role of the titular Dishwasher, who was at some stage destined to be turned into a Cyborg before being saved by his mentor, The Chef, and injected with alien blood which gave him super powers. The Dishwasher hates the Cyborgs, especially after his sister Yuki willingly turned herself over for conversion, and is determined to wipe them all out. The story is conveyed through comic book panels distributed liberally throughout the game’s levels, though you’ll find them overly broody and frivolous given the relatively straightforward plot.


The Dishwasher follows a formula that’s essentially a mix of Devil May Cry’s stylish action and Alien Hominid’s difficulty and brutality. It’s a button mashing beat ‘em up at heart; the X button handles your quick attacks, the Y button your heavy attacks, with sequences involving mixtures of the two making for some particularly bloody combos. As handy as he is with a meat cleaver or samurai sword, the Dishwasher is not a powerhouse; you need to play the game on the defensive, using the roll or after-image techniques just as often as your attacking moves in order to survive.

New weapons and abilities are given to the player at a satisfactory pace throughout the game. The Dishwasher starts out with a meat cleaver, but quickly earns a sword which gives players the after-image technique. Soon after you gain access to “Dish” powers, which is basically a couple of fancy magical abilities. The game eventually tosses the player some firearms to quell the range disadvantage and allow for some ridiculous juggle combos. Players earn points from dispatching enemies which can be used to upgrade the Dishwasher’s weapons and various other characteristics, though some of these require magic guitar picks which are hidden throughout the levels or earned after playing a basic rhythm game.


The Dishwasher promises cooperative play for three players, but this isn’t available from the outset – one player must go through at least the first four or so levels in order to find the two amulets which allow the other players to join their quest. It feels unnecessarily arduous, but the game is somewhat more rewarding when played with friends. One player controls a scythe wielding spirit, while the other controls a floating guitar (which requires a guitar peripheral to play).

Outside of the single player mode, players can jump into the Arcade mode or the Dish Challenge mode, both of which are basically single room encounters with a flood of enemies. The problem is that they are essentially what the single player game is, which reflects poorly, more on it rather than these supplemental modes. Basically players just trudge from one room to the next, get locked in until they kill every opponent, then move on. There’s very little imagination to the level design, and eventually, the once exciting fighting side of the game feels routine – simply dodge until you have an opening, attack, rinse and repeat until you can move onto the next room. Enemy variety is relatively limited, though some exciting boss encounters make up for it. The game becomes somewhat dull rather quickly.


One of the main draws during The Dishwasher’s pre-release promotion was its rather unique graphical style. While very well drawn and very gory, The Dishwasher suffers from very weak and limited animation, giving it the appearance of a cheap Flash game, rather than a full-blown Xbox Live Arcade product. At times, The Dishwasher’s visual elements don’t seem to mesh, and some things (like the ED-209 inspired boss and lightning strikes) seem like fish out of water. While one can appreciate that The Dishwasher is the work of a single man, once it moved into the big leagues of Xbox Live Arcade, the competition is steeper and players’ expectations are greater.

The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai is a showcase of what a single person can accomplish on XNA, and just how far one can go with the XNA Community Games initiative. On the other hand, the game has some major design flaws – unimaginative level design, low enemy variety, disconnected visual design and a combat system which becomes stale much faster than expected. The Dishwasher can be very entertaining, but it wears out its welcome too soon.