Strange Design

Week of Gaming #109 - 11/04/12

It's been a good gaming week - I'm enjoying my new balance between console, PC, and tablet.  Now if only I had a reason to fire up my 3DS...

Games of note this week:

1 - X:Com - Enemy Unknown

2 - Rows Free

3 - Your Shape: Fitness 2012

4 - Elf Defense

5 - Polara

 

Polara

 

I quite enjoyed Polara when I first played it - but now I can say without reservation that it is destined to be a classic.  Have you ever played Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride and thought "I wish this were made like a real classic game - with increasing difficulty, curated levels, sweet hidden objects, and a story!"

Your wish has come true.

Switching from blue to red is so natural - and so awesome.  Jumping is easy, with a bit of hidden depth in exactly how high/far you'll travel.  But the combination of the two is nothing short of magical.  Jumping through spinning globes, reversing gravity, turning platforms on and off - and then doing them all together!  Plus, the boss fights are totally sweet.

 

Elf Defense

 

This was a surprising discovery - I love a good Tower Defense game, and they seem to be pretty thin on the ground for iOS.  (Note the emphasis on good TD games...)  Elf Defense might just make the cut.  The visuals are great, and the mechanics of the touchscreen are solid.  But best of all, there are some really interesting decisions to make - and a robust economy behind the game.  Stay tuned to see how long this one can hold my attention.

 

Your Shape: Fitness Evolved 2012

 

I'm playing a Kinect game!  This is pretty much the killer Kinect app for me - because not only does it tune a workout for me, but it's actually really helpful when I get some of the movements wrong.  Doing the Bollywood dance, it might say "straighten your left arm" - because that's exactly what I'm doing wrong!  A real person might frustrate me with their little corrections - but I'm loving the personal attention from my Kinect.  Also, my body is feeling sore in a way I haven't felt since I was on the track team.  That's good?

 

Rows Free

 

Here's a blast from 6 months back - a bare-bones puzzle game.  It's so simple that I suspect most players wouldn't give it a second look - but math-nerds like me get totally wrapped up.  You're given 4 objects, and you need to place them on a grid.  Then you're given 4 more.  If you get a line or a block which make a Set (set-style!) they disappear.  You rarely get to make an obvious set, so the game is mostly all about layout out your pieces to create as many "set opportunities" as possible.  I can easily lose myself for an hour in that process.  I think the game is actually called "Rows" - but I can't imagine what features a paid version could add to the experience, so I choose to think that you are "freeing" rows.

 

X:Com - Enemy Unknown

 

I really like X:Com, but my efforts to play the game have been thwarted one way or another for quite some time.  Recently I've been cursed in my games - dying immediately in Dredmor, or FTL.  But now in X:Com I think I've broken the curse.  I have a classic game running which looks really promising.  My biggest complaint is the fact that everything in the game revolves around hit % - but nothing reduces damage.  (There is an armor which reduces melee damage, I believe)  So in the early game even if you play well a few lucky rolls from the Thin Men can just wipe your entire squad.  Grrr...

Week of Gaming #107 - 10/21/12

Having a real TV & Console set-up in my house has totally brought me back to console gaming, which is a refreshing change after the past 9 months or so without.  I really enjoyed the time spent playing Starcraft 2, and I've certainly broken in my iPad - but I hope that more console time will broaden my playlist week to week.  It will certainly help me sift through my massive backlog!

Games of note this week:

1 - FTL

2 - 10,000,000 (ten million)

3 - Polara

4 - TMNT

5 - Borderlands 2

Borderlands 2

We've been playing this one for about two weeks on Monday nights - playing as a group of 3.  I'm playing the Siren, alongside a soldier and gunzerker.  After a few weeks I'm ready to report - I'm not enjoying the game.  There are no difficulty levels, but somehow the game is incredibly difficult.  I feel ineffectual all the time, and can barely kill even one enemy without dying myself.  I keep thinking that I'm in some weird experience hole - or that I'm at the inflection point of weapon power - but that clearly isn't the case.  The game is just too hard to be fun.

I started a game to play solo - playing as the Zero this time - and the experience was significantly different.  I was taking out enemies in just a few hits, my skills felt interesting and useful - so maybe it was just the Siren class which wasn't to my tastes?  Unfortunately no - I switched to a multiplayer Zero, and I was right back where I starter.  I'd unload a full SMG clip into an enemy and barely see their HP move.

So I'm thinking one of two things must be true:  Either the difficulty scaling for 3 players is horrible, or something about the networked (as opposed to offline) environment is preventing me from hitting enemies properly.

TMNT

This is an old game from my backlog - I'd heard it wasn't very good, but it's a Jade Engine game (used in Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, Assassin's Creed, etc) which is always nice to check out.

Unfortunately right off the bat I can see a control problem - your character only enters the running animation when L-Stick = 1.  In my games I always use L-Stick > 0.8, to make certain that a fully depressed stick will always trigger the run animation.  Requiring L-Stick = 1 means that on most controllers there will be directions in which it is impossible to run (because the octagon has a shorter radius in the center of each face than it does at each vertex.)  So certain jumping sequences are very frustrating, because I can't run (to do the running jump) the way I want to.

This is a great example of how intimate knowledge of controllers can make me a bit over sensitive to very specific problems - Conan (which I loved for the most part) had a similar issue which nearly caused me to quit the game.  I'm only 20% through TMNT, so hopefully there won't be more sections like this last one.

I suppose I should also mention that the combat is terrible?  Because it is.

Polara

Here's a nice new addition - Polara, from Hope This Works Games - the folks who brought us the very pretty (but not totally satisfying) Kunundrum on iOS.  Polara is an "endless runner" game like Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride - but it has a few nice twists.  First off, each level is "curated" - which means configured by hand.  This was amazing in Don't Run with a Plasma Sword- and less so in Zombie Runner.  In this case it's great, because some of the "random" levels can feel really punishing.

Polara also has some great secrets and bonus objectives - which I really like & respect a bunch.  One minor issue is the fact that the platforms you jump on blend into the background a bunch, which can make it really hard to see what I am expected to do.  The game revolves around a red/blue color mechanic, so I understand that everything else in the world needs to be muted... but I think this could be improved.

My one big complaint about the game is that it doesn't support multiple profiles... I'd love to see that added in an update.  Until then, you'll have to check this game out for yourself - on your own device.

10,000,000 (ten million)

A bunch of rave reviews led me to this iOS oddity - a time-based puzzle matcher with light RPG elements.  Unfortunately, it turned out to be not so much my my of tea.  The premise seems promising - you match things down below, which give you resources (wood, gold, stone) or help you progress (damage, keys, items).  Initially you can't progress well, but the resources you gather help you to buy better equipment, which allows you to deal more damage and thus progress further in the game.

Unfortunately, the whole thing scales like a JRPG - you gain the ability to deal double damage, and then enemies get double HP... so while your scores go up, you're not really playing more, or doing anything different at the higher levels.  Eventually I "won" the game - but it didn't really give me much of a sense of accomplishment.  The game certainly has nothing on Puzzle Quest (1), or Clash of Heroes.  Heck, I'd still suggest people play Slydris over this.

FTL

I'm still grinding away through FTL - haven't managed to beat the game yet on normal difficulty, and still have several ships & variations to unlock.  Most of my focus has been on the Rock Cruiser recently, which really needs hive evasion % to survive early encounters.  The biggest pain about the Rock Cruiser though is the all-rock crew.  They are expensive, move slowly, and since you want to move them to offensive / defensive roles all their early nav / weapon / shield experience goes to waste.  Absolutely the hardest ship to play well.

Week of Gaming #102 - 9/16/12

My Xbox is still attached to my PC monitor, which has re-enabled console gaming for me after a modest dry spell.  Unfortunately mo work load has been relatively high this week, so it hasn't seen the time investment I would prefer.

Games of note this week:

1 - Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Marvel Vs. Capcom 2

4 - Slydris

5 - .Slide

.Slide

This little puzzle gem was something I found via reddit - the author was looking for feedback on his first published game, so I checked it out.  For a first effort it has a really clean visual aesthetic, and the puzzles are decent.  There isn't a lot of replay opportunity, but the potential for expansion is present, so we'll see if anything more comes of the game.

Slydris

An unexpected find when I was looking for .Slide (and didn't type in the leading period).  This is a fresh, exciting take on Tetris-style line clearing.  No, really.  It has great achievements, a few nice game modes, and just the right number of special elements (blocks you can't slide, magnets).  I think hard-core action puzzle fans will love chewing through this one - and anyone will at least enjoy playing it.  It has a very "Lumens" style to the gameplay, especially the survival mode.  I always appreciate a game that helps organize my thinking into new patterns, and Slydris absolutely delivers on that.

Marvel vs Capcom 2

There is a new arcade in town, which offers free to play games and monthly membership rates.  The have a dedicated Marvel vs Capcom 2 machine - so I've been making a point of stopping through once a week or so to play.  It's taken a few sessions for the old reflexes to come back, but now I'm crushing the story mode in about 20 minutes.  This is the real arcade machine - so the game needs to be played and finished a few hundred times for all the characters and options to unlock.  I'm very much enjoying my role in that process!  I was disappointed that UMvC3 didn't have any sort of unlock progression, though at the same time I appreciated it.

Dungeons of Dredmor

After months of planning (and a little lucky help from my son) I finally got one of the most elusive achievements in DoD - the "Double Rainbow" which requires that you hit a monster with 14 damage types simultaneously!  The most challenging types to locate are Existential and Asphyxiative damage, two words which have now entered my 9-year-olds lexicon.  (Video games are educational!)  I have more achievements to earn still, but most of them have straight-forward requirements.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

My Monday-night co-op group played through all of Transformers: War for Cybertron, and we had a blast doing it.  So it was a natural fit for us to check out the sequel.  The gameplay in FoC is nicely refined and improved overall - the story is still excellent, the fan-service is lavish, but neither gets in the way of the action.  Unfortunately there is no co-op story this time around.  :(

I totally understand why - a co-op story requires that you have 3 or 4 allied characters battling through the story at all time - which means any given player could be missing a lot, and your success or failure will often hinge on things you don't even see.  Without those constraints, the developers can deliver a much more personal action story - covering many more characters.  So I think it was a good decision, and improves the single-player game.

But will I take the time to play through the single-player game? ... I might skip it.

Week of Gaming #93 - 07/15/12

This week I've been consumed by the social duties of running a large Kickstarter campaign... but I've managed to balance it just a bit better than last week.  Mostly by starting a few new games - that's always good for my motivation!

Games of note this week:

1 - Serious Sam 3 BFE

2 - Dungeon Raid

3 - Endless Space

4 - Battle Nations

5 - Dungeons of Dredmor

Dungeons of Dredmor

I've been dying in Dredmor a lot.  Now that's not really unusual - most characters die, and some quite early on.  But what I mean is that when I try really hard to focus - I'm still dying.  There is a new expansion coming out August 1st which I'm very excited about, so maybe I should take a break until then - to recharge my capacity to sink hundreds of hours into such an awesome game, eh?

Battle Nations

They keep expanding this game, and I still think it's one of the best "click, then wait a while" games out there.  But I think my time with it is coming to an end.  Of the 7 or 8 resources the game uses, only 1 or 2 are relevant to me any more - the others just sit at maximum levels all the time.  I only use a few attack units - because everything else has been outclassed.  It's sad to leave it, but I suppose I've enjoyed it quite a bit for free, so why complain?

Endless Space

Custom Factions?  The game finally goes live and now I have to deal with the agony of designing my own race?  Now I spend an hour before I start the game, which means I get even LESS done when I want to play some 4x in space action.  I'm falling into a sort of normalized sequence of events during my first 20 or 30 turns - soon I'll start trolling strategy posts to see how closely to optimal I've been playing.

Dungeon Raid

This is a game I wish I'd thought of - it's a simplified game that's partway between Puzzle Quest and Tower Defense.  I say Tower Defense because enemies grow stronger procedurally over time, and you need to upgrade your ability to resist them at nearly the same curve.  You have a few tools to do this - Experience from killing enemies gives you "levels", while defense points spent when your defenses are at maximum earns you "upgrades" and coins collected can earn you "equipment."  All of these things are pretty much the same - do you get +1 def, +1 attack, 5% more gold?  Do you get a special ability?

These choices don't really matter much in the early game - but eventually the enemies become quite strong, and if you don't have the defenses necessary to absorb their attacks you'll die very quickly.

It's a fairly bare-bones game, but I quite respect it.  Worth the price tag of free!

Serious Sam BFE

I played and very much enjoyed the first two SS games.  They start out fun, and by 10% of the way through you're thrown into an INSANE firefight with literally hundreds of enemies attacking you at once.  Ammo conservation becomes a real problem, which is especially well-done because many enemies have specific weapons they are weak to, but you just can't switch fast enough to be efficient, so you end up experimenting with inefficient alternatives on the fly.  It's not frustrating, it's awesome.

This new game feels a bit too fast - that might be the way it's programmed, or my settings, or it could just be that my reflexes are way slower than they were 10 years ago.  In any case it's not a dealbreaker.  I love that the default weapon - the "you have no weapon so just fight with your hands" is a ONE HIT KILL.  Your "basic" attack is literally to rip your opponent apart instantly.

This is balanced in some really interesting ways.  Number one, the attack speed of this move is not great.  One-on-one you can dominate with this move alone, but in the midst of a group you need to get OUT of there, not stand by each enemy in turn.  But number 2 - the game has some excellent environmental effects, which basically means you can't see anything nearby for a moment when your opponent's body is showering blood.  Likewise, exploding enemies leave lingering smoke clouds that obscure the dozen or more exploding enemies advancing behind them... this makes movement, position, and weapon choice really important in an organic way.  I'm digging it.

Week of Gaming #92 - 07/08/12

A very emotional week for me - the Kaiju Combat kickstarter went live 5 days ago, and has been a very mixed bag thus far.  Near-constant promotion of the campaign has left me with very little focus for gaming.  But I manage to make do!  Because I would have to disappoint my readers...

Games of note this week:

1 - Endless Space

2 - Field Runners

3 - Shiren the Wanderer

4 - Jetpack Joyride

5 - Hex a Hop

Hex a Hop

This is a dinosaur of the iOS game scene - released all the way back in 2009.  I first found it because of gottasolveit - the best resource I've found for puzzle games on iOS.  The presentation is crude, and the game mechanics are familiar - step on every tile exactly once.  But the interesting level branching, the clear mechanics, easy controls, and the excellent puzzle design make it shine.  I love a puzzle game which is large enough to let you win and lose while learning, and Hex a Hop totally fits that bill.

Jetpack Joyride

A year old, but still one of the very best games on iOS.  Recently updated to include "gadgets" - which subtly modify the game experience in fun ways.  I find that buying and using gadgets has really slowed my ability to save up money for other things - and that seems like a good trend.  I reset my achievements, and I'm having a blast all over again!

Shiren the Wanderer

I talked about this at some length last week - it's a really interesting intersection between old-school SNES gameplay and Roguelike ideas.  The biggest problem (when compared to a modern game like Dungeons of Dredmor) is that there is no choice at the beginning - the game always starts the same.  It eventually becomes quite different, of course - but it can lose appeal to do the same intro over and over.

Field Runners

I thought this tower defense game was pretty good when I first played it back in 2009, and I'm looking forward to the upcoming sequel.  But the reason this has jumped back onto my play rotation is the fact that I can play it in a chrome browser now - that makes it easy to jump in and out of, which is what I want most from a TD game.

Endless Space

As I mentioned at the start, I'm spending a LOT of time checking out forums, posting news updates, and prepping for interviews.  It's difficult work not only because it takes so much time, but because it's endlessly repetitive.  So how can I cool my brain off when it's 3am but I'm still too wired to sleep?  Endless Space.

This sort of "one more turn" game hits all the right notes for me - it's relaxing because I can play at my own pace.  It's exciting because I have lots of anticipation regarding what will happen in the next turn or two.  It's not a prefect game, but it's very good.  I'm having a good time with it.

Week of Gaming #89 - 06/17/12

Apparently I've been away from the app store long enough for several interesting new puzzle games to show up.  Since I'm still just on the cusp of my major update to Sun Stones, I thought it would be professional for me to try them out.

Games of note this week:

1 - To-Fu 2

2 - Rune Raiders

3 - Pinch 2 HD

4 - tJam

5 - BraveSmart

BraveSmart

BraveSmart looks like another clone of the excellent Triple Town - but it's not.  Rather, it is a match-3 game which uses Triple-Town-like upgrade paths to create a really unique puzzle mechanic - which still manages to make use of the dozens of hours I've spent in Triple Town and its ilk.

I can't quite say that BraveSmart is an especially good game - I don't quite understand what it is trying to accomplish with limited hammers / weights, and the character movement also seems a bit obtuse.  Sometimes characters move just once - sometimes they move several times.  Sometimes a trapped character needs to be moved - sometimes a trapped character cannot be moved... yet.  Still, I love the fact that I'm playing such a new game, and yet I feel like I have such a leg-up on learning it.  Very well timed.

tJam

tJam's icon makes it look like yet another clone of Rush Hour - probably one of my least favorite puzzle archetypes of all time.  However, I'm very pleased to report that it is, in fact, a totally different beast.  It's an edge-sliding game which uses really tight limits to create fascinating puzzles.  Each "move" is you sliding a colored vertex along an edge - either an edge which matches the color of the vertex, or a white (colorless) edge.  If you slide over a white edge, the edge changes color to match your vertex.  If you slide over a colored edge, it turns white.  The goal is to turn all edges white.

The fantastic thing about the game is that, in most cases, you have only 1 possible move.  The first level you play has you make 6 moves before you have a choice about which piece to move.  This makes it feel as if you must be on the right track - but it took me nearly 60 moves to solve the first puzzle, instead of the minimum of just 22... I eventually got the 22 move solution, and it was a pretty great feeling.

Ivan Vassilev has published several puzzle games - I suspect he procedurally generates his puzzles.  That's the feeling I get playing through them - they are interesting in a dry mechanical way, and lessons learned in one do not necessarily apply to the next.  Still, it's free.

Pinch 2 HD

I never played the original Pinch, but this one just smacks of touch-puzzle awesomeness.  Simply slide a dot around.  You can merge several dots together into big dots - which can cross pits but don't fit through narrow gaps.  You can break big dots apart - for the opposite problem.  It's lovely, fluid goodness.

I especially like the fact that achieving all four objectives in each level is impossible in a single-go.  You need to win levels several times, playing for minimum screen-touches one time, then playing for completion (which probably requires several redundant merges / splits) a second time, then playing for time a third run, and so forth.  It's a good way to get more mileage out of each level.

Rune Raiders

I loved Rune Raiders when I first discovered it - but my interest waned pretty quickly.  It's still a fantastic concept - but the reality of playing it pretty much runs the experience into the ground in short order.  :(.

A new update has changed the icon (I hate that!), and added new characters and levels.  Well, one new character.  I'm playing through the game again, but they still have not fundamentally fixed the problems inherent in the system.  However, I'm hopefully that they've seen enough success to keep at it!

To-Fu 2

One of my side-project games for iOS was very similar to To-Fu 2.  I don't think I'll ever get to finish that project, but it warms my heart knowing that To-Fu 2 exists.  This is a puzzle game which dips a bit into physics - but not in the sloppy way so many games do.  You fire your To-Fu master with a stretch-and-release mechanic, and he flies straight until he hits a wall and latches on.  Moving straight towards your goal is not always the best way to proceed, because sometimes an extra launch near the beginning can put you on a path with fewer "turns" required later.  Since you are playing to minimize launches - not maximize the distance traveled each launch (a subtle distinction!) the levels have a lot of surprises.

Week of Gaming #88 - 06/10/12

Ok, even though I've played a fair amount of Diablo 3 this week, and have had a few really good Hero Academy games - there is only one game I want to talk about today:

Endless Space

Endless Space has a few things going for it:

1 - Absolutely breathtaking UI and overall presentation.  Finding information about your space empire is totally effortless, and beautiful at every moment.

2 - An innovative (though, ultimately, not very effective) system of early alpha releases and community feedback.

3 - A pretty fine 4x game - though it is closer to Civilization than Space Empires.

Let's talk about the UI - because it's not just about beautiful art direction - the presentation design goes all the way into the bones of the project.

Beautiful UI

To begin with - the universe is displayed as a rendered galaxy of stars.  The stars you use are all in a 2D plane, but the game fills in around that to create a full breathtaking galaxy.  You zoom in and out of this with the mouse wheel, and the amount of information you see is determined by your zoom level.  At minimum zoom, you see just the Galaxy.  Come in a bit, and you'll see the network of star lanes connecting the important planets.  Come in closer, and you'll see empire borders, and the presence of fleets.  Come in closer, and you'll see breakdowns of how many planets are in each system, whether or not they are colonized, and which special resources are present.

Zooming in and out is so natural - and the information is laid out so well - that this really is the key innovation of the product.  In most cases starting with praise for the UI would indicate that most of the game is poorly realized - but in this case the UI really is fantastic enough to warrant it.

If you click on a star, you zoom in even further - to see the planets orbiting.  This view shows you the centerpiece of the economy - each planet has 6 essential stats: Food, Income, Dust, Science, Size, and atmosphere type (which also encompasses things like gas giants).  Size is the maximum population, and each of the FIDS production numbers are multiplied by that planet's population - so population is often the key resource to maximize.

Guts of the Economy

The economic core of the game is very similar to Civilization, as I've already said.  One cool innovation is that the smallest unit of your economy is the system, not individual planets.  This is awesome from a UI and management perspective, but it makes system combat non-existent, which makes military actions a bit broad - none of the planet-by-planet battles or minefields of Stars!  Food production fills up a supply bar, and when it is filled the system gains 1 population.  Building a colony ship costs the system 1 population.  Increasing population (as well as the tax slider) decreases "happiness" - which acts as a multiplier to your FIDS income.

You build system-wide enhancements, which have an upkeep cost in Dust.  This is all very, very familiar to anyone who spent much time in Civilization IV.  That's not much of a complaint however - since I'm of the opinion that Civ IV was pretty much the best PC game ever created.

Community Design

The first thing that caught my eye about Endess Space was not the game itself - but rather the "community design" system under which it was built.  I myself am planning a project which uses a community-driven model, so I was interested to do some research into such a system already in action.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much community involvement.  There are forums where people discuss the game, but it's very much the same sort of "buff this nerf that" balance noise you can find on any game forum.  I don't see any careful or thoughtful analysis.  There is a system in place similar to Gaia online - where people can agree or disagree with your statements - and gaining more agreements makes your suggestions carry more theoretical weight.  I haven't seen this in action much - mostly because there just isn't much reasonable discussion in the first place.

Ship Combat

Ship and fleet building are decent, though the UI selection is oddly poor for "systems" - you select them from a scrolling horizontal box, even though you quickly have 20 -30 systems to choose from, so there is rather more scrolling than is healthy.  There are only 3 weapon types, and the theory is that each is effective in one phase of combat - missiles at long range, beams at medium, and kinetic weapons up close.  There are also three defense types - one for each weapon type.

Your empire has a command point limit - which affects the number of ships you can use in battle at once.  Initially you may have only 5 ships in a fleet - so you can build 20 ships, but they will organize into 4 fleets, and battles are a 1-fleet to 1-fleet affair.  The problem with the combat design right now is that kinetic weapons are quite effective even at long-range, so masses of kinetic weapons are effective against pretty much everything.  There might be some technologies deep in the tech tree which adjust that balance - but I haven't seen them yet.

I haven't quite figured out how to push fleets or colonies out of a system - the game seems to be mostly  a race to colonize contested systems ASAP, since even new systems seem to defend themselves pretty well, and as they grow they become very strong contributors to your empire.

A Long Road

The real question is - how much more effort will be put into Endless Space before it is considered final?  Will the thin diplomacy selections be fleshed out?  Will the combat be adjusted to favor kinetic weapons less?  Endless Space has the best foundation for a 4x game I've ever seen, so I hope the developers will be improving it for years to come yet.

Week of Gaming #84 - 05/13/12

Well, I finally jumped on the Hero Academy bandwagon this week.  It's very good, but also a bit unsatisfying.  I'll get into why below.

Games of note this week:

1 - Legend of Grimrock

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Battle Nations

4 - Titanic Lite

5 - Hero Academy

Hero Academy

The mechanics of Hero Academy are great - elegant mechanics, clean controls, infinite undo - it's all just fantastic.  The art is clean, the game loads fast - there's just nothing wrong with the implementation at all.

Unfortunately, the game falls down quite a bit in the overall design.  I don't mean the battle mechanics - which are well-balanced and tactically interesting - I mean in the way you play the game.  Hero Academy is only playable in asynchronous multiplayer battles.  New teams are available, but you never get to see them without an in-app purchase.

This is a game which I would devour in single-player mode.  I would love to practice and learn how to play the game - experiment with the UI, and play entire games at once.  I'd love to play hotseat with a friend on the same screen.

Since it takes hours (or days!) to play through a game, it is very easy to get 5-10 games going at once.  But this makes it impossible to remember where you are in each game - is this the game where I lost my Ninja early on?  How many attack upgrades are left in my deck?  Have I seen the opponent's super-unit yet?  Without access to this information, games played over days become more like random chess problems than real tactical successes.

If I could pay $2 for a single-player version of the game, I'd be on that in a heartbeat.  And a sample single-player level with each new team would give me a great chance to try them out - and possibly encourage a purchase.  Unfortunately, as things stand now I won't be spending any money on Hero Academy - even if I keep playing it.

Titanic Lite

This is a puzzle game I discovered (like most good puzzle games!) through Tom Cutrofello's excellent blog.  This game has you rescuing people from the water into a series of lifeboats.  The trick is that boats rescue the first drowning person they touch - and can't be moved once they are full.  So paradoxically you keep your boats away from people in the water as much as possible - because you don't want your locked boats to block the future boats.  The game is free, and it's an excellent puzzle experience.  Highest recommendation.

Battle Nations

I'm still very much enjoying Battle Nations - in fact, I'm getting close to buying my first premium building thanks to all the Nanopods I've earned through Tapjoy.  I'm at a point now where my Iron output, unfortunately, just clobbers every other concern I have.  I don't mine stone, wood, or oil at all these days - it's all about iron.  damaged units take around 1000 iron each to repair, which takes most o my supply.

Dungeons of Dredmor

My interest in DoD is waning again, which is natural after 400+ hours invested.  Gaslampgames has announced a new free DLC coming in a month - so I'm sure this will continue to be a great game for me to play in the evenings.  My 8-year-old son has finally started his own character in the game, and he's enjoying himself even though his math skills prevent him from really digesting the game's finer points.

Legend of Grimrock

I'm nearing the end of the dungeon, finally, and I have nothing but respect for what the developers have accomplished with this game.  The only thing I want in Legend of Grimrock is more - much more.  The game doesn't lend itself well to multiple play-throughs (I say when I'm on my third...) and the skill trees sort of cap out pretty early on.  There are some really genius moments - like the Guitar Hero-esque light puzzle, and the Headhunter skill for Minotaurs.  The lighting system, food, encumbrance, defenses - everything is in place to make Legend of Grimrock a really great game.  We just need more of it to love.

Week of Gaming #83 - 05/06/12

Started a new contract at Pipeworks this week, which hopefully will translate into more game time in the evenings, and less frantic scrambling for work.

Games of note this week:

1 - Battle Nations

2 - Legend of Grimrock

3 - Dungeons of Dredmor

4 - Mount & Blade

5 - Hero Mages

Hero Mages

This one was a nice surprise - a quick-action tactical game featuring asymmetrical teams of fantasy characters.  It's been around on the web for a while at HeroMages, but I hadn't encountered it before.  It feels very much like an online version of Descent, which is a pretty decent pedigree.  Most characters have 6 HP, everyone moves 5 spaces per turn.  You can attack once, or move a second time.  In addition all characters have special abilities, which are fueled by cards.

Each team has exactly 1 mage - a character who casts magic spells.  The cards are your available spells, and you can cast up to 3 mana worth of spells each turn.  The different mage types are interesting - summoners can have unlimited creatures on the board, sorcerers do extra damage with attack spells, combat mages have excellent regular attack & defense, as well as a teleport ability.  You can also discard cards to fuel the abilities of your other characters - this is something you'll want to do sparingly at the beginning of the game, since spells are so powerful.  But when your mage dies (mages are the most powerful characters, so they tend to be targeted first) you can still use your cards to kick some ass.  My favorite team thus far uses a bard and a knight - the knight has only 2 attack dice, but can attack twice a turn.  The Bard gives all characters +1 attack dice - which means my knight attacks 6 times a turn!

The game is not easy by any means - the default 1 minute turn limit is incredibly harsh when you are trying to learn the spells, and a few unlucky rolls can kill you in seconds.  But it has an elegance to it which makes it easy to recommend.  PC version preferred.

Mount & Blade: Warband

Every so often I get an itch to play more Mount & Blade (note - the title is still impossible to express clearly to anyone through speech - it is usually heard as "Mountain Blade" or worse.) and this past week I had a good bender.  Learning to fight on a horse is just as invigorating the 10th time as it is the first time - simply feeling the rhythm of the gait as your ride is a really immersive experience.  I play so many games in windows - because I need to switch back and forth between my game & skype, e-mail, and so forth - it's great to play a game that I really lose myself in.

Dungeons of Dredmor

After writing my 5th guide for this game, I had a few new character builds to explore.  The upcoming DLC (less than a month away!) makes me want to get another victory or two under my belt before things change again.  This game is, thus far, the deal of the decade for $5.

Legend of Grimrock

I had two parties of adventurers running the mountain, but both started having significant difficult at the lower levels.  Rather, certain characters were having significant difficulty, so I decided to make a new party using only the character builds which were working.  That means a bit more Staff Mastery + Earth Skill on my mage, and a bare-knuckle Minotaur in the front row.  I finally got this new party down to the level where I've abandoned my past parties, so I'm suddenly running new areas again - and the magic is totally back.

Battle Nations

My #1 game this week has been a Farmville-decendent?  Indeed it has.  Battle Nations is the new gold standard for this type of game - it has well-integrated player interaction, good writing, and rock-solid mechanics which let people really expand their playstyles.

Here's the economy in a nutshell - you have 5 population for each character level.  You house that population in any of several buildings which produce gold at regular intervals.  There are some interesting strategic choices about gold/min/pop depending on your housing choices, but you can expect to make about 200 gold/pop each day.

You put some of that population into resources.  New resource types are added every few levels, so you start with just quarries, then expand to lumber, metal, oil, coal, and more.  It takes ~3 population to extract each resource, plus 1 or 2 population to run the trucks which bring it back to your depot.  You can "turn off" each quarry, which stops collection on that resource and gives you back all but 1 of your population - which lets you put more people where you need them.

You put the rest of your population into experience-production, which mostly means farming.  There are lots of "farm" type objects, including farms, fields, bakeries, fast food, ranches, distilleries, orchards, and lots more.  These each take a certain amount of gold, and transform it into more gold + XP over a set period of time.  Like quarries, these require 3 or 4 population each, and you can "turn off" each one to shift your focus to where you need it.

So far so good.  But the army interactions are where Battle Nations really shines.  Build an army using gold (and later metal, oil...) and send it into battle against foes.  Each victory earns XP for your units, which make them stronger.  You also earn gold for yourself - usually a lot more gold than you are earning via your houses!  Defeated units can be re-purchased (healed) for half cost, so you really want to keep your guys alive.  You can also tie-up units, which means you need to field a reasonably sized army to keep up with all your goals.

Week of Gaming #81 - 04/22/12

It's true, Legend of Grimrock has pretty much been my only gaming action the past two weeks.  And I'm fine with that.  But I've got at least a few other good tips for those of you looking for something fresh this week.

Games of note this week:

1 - Legend of Grimrock

2 - Battle Nations

3 - Choice of Zombies

4 - Mario vs. Donkey Kong

5 - Kid Icarus: Uprising

Kid Icarus: Uprising

Here is one of the highly-anticipated 3DS titles, one of the three or four (along with Super Mario 3D Land and Resident Evil) which was supposed to really prove out the hardware.  I'm not quite sure it does that, but it's certainly not a bad game.

In simplest terms, the game plays out like Panzer Dragoon - an into-the-screen rail shooter with independent player movement and aiming.  It transitions between ground-based and flight-based sections, but both types of sections map pretty closely to the same archetype.  This is an archetype which has proven to be enjoyable in the past - but the 3DS hardware isn't especially well suited to the necessary controls, so there is a bit of a mapping problem present.  Specifically, you are forced to move with your left thumb, and fire with the left shoulder button at the same time.  This is a bit of a contortion for long sessions.

Mario vs. Donkey Kong

I adored playing through this 6-7 years ago, and was excited when it came back up as part of the ambassador program on the 3DS.  I'm going through it again, and it's still just a fantastic action puzzler.  If anyone missed it the first time through, you owe it to yourself to check out the original.  Don't bother with the sequels - they change the formula around significantly, and lose the tight elegance of the original.

Choice of Zombies

This is an IF game (Interactive Fiction - like a choose-your-own-adventure book) from the studio choice of games.  They have several free books out like this one, and if the quality level is as high, they are well worth checking out.  Writing an interactive book presents several interesting challenges - you really need to worry about pagebreaks, and story breaks in a way that you don't need to in novels.  Names become much more important as well, since you need to actually make choices and take actions for the various characters, so remembering that Kayla is the 8-year-old and Lisa is the gun-nut zombie survivor becomes pretty important!

Battle Nations

This is a pretty popular resource-management game - it gates the content behind "quests" a bit too much for my taste, but in most ways it fully realizes the potential I used to yearn for in games like Ikariam.  The big two innovations are to pit players against AI enemies for combat, instead of having players attack other players.  This makes combat a reasonable source of funds, and doesn't encourage ganking the way so many past attempts at this sort of thing have.

The other big innovation is that "energy" in the zynga sense is totally unnecessary if your economic factors are strong enough.  Battle Nations has "population" as a serious restriction on my productivity, which is interesting.  Here's my current dilemma:

1 - I can only hold 500 of each resource.

2 - Building a warehouse adds another 500 storage for each resources, but requires 8 population to staff.

3 - You cannot "de-staff" a building once it is complete - you must sell it and then re-build it later if necessary.

4 - I've recently gained the ability to make a larger warehouse, which increases capacity by 1000 and still requires only 8 workers.  But it costs 4000 resources, which means I need to already have 7 warehouses, tying up 56 population of my 125 total.

I've been pretty good about anticipating bottlenecks, and smoothing out my experience in the other resources - I've been expanding early, turning on multiple harvesting nodes, etc.  But the population bottleneck is frustrating - it's almost convincing me to buy the premium building which increases capacity by 2000 and requires only 4 workers.  But I shall resist!

Legend of Grimrock

Ah, bliss.

Legend of Grimrock is a lovely, lovely game.  The puzzles, the dungeon, the monsters, the pacing of combat - it's all good.  I really like the skill + upgrade system as well - getting a few stat bonuses here and there as I increase my daggers skill is very interesting.  Axes increase strength, but now I need Dexterity - so I'm thinking about dipping into swords and athletics for that.  Bracers are an armor slot that gives interesting and significant bonuses - +50% poison resist, or +20% regeneration rate, or similar.

The only weak point, in my opinion, is the magic system.  Legend of Grimrock uses a glyph-based system obviously inspired by Dungeon Master.  But in order to learn the spells, you need to increase your appropriate skill - and skill trees alternate stat bonuses and spells to better match the weapon and defense trees.  This means that the total number of spells in the game is under 20, and any individual character is going to get only about 6.  That's pretty anemic for a wizard.  Even worse, mana is deducted when you cast the spell, not when you select glyphs.  This means you have no idea how much mana a given spell is going to cost or - crucially whether or not you have enough mana to actually cast it.  It's very frustrating to open up the glyph pane, select your glyphs, then hit "cast" and have nothing happen, forcing you to manually close the glyph pane so that you can continue combat normally.

I have two parties in the dungeon at present - one which uses magic and one which does not.  I'm finding the non-magic team to be much more robust and fluid in a tight spot.  I wish that weren't so.