With all the talk these days about hyper-connected communication, community building and social media, Microsoft’s Xbox LIVE has really cornered the market on true community collaboration.

Through the Xbox XNA Creator’s Club, individuals with programming and design skills can create and submit custom games for sale in the Xbox LIVE Indie Game catalog. Currently, more than 1,100 such games are available on Xbox LIVE in every genre and at a great, low price point (usually around $1).

Not an aspiring developer? Not a problem. The really cool thing about the indie game community is that it provides a catalog of affordable games that are wonderful distractions from monotonous level grinds; the perfection solution for reviving a flatlined Friday night party and a great way to pass the time between mainstream game releases.

So go on, join Xbox LIVE. Jump in and start checking out hundreds of user-created games for every taste. Here are my suggestions for a few games that will get you up to speed.

I MAED A GAM3 WITH ZOMB1ES IN IT!!!

Developer: Jamezila

Players: 1-4

Rating: 4.75/5 by 42,166 players

Our rating: 3.5

Zombies are certainly a hot commodity in the gaming world right now. This challenging stick shooter is one part Left for Dead, one part Asteroids. You rack up points by mowing down waves of the undead with up to three friends and the help of various weapon upgrades.

This game is currently the top rated game on Xbox LIVE Indie Arcade by community reviewers.

Avatar Ninja

Developer: Milkstone Studios

Players: 1

Rating: 4/5 by 1,109 players

Our rating: 2.75

This skill game puts your avatar through his or her paces in an ancient ninja training course, featuring water racing, killer traps and shurikens. The graphics are good, but the annoying rhythmic music will make it tough to for you to focus your reflexes on the task at hand.

If you’re digging the avatar action, you might also like Avatar Showdown and Avatar Boogie.

Soul

Developer: Kydos

Players: 1

Rating: 3.25/5 by 1,206 players

Our rating: 4.25

In Soul, your job is to courier a luminescent soul through the dingy but beautifully orchestrated halls of the hallowed hospital grounds and into heaven. The game is filled with the realistic and unobtrusive sounds of hospital goings on and the horrible growls of hell monsters that wish to devour the fragile vessel. Without your wits and dexterity, and a very subtle hand, the fate of one man’s soul is sure to be dark.

Of the games I played, Soul is by far the most professionally developed. The development team at Kydos definitely has a future in commercial game design.

The Impossible Game

Developer: FlukeDude

Players: 1

Rating: 4.25/5 by 8,546 players

Our rating: 2.25

The developers boast that it is “quite possibly the world’s hardest game.” Yep, impossible. So much so that it’s not much fun. In this perpetual side-scrolling platformer, you control a physics-bound orange cube. Your goal is to jump over spikes and jump onto blocks. The sadistic bastards who made this game even keep a running tally of how many “attempts” at the impossible you’ve made.

I guess one thing you can count on is that indie game developers aren’t afraid to provide incredibly difficult (albeit simply formatted) games for the most hardcore of gamers.

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