Strange Design

Considering: Rune Raiders

Rune Raiders is an iOS game by the group retro64.  I love the game, but not because it's especially good.  I love it because it has three or four really unique, elegant elements which I haven't seen before.  Unfortunately, these are a bit hard to see behind several layers of poorly-designed systems.

Rune Raiders is the first game I've ever played which made me immediately want to create a clone game of my own, to tinker with.  But since I might not get the time, I thought it would be a useful exercise for others to discuss the game's shortcomings, and describe how they could best be improved.

The Marketing Story

Rune Raiders has a classic premise - assemble a team of heros, and kill monsters in a dungeon, collecting loot and leveling-up as you go.  The twist is that your characters are little boxes, and the dungeons are linear strips of stone which go in only one direction.  You "move" all your characters at once, and have no direct interaction with them other than selecting their location.  I love everything about this marketing story - it is simple, sounds interesting, and gives me a perfect idea of how much mental investment the game takes to play (very little.)

The Economic Models

Rune Raiders has two economic models - both of them deeply flawed.  The first is the "gold" economy.  Recruiting heroes costs a certain amount of gold.  Resurrecting them in-game costs even more gold.  Killing monsters earns set gold rewards per kill, and finishing a dungeon level earns you a set gold reward.  The idea is that you pick heroes such that the gold you earn for completing the dungeon is greater than the gold you invested to finish it.

But the gold values are set to such ridiculously high levels that there is absolutely no economic pressure in the game at all.  The most expensive team possible costs about $5,000, but I earn 7-10,000 for each level.  Without an economy in place I just pick the strongest characters, every time, and ignore several of the cheap characters.

The second broken economy is the leveling-up system.  About 1/3rd of the upgrades are boring (+20% attack!) but useful.  About 1/3rd of the upgrades are thematic (die instead of your ally!) but useless.  About 1/3rd of the upgrades are AMAZINGLY POWERFUL and transform the game experience dramatically.  You will NOT be playing the same game after you've unlocked a few of these.  I really like the idea of dramatic power-shifting upgrades, but since they persist forever, I feel like I've turned on some cheat codes and can't turn them off again.  For example, the Ninja is a sweet character who can basically 1-shot any enemy he can get behind - but can't take damage well in return.  Once you unlock the ability for him to dodge most attacks, kill 2 enemies instead of 1, and hit targets to the side and in a swath around him, and NOT CONTRIBUTE TO THE MOVE COUNT(!) I basically can use the Ninja to kill 80% of everything in most levels.  Without even spending any moves.

The Treant gets the ability to kill stone walls, and heal 33HP to the entire party when he kills an enemy.  With those two abilities I stopped ever moving side-to-side in my games - I just put him top center, and drill my way through every level.  Killing the walls also heals my entire team, which transforms the minor navigation challenges which really make some levels interesting into a double-whammy of triviality.

The Fixes

So how would we fix these two problems?  Let's remember that a good system must generate strategic tension for players.  Permanent upgrades are the opposite of strategic tension, so let's change them to be something you earn each adventure, like Crimsonland (or Monster Hunter, for a more topical analogy).  Perhaps you select 1 starting upgrade for each member of your party, and then earn some additional upgrades during each level.  That would normalize the experience and give more strategic tension.

The gold economy is harder to fix, because it doesn't put any acceptable tension on the player even if we were to fix the numbers.  Consider this - what if players sometimes earned less money than they spent?  Well, the consequence would be that players have less ability to play the game.  That's clearly a down-spiral that we can't actually allow.  But without that negative consequence, what is the money system even for?

I believe the money system should be used to purchase new characters, new levels, and new available upgrades in-between dungeons.  Award money on completion of each level (monster-kill funds can stay), but don't charge per party member.  Just let money build up, so that players will be motivated to select new content and re-play levels to earn the right to that content.

Since the money arrow in this system points only one direction, it is a fine gating mechanic for content.  And allowing people to actively add content (instead of just giving it to them) helps to build player engagement with that content.

Week of Gaming #76 - 03/18/12

This week I've been up to some serious introspection - and so lots of game-playing has been happening in-between.  I'm still a bit in shock how quickly my game habits have moved away from consoles... is this just a local minimum?  Or a long-term trend?

Games of note this week:

1 - Batman: Arkham City

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Temple Run

4 - Majesty (iOS)

5 - Plants War

Plants War

Plants War is a very nice bare-bones DoTA-style game for the iPad.  It uses the familiar virtual currency system - giving a few hundred coins for each win, and occasional goodies which cost real money to buy in  bulk.  The hero design is solid, if perhaps a bit too familiar (Every ability is pretty much a direct copy of a WC3 hero ability - look at Demigod for a DotA-style game which avoided this route) but I can't fault that because the game is so nice and pure.

Which, unfortunately, is also its biggest flaw.  The game is so bare-bones right now that there doesn't seem to be much point in grinding for the few tiny bonuses which exist.  Lots of greyed-out "coming soon" content promises that the game will become deeper with future releases - I look forward to that.

Note on tactics - as with many momentum games of this sort, the best way to push the enemy back is to time your level-ups (which restore all your health and mana) just right.  I've found that the melee hero can, with a bit of kiting-tech, plow through enemies and level-up at just the right moment to make many levels a breeze.  I beat level 17 in under 80 seconds, which felt pretty good.  If you are struggling, I highly suggest saving your coins for the melee hero!

Majesty (iOS)

I've had a pretty good run with the Majesty series - it's an "indirect-control" RTS series which really peaked my designer-sense on PC, but was never quite "fun" enough for me to suggest my friends play it as well.  I loved creating stories about why units behaved as they did - some knights were noble, and would die to project the kingdom!  Rogues were unscrupulous, but you could count on them to take big risks for the promise of riches.

Anyway, I'm pleased to see that the game has come, mostly intact, to the iPad.  The indirectness, which was so hard to see on PC with 100 buttons and a mouse - is perfectly suited to touch-screen interfaces.  The economy of the game is still a bit opaque - I'm sure lots of people spend their initial money quickly and then starve to death as the hordes advance - but it's a solid and time-tested game translated to a more accessible framework.  So I approve.

Temple Run

I've heard about Temple Run for quite a while now - people keep telling me that it's better than Jetpack Joyride, or Don't Run with a Plasma Sword.  I see the connection but... it's just not very good.

The basics are solid - run at breakneck speed through a 3D environment.  Kudos to the well-conceived tilt mechanics here - which are subtle and complimentary to the game experience.  But the economy just doesn't get off the ground fast enough.  I played a few games and unlocked some power-ups - what fun!  But then I hit a wall.  I get ~500 coins for each play, and everything now costs 10,000 to 25,000 coins.  Am I going to play 50 times to get a 6% increase in income in future games....

No.  So in this case the unlockables make me give up, instead of encouraging me to play through over and over the way JJ does so well.

Dungeons of Dredmor

Ah, DoD.  I've been experimenting with a Were-Diggle build, which I'll release upon the world in the form of a new strategy guide... soon!

Batman: Arkham City

I've finished all the achievements for Batman & Catwoman's campaigns, which was pretty satisfying.  I don't think I'll bother doing the same for Robin - although my daughter has a long-standing crush on Robin, so she might be able to convince me otherwise if she wants to watch him Be Awesome.

Week of Gaming #74 - 03/04/12

I've had a nice run of gaming this week - I can feel a raft of new play-sessions coming up in my near future.  The harbinger of me starting a bunch of new games is when I start to seriously finish a bunch of games, as I've found myself doing this week.

Games of note:

1 - Batman: Arkham City

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Space War Commander

4 - Monorail (iOS)

5 - PowerGRID (iOS)

PowerGRID

About a week back I discovered the fantastic puzzle-enthusiast site gottasolveit.blogspot.com.  If you like to know exactly how much math lies at the heart of every new puzzle game on iOS, this is the only site which can really scratch that itch.  Of all the games (more than 50!  This week!) I've grabbed at this blog's suggestion, PowerGRID is the one that really holds my attention.  It has a no-frills presentation, but the visuals are crisp.  It's all about the puzzles, which in this case is plenty for me.

The central mechanic is about connecting nodes with lines - two nodes can hold up to 2 connections, and every node must be connected into a single grid with a certain number of total connections.  Bliss.

Monorail

This game is pretty straight-forward: connect every peg in a board into a circuit.  It's not unlike PowerGRID in that way.  But every level in Monorail is identical - except for a few pre-placed connections which make all the difference.  What I really like about this game is that I can execute solutions in under 60 seconds, but it's a more organic than a cerebral process.  I don't know if everyone would play it the same way, but it's really resonating with me.  It certainly whisks you straight into the next puzzle - which makes it a bit hard to put down!

Space War Commander

I had to cheat - use one of my 5 "ambassadors" to pass level 15, after more than a year of being stumped by it.  Space War Commander is a fantastically restrained 4x empire sim - it takes only 8-10 minutes to play a level, and each level is laid out like a puzzle in which you need to learn how to use the resources available to defeat all enemies before your starbase degrades to nothing.  It's a riviting piece of design, because just a very small number of rules unfold in grand complexity.  It's the sort of game I wish had a big community of supporters and fans - but unfortunately I seem to be one of only a small number of people to adopt this PC gem.  Sigh.

Dungeons of Dredmor

After a near-total hiatus, I'm back in the Dungeons again this past week.  Patch 1.10 is out, and it does a lot to improve the flexability of the game.  Melee combat has been tweaked, more items and armor have come in, but the biggest change since 1.6 is the fact that spell costs are now reduced by a different stat than the one which increases their power - the quadratic power-explosion which I complained about in my 4-part strategy guide.

The new crafting system is still poor, but the game overall is still a blast to play.

Batman: Arkham City

I'm very close to being done with this game - less then 10 Riddler trophies remain, plus 1 challenge and 2 campaigns.  I'm having trouble coming up with a good strategy for Top of the World (Extreme) - I can get the triple-freeze right off the bat, but then the stupid jammer thug just won't ever go somewhere quiet where I can take him out!  Once that's done I can finish off the last campaigns.

Wonder City had a really interesting medal - use the line launcher to kick an enemy, then change directions and kick another one.  The crazy bit is that a parallel goal is to not be shot by any enemies.  So how can we do this one?

I came up with the following solution - right at the start, there is one enemy to the right of the tower, and another walking around from behind.  If I wait for the first enemy to turn around, I can kick through him, then zip to the other enemy just as he comes around the back of the tower.  About 75% of the time I can catch him before he sees me, which nabs me the medal and keeps me safe from damage.  After that, I just hid in the entry and take everyone else out with remote-batarangs.  Dull, but safe after that nail-biting opener.

Week of Gaming #73 - 02/26/12

A few good sessions of Batman: Arkham City have put that game back on top of my list this week, and an obsession with earning my new avatar in Starcraft 2 has made it a close second.  But the real winners are everything else I've been checking out on my iPad this week...

Games of note:

1 - Batman: Arkham City

2 - Stacraft 2

3 - iPad puzzle games!

iPad puzzle games!

Well, obviously Sun Stones has given me a professional interest in puzzle games on iOS, and I've recently discovered the amazing blog http://gottasolveit.blogspot.com which reviews iOS and physical puzzle games.  Why such an odd pairing?  Because it's written by the man responsible for covering physical puzzles for Games Magazine, and he has an iPhone!  Sounds like a recipie for success to me.

Anyway, Tom Cutrofello has put together a really astoundingly complete list of puzzle games on the site, including lists of top suggestions.  I've been playing 40 or more of them the past few days.  Tom really seems to appreciate the underlying mechanics, so many of these are pretty bare-bones affairs, but all of them have some interesting mathematical quality.  Here are a few of the ones I'm especially enjoying:

Circadia - A fairly amazing music-based puzzle game.  It's very austere, but effective.

Beam Puzzle - A really nice math puzzle.  You like math, don't you?  And logic?

Monorail - Very similar to other puzzles I've played, but it's so streamlined I just keep playing it...

KakuroLite - It's Cross Sums!  Joy!  I actually bought the full version of this one on sight.

Cut the Block - This was a bit hard to understand at first, but once you get it it's great fun.

Tiny Invaders - Clever, clean, and funny.  Not the deepest game, but very polished.

Move the Box Pro - It's like the puzzle mode from Puzzle Quest 1 (!)

PowerGRID - A classic number puzzle, which plays very well on a screen.

Kunundrum - A pretty sliding block puzzle.  Difficulty is a bit uneven - mostly too easy.

Think Ahead - this is an awesome 2player puzzler.  Fighting the AI is pretty bland, unfortunately.

Conztellation - it's a spaceship-based triangle-building game!

Starcraft 2

I really want to earn the avatar for completing all of the Hard AI custom challenges - the biggest component of which is to defeat 100 even-matched Hard AI opponents.  I've been playing them as random, to help improve my progress towards the medium AI achievements as well... (interestingly, you need 100 Terran, 100 Zerg, 100 Protoss, and 100 Random games for Medium - but each random game counts double-duty for its specific race as well.  Thus playing random games on hard gives me triple-credit.)

I'm at a point now where hard AI is just a cakewalk.  Just do a decent job with one base economy, and build a defensive force near your ramp.  Wait for the opponent to come with an attack around 7-9 minutes, then counter-attack.  Win.  Repeat.  Will this practice improve my vs. human games?  Or will it make me less robust?  

Batman: Arkham City

I'm just over 300 riddler trophies collected, and I finally redeemed my free Robin & Catwoman DLC.  If only the combat challenges would unlock a bit faster...

Week of Gaming #72 - 02/19/12

I've played vere little Sun Stones this past week - after several months of non-stop play I figure it's time for a break.  But that doesn't mean you should ignore it!

Games of note this week:

1 - Starcraft 2

2 - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

3 - Don't Run with a Plasma Sword

4 - Batman: Arkham City

5 -  Conztellation

Conztellation

This is an interesting game - it's sort of like Hex mixed with Space War Commander and Attaxx.  You start with a board of pegs, and you take turns drawing lines between them, in an effort to enclose more line than your opponent.  Clean, pretty simple, and estimating area as points lends it just a bit of uncertainty that I like.

But the catch is - you don't strictly take turns.  Each move is a ship being sent between two stars, so closer stars take less "time" than longer trips.  The game pauses for a turn whenever a ship is idle - so although it mostly comes out even in term of turns there are opportunities to double up on your opponent for some interesting effects.  Short moves become very useful, as they can switch up the initiative - and when you opponent is at the start of a long move you have a chance to get in some unexpected turns free from interference.

It's pretty much a match problem more than a game - but I like it.

Batman: Arkham City

I'm taking lots of time with this one, but it's all good fun.  The combat is polished and exciting, and the world / character design is just top-notch.  I do feel like I started out with too many toys however - it's odd that "too much" could be such a complaint in an excellent sequel to an excellent game.  But there it is.  I just finished the boss fight with Ra's Al Ghul, and it was stupendous.

Don't Run with a Plasma Sword

This is an iOS gem I've been enjoying on my iPad recently.  It didn't start out very strong - it seemed like a weak version of Jetpack Joyride / Stylish Runner / etc.  I didn't give it too much attention, but I would occasionally pick away at it.

Well this week I started really grabbing upgrades, and now I understand that the game has a fantastic amount of depth.  You start weak because they want to give you so much room to grow.  Here we see the difference between an established IP and a new one: in Batman I want to start weak, because I know that I'm BATMAN - a world-class asskicker.  But in DRWAPS I don't have any reason to know off hand that I'm going to learn fantastic new tricks which will (eventually) having me run rings around my previous high scores.  So I'm letting you know here.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

Have I ever mentioned how proud I am that my son knows all about various Marvel characters?  I totally am.  And he's been really interested in playing UMvC3 with me - to check out Nova, Ghost Rider, etc.  And now he can finally appreciate what a favor I did for him when I refused to let him be named Stephen.

Starcraft 2

I'm on a mission - to finish off enough achievements to get myself a decent avatar.  I'm targeting the Custom Game -> Hard AI achievements, because most of them were really fun.  Looking at some of the other achievements - I just don't understand how a person could beat 4 allied Very Hard AI opponents... is there something I'm missing there?  Anyway, I look forward to seeing which avatar I earn with my chosen goal.  I estimate it will take me another 10 days to get there.

Week of Gaming #70 - 02/05/12

My son has become rather interested in UMVC3, which has got me playing the game again.  Good times.  I've also spent a lot of time this past week actually playing Sun Stones, while we wait for Apple to approve or reject the game from their store.  I enjoy the fact that about 15% of the levels take me quite a long time to figure out, even though I built them in the first place.  Even better, I don't "remember" how to beat them - I have to figure it out just like players do.

Games of note this week:

1 - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

2 - Magi

3 - Starcraft 2

4 - Batman: Arkham City

5 - Yeti Town

Yeti Town

I wrote last Thursday about why I like Yeti Town more than Triple Town, at least in some respects.  And it's true - I do like it quite a bit.  For all the reasons I've already exrpessed - extra campfires, extra storage, achievements - it's really holding my attention.

Batman: Arkham City

The new Batman games is great for all the reasons the first one was great - but I think the "open world" aspect makes the experience less focused.  I don't see myself spending hours running around the world the way I did in Crackdown, or Prototype, or Hulk.  Grapple Boosting is genuinely great however.

Starcraft 2

My friend and I were placed in Bronze league (the lowest) as a 2v2 team, and we're absolutely slaughtering our opponents at that level.  Hopefully we'll move up soon, and have more engaging opponents.

Magi

After playing a Sorceress for a few days last week, I've gone on a week-long Ice Queen jaunt in Magi.  Ice Queen is interesting because her first two special abilities are pretty bland - but her third one is absolutely amazing.  It's still a force-based game, which is interesting because I spent a year or more proving to myself and the Magi community that Communion was the stat with the greatest impact on the game.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

I really like the MvC series - they get away from what I dislike about so many fighting games - the focus on timing, execution, and merciless grinding of your opponents - and put emphasis instead of humor, familiar characters, and awesome spectacle.  Plus the roster has an amazing depth of strange Marvel characters - I absolutely NEVER tire of seeing MODOK on the field.

Week of Gaming #69 - 01/28/12

A few big play-sessions of Batman: Arkham Asylum have put that game on top of my list this week - I've been off of Starcraft 2 for almost 7 days, which is an interesting dip in my interests curve.

Games of note this week:

1 - Batman: Arkham Asylum

2 - Bit.Trip Saga (3DS)

3 - Magi

4 - Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition

5 - Triple Town

Triple Town

This past week I earned 3.5 Million points in Triple Town - my best score by far.  It's hard to remember much about the game, as I played that single town for more than 2 weeks, but I know I had at least 2 Ninja Bear re-sets (where you deliberately fill the board, in order to kill all the ninja bears) and ended up buying everything in the store.

I can see by my web traffic counter that my guide to Triple Town is getting decent traffic - which hopefully means more people will start to rock the leaderboards.

Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition

My Necro team is still going strong - I've been so pleased with the game that I even made a Viking team to play...

Unfortunately I now remember how frustrating BB can be - I haven't been able to win a single game with the Vikings, and it's almost put me off the game entirely.  Apparently getting at least a few PP to start adding skills & building a team is an essential hook for the game.  That's obvious in retrospect, but I'm surprised to feel it so clearly as a direct experience.

Magi

Oh goodness I love Magi.  My recent obsession has been with playing the Sorceress Class - I've never achieved the elusive 50 victories, and I really would like to do so.  The secret to success is to put your Edge stat very low to start - and increase Intelligence rapidly.  That really hurts with folks wit Incantation Edge - but the sorceress has such a powerful blasting game early on that I haven't really had any troubles.

Bit.Trip Saga (3DS)

I had a great mind-meld with Alex Neuse back when he was hired to do the DS port of Godzilla: Unleashed, so I've always been rooting for Gaijin games.  The fact that they've built a recognizable brand and had a successful run wit the Bit.Trip games hasn't hurt!  I picked up the all-in-one collection for the 3DS, so I can finally play all the games back and forth.  My favorite right now is Core - although the first boss kills me every time.  It's really clear - playing all the games together - that the trend was to make the games easier over time.  That's a bit of a slippery slope - it comes off a bit amateurish when viewed all at once.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

After waiting so long to actually play this game - I've been loving it to death.  My son has even been sitting to watch me play - which we haven't done together in months.  He even corrected me the other day - I referred to an object as a "Bane canister" and he corrected me by saying "You mean a TITAN canister!"

He's so right about that.

All the new gadgets and combat tricks are still just a bit overwhelming - I remember how hard it was for me to get the "use all of your moves in one battle" achievement in the original, and with so many new moves... at least the gadgets have been broken into their own list.

I love the grapple boost move - it really makes it a blast to cruise around the city.  It's almost (almost!) as awesome as the two-trigger web movement in Spider-Man 2.

My only advice thus far for players is this - get your melee armor up early, and keep your ballistic armor low as long as possible.  Melee armor is essential for getting practice (you fight a LOT in this game), but ballistic armor just allows you to sort of ignore areas where you need to be stealthy.  Not learning those stealth tactics will really hurt you later on - so deal with the frustrating of learning to do them properly the first time.

 

Week of Gaming #68 - 01/22/12

Some real Xbox time was put in this week, mostly due to my son's recent interest in fighting games.

Games of note this week:

1 - Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3

2 - Starcraft 2

3 - Trenched

4 - Jetpack Joyride

5 - Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition

Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition

Being able to run this game in a window is a godsend - I've played 3 matches this week while simultaneously engaged in other things.  The lack of good save/restore mechanics in mid-match mean that this can only come out when I KNOW I'll have 45 minutes to play - which pretty much never happens when kids are awake.  But I've finally got my werewolf team up and running - which is great.

Jetpack Joyride

I thought I was finished with this one - but my girlfriend recently discovered it, and so I re-installed it and am loving the process of working through all the achievements again.  In fact, the achievement design in this game has heavily influenced my current project - Sun Stones

Iron Brigade

My regular play-group has been wanting to try the new endless mode, so we fired this up again last weekend to ply our hands.  The rust was a bit thick - but the biggest disappointment was going back to Live-chat, after using skype calls for our Starcraft 2 sessions.

The gameplay is just as I remember - but it suffers a bit from the high-end problem that games like WOW have.  You earn lots of stuff, mechs, weapons, etc - but only the best stuff is really worth using.

Starcraft 2

This past week hasn't seen a ton of SC2 play, and mostly I just had a rough losing streak.  Will rebound next week, I'm sure.  Been having trouble with heavy Thor production from Terran opponents...

Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3

My daughter loves Phoenix Wright (so do I!), so my son was excited to play as him in a fighting game.  For my tastes, Frank West is the best new character - he uses lots of slide-play and surprise weapons, much like She Hulk.  

Week of Gaming #67 - 01/15/12

Is it a good sign that I've been "almost finished" with Super Mario 3D Land for several weeks, but keep discovering more goals within the game?  I think it is!

Games of note this week:

1 - Super Mario 3D Land

2 - Starcraft 2

3 - Batman: Arkham City

4 - Triple Town

5 - Bloodbowl: Legendary Edition

Bloodbowl: Legendary Edition

It's been more than a year since I seriously played Bloodbowl, and although all the flaws I've noted previously are very much still present - there is still lots of fun to be had there.  My buddy Rodger (from Sunstone Games) recently picked the game up for a few dollars, and I've really enjoyed trying to explain the nuances of the game to him.  The turnover mechanic - whereby missing _any_ die roll means your turn immediately ends - really drives the game in an interesting direction.  You want to make your "very likely" rolls first, since your first risky roll will probably be your last - but on the other hand being able to pull off a risky move successfully will change your strategy for that turn - so you need to know whether or not you can pull it off before you know exactly what to do with all your players!

It really is unfortunate that the game is so unforgiving to new players - things like hit rolls and armor rolls are done automatically - which pretty much means those mechanics are totally hidden from players.  The game also puts a real-time clock on your turn - so your turn can also just end in 2 minutes with no warning!  I understand why you need something like that to keep online games moving, but in single-player it's pretty shocking.

Triple Town

After writing up my Triple Town Tactics Guide, and with the big update to the game which allows players to save their cities, I'm once again feeling pretty motivated to build tiny cities beset by Bears.

Batman: Arkham City

Due to broken Xbox woes, Arkham City took a lot longer to enter my play rotation than I ever would have believed.  I'm loving the grapple boost mechanic - whereby you glide, grapple a ledge, but then just use the grapple-yank's momentum to throw yourself over the ledge and gain more height to extend your glide.  I'm also LOVING the new uses for stuns in combat.  Excellent evolution of what made Batman: Arkham Asylum so excellent.

Starcraft 2

I can't decide which I like better:  a good 1v1 game, or a good 3v3 game where I'm teamed with my buddies.  1v1 games are, occasionally, determined by positioning more than economy - and clever positioning attacks continue to be a strength of mine.  Conversely, many v. many games are all about anticipation and scouting, because when 2-3 players come hitting your base together, you need to have the support of your allies.  I'm always playing with a Skype call running between my allies, which should give us a significant advantage.  Based on our win % I think it does.

Super Mario 3D Land

I've played all 8 worlds and all 8 special worlds.  I've collected every secret coin.  I've rescued Luigi.  I've re-played every level to earn a golden flag.  My final task, I assume, is to beat each level with both Mario AND Luigi.  That should be relatively straightforward.  Hopefully.

Triple Town Tactics

I've played quite a lot of Triple Town the past few months.  It's a charming game, free to play, easy to get a thrill with in just a few minutes, and the turn counter keeps it self-limiting.  I'm certainly not the best player in the world, but I consistently score a few million points in my games - so I think I'm qualified enough to discuss tactics.

Step One

The most important element in the game is to understand the very simple core mechanic - three or more like objects will transform into a different type of object and give points.  Matching 4 or more objects gives double points for the resulting object.  (If matching 3 grass to create a bush is worth 20 points, matching 4 is worth 40!)

Step Two

The other thing to understand is the basic progression of objects, which is:

Grass(5) -> Bush(20) -> Tree(100) -> Hut(500) -> House(1,500) -> Mansion(5,000) -> Castle(20,000) -> Tower(100,000) -> Golden Castle(500,000)

(Something must be wrong in my Mansion or Castle points - but I'll have to correct it later, when I get another build)

Step Three

The next thing to understand is how bears work.  About 1/6th of your given items to place will be Bears - Bears move one square (if possible) each turn.  A group of bears will die if it is entirely enclosed - turning into gravestones.  3 or more Gravestones will turn into a Church (1,000), Three churches will turn into a Cathedral (10,000), and three Cathedrals will turn into a treasure chest worth 500 coins.

Bears take turns in their movements - top to bottom & left to right.  All the bears in the left-most column make one move, then all the bears in the second column, and so forth.

(Interesting aside - three treasure chests will turn into a large treasure chest worth 1,500 coins - so there isn't much reason to make that meld.  Usually.)

Step Four

The final element (Only four - it's a very elegant game!) to learn is the distribution of granted items.  Roughly the percentages seem to be:

Grass : 36/60

Bush : 5/60

Bear : 5/60

Imperial Bot : 3/120

Crystal : 3/120

Tree : 1/60

Ninja Bear : 1/60

Hut : 1/120

These are obviously approximate, but they seem to match up decently with the 5x point values (Bushes show up about 20% as often, and are worth 5x points).

Placement Strategy

Here's what you're really here for - my breakdown of where to place items and when, which is really the only choice you make in the game.

Let's imagine you are given nothing but Grass to place - what is the optimal strategy?  Well, first we need to realize that, if we were only placing grass, we could never build anything better than a House!  An ideal arrangement would be a square (where we will place our final Grass) with 2 Grass below it, 2 Bushes to the right, 2 Trees above, and 2 Huts to the left.  It is impossible to create Mansions, without a Bush (or better) object - which occur so infrequently that you really can't count on them showing up when you need them.  So, ALL YOU BUILD ARE HOUSES AND CATHEDRALS.  Anything better than that comes as the result of a crystal match.  Period.

So, how should we place our Grass to build Houses together in the right spots?  Let's take a term from Go and think of each square as having 4 natural "freedoms" - or open edges to match.  If we reduce the freedoms of a square, that square becomes much less valuable for matching - so whenever possible we want to keep our high-level objects confined to the sides, and leave the center open.  This advice reverses itself in the case of Towers - because you need to match 4 Towers to create the 500,000 point Golden Castle, which you can't reasonably do in a corner or against the side (remember that you need 4 of them via a Crystal Match - a tricky thing to do!)

Tactical use of the open slot should ensure that you always have Grass or a Bush to place - saving Crystals or Imperial Bots is sometimes important, but you shouldn't do that in general unless you are very close to an important match.  Saving a Bear is also a good idea on rare occasions - when you need to wait 2-3 turns for your bears to cycle, for example, into proper position.

Using the Store

The store should be used very sparingly - as a rule of thumb I only use the store (which allows you, 25 times during the game, to get EXACTLY the piece you need next!) when I have a Bear or Crystal in my save slot.  Your first few games you won't have the coins necessary to buy things from the store, but by your third game you should be using the store at least a few times - and once you do your games will start to pay for themselves quickly - I generally float about 50,000 coins or so between games.

It is important to realize that you never need to buy an item from the store - you can always just safely wait for an item.  What you are really buying from the store is time.  If you absolutely need a grass RIGHT NOW, THIS TURN but you get a bush instead?  Time to buy a grass from the store.  If you have a bear in your save slot, but you need to let your bears cycle once more?  Buy that time with a purchase from the store.

Crystals and Imperial Bots should only be bought in the most spectacular situations - when you think you have a really excellent shot at getting a high score.  It's almost impossible to get anything which will actually improve your town enough to justify the 1000 or 1500 coins they cost you.

Bear Strategy

Creating Cathedrals is very easy - the trick with a good Bear Strategy is getting your Cathedrals to turn into chests.  You can use a crystal, of course - I do that occasionally.  But it is much better to let it happen naturally, and the simplest way to do that is to make sure you never make your first two Cathedrals diagonally adjacent - that seriously restricts your ability to place your final Church into the correct spot - since you will have only a single freedom to work with.  Adjacent Cathedrals are much better, and 1-apart Cathedrals are even simpler to merge.

Keeping a region blocked off for bear hunting is a proven method.  I strongly prefer to have a 3x4 area to work with - anything only 2 blocks wide is liable to suffer from mistakes which cannot be easily corrected.  As you fill with churches you create smaller, easy to fill areas.  I've recently started leaving my treasure chests around for hundreds of turns - using them as "blockers" to break up my bear-hunting space.  It's really easy to get your bears placed properly in 3-4 block areas, so allowing chests to build up is useful.  Initially, when you have no chests, getting your first church / cathedral to appear in the middle of your bear hunting area is a good way to break up space and make your subsequent bear matches happen more quickly.