The XNA Community Games have been mostly known for being created by a couple of guys in a room, but it has yet to be truly taken advantage of by companies which are that little bit bigger.

Halfbrick, an independent game developer in Brisbane, Australia are like many smaller developers, they tend to work on Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable software. The XBLA, PSN and WiiWare forefront allows them to begin working on next generation consoles with ease. Their first plan of action is the new Halfbrick Fridays series of games, developed for the XNA Community Games space.

Their first title, Halfbrick Blast Off, is a relaxing puzzle game which has you control a small space ship where you try and grab all the lost spacemen out in the void of space. Using a limited thrust maneuver, along with the gravitational pull of the surrounding planets, you must try to grab as many as you can and get to the space gate. It's a little similar to one of Nintendo's WiiWare titles Orbient, but with a far more game like aesthetic.

The other titles in the Halfbrick Fridays series include Halfbrick Echoes, Halfbrick Thrusts and Halfbrick Zombies.. With the XNA Community Games marketplace being very similar to the iPhone Apps store, Halfbrick are able to make several games very quickly with a quick turnover for very simple ideas.

Halfbrick Blast Off is set to be released onto the XNACG Marketplace on March 27th - this Friday, and the other titles will be released throughout the next few months, with possibly more on the way. It's a shame that, like all other Australians, they will not be able to sell their games in Australia, as the Xbox Live Community Games marketplace is not available in out country. I'm hoping we'll hear something very soon rectifying that situation.

I hope that more independent developers try something like this, working on those cool, small ideas which can be created and tested very quickly, much like the development of games for the iPhone. Hopefully we'll hear more about their other games very soon.