Inktober 2021, The Scarbots, Week One

I introduced the Scarbots a bit last time, and have since produced a couple more of them. I’ll save today’s for next time, but these two get to join their brethren to finish up Week One of Inktober 2021. I had a little more time on these, so I managed to finish up the inkwork. I do clean them up a bit before coloring them, so that’ll wait, but for now, that’s 7 new Scarbots in the sketchbook for the year!

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Trouble on the Tracks: Tinker Bits IV

Hello everyone!

Yes, it’s been far too long since I’ve posted here, but that’s just how life goes sometimes.  This time, as last time, it’s to announce a new Kickstarter campaign we’re running, this time for some steampunk train-themed tabletop game bits.

Trouble on the Tracks: Tinker Bits IV

There are a bunch of photos of the prototypes over here, too:

Project Khopesh on Pinterest, Tinker Train Bits

Please spread the word!  Promotional algorithms on social media sites aren’t kind to self-promotion, and many forums outright forbid it.  It’s hobbling crowdfunding a bit, and we greatly appreciate any boosted signal that you can offer, even if you don’t want to jump into the project yourself.

Thank you all!

Tesh

…and yes, there are still some “Steam backlog” mini reviews in the pipeline, I just need to make time to polish things up a bit.

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Dragon Aged

Yes, it’s been a while.  Yes, I have a lot of things I could and would like to write about.

For now, though, I’m short on time.  I wanted to show this design, though, for the Dragon Tinker Metal Meeple that I’d like to get made in a Kickstarter project later this year.  The “Dame”, “Fairy” and Top Hat” designs included for scale (the Top Hat gentleman is pretty standard meeple size, at 20mm tall or so, meaning this Dragon would be about 30mm tall, or 1 and 1/6″).  The Dragon has a normal mechanized Dragon side, and an “aged” side, to give it a bit of gravitas.  This also allows me to hint that it would be made of different metals, given that some parts don’t show the aging.

This is the last design I’ve had in mind for now, though I certainly can come up with others, and there are some Carcassonne expansion meeples that I haven’t had time to work with yet.  They are less popular, though, and possibly less usable out of that game, so we’re sticking with more universal designs for the moment.  Like the Mad Scientist…

The Tinkerer…

and the Sky Pirate and Rocketeer…

Now, I really would like to get the Tinker Steampunk-flavored Carcassonne tile variant designs done.  They will take a bit more time, of course, and since I can’t really sell them, they will be a back burner “labor of love” sort of thing.

Then there’s the Pantheon Wars game, the Fudging Fates dice and this other game I’m designing, tentatively calling it Shattervale… there’s a lot to do.

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Final Fantasy XII: The Movie (Sort of)

Going through Final Fantasy XII again via this spiffy video reminded me how much I really love the worldbuilding and look of Ivalice. It’s a world that spans multiple games as well, in different RPG subgenres. It has a great sense of place and history. It’s interesting to see a game studio do that sort of thing over the course of several years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq7iLLFlerg

Blizzard has done some similar things with Azeroth, and I think it serves both companies well. A big part of making these games interesting to me is making them believable. Not realistic, not really, but believable as Other Places that are more than just Potemkin Villages.  That’s what I find most unique and appealing about video games; the ability to explore a different world and tinker about within it.  It’s always nice to see thought and craftsmanship involved in the setting rather than just the splashy things like polycount, soft body physics, battle engines, progression schemes and stunt voice casting.

I do have my quibbles with Azeroth and Ivalice, like the character design of Fran and her kin (she’s actually a great character with excellent, memorable voice work, but making her race be literal bunny girls with little modesty is dumb), or the strained two-faction lore of World of Warcraft (OK, maybe I just want a neutral Tauren to play).  FFXII owes a lot to Star Wars, Azeroth leans heavily on Dungeons and Dragons and is unnecessarily goofy at times (pop culture references don’t age well).  They both have somewhat lazy writing at times and weird choices in protagonists (Thrall and Jaina are overplayed, Vaan is a much weaker character than Balthier or Basch), but are endearingly earnest in their devotion to their story.

The thing is, neither game is in my top 10 list of games, but the worlds of Ivalice and Azeroth are high on my list of game worlds that I love to investigate.

I also find that the rather slow, political, story of FFXII is easier for me to follow when it’s all together like this, rather than in cutscenes between hours of grinding in a barely-interactive combat system, all over the space of a year, a few hours here, a few there.  Call it a personal failing, but I found the story much, much more entertaining when I was allowed to get on with it instead of plodding through the game, looking for the next story crumb.  I did actually like the game sometimes, like when I just wanted to zone out and look around, but the story got lost sometimes.

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Garrison Under Siege

I mentioned World of Warcraft in passing a little while ago.  I jumped back in a little while ago after picking up the Warlords of Draenor for $7.50 around Christmas time in a sale.  I figured I’d try it out a bit and see what the fuss was about.

I paid $15 for a month, then a good friend sent me in-game gold that allowed me to purchase four more months of time via the WoW Token system.  I built up a level 100 character (a new Death Knight Worgen because I wanted to get the procession boost from the insta-90 boost that came with Warlords), built a Garrison, played around a bit… then got stuck in the endless grind that is “endgame”.

Dungeons and more dungeons, reputation grinds with everyone and their ponies.  I gave it more of a shot than I usually would because I thought I’d take a shot at “earning” the ability to fly in Draenor.  I did pick up a few new flying mounts, poking around in old raids, after all.

…yeah, it’s a dumb, very dumb, exceptionally long grind.  Gating flight behind completing the main story questlines is annoying, but acceptable to a degree.  Gating it behind a ton of grind, easily months’ worth of full-time work, that’s not cool.

Anyway, I built up a Garrison that allowed me to earn enough gold to extend my playtime another few months.  I picked up Harrison Jones as a follower and was poking around in the world, again and again, using the magnificent Aviana’s Feather to pretend I could fly.

And then, somehow, the game broke.  I literally can’t get into the game to play, always getting stuck at this screen.

It’s been like that for about 6 weeks.  Thankfully, I’m still on “Token Time”, which somehow lessens the sting a little, but man… I detest the subscription model.  This is time that the game isn’t working, but I’m still “paying” for it.

I might try a full reinstall, but with my internet connection, that means another week or so.

This isn’t a Big Deal.  It’s just annoying.  And a big reason why I’m playing nonsubscription games and tabletop games instead of zooming around Draenor on a flying dragon.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  I’d pay decent money for a standalone, offline single player version of WoW.  It might actually work, and I’d get to have fun with it.  In the meantime, No Man’s Sky might just take over the Explorer’s itch.  Once I get a few other things done, anyway.

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Gnomish Hunters and Fish Tanks

In a shocking, earth-rattling decision, Blizzard has finally allowed Gnomes to be Hunters.  Maybe.  Possibly.  Probably.  At least, this screenshot swiped from Twitter seems to indicate as much:

I guess I need to update my shirts over on Zazzle (based on an idea by the Big Bear Butt himself).

Why Gnomes Can’t Be Hunters

…oh, and Blizzard?  If you want to make a Fish Tank Gnomish Hunter Pet, I’m very happy to build you one that looks like this.  I’m very familiar with modeling, texturing, rigging and animating video game characters, having worked in the game industry for almost a decade.  I’m also presently open for contract work.

I also find it interesting that this is happening at the same time as a melee-based Hunter spec.  Coincidence or conspiracy?  Dun dun dunnnnn!

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Operation: Backlog – Playing for Tips

As noted last time, I’ve been playing more mobile games than anything lately, so once again, I wanted to write about a few games I’ve played on my Android-equipped Samsung smartphone.  I don’t know the model, it’s never been important to me; it was one of the “free” ones at Costco when I needed a new phone.  It’s a smartphone, I use it to call my wife, text my family members and play games.  It tells time (and even automagically updates to Daylight Savings times) and takes lousy photos, too.

So, first the disclaimer, noting that I will get back to Steam PC games, this is just a mobile detour since that’s where my gaming time is at these days.  Also of note are the Humble Bundles that are all about mobile games.  I picked up the latest one, and will be writing a bit about those games when I make the time to play them.  I’ll probably need to play those on my tablet (another “free” model that came with my latest laptop… a Dell somethingorother), since it has more horsepower and screen real estate.  Anyway…

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I’m going through my Steam list (and then some, as it happens) alphabetically, picking up games I own but haven’t played to see what’s there.  15 minutes each is all I’m budgeting, but I reserve the right to get sucked into a cool game.  Some I’ve played already, though, so I’ll mention them in passing here and there, giving them a rating like the other games.

I’ll be giving each of these Backlog games a rating of sorts, as follows:  Regret (uninstall and forget), Remember (uninstall but wish for more time), Revisit (leave installed for later) and Recommend (wish for more time to play this right now).  This is a squishy continuum of sorts, and deliberately imprecise.  This isn’t an in depth survey-and-review, it’s Spring Cleaning of my video game backlog.

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The games I’m taking a look at this time all have some things in common, and this means I get to point out some trends about mobile gaming in general.  Some I like, some I don’t, but that’s how these things always go.  One that I should mention up front is one that I mentioned in passing last time:  The Gacha System.

I really don’t like gambling.  When it’s “just a game”, I can fairly easily ignore it, but I don’t like the psychology of it, I don’t like the monetization of the gambling impulse, and I don’t like the leverage it gives skeevy designers, like the King people and their annoying Candy Crush game and games of its ilk.  Most big mobile games use some variation of this Gacha system, where you can use in-game currency, purchased currency or simply purchase widgets that are then “opened” or cashed in to acquire a piece of gear or some other piece of the game.  There are different rarities of said pieces, with different values for gameplay.

There is often a secondary currency in these games, obtained by spending real world money.  Sometimes this currency has other uses in-game, and I’ll detail that a bit in each game, but this is also often used for the Gacha systems.  One way or another, then, you’re taking a chance at acquiring something that may or may not be useful to you in the game.  The vast majority of the time, however, the odds are very, very low for getting something good that will be useful for more than as vendor trash or upgrade fodder.

In Slingshot Braves, for instance, a game I mostly enjoyed but have since uninstalled, you could spend $5 for one of these Gacha items (a common price), and that item had about a 75% chance of being B-class gear that you would then just break down into upgrade components that were the rough equivalent of the rewards from 5 minutes of gameplay.  They were not worth upgrading since A-class gear was far more powerful, even without much investment into upgrading it, and the B-class gear couldn’t evolve into the top tier SS-class gear at all.  There was no point in sinking more than a few assets into them to make your team slightly stronger as you waited to score some useful gear.

The other 25% of the time you would get an A-class item, which could then be eventually (with a lot of in-game money and upgrade materials) upgraded to an SS-class item, which would usually last you for several weeks or more, as powerful as they are when fully upgraded.  Even then, the A-Class item might be one that you would rather not invest in, since gear is gender specific (and the game insures you have two of one gender and one of the other in your party) and tied to a specific material type (one of five, though one of those is a “wild” type that matches with anything else).  If you equip gear (you have one weapon and two armor slots) that is all the same material, you get a 20% boost to your stats, which can be crucial.  There are also five weapon types, and some of them are clearly subpar in some missions and situations, especially since maintaining a combo can often be critical and some make that significantly harder.

The value difference between the B-class items and the A-class items is absurd, and spending money on a slim chance (not just the 10%, but the small subset of that 10% that is useful to you at that moment) just doesn’t stand up to cost-benefit calculations.  This always wore at me with Slingshot Braves, but it was possible to have fun with subpar gear for a while.  When the high end gear became mandatory for high level play, I lucked out by having a couple of spears that were very nice for a while, but then the developers drastically reduced the power of spears across the board, and I simply ran out of patience with the game.

I’ve read about some people who chip in money here and there to a game that uses a Gacha system, in an effort to support the developers.  This is, to me, a bit like giving a tip to the devs.  I think that some developers are counting on this impulse, especially when the odds of useful Gacha items are so low.  They probably count much more on the gambling impulse, but it’s interesting to me that there are those who know full well that the system is rigged, but who give money anyway.  These players appreciate the games for what they are, but can’t find a better way to give the developers money.  This seems like an oversight and opportunity to me, but perhaps it’s just that there’s no good solution.

I am not opposed to giving money to game developers.  I worked in the industry for almost a decade, and we always appreciate it when we actually get paid.  What bugs me though is that there’s not really a good feedback system.  Incentives matter, and when a developer or publisher sees that players spend money on some piece of their monetization, it’s only common sense to find ways to keep that trickle of money flowing.  There’s no “tip jar” or comment field for purchases, no face to face “hey, I like that part of the game” interaction, just the Gacha purchases (or other annoying systems).

That’s why I don’t really want to give money for what I consider to be a “tip”, since it’s going into a Gacha system that I think is bad value.  I don’t want to send the signal that it’s a monetization vector that I appreciate.

For most of these Free to Play (F2P) games that I play, I do appreciate that I can get a taste of how the game functions without a cash investment.  Ultimately, though, I would much, much rather pay them a reasonable flat one-time purchase price, and have the gambling acquisition elements eliminated from the game design.  That’s not going to happen, but it does keep me from giving most of these developers money, despite the fact that I like their game design.  That’s undeniably stingy of me, though not spiteful.

I’m voting with my wallet, in a way, choosing to play and support games that I consider to have good core game design, like posting about them here, but with an asterisk about how I spend my money.  I’ve long since divorced my appreciation for a game from my appreciation or lack there of for its monetization.  MMOs were really the big impetus for this, since I detest the subscription model, even while I appreciate the design of some of the games.  I think it’s important to give credit where credit is due, pointing out good design and art while also noting problems as honestly as possible.

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So, long-winded aside aside, it’s time to take a look at a few games that I’ve been having fun with lately.  I Recommend all of these, which is worth noting up front, so any pros and cons that I note ultimately settle out in favor of these games.  Despite my reservations about some elements of these games and annoyances with monetization, noted in each mini-review, there really are some good-to-great bits of gaming to be found here.

Pokemon Shuffle

Soul Hunters

Final Fantasy Record Keeper

Last time I grabbed screenshots from the internet, but this time I’m using screenshots from my phone.  Other images are from the internet, here and there.

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Pokemon Shuffle is one of my favorite match-3 games.  Puzzle Quest is still on top, followed by Puzzle Quest: Galactrix, Bilging and Gem Spinner 2, but depending on my mood, Pokemon Shuffle can fit anywhere after those two Puzzle Quest games.

I have this on my GameBoy 3DS as well, and it’s mostly the same, though the 3DS seems to run a little faster and smoother.  Some live events are different, and the mobile version seems to be a release or two behind, but the gameplay is the same.

The beauty of this game is two-fold.  One, it layers the solid Pokemon “collect ’em all” approach and intricate element “rock-grass-steel-lightning-bug-dark-psychic-etc” web on top of the match-3 core.  This by itself would provide for a solid game, or at least a solid management layer over a bog standard match-3 design.  The real joy of this game, though, are the small design tweaks on the matching board.

First and foremost, you can swap any two Pokemon icons; you just grab the one you want to move, plunk it anywhere else on the board, and it changes places with the one you moved it to (and if you’re moving it to an empty space, the place where it was is emptied, and those above fall down).  You do still have to make a match with a move, but you no longer have to scour the board for two neighboring tiles that happen to play nice together.  You have as much time to make your move as you’d like, in turn-limited puzzles… or there are the time-limited puzzles that let you move anything anywhere except on top of obstacles.  You don’t have to make matches in these, and often benefit from setting up the perfect combo or long match, so long as you can do it quickly.

This freedom (and the enhanced freedom of placement in timed puzzles) brings fun back into the genre for me.  I’m not sure if any other games do this, but it’s really, really nice.  Yes, it makes things easier in some ways, but it also means you’re more able to optimize your moves and even plan better, since you don’t have to rely as much on the luck of the board layout.  More freedom and better planning built into a single core design change?  That’s a major bonus in my book.

Second, each Pokemon has its own special ability that can occasionally trigger when it’s matched.  Some are nice, like the ones that remove board obstacles, others are just extra damage, while others do things like boost their kin in combos/cascades or boost the “Mega evolve gauge” for the Pokemon that leads the team.  This isn’t something to plan around, really, given random activation, but it’s nice to give each unit more flavor and possibly push a team over the edge in a tight puzzle.

Third, that “Mega evolve” Pokemon system provides for a significantly more effective special move for some Pokemon.  The one that leads your (usually) four-unit team has the potential, if you have the appropriate evolution stone, to change mid-puzzle into a better version of itself.  It doesn’t get an attack power boost as far as I know, but most Mega evolved Pokemon gain the ability to clear the board in some way.  Some clear columns, others clear rows, others clear obstacles, and others simply have local or pattern-based clearing.  This is a great way to clear up logjams in the board, and often provides a bit of extra punch as the cleared icons can add to the attack power of the match that triggered the clearing.  Lucario’s vertical clears are usually very effective, for instance, clearing all rows that are in line with any match you make with its Mega evolved icons.  Gengar’s Mega form clears out all of its other icons, effectively making the other Pokemon more common on the board, meaning more combo/cascade potential.  It made a 97-hit combo happen for me once, which is equal parts absurd and awesome.

Fourth, there’s a curious little “hitch” or “hiccup” in the gravity of the game.  Icons that should fall down due to matches clearing space below them will make a brief stop in the space directly below them before falling the rest of the way.  If this brief stop means a new match is made, it triggers instead of the icon falling the rest of the way down to where it would be destined to in pretty much any other game of this type.  It’s occasionally annoying, but I’ve learned to use it on to make some matches happen that otherwise wouldn’t, and it does make extra steps happen in combos sometimes.  It’s a curious design decision, but it’s a nice little quirk that gives the game some personality.

Fifth, since it is Pokemon, you can try to catch the Pokemon that you defeat.  They are easier to catch if you solve the puzzle in fewer moves (or in less time on some levels).  This makes smarter play more satisfying beyond the score and self-directed impetus to do better, as you’re rewarded for doing better by making it easier to expand your Pokemon collection.  This collection is key to being able to field the perfect team in any given matchup, as you’ll be needing Pokemon of every type to really maximize your efforts.  …OK, “Normal” type Pokemon still get the short end of the attack web, but they still scratch that collectible itch.

Sixth, you can purchase boosters like five extra turns or increased attack power, or more importantly sometimes, an improved Pokeball for capture attempts after you beat a Pokemon’s puzzle.  These aren’t as powerful or interesting as the game-swaying abilities in a Puzzle Quest, but they do make some levels easier, or at least less frustrating.  They cost Coins, which are earned at a trickle through play or via exchange of the secondary currency.

Seventh, there is an Optimize function before each puzzle, which is a really nice touch, given that the attack web is fairly complex, and your collection will grow to over 100 units without much trouble.  If the Optimize doesn’t get you want you want, there are tools to search for given types of Pokemon and even a “Super Effective” tag that refines the process as well.  It’s just a nice bit of streamlining that still gives you control if you want it.  I appreciate this, though some will certainly bemoan it as an appeal to “casual” players instead of elite hardcore players who do it the right way, uphill both ways in hip-deep snow.

On the downside, there are some puzzles that are very heavily biased in favor of the enemy (Mega Mewtwo and Mega Gengar in particular were very annoying for me).  The boosters help with these, and it’s hard not to be reminded of Candy Crush’s gatekeeping levels that almost demanded boosters, pushing people to buy the secondary currency, but I was less annoyed with these levels than the equivalent in Candy Crush.  I’m not sure if that’s a pacing issue in favor of Pokemon Shuffle, the greater ease of obtaining boosters in this game, or just me mellowing out over time, but hijinks along these lines seemed less annoying in this game.

All in all, there are a lot of little things that I like in this game that add up to a very nice core design with few caveats.  Play feels more like I’m in control than most match-3 games, and I appreciate that.  Long combos can happen, and they are bonuses, but most puzzles seem to be paced so that you can get through them with smart play and only a little luck to push you over the edge if you can’t quite get there on your own.

Monetization:

As with so many mobile games, Pokemon Shuffle uses a Stamina system that throttles your ability to play as much as you’d like.  The Stamina system equivalent in this game is a set of 5 Hearts.  Each puzzle attempt costs one or two hearts (so far only some special event Pokemon have required two in my experience), and they regenerate at a rate of 1 per 30 minutes.  This doesn’t lend itself to marathon playing unless you buy more Hearts, so it’s really only something I play in small bits here and there, but that’s not uncommon with mobile games.

You can spend money to acquire Jewels, which can then be exchanged for Hearts or Coins.  Hearts allow you to keep playing, Coins allow you to purchase boosters or Pokeballs.  I can wait for Hearts to regenerate, and I like the challenge of playing without boosters, so I’m not too bothered by either, and neither seems too abusive.  The highly difficult puzzles seem like obvious pushes for Jewel purchases, but I ignore the impulse and try again later, trying to play smarter.

One nice touch is that Hearts that you acquire through Jewel conversion go into a separate pool of Hearts, instead of being capped at 5 like the standard regenerating pool.

All in all, the monetization isn’t all that annoying or pushy, and that’s appreciated.  It’s one that I’m more comfortable thinking of as a “tip” instead of a ridiculous Gacha system, at any rate.

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Soul Hunters is a game that seems to be engaged in a curious sort of brinksmanship.  It seems to want to give away as much as it can in the form of in-game currency, gear, characters and other oddments in an effort to make the game feel more generous than its competitors.  It’s an interesting approach, and it earns some goodwill points from me.  It should be noted that I’ve only played it for a couple of hours overall, so I don’t know if the pacing crashes later on, but so far, it’s been prolific in barraging me with goodies.

As you play, at least in the early levels I’ve been through (two chapters of the campaign, of which 14 have been released), there is a small avalanche of things that happen and gifts that are given to you.  It’s the only game that I’ve played in the last year or so where I got tired of playing before its stamina system kicked in.  in fact, the game lets you bank extra stamina in the form of drumsticks (or something like it) with no limit I have reached so far.  It looks like I have a limit of 65 or so that would regenerate (I think, anyway, as I’ve never dipped into that reserve), but given all the treats the game has tossed my way, earlier today I had about 400 of these stamina-like points, and as I use them up to play through levels, I just accrue more.

The game looks like what might happen if Blizzard absorbed the Capcom Puzzle Fighter art team, then made a single-player pocket-sized WoW dungeon runner.  You control five units in combat through three waves of enemies, proceeding left to right in an effort to crush your foes and steal their stuff.  Each of your units has a special ability that charges as they deal damage, and activating them at just the right moment can mean victory in a tight spot.

To me, it feels very much like controlling a team of adventurers through a small WoW dungeon, where each unit has a single hotbar skill.  (As a minor digression, I also think that the skills might benefit from time-based activation on cooldowns, especially healing… but as most waves are finished in less than a minute, it’s not a big deal to try again if you fail.)  You have “tanks” out front, damage dealers crowding behind, and a healer tucked in the back.  This is enforced, more or less, by having each unit associated with one of the three rows (front, middle or back) simply as part of what they are.  You can’t place your fire witch in the front row, for instance.  You can shuffle around which units you’re using, but they settle into their designed rows and roles.

There are no taunts or aggro, just attacks and rows.  Foes have to cut through your front row to reach the middle, and through the middle to reach the back.  Some attacks can pierce every row and strike everyone (ballistas, for instance), some are area attacks that tend to be lobbed over the front row to hit the back, others are sneaky Rogue-like attacks that start up front but sneak around back… but most foes are just simple grunts that either have a simple melee range attack or a ranged attack.  All in all, it’s fairly balanced as far as damaging your whole team over time, even though some levels’ foes certainly pound on the front row with more vehemence… and once that front row collapses, your squishy middle and back rows die fast.  That’s a big part of why I think healing is perhaps a bit weak, but generally speaking, just playing through the game, you’ll probably only fail a few times if you pay attention to timing, especially with heals, stuns and big attacks.  You’ll need to cut through your enemies’ ranks, or use your own abilities to blast bosses hiding behind their mooks if the melee rows are clogged up.

Each unit’s skill is useful, and each also seems to have a passive effect or two that happens as they just blast away at enemies as they go through the levels.  The healer I wound up with (I’m assuming it’s the one everyone gets, though it looks like there are 30-some units to unlock and recruit later) has a second-rank (there are four ranks) passive skill that “charms” a foe and turns them on their team.  I love that skill, though I wish I had control over it.  I also want to keep playing and see what happens as my team unlocks more ranks of skills, to see just how well they feel like they grow over time.

There are a lot of characters to recruit, though not as many as the 170+ units in Pokemon Shuffle.  There are tons of loot items to collect, many of which are fodder for upgrading your units.  Some gear is crafted into other gear, so far at a ratio of 3 lower-tier gear bits to one higher-tier item.  A third tier item, then, would require 9 low-tier bits, unless you happen to pick one up from a fallen foe..  Some items are simply sold to the local vendor who randomly stocks items for you to buy if you feel so inclined.  From gear to Experience potions to character boosts, they run a decent little shop, though it doesn’t seem necessary just yet.

All in all, it’s a curious blend of almost Tower-assault sort of gameplay, filtered through a WoW sensibility and standard RPG tropes of building a team of adventurers and helping them grow over time.  Even your starting hero bears a striking resemblance to a certain Azerothian prince-later-Lich-King.  There are some bog standard mobile game monetization vectors, like a Gacha-like gear acquisition system (with a free “pull” every 48 hours, whee!), the stamina system and the ability to directly purchase the in-game gold.  None of this seems necessary, though, at least not at this point.  I’m disinclined to buy into a Gacha system, though, so it’s nice to see that there’s the periodic free hit to keep the potential acquisition of useful gear in play.  On the other hand, there’s really nothing that I would want to spend money on.  I might pay for a stamina-free offline version, but that’s about it.

Still, between the generous reward system, a fairly large selection of unlockable functions and characters, and a simple but fun core gameplay loop, it’s been fun to play the game so far.  The gameplay itself is a bit thin compared to games I have more fun with like Terra Battle, but it’s easy to pick up and have some fun with, and there are moments where smart timing matters, so I can’t fault it too much.  The passive abilities characters can earn as they progress do help keep things interesting, though I do wish the design was more ambitious, allowing for more active abilities.  Maybe they decided to just keep it simple for the learning curve’s sake, and to keep it from being too demanding.  That can be important in mobile games… even though my gaming tastes run more to the Final Fantasy Tactics vein, where there’s a bit more meat on the bones of the game.

…48 hours later, and I did play a bit more of the game, and it does hit a bit of a wall around the 4th chapter, where the difficulty curve is only surmountable with grinding, so it’s not a smoothly paced game, but even then, it’s still fairly generous, even if the stamina recharge is 6 minutes per point, which is the slowest I’ve seen.  I’ve also found that there’s a really nifty little “gear finder” system that lets you select a missing bit of gear you want to upgrade a character, and the game tells you where it drops from enemies.  Two clicks later, if you’ve unlocked that area in the campaign, you can be in that dungeon, trying to collect the gear.

Also noteworthy are the “Sweep” tokens that let you go back to any level you have cleared with a maximum three-star efficiency, and just use the ticket to “finish” the level again and grab a bit of loot that you might have found if you actually played through.  It’s a nifty little time saver, though I’ve found that it’s best to use them on the elite-class levels, since they are much more generous with the item drops.

One other really nice bit is that while the game does have quests as you’d see in an MMO, they are pretty passive affairs, keeping track of you, waiting quietly on their own, and notifying you if you happen to complete them, ready to throw goodies at you.  If a mobile game can do this, why in the world can’t World of Warcraft or other AAA MMO games?

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And then there’s Final Fantasy Record Keeper.  I can’t help but like this game given my long history with the series (going on 22 years now), but if you want to skip the rest of this particular review, I’d just note that it banks heavily on nostalgia while having a decent simplified bit of gameplay at its heart.  It’s not an amazing game, but it’s good fun if you’re a fan of the series.

At its heart, it’s little more than a bare bones nostalgia romp, a Pokemon-like “collect ’em all” sort of trip through most of the Final Fantasy games, grabbing characters from those games and employing them in a variant of the ATB combat engine that’s common in the series.  If you’ve ever wanted to see what would happen if you took some of the core design from early in the series and shoehorned all of the other games through that pipeline into a katamari-like mashup, this is a good game to dig into.

It plays a bit like Final Fantasy 1, with limited ability/spell usage, it looks a bit like Final Fantasy VI, with all the various characters rendered in that game’s sprite style, and sounds like, well… all of them.  If nothing else, it’s a sweet little minimalist jukebox, with tunes from all of the games.  That’s really what trips the nostalgia factor for me, since I have a lot of the game soundtracks, and often listen to them just because I like the music.

I could write at length about the nuts and bolts of the game, but, well, it’s a RPG where you use the FF ATB combat to plow through dungeons that evoke key bits from the main games, collecting characters, gear, abilities and money along the way.  It’s paced with a stamina system and monetized mainly with a Gacha system.  If you haven’t played a Final Fantasy game with the ATB system, just go play Final Fantasy VI.  It’s available on Android and in several other places, and it’s a better game in almost every way.  It’s really best with a TV and console, but it’s playable on Android.

This is not the FFVI you are looking for, but it will remind you of it.

If you’re familiar with the series, though, FFRK is a good little time burner comprised of a tight feedback loop of clearing dungeons for experience, money and loot (gear and orbs used to make abilities).  Gear acquisition is based on a Gacha system that has free daily pulls and awful odds of getting any significant gear.  You can earn the in-game currency at a snail’s pace playing through the highlight reels of the main games, and events allow you to earn some more.  There’s almost always a special event running, based on one of the main games, wherein there’s a subset of the Gacha system that does have better odds of getting useful gear, but it’s still all too often throwing money at a wall, hoping a flake of gold falls off.

It costs 5 Mithril (acquired one at a time through play and sometimes as login bonuses) or 100 Gems ($1, more or less) to get one bit of gear.  Gear comes in five different rarities, from almost useless one-star gear to really strong five-star gear, with the occasional character-based super awesome five-star bit of gear.  (Any character who has the ability to use that class of gear can use character-based gear, but specific characters get nifty new “soul breaks” from these spiffy pieces of gear.)  The free daily Gacha can be any rarity, but the Mithril/Gem purchases are guaranteed to be 3-star or above.  The thing is, once you’re past the first day or so of play, it’s really only good to keep four star or above gear and invest in leveling it up to make it stronger.  It’s almost never worth the investment to “combine” gear.  There just isn’t a smooth power curve, with the five-star gold gear being overwhelmingly more useful than anything else.

This is the game that really made me think of this “playing for tips” concept.  I haven’t spent any money on the two other games in this article, but I did buy $4 worth of Gacha gear attempts in FFRK, one each in four different event subGachas.  I thought for a while, as I noted someone else did earlier, that I was OK with giving these guys a bit of money for capturing a nice slice of the Final Fantasy experience and history.  It’s just… I don’t like sending the message that the Gacha system and the gear tiers are something I approve of, especially enough to signal for more.

There’s a lot to like about this game for a nostalgia-ridden FF fan like me.  The extremely limited two-ability-per-character system (five characters in a party) does grate on me now that I’m running into more complex fights, and there’s a significantly steeper curve when it comes to making your team more powerful after what I think is the midgame.  The five-star rarity system applies to abilities, too, and making four-star abilities is all but impossible for teams below the level cap, and five star abilities require a team well above the level cap.  (You can break the cap per-character if you participate in the events and acquire the right items.)  It’s one of those catch-22 sort of situations, where you really only need those abilities to get to the point where you can make those abilities.

There are awesome little niceties, like “realm synergy”, where characters and gear who belong to the worlds you’re playing through getting bonuses (your team is almost never comprised of a single game’s cast; you usually have a mix of heroes from various FF games), and the events can be fun bursts of activity.  The Optimize function is really, really nice, though I’ve hit a point where I tend to override it with item-specific vetoes more often than not to take advantage of quirks like Cloud’s extra damage from swords, since the game likes to give him knives sometimes. Overall, though, it’s a really nice little function that lets you jump in and play without endlessly navigating the slow menu system.  There’s also a nice wiki system that SquareEnix seems to be at least marginally in charge of.

FFRK brought me along for a good little romp through the ages of the series, but it buckled under the need to monetize the game with a Gacha system and the stamina system.  I do Recommend it to fans of the series or anyone with an itch for some solid-if-shallow RPG play, with the caveats that it really does benefit from nostalgia, and the Gacha system isn’t for everyone.  I’d happily pay a single purchase price for this one if it could have faster menus, more music with a Jukebox mode, a smoother power curve, and ways to alleviate the catch-22 of ability and gear progress.  I’d pay extra for a third ability slot for all of my characters.

Get used to loading screens… at least they include trivia.

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Almost 5700 words later, and three games reviewed.  That might be a new record for me, and that’s even trying to keep some parts brief…ish.  Thank you for stopping by!  Next time, I’ll be posting again about the Tinker Plastic Dice, but then I’ll get back to some Steam games, I think.

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Pantheon Wars: The Fall of Ra

Once upon a time, I designed a small “area control” tile-capture game for a game development exercise.  I called it Alpha Hex, a simple, abstract name for a simple, abstract game.  It has evolved over the years, and I’m looking for ways to bring it to market as a tabletop board game.  Perhaps someday it can be released as a tablet game as well, but for today, it’s a Print and Play game in what I call a “Paper Beta” format.  We would greatly appreciate your help in taking a look at the game and seeing just how well it works, or doesn’t, as the case may be.  It’s been fantastic so far in our experiments and testing.

Please print out the files below and give it a try!  If you will tell your friends about it, all the better!

It’s ready to play, though we are keeping an eye on how well it plays, and we are trying to make sure it has sufficient depth to offer good value.  We have plans to add another wrinkle to this particular game, the Deity Cards, but at the moment, I’d like to get this out into the wild to see what sort of feedback we can gather.  If you have the time and inclination, please take a look at the game, and if you can tell us how it played for you, we’d love to hear it.

Pantheon Wars: The Fall of Ra is an “area control” game played on a 39-cell board.  You can play a shorter game on the 19 cells in the middle, which is how we have done most of our testing to date, but both work well.  Players compete to control the most tiles, with ties decided by control of the Nile river and delta cells on the board.  Tiles played on the board stay where they were played, but control of those tiles shifts as the game proceeds.  Success comes from smart play and careful planning.

If you have played Triple Triad, you will probably easily understand the core mechanics, but I’ve tried to keep the rules clean enough and the basic ruleset simple enough that it doesn’t require knowing that game.  Pantheon Wars: The Fall of Ra is designed specifically around being easy to learn, but with enough complexity in play decisions and circumstances that there is room for careful thought and skill testing.  Players find that to be true in testing, and it’s my hope that getting some new people to look at the game will let us refine it further where needed.

I call the game a “beta”, but it’s really one that has been through several cycles of development already.  I’d be happy with the game being released into the wild as-is, since we’ve had a lot of fun with it and so have our testers to date.  Still, there is room for polish, and when we get the Deity Cards polished up, we will need to give them a thorough period of testing as well.

We would love to get this made as a commercial product, too, and I’ve been investigating options for a Kickstarter project to make that happen.  Before we do that, though, testing the game some more is in order, and the more people we can reach to get this tested, the better.  More eyes can also mean a better launch for the game if we do get to take it to Kickstarter.

If you have the time and interest, then, please download the files below and print them out.  It should give you all you need to play the game with 2 to 6 players.  I print the board and tiles on photo paper and then mount them on matboard, then cut them out, to give a better feel to them and more durability, but you should be able to play the game if you just use simple paper on everything.  I’m happy to answer questions about the game, either here or over on our Facebook page:

Project Khopesh

I would also love to ask you questions about how the game worked for you.  If you are willing to let me ask you some questions, or just want to ask some, please contact me at tishtoshtesh@gmail.com with “Fall of Ra” somewhere in your email subject line.

Thank you all!

If you want these as .PDF files, they are presently hosted over on Dropbox at this link (two files; a small rulebook and another file with the board and pieces):

Pantheon Wars: The Fall Of Ra Print and Play

Rules

 

Board in 3 parts for printing on 8.5″ by 11″ paper

Board combined for larger format printing

Tiles and Control Markers (we’ve been using flat marbles instead of  these colored squares, but it’s handy to have these markers in the print and play files, just in case)

 

 

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Three if by Air

A few more points on flight in World of Warcraft that have come up that I wanted to note in a bit more detail since last time:

1.  A “smaller world”.

I’ve written it before, but I consider this to be an inaccurate statement.  Flying doesn’t make the world any smaller, it changes how quickly you travel through it.  That will probably make your world feel smaller if you’re only interested in Point A and Point B, but if that’s all you’re looking for in the first place, the interstitial points (like fights with bad guys or weird pathing issues) are just filler (time sinks) anyway, and the points off of the beaten track are irrelevant to you and how you view or feel  the world.  Flight doesn’t remove any content, it lets you access places that you never could before.  If anything, it makes the playable world, the part you can get to and the sights you can see, much, much larger.

No, a smaller world is one that’s just Potemkin villages and a tight, controlled experience that doesn’t let you explore the world at large.  A smaller world is one where you play the developers’ story and don’t explore the world around it.  The game’s title is World of Warcraft.  It has been lamented before by me and others, but the World part keeps contracting, and I believe it’s a detriment to what the title has to offer.  (Tangentially, Final Fantasy XIII is perhaps the most maligned of the post-SNES era of Final Fantasy games, and that is mostly because it’s a very controlled experience.  Gamers like freedom to explore.  This is not an MMO problem, it’s a game problem, since games are all about player autonomy.  This is a problem that savvy developers leverage instead of fight.  It’s part of why Minecraft is so huge.)

2. Game development costs.

I am not privy to the costs of developing World of Warcraft.  I have, however, worked on Tiger Woods video games and smaller titles that are heavily invested in facades.  It is not a huge time saver or money saver to make them instead of making full 3D worlds.  Designers still have to find ways to curtail player viewlines, which takes time and possibly engine work with programmers.  It takes finesse and massaging to try to keep the boundaries organic instead of arbitrary.

Artists still have to find ways to make all possible views interesting.  They have to make buildings and terrain anyway, and often, it takes more time to go back and prune polygons on the “back” of objects, or to go make more pieces of geometry to be used specifically as facades.  It is often actually faster and easier to have instanced buildings and oddments that look good from different angles and then place them strategically.  The data footprint is smaller since you can reuse objects in more places, and savvy programmers can make use of that bit of savings.  An object that can be viewed from many angles instead of a select few is more useful in the long run.  There are even savings with LOD (Level Of Detail meshes that pop in to save processing cycles by having lower-polycount items on display at certain distances) construction that way, as a building need only have one set of LODs instead of making a variety of buildings with different geometry needs, each with their own LODs.

There is also a larger problem with players being able to see “behind the curtain”.  If devs miss an angle, a place where the facade falls apart, it’s more obvious in a Potemkin village.  Perhaps paradoxically, but entirely in keeping with the mental gymnastics our mind goes through to “fill in the blanks” that make the Uncanny Valley approachable with low fidelity art, the more controlled an experience is, the stronger the distraction effect if something doesn’t look just right.  And yet, on the flipside, if a place in-game is presented as a fully explorable 3D space, some of those distracting little details are often ignored in the sheer amount of information on display and the freedom the user has to look at it from different angles.  In more pithy phrasing, there are no curtains to look behind.  All the warts are out there in the open, or easily discovered, and as such, are instinctively more forgivable.

I say this as an artist who has had to deal with making things look just right, and having parsed a lot of publisher feedback, it’s very interesting to see what people pick up on and what they gloss over.  It’s very, very easy to swallow even big bits of weirdness in large if imperfect presentations, but smaller, more intimate content walks a much tighter line, and it takes time and money to make both styles work.

I’m sure they have crunched numbers to make an argument to the board members, but down in the trenches of development that I’ve seen, the differences aren’t huge.

Also, as a brief aside, speaking again as a 3D artist, I’d much rather players see my work from a variety of angles, rather than make a widget that looks right only in tightly controlled circumstances.  It lets me show off my abilities more when I can make a component that has a more holistic appeal.  This, to me, is the appeal of sculpting (digitally or physically) in the first place.  If I wanted to just show one angle, I’d simply make a painting.

3.  Player costs.

WoW is still a subscription game.  As such, it is in the company’s best interests to make players take as long as possible to get through content.  If they can be strung along for long enough, the next subscription time period ticks over, and the financials look better.  Players trudging through ever-respawning enemies to get anywhere will take more time to play through the developer stories.  I’m cynical enough to think that there’s a bit of calculus involved to discover the best way to string players along so they pay for one or two more months than they might with flight as a travel option.  At least, the players who do the content once, don’t look around much off the beaten trail, and unsubscribe when done with “the story”.

Speaking of content, if players are skipping your content by flying over it, the problem is not the player.  The problem is the content that they do not want to engage in.  Going through yet another rebel/pirate/demon/enemy camp to kill the leader, then muddling back out, fighting every few steps… it’s just not interesting gameplay content to someone who has done it many, many times before (and almost anyone in Draenor is in that position).  That’s a problem with the design, and it’s not going to be solved by making players do more of it.

I firmly believe that the best stories in MMOs come from the unique ability they have to let people interact with each other and with the world.  The sense of place is important to these fictional worlds, or it should be.  Emergent play is important.  Weird nooks and crannies make a place seem more interesting, and they need to be experienced at their own pace.  Players need to be able to take in the sights and get a sense of the world.  Cities offer this, quiet spots offer this, and flight offers this breather space.  If players are constantly being prodded through the narrow “developer experience”, they simply don’t get a sense of what the world has to offer.  They are too busy dealing with the cardboard enemies that are all too often neither interesting nor challenging, merely time sinks.

Those moments when things are different, when something unique happens, those are often the best memory making moments.  A sternly guided experience will have these moments, if done correctly, but there is little room for the sublime accident, the quirky discovery, the quiet moments of awe that come from momentarily buying into the idea of being in a different world and seeing something new.  Those can happen on the ground, certainly, but flight facilitates them both by allowing more angles to see the world from, and more opportunities of quiet reflection.

It’s not the quests or the endless killing that are the best that WoW has to offer.  Blizzard’s work on this sort of content is entertaining enough for a while, but it’s not amazing, and it’s not engrossing, at least, not for long.  Letting players poke around to see what is off the beaten track can help fill in the world, give it context, and breathing room.  If a player has to be on their toes dealing with “danger” all the time, they will not relax, they will not find the world welcoming or worth exploring.  They will burn out faster.

The World of Warcraft has never been high on verisimilitude, and I’m simply not convinced that putting players into ever-more-controlled experiences will help that in any way.  That’s quite apart from flight purely as a mechanic, but as flight is a way for players to take their time and manage their approach to the game, it’s highly relevant.

Developers do have to manage expectations and design a stage for players to play on.  That’s part of game design.  I simply believe that the more controlled an experience, the more a game is like a movie, and less adroit at leveraging the true strengths of games as a medium.  Players want control, otherwise they would be watching a movie or reading a book.  Designers need to ease off the reins and let players play.  Flight has allowed that, and taking it away isn’t going to make WoW better in the long run, not for players.  It will absolutely make it easier for developers to manage the presentation, but I believe that’s missing the point, and players and the World of WoW will be lesser for it.

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Operation: Backlog – Bundled Backlog

As noted last time, I had a secondary backlog to deal with in this Operation: Backlog project; my collection of Humble Bundles that I’ve gathered over the years.  It turns out that there were about 60 games I had tucked away in their system that hadn’t been added to my Steam list.  So, I went through and bulked up my library.  There are a few that were part of these bundles that were included, but that I’ll never play, like Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Penumbra Overture (I very strongly dislike horror games, but hey, if that’s your thing, they do show up in bundles here and there), but there are still more than a few that will get the 15-minute treatment as I’ve done before.

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I’m going through my Steam list alphabetically, picking up games I own but haven’t played to see what’s there.  15 minutes each is all I’m budgeting, but I reserve the right to get sucked into a cool game.  Some I’ve played already, though, so I’ll mention them in passing here and there, giving them a rating like the other games.

I’ll be giving each of these Backlog games a rating of sorts, as follows:  Regret (uninstall and forget), Remember (uninstall but wish for more time), Revisit (leave installed for later) and Recommend (wish for more time to play this right now).  This is a squishy continuum of sorts, and deliberately imprecise.  This isn’t an in depth survey-and-review, it’s Spring Cleaning of my video game backlog.

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Since I’m dealing with a new influx of games, I’ve gone back to pick up the ones I skipped over in the alphabetical list.  First up is Air Conflicts: Pacific Carriers.

I’m just not a flight sim fan.  I’d rather play something like Privateer or Freelancer, out in space with a bit of whimsy.  Air Conflicts is a historical combat flight simulator built around carriers in the Pacific theater, specifically in the second World War.  You can fly for Japan or the U.S., piloting planes that look decent over terrain and ships that look decent.  I have little idea whether or not they are meticulously accurate to real history, but the visuals look good overall.

The play is what I’d consider to be an “arcadey” combat flight sim.  It’s not a cartoony flight game like Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (we’ll get to that later) or Pilotwings (those were the days), but it’s not really trying to be a hardcore simulation of flying these planes.  I’m OK with that, since flying real planes can be a very complex procedure sometimes, from what I understand.

Just speaking to how fun the game is on its own, though, flying around is fun enough, though I’m just not very good at the combat portion.  Controls are decent if a bit “floaty” and imprecise.  Stuff blows up nicely.  The sounds serve their purpose well.  There are different options to play, from a campaign to Instant Battle, which was nice to just jump into.

I don’t have any big complaints other than just the simple fact that this isn’t my sort of game.  It’s not a bad game, it’s just one that I have no interest in playing again.  I’d be the sort that just flies around the arena, looking for screenshot opportunities.  I just don’t follow orders well, and I’d get tired of being shot at.

I’d say I Regret this game, but really, it’s not something I paid much for, since it was part of a bundle.  I had a bit of fun with it, but it’s not one I’ll play again.  If arcadey flight sim WW2 games are your thing, it should be good.

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Then, in a significant shift, I tried And Yet It Moves.  I used my XBox 360 controller for this one.  It’s a quirky platformer which lets you rotate the world.  This relatively simple concept changes a lot of how you move through the world, and I find that I’m rather fond of the twist.  The controller makes it easier to sort the controls intuitively, which is important.

The visuals are unique and consistent, though it’s not quite the sort of style I’m really fond of.  Still, I give them credit for staying true to their vision and really embracing their design.

Controls are decent (though the character feels a little floaty and doesn’t jump all that high), platforming around is good fun, and learning how to handle the world (and your character’s motion) is a nice change from something like Braid, which, for all its time-bending gameplay, is still relatively static.

I give this one a Revisit rating because I probably won’t play much of it, since Dust fills my platformer impulse at the moment, but AYIM is a solid little game.  If you’re into platformers with some thoughtful design, it’s a good one to check out.

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Anomaly 2 is the next game I tried.  I have the first one around here somewhere, probably from a non-Humble bundle, but now I can’t find it.  I’ll just pretend that the two are more or less designed similarly, and hope that’s right.  “More of the same, but better” isn’t a bad thing, and Anomaly 2 should offer at least some idea of what both titles have to offer.  They are “tower offense” games, where you’re not controlling the towers to defend against enemies as in tower defense games (GemCraft, Defense Grid, etc.), you’re assaulting the bad guy towers with your squad and commander.

That’s enough to Recommend the game if you’re a fan of tower defense games.  If you’re just looking into the game with no particular interest in the genre, know that it looks really good, controls are excellent, and the core design is solid.  Your commander usually has to stick with your squad, escorting them through hot zones and making the most of their abilities to finish missions, though you can wander off if you consider the reward to be worth the risk.

Different units and layouts mean finding ways to stay on your toes and keep on top of the tactical situation.  It can get a little twitchy at times, but it rewards fast thinking and situational awareness rather than just reflex tests, and I appreciate that.  I find that I don’t mind needing to execute fast controls at times if I have enough time to anticipate them well, and Anomaly 2 works well for that.

One quirk is that each unit can “morph” between two different forms.  They have different abilities, like the first unit which changes from a tank with a killer cannon into a two-armed flamethrower “urban warfare” unit that can target multiple foes.  Juggling the morph states gives your six-unit squad more flexibility and keeps things from getting too repetitive.

It’s a game that is great for fans of the tower defense genre, and I think it would be good even if you’re new to the genre.  I really like the time I spent with it, about 25 minutes, and would someday like to play more.  The game eases you into its design and has multiple difficulty settings for a variety of players.  It’s easily one of the better games I’ve played in this project.

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Aquaria was up next.  I’m pretty sure I have this at least three times from different bundles.  It’s a pretty game with a good sense of style, good voice work, good music and decent controls.

It’s really nice to be able to just swim in any direction, though Naija doesn’t turn as quickly as I’d like.  She feels a little… floaty… which is odd, perhaps, for a mermaid, but still, moving her around is nicely freeform, just a bit imprecise and sluggish feeling.  She has the ability to sing songs that help her in what I assume are various ways.  The only one she starts with is Shield, which didn’t actually seem to shield all that much.

The reviews I’ve read of this bill it as a Metroidvania game, and it does feel a bit like Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet (another such game, and a good one).  It’s really, really slow to start off, though.  It’s rather fond of its narration, but I just wanted to get on with the game.  Metroid Prime spoiled me on that, I guess.  There’s a good Reddit thread on it over here.

Perhaps it gets better and more interesting down the line, and a slow start does fit the ambient lackadaisical sort of mood they seem to want to evoke, it’s just… it doesn’t show all that well in the first 15 minutes.  If that was all I played, I’d have to give it a Regret rating.  As it is, I played for about 25 minutes, and eventually found a sort of “combat flashforward preview” thing which hinted that the game might get more interesting, so I’ll Remember it and move on.

This game, more than others I’ve played in this project so far, seems to suffer the most from a slow start.  It was easier to get away with this in days long past, but in today’s more saturated market with more ADHD customers (and/or just time-starved like me), your game has to make an accurate and good impression as soon as possible.  It’s just not as likely that customers are going to play for 3 hours before your game gets good.  We don’t have time for that.  Get to the point, developers!  Even if it’s a tease like Metroid Prime, where you’re given lots of toys to play with up front, but then you lose them and have to find them again, players will know in short order what the game has to offer later, all within a few minutes.  Even the super-dense Endless Legend makes a quick good impression, and they have more depth and play options to get through.

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Atom Zombie Smasher isn’t a game I’d buy on its own, but since it came with a bundle, I figured I’d give it a shot.  It’s… not a typical zombie game.  It’s more of a Real Time Strategy game with minimalistic visuals.  That’s not a bad thing in itself, and it certainly cuts down on the cliche gore that zombies usually show off.  You try to protect little yellow dots (humans) from little pink dots (zombies) in a city, using a variety of weapons from your “eye in the sky” tactical view.

It could really be about any two groups of things where one tries to escape the other.  The theme isn’t strong, but that’s OK.  The gameplay is solid, and that’s more important to me anyway.  The art style, simple as it is, is consistent and clear.

That yellow dot on the right is not going to come to a good end.

 

Send in a chopper to save yellow dots, protect them with green dots (soldiers who fire on pink dots within range/sight), maybe use some land mines or artillery (remember that explosives can open new avenues for pink dots), and maybe even some pink-proof barriers.

Those land mines leveled buildings that could have kept the pink dots controlled a bit.

 

It’s a solid game, one I’ll Remember.  If you’re into RTS or zombie games, it’s worth picking up and playing for a while.

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aaaaand that’s it for this time.  I’m still not through the secondary backlog, but should get through it next time.

Thanks again for stopping by, and here’s hoping you have time to dig through your list.  There are a LOT of great games out there, and tons of good ones.  It’s a good time to be a gamer.

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