Every year Microsoft holds its DreamBuildPlay contest to promote the XNA Development Kit on the PC and Xbox 360.  The contest allows independent developers a chance to showcase their best work and enter for a chance to win some great prizes - including a publishing contract.  We had a great tip from a member about two upcoming entries that feature cooperative play in a unique manner.

Today seems like a good day to be a fan of SHMUPs and Shooter games.  Along with the previous news about Raiden IV comes the announcement that Schizoid, another co-op shoot em up, will hit Xbox Live Arcade sometime next month.  Schizoid was developed using  Microsoft's XNA, and is the first such game to be released on XBLA.  The developers call it the "most co-op game ever".  That us certainly a bold claim!  The color-based gameplay  echoes that of Ikaruga, but apparently color changing is not an option.  Players must protect their teammate while avoiding opposite colored enemies at the same time.  Color us very interested in checking out the trial version of this title sometime next month.

One of the things we talked about was the network play, and we've had people doing prototypes internally of multiplayer shoot-'em-ups both in versus and co-op.

From day one, Schizoid promised true teamwork where players have to rely on a friend to survive and advance through the game. The clip is short, but we get to see how the game actually works and why it's so "teamworky". In a nutshell, Schizoid is based on red and blue crabs that need killing, but there is no shooting in the game. Instead, you kill these evil crabs by running into them with the blue player ramming blue crabs while the red player rams the red crabs. But the catch is that the blue player can't touch the red crabs or they die and vice versa making the co-op element oh so apparent.