Hey guys! So I found this Kickstarter project when I was looking around to see what kinds of neat things were available. I think you should all check it out.
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Sorry for the lack of post on Wednesday and the lack of real post today. I’m going on vacation for a few weeks. I’ll be back on the 24th, and you can expect new reviews starting around then.
I might have mentioned that I’m a game design major. This implies that I know other game designers. And, I do! Some of them made some games (*gasp*) and here are a few of them. I’m going to be including a link in the arcade to all of their games, this is just a quick run down.
As a side note, these games were made using the Perlenspiel HTML5 engine, which explains the blocky graphics. If you would like to check out the engine, its right here.
Liquid Pixel Pixie Stix
It comes in both single player and multiplayer. Its like snake, only level based and involving the consumption of pixie stix.
Block Party
There are blocks, they want to be together, like an adventuring party. Gather them! You might also be murdering everyone, it depends on whether or not the sound is on.
Liquid Pixel Pixie Stix 2: Pixi’s Pixie Stick Factory
You’ve played diner dash games, but have you played a pixie stix factory game? Its the self-proclaimed obnoxiously sweet sequel to Liquid Pixel Pixie Stix.
Like I said, I’m going to be adding these to the Arcade. So be sure to check them out. You can either navigate to the Arcade or just go straight here.
As its name hints, Creatures & Castles by Hiive is a dungeon crawling puzzle game where you play a hero looking for treasure. In this game, you’re solving the puzzle of how to move around the room without getting attacked by a monsters. You plan a path to get through the room and then your character follows it. You can stop them again by clicking on them and start a new path from that point.
There are two possible player characters: one male and one female. The initial level pack available is the Middle Ages, but for 99¢ you can buy the Egyptian level pack. Its also quite the challenge to get through all the levels. The tutorial levels are extremely good, but the difficulty ramps up way too quickly after that. There are 64 levels in the middle ages path and that’s where I got stuck.
The graphics for Creatures & Castles are really cool and don’t get in the way of gameplay at all. The controls are simple to use, which is very nice. It plays nicely on the computer, despite feeling like it was designed for the iPhone.
Here’s one of those things that drive me crazy. The backstory of the game isn’t in the game. If you want to find out things like the names of the characters or why they’re running around in a castle, you need to look on the website. That makes absolutely no sense to me. If you’re going to bother writing a story for your game, put it in somewhere. Even if there’s just a button you can click to read the story or a one-time splash screen on loading. Their names are Timmy and Susie by the way.
In conclusion, Creatures & Castles is an entertaining but ridiculously hard puzzle game available for all the iPlatforms and the Chrome App store. The game is decent, the art is nice but the story isn’t included in the game. It could use to have a slightly better difficulty curve, though I’m sure that some people can make it through. The other thing that really got on my nerves is that I have no idea what the gold is for. You collect gold over time and it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. Creatures & Castles gets a 2.5 out of 5 hearts. I just wasn’t impressed.
Puzzle games were among the first development when computer gaming became a big thing, and no wonder since they are fairly easy to develop. Gopherwood Studios have created a lovely little puzzle game that is available freely in the Chrome app store. Its called Entanglement. The basic idea is that you form paths, trying to loop the red trail around without hitting a wall or the center or trapping yourself. In order to control the path, you rotate the pieces which are randomly dropped. The controls are extremely simple but the game is extremely challenging.
To control the orientation of the piece, you just click those little arrow images. The challenge is paying attention to where the path will lead.
The user interface is really simple. The score for your current game and your personal records are kept in the upper left hand corner of the screen. The menu is available on the bottom right hand corner in a little tab that you can pull out. The UI is really pleasing to the eye and doesn’t interfere with the game at all. I also really like the art style. It has a very distinctly asiatic feeling to it, which adds quite nicely to the overall zen feeling.
I find that playing Entanglement is extremely relaxing but also quite challenging. I particularly enjoy the fact that I start it and I’m immediately playing. There’s no loading or intro videos or anything like that, just start and go. And a play is pretty short. It only takes a few minutes. More puzzle games should have that feeling that you can jump in at any time and play for as long or short as you would like.
In conclusion, I really enjoy Entanglement. I was particularly pleased to find out that the developers work with HTML5, which is easily my favorite development tool. I love the art and the feel of the game. It really fills an important niche in my games collection. As a result of that, Entanglement earns the much sought after 5 out of 5 hearts. Well done!
If you’re interested in getting Entanglement, you can find it in the Chrome app store here or you can check out Gopherwood Studios’ own website here
Today, my friend Becky and I wrote a card game. It is strangely entertaining and confusing at the same time. The people who have played thus far have greatly enjoyed it. It might be designed to be played by a certain young and confused elf LARP character. She was challenged to prove that she knows how to play cards. This is my way of doing it. 
Enjoy!
Yes; Every System!
Requires:
- A standard deck of 52 cards + both jokers
- scoring mechanism such as paper for counting tricks
Rules:
- Deal out hands of 5 cards to each player
- Play proceeds counter clockwise
- The game is comprised of rounds until a player has taken 13 tricks exactly
- On each round, each player has to make hands in as many card games as possible.
- The following rules are in effect:
- 8s are crazy (wild)
- Pair games are not allowed
- Once per turn, each player may invoke “Go Fish”
- If you invoke “Go Fish”, you must declare which card you are discarding or passing first
- To score “Go Fish”, you must have 4 of a card
- Black Jack must be 21, use of black jack trumps
- War must be a card that was used in no other hands
- Cribbage must be 15 or 31 (neither trumps)
- Jokers:
- if a single joker is in your hand it is minus a single trick
- if both jokers are in your hand, they are a poker pair higher than aces
- Muggins:
- If you see a valid hand of cards in another player’s hand and call it for them, then you can claim the trick if they win it
- Each “game” they win is a trick
- If a player passes 13 tricks scored, they bust and are out of play
- Dealer passes counter clockwise each round
Rules for Taking Tricks
In order to take a trick, you must have a better hand in that game than the other players.
Valid Card Games
Valid card games should be announced at the beginning of the game. Some examples follow:
- Poker
- Crazy Eights
- Go Fish
- Black Jack
- Cribbage
- Old Maid (see also, single Joker)
- War (special rules)
If any of the rules are unclear, please feel free to leave a comment.
Have you ever played Zoo Tycoon or one of the various clones? Then you understand the basic concept behind Monster Corp. Basically, it starts out with a very Jurassic Park-esque intro sequence in which it is revealed that the fossils of ancient monsters have been discovered and the scientists have begun extracting DNA from them to clone the creatures. Obviously, the next step is that you open a zoo to exhibit these monsters. Because clearly, there is nothing wrong with opening a zoo containing giant horrible bloodthirsty monsters. This clearly won’t end in terrible, right?
So, basically you have this little room that they keep calling a museum but it looks much more like a zoo, given that it has live animal…monster…things. You have to make sure you keep food and such stocked. You also have to keep cleaners and such on the payroll to make sure they keep your monster cages clean.
So, then you start in and realize just how unintuitive the interface is. I’m pretty sure that it has stopped acknowledging any times that I send people out to explore for new fossils. They seem to be charging me the money but not giving me any DNA. Also, both of my monsters just died from neglect while I was writing this. I’m not entirely sure how the goals work in this game. They seem to keep giving me more goals to achieve despite the fact that I haven’t completed the earlier ones.
My favorite part of this comedy of errors is the grammar. I’m pretty sure the designer was translating their dialogue using an electronic translator. The word choice and grammar only get better in the help screens and such.
Over all, this game is hilariously bad. The story doesn’t make sense, the grammar and writing are atrocious and the mechanics didn’t make any sense. The graphics were kind of cute…I guess. The music was repetitive and kind of hurt after a while. I’m really sad to say it, but I feel like this might be the worst I’ve ever slammed a game, this might be worse than Kitty Spangles, which is impressive in a terrible kind of way. In conclusion, like the aforementioned nightmare of my gaming, Monster Corp has earned 1 out of 5 hearts.
Greetings my patient readers, I’m taking some of my time off this evening to post a review for an interesting flash game I found while wafting through the internet. Its called Microbe Kombat. It rather reminds me of Osmos, but on a much more simple to play level. The basic idea is that you’re playing a microbe and you’re trying to eat proteins and other microbes. If you succeed in wiping out the other types of microbes on a given level, you beat that level.
You control your little microbe with the mouse and swim around collecting proteins to get bigger. Then you can eat smaller microbes and use special powers. The AI isn’t very smart, since every time it hits the maximum size, it splits itself into two smaller microbes and then I just eat it. There are several levels but the game still seems quite short because of how fast paced it is.
There were some really annoying glitches when I was playing. In particular was the false protein. See that lovely red circle in the middle of the above image? Yeah…not a real protein. That was a very very very annoying bug. I found the mechanics to be pretty simple and the controls were usually easy to use.
Overall, I was underwhelmed by Microbe Kombat. The concept was intriguing but the game didn’t match up with what I was hoping for. Microbe Kombat gets an unimpressive 2 out of 5.
So, I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m going to start trying to make the time. I’m currently working at a computer camp as a counselor. This does mean I have access to some neat new games to review for you all, but at the same time its making my time (and sleep) a precious commodity. Expect posts to be sporadic at best, non-existant at worst.
Hopefully the next post should be about Game Maker Lite. I downloaded it yesterday afternoon and I’ve been playing around with some of the basic features. It seems pretty nice so far.
This made me really happy when it turned up on Geeks are Sexy. Its the World’s Biggest Pac-man. It contains thousands of different Pac-man style mazes that are attached to each other and you can continually flow from one to the next to the next. The basic idea is the same as normal Pac-man, but here as long as you can keep going, you just keep going.
Here’s the best part, the mazes that aren’t from the original game are player made. If you log in via Facebook, it saves your player stats and allows you to make new mazes. I’m a big fan of new twists on old games and this isa classic reborn into something absolutely amazing.
It plays exactly like the original, with nice simple controls. The only real change is the never ending nature of the map. They even used the original style of the graphics and audio.
If you ever liked Pac-Man, this is a game to try. Its everything there ever was to love about the original game, only there’s more of it. I award The World’s Biggest Pac-Man a 4 out of 5 hearts.
If you are interested in playing the World’s Biggest Pac-Man, it can be found here. You don’t have to have a Facebook account to play, only to save new levels.
