Wednesday saw the four teams making significant progress made by the teams in the XNA Challenge contest. 

Game|Life's Mary Jane Irwin is chronicling their progress.  Here's an excerpt from the latest entry:

Game|Life: The XNA Challenge: 19:15

With 19:15 left on the clock Tuesday night, it was evident that teams were starting to fill the strain of constant coding. Josh Butterworth and Andre Furtado both managed to produce some form of playable build, while the two-man teams were struggling to implement a few basic features.

"...But I have to say I'm awfully impressed with the progress they made. I know that statement is feeding directly into Microsoft’s marketing ploy -– confirmed during a brief encounter with Rick Wickham, director of Microsoft's gaming business -- but XNA is apparently really easy to use. All you need is a basic programming background.

Anyways, to combat the art problem, shown in the last update, the teams are getting resourceful. Thanks to a blog post by Andre Furtado, the teams have started to tap into the XNA community for art assets. Josh Butterworth managed to contact his Dream-Build-Play artist, which has given his game a Geometry Wars flare. And Simian Escape will be getting artwork from community members. ..."

Dungeon Quest
Testcavecolladamodelscene_screenshot_001

AbduX
2_1

Final Stand
Finalstand4

Simian Escape
3

Read the entire post, with summaries of the teams and their progress.

Joystiq also did a summary of the work so far, with an entry on each team, and a short video clip. Here are some clips from their posts (Click to each for more from the teams).

Joystiq: XNA Challenge: Dungeon Quest

"...When most programmers are faced with developing a game from the ground up in four days, they go for a simple concept like a 2D shoot-'em-up or platformer. When Benjamin Nietschke and Cristoph Rienacker make a game in four days, they go for broke, aiming for a 3D, first-person multiplayer dungeon crawl that would take most people weeks if not months to develop. "When we heard about a four-day development competition, we thought we could do something simple, but that wouldn't be as cool," Nitschke explained."

 
Joystiq: XNA Challenge: Simian Escape

"...Glanville describes his game, Simian Escape, as a standard escape-predators-and-a-meteor-that's-threatening-to-destroy-the-earth platformer. There was a lot of work still to be done on the early build I saw on Tuesday, but with some support form their friends at Garage Games, Glanville seemed confident they'd have a functional prototype when the contest ended on Thursday."


Joystiq: XNA Challenge: Abdux

"Andre Furtado isn't an artist, as he's quick to tell me when showing off the somewhat simple drawings and animations of his XNA Challenge entry Abdux. But while visual art might not be his specialty, Furtado's work shows a certain artistry in the simple, natural input it uses. ..."

Joystiq: XNA Challenge: Final Stand

"Butterworth's creation is Final Stand, a "static-screen shooter" that he admits draws lots of inspiration from Geometry Wars, right down to the dual stick control scheme. Where Final Stand tweaks the formula is in its multiplayer mode, which will allow four people to work together to kill as many of the swarming yellow enemies as possible. The game is intended as a co-operative exercise, but Butterworth said he'll be leaving friendly fire on so "if you're losing in the scores and have two seconds left and have a missile in your pocket and you see your friend over there, you can feel free to shoot him." Think of it as Space War meets Geometry Wars."