Recommending Hey Wizard!

My series of browser game reviews continues with a third installment. The premise of the series, as can be found in the original post, is that I’m telling you about browser games that I recommend for their quality of design. I’m no expert on the subject, I just mostly play what my brother Markku recommends to me. Click on the game’s icon to play it, it’s as easy as that in this new age of free ready-to-play browser gaming.

There are actually two titles in this series of platform games, Hey Wizard! and Quest for the Magic Mojo. The basic content is similar enough in the two – the wizard guy, who can’t jump, has to navigate his way through various levels filled with monsters by using the magics in his disposal. The minimalistics graphical representation makes the games very atmospheric (not to speak of the technological benefits of using pure vector art), while the freely navigated levels add a sense of exploration. Both games involve the wizard gradually gaining a more powerful repertoire of magics that allow him to jump, float, climb and blast his way through to his goal. The two mostly differ in tone, with the first game being more difficult and grim, while the latter focuses more on the exploration.

Recommending Elona Shooter

My series of browser game reviews continues with a second installment.

This is a pretty new game, I understand. Another title with tower defence roots, except this time you’re managing a team of fighters defending a castle from various attacking critters. The core activity is point-and-click shootery, with switchable weapons and managing reload times. After each “day” of combat you get to invest the money recovered into better defenses, such as more fighters, better walls and so on. Experience points flow, too, so your fighters get to learn fancy new skills. The game strives to hit all the hardcore buttons at once, and succeeds rather well.

Recommending the Space Game

Let’s begin this series of browser game reviews!

The Space Game is a real-time strategy game in the vein of Command & Conquer, set in space. Specifically typical of the genre is the attention slathered upon resource-gathering (space ore mining), which needs to be balanced with military concerns. Typical of browser games, on the other hand, is the tower defence -like military model: the player is a semi-passive party in the military conflict, situation defensive structures and waiting for the computer enemy to attack in “waves” that must be destroyed for the ore to flow. I’m not a particular fan of real-time strategy (as far as I can see, the only reason to do it instead of turn-based is so you get to try out wacky game mechanics that work better in a non-discrete environment), but I definitely can enjoy it when done well and provided with a pause button.

A beginner’s introduction to browser games

A beginner’s introduction in the sense that I am a beginner, that is – I’ve never taken to the genre with my full powers of sitting-in-front-of-a-computer. During the last couple of weeks I’ve played this stuff more than usually, though, largely because of my brother Markku, who plays this stuff quite a lot. Consequently I can recommend some excellent games to anybody interested in video game design or just playing innovative games.

Return from Wesnoth

I finally lost my patience with Battle for Wesnoth, which I’ve been playing lately. While I’ve usually been able to endure playing a scenario per day, the latest scenario in the campaign, the Trial of the Horse Clan (or some such; playing the Finnish translation here) almost made me break my mouse in frustration. I doubt that I’m going to return to the game again.

Games and Toys and Defeat Horizons

I’ve continued playing Wesnoth and trying to figure out what it is that annoys me in the game. I think I’ve got at least a part of the answer here: the issue is that what we call “games” actually consists of two different types of interactive objects, and mistaking them for each other is a recipe for disaster. Just an idle thought, let’s see if it goes anywhere.

Playing Battle for Wesnoth

I’ve been playing Battle for Wesnoth lately. It’s a light hex-based fantasy war game that mixes influences from western war games and Japanese skirmish war games. Wesnoth is free software, and really quite impressive for that – it has nice graphics and sounds, plenty of cheesy fantasy dialogue and everything else you’d expect of a game in this genre.

For all its good sides, though, I’m quite dissatisfied by this game overall. The project workflow obviously has worked well, and the production quality is good, but the game’s fundamental design tenets seem faulty to me. Let’s see if I can figure out why.

Marble Madness

I’ve now spent two nights playing Metroid Prime, a couple of hours all told. I remember playing the game around five years ago, but I didn’t finish it then. I can see why easily now: while the game is quite beautiful and has some interesting ideas, it’s also rather repetitive. Most condemning is the player flow control common to the genre of action adventure ever since whenever.

Back with news

Ho hum, a human is a busy creature, and apparently the first thing I cut when I’m busy is blogging. This is a fortunately non-pressurized medium, though, perhaps because of the singular publication model: no need to edit, print or publicize yourself when you want to write. Nice.

Anyway, as a brief explanation for the latest month-long silence, I offer thee this. In other words, I’m going to Gencon this year with the Forge booth if everything goes well. There’s quite a bit of planning involved with all the flight plans, hotels and, foremost, preparing products for the convention. I’m going to perchance discuss my products in greater length later either here or some other medium, for now it’s sufficient to say that I’m being pretty busy writing and producing the games I want to sell at Gencon.

I’m still hoping to write the blog as well during the summer months, though. The first order of business is to write more extensively about different flavours of fantasy gaming, which topic has stood open for a while now after my latest post. A big topic, but I’ll tackle it soon.

Shadow of the Colossus, first taste

I started Shadow of the Colossus tonight. Played for about an hour, defeating two colossi, gigantic monsters residing in a secluded valley the player explores in the game. Although the introduction sequence was typically long-winded, it was pretty obvious from the five first minutes of play that this game is something of a higher caliber than your run-of-the-mill action adventure: no inventory, realistic character movement, simply linear progression, fully continuous world and stunning attention to visuals; the graphic engine is butt-ugly as all hell to my eye when they try to use it for close-up shots of humans, and anti-aliasing is apparently a forgotten art, but it’s all made up by the scenery and attention lavished on the monsters. After Ocarina of Time, which I finished just this week, this is already the second game in a row where I’m actually content with the polygon-based 3d-engine. Apparently I’m just playing games that make appropriate use of the technology, or perhaps it has grown out of being a cancerous bastard on the side of the actual game that it was too often during the ’90s.