Operation: Backlog – Monsters, Machines and Machinations

Operation: Backlog is still proceeding, I just don’t have tons of time to do any of it, from the playing to the documenting.  Still, it’s good for the very fractured gaming schedule I have.  As usual:

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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First up is one of the drive-by games:  Batman: Arkham Asylum

This is an excellent game.  I played it to completion and then some on the XBox 360, not on PC, but it’s one I highly Recommend.  It’s not perfect, but it’s great fun, and really nails the feeling of Batman, at least, as I have come to expect it as a fan of the character since the mid-90s.  It has fantastic combat, excellent worldbuilding, really, really good graphics, fun mobility, Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and, well, it’s tons of fun to play.

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Second, we have the sequel, Batman: Arkham City.  I’ve only played this one for about 45 minutes, so I don’t know how well the open world nature of the game actually works in the long run.  Catwoman is a bit too skanky and the political setup seems contrived, but it still seems like the core of what made Arkham Asylum works is still present.  It’s a game that I’m leaving installed, and Recommend, though with the usual caveat that I haven’t played all that much of it.

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Third, I did try to play Birth of America, but it flat out refused to work.  So, dump that in the Regret pile.  I don’t have time to wrangle dysfunctional games.

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Fourth, the Blackwell Deception almost ran into the same fate, with some weird tech issues popping up thanks to my dual monitor setup, but the second time I fired it up it behaved.  This one’s a bit tricky, as it’s an adventure game in the vein of the LucasArts classics.

I did love that era of gaming, for all its quirks, and this game would have fit well in those days.  I consider that to be praise, though it does mean that I just don’t have time to give it a proper playthrough.  I’d like to someday, along with the rest of the Blackwell Bundle that I picked up at GoG.com, but for now, I’m lumping them all together with a Remember rating, noting that I do like adventure games, I just don’t have a lot of time.

I love that Wadjet Eye Games is making games that feel like classic adventure games.  The voiceover work is adequate, if not stellar, the art and animation is solid, and the writing that I saw was pretty good.  The game plops you into an investigation with little fanfare, effectively dropping you into the deep end, but it’s designed well enough that there’s not much trouble getting up and running.  It’s a well designed first 15 minutes, I think, and it does leave me wanting to play more someday.

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Fifth, Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition.  I picked this one up on deep discount due to my passing interest in the WarHammer tabletop wargame.  I have some of the sourcebooks, but no models and nobody to play with.  I just study the books and dissect the game design.  Blood Bowl isn’t really the same thing, but I’ve heard enough good about the board game incarnation of the title that I figured I’d check out the digital version.  (I still wish there was a digital version of the WarHammer tabletop game so I could play with someone online.  Not a RTS, not a card game, not a shooter, just a literal translation of the tabletop game.  This is one reason why I backed WarMachine Tactics for its Kickstarter campaign, but we’ll dig into that later.)

Without a history with the board game, I hit the learning curve hard in Blood Bowl.  It seems to be well designed and the visual design is solid, if a bit too skanky and “grimdark” for me.  (I have very little interest in any WarHammer 40K titles for the same reason.)  I puttered around a bit with setting up a team, fired up a match and promptly lost horribly.  There are a LOT of options and rules to the game that I’m just not up to speed on.

That’s not a bad thing, really, so long as the game can be mastered with some honest effort, but I just don’t have the time to make that effort.  This is a failing in my schedule, not the game, though it would be nice to have a bit more guidance for those early learning moments.  Being tossed in the deep end is OK so long as there’s a good learning feedback cycle.  That seems to be a bit obscured in this title, though it is clear that it builds on the board game.  I should see if I can find the rulebook somewhere in a used bookstore, perhaps.

As such, I’m giving it a Remember rating, and maybe I’ll pick it up later.  I don’t dislike the game, I just have to move on and it didn’t really grab me.  There does seem to be a lot of meat to chew on and a fun, snarky sense of humor, though, and that’s promising.

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Sixth, Braid.  I’ve written about this before, I think, having played it years ago, but in a nutshell, it’s a decent little platformer with great art design and solid game design.  The story is pretentious, dreary, and takes itself way too seriously, but the game is fun.  I give it a Recommend rating, if only to see the visuals and design in action, just with the caveat that it’s not really the revolutionary masterpiece that it often gets credit for.  It’s fun, it’s solid, it’s full of itself.  I’m done with it, but I do think it’s worth playing if you haven’t.

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Seventh, Cargo Commander.  I got this one in a bundle, one of those games that just sort of tags along with other games I actually cared about.  (I don’t remember what it was bundled with at the moment, though.  Oops.)  It’s not that Cargo Commander looked bad, just that it seemed a bit too twitchy for me.

It’s a platformer with variable gravity and a ticking clock.  The design is actually pretty solid, I’m just not all that interested in this sort of game any more.  Maybe as a teenager I’d have loved it, but I prefer more thoughtful, careful, tactical games these days.  That’s not a failing of the game, since it does what it sets out to do well.

You play as a corporate lackey, stuck on a space station in some far off garbage zone, tasked with dragging cargo containers in to crash into your habitat, and then go invade them and grab any valuable salvage before the timer runs out and everything falls apart but your base.  You have to scramble into these other containers, platform through them fighting baddies and the structure, and grab what you can.  It’s fast, frantic and not very forgiving.

The controls are tight, platforming with the keyboard and aiming with the mouse, a bit like A.R.E.S., but much more fluid and fun.  There’s an upgrade system and a “completion” rating, with the ability to replay levels to try to do better.  The visuals are adequate, nothing amazing, but not bad.

All in all, I give this a Remember rating for myself, but it’s really something that might be worth picking up if you’re into variable gravity direction, crazy quick-on-your-feet action.  It’s a slightly silly premise, but it winds up being pretty fun to play, so long as you’re up for fast paced gaming.

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Eighth, Chains.  This is a light puzzler, very clicky like AVSEQ was, but not quite as fast and much more interesting given its physics and variable levels.  It’s a decent little game, one I give a Remember rating since I remember it in a positive light.  It’s not even close to my favorite puzzle game, but for all its apparent simplicity (the visual style really isn’t all that great), there’s a bit more going on under the hood than screenshots might suggest.

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Ninth, Chime.  This is one I’ve mentioned in passing before.  I really like Chime.  I do wish that I could flip pieces like I can in Puzzle Pirates’ Carpentry puzzle, as that would make it a more complete puzzle game, but for what it is, Chime works well.  It could use more music options, too, but what it has is good in my book.  I give it a Revisit rating, since it’s not as great as others I’d put in the same mental “music/puzzle” game niche, but it really is a good game.

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Tenth, Cogs.  I’m a fan of steampunk design.  Hence the Tinker products I’ve been working with for almost two years now.  (Go visit the shop, please, and spread the word!)  I love old, beat up, lived in machinery, and I love puzzle games.  Cogs scratches all the right places for me.  It has smart puzzle design, great visuals, simple play rules (at heart, it’s just a bunch of sliding tile puzzles with some nice 3D aspects), and it really embraces its own steampunk design ethos.  It’s not arrogant, it’s not silly or trying to be ironic, it’s just a well-themed tinkerer’s box full of puzzles.

Some are easy, some are really tough, and most are somewhere in the middle.  They always feel fair, though, and there are some great uses of the 3D aspects that introduce nice quirks with sliding tile puzzles.  Sadly, when my computer crashed last year, I lost my screenshot collection, but there are some puzzles that I played again and again, just for how fun it was to see the mechanism come together as I solved the puzzle.  I wish I had some of them as real, physical devices.  (These puzzles are later in the list, and I didn’t have time to get to them for this project.)

Cogs earns a hearty Recommend rating from me, as it’s one of my favorite light puzzle games.  It’s available for Android devices, too, which is nice.

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That’s all for this post.  There are plenty more where these came from, the most notable for next time being Dear Esther, Defense Grid and The Dig, one of LucasArts’ finest adventure games.  Until next time, then!

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Black Nickel Gearpunk Dice Photos

This is just an addendum to the photo set of the Gearpunk dice.  We’ve ordered some in a black nickel finish, and though we don’t have all of them in stock yet thanks to a factory mistake, we have a few.  May as well show some beauty photos, right?

D6GearpunkBlackNickel

D8GearpunkBlackNickel

D12GearpunkBlackNickel

D20GearpunkBlackNickel

D20SpinGearpunkBlackNickel

DFudgeGearpunkBlackNickel

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Tinker Oddments

This is a simple enough post… we’re just looking for a little feedback on what future projects we might windup doing in the Tinker stable of fun metal gaming oddments (well, all but the potential plastic Tinker Dice).  If you’ve a moment to opine for us, we’d love your input.

Thanks!  (If the surveys aren’t showing, this is an alternate link to the PollDaddy version:  Tinkering with the Future)

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Looking Back, Looking Forward

It’s been a great 2013, with our two Kickstarter projects doing well, thank you everyone!  We’re still shipping out the Tinker Decks and the Tinker Dice, but we’re also looking forward to what else we may be able to do.  To that end, we’d like to get some feedback from those of you who might be interested in what we’re plotting.  (And if you’re one of the kind souls who come here for my other assorted posts about gaming, game design, art and photography, I’ll do more of those, too.  I’ve been itching to do some “regular” blogging.  Lots of ideas rattling around here.  This Kickstarter stuff might just be static, sorry, but we’ll get some more signal in here, too.)

So, first and foremost, we’re planning a new campaign just for the Gearchips that we offered in the Tinker Deck campaign.  We do have a few leftovers, but there is some interest in more.

These Gearchips are poker chip sized, ready for play with the decks… or whatever else.  My kids just love playing with little metal gears, and they can serve well as tokens in a variety of games.  They are 39mm, so they can even stand in as wreck markers in WarMachine for 40mm base units or the like.  We’ll fire that up in the next month or so, since a lot of the groundwork is ready to go.  We need to run a campaign because we still have to make sure we have enough interest to get a “print run” of the coins.  We’re not yet far enough ahead of the curve to just go get more coins and hope the demand happens later.

Secondly, we’re planning a set of Gearchip-like game coins.  Specifically, they will be gear-edged coins, all built to mesh with each other, no matter which denomination.  They will have square holes in the center for use either as driver gears with a square axle, or to be able to turn freely on a round axle.  They can function in any game or situation that calls for coins or chips of different denominations (say, 7 Wonders, Race for the Galaxy or Magic the Gathering), or as parts to a machine, albeit a simple, low powered one.  These won’t be highly hardened, tempered, true machine-ready gears, just toys.  Still, that’s enough to have fun with.

We have some questions on these, though.  What sort of metal finish?  How to simplify the sale of them in batches, while still allowing some customizability to allow for use in a variety of games and situations?  We’ve been very impressed with the Gearchip coins, and we want to see how we can riff on the idea.  If you’ve a moment, we’d love some answers to this survey or comments down below.  (For all the surveys, you can select more than one option if you wish.)

Third, we’re looking at producing another deck.  We had a lot of fun with the Tinker Deck, and have other ideas we’d like to experiment with, if it’s worth it.  We’re not at all sure that we’ll go with Bicycle as the printer again, though.  They do good work, no doubt, and they are really good people to work with, but the print run of 2500 or so decks is a significant monetary hurdle.  It’s not impossible, to be sure, but there are other options that we’re considering.  These, of course, don’t carry the brand name or the instant quality assurance and recognition, which can be a different sort of barrier.  If you’ve an opinion (or recommendation) on printers, please let us know.

Also, while we’re brainstorming, how about these options?

We’ve also considered making the Tinker pair of decks available in plastic, though that will definitely mean going with a different printer.  We’re not seriously looking at Kem custom cards, as their prices are prohibitive.  We’re looking at non-US printers for this (unless someone in the ‘States can compete).

Speaking of reprints, we did order some extras of the Tinker Dice, but if there’s enough demand, we may well do another campaign for those to get another batch going… though we’d spice it up a bit by offering new finishes.  We’d simplify the ordering scheme, though, since it was overly complex this last time.

We’re also seriously considering rebooting the initial, failed, plastic Tinker Dice campaign, though we acknowledge that metal dice just seem to fit the theme better… and are in some ways, just plain cooler.  Still, plastic dice have their charms, and are less likely to destroy your gaming table.  They would be less costly, too.

There’s also a temptation to do some sort of token set for wargaming… but we need to figure out the best approach for that.  Some of those templates are big, and might get prohibitively expensive to do in metal.

So thanks for chiming in, and for your support thus far!

…and we’ll get back to a game design post here in a little bit.  There’s this one on worldbuilding I’ve had in mind for a while now…

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Tinker Dice in hand!

We now have the Tinker Dice in hand!  We’ll be shipping them out to those who ordered only Tinker Dice.  The Gearpunk Dice are still in processing (I emailed the company again last night to get a timetable and photos… we’ll pass along what we learn), so we’ll send those out later, along with the Tinker Dice for anyone who ordered some of each.

Thanks for your patience!

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Tinker Dice Production Photo 1

We received an email this morning from the company producing the Tinker Dice.  They sent us a photo of the first Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice, hot off the press, as it were.  These are plated in nickel.

The funny thing is, the Tinker Pentagear Fudge dice main production run will be entirely in antiqued bronze.  We consciously limited their finish to bronze because they were a  promotional design to coincide with the Mechanika campaign, not our standard dice that we wanted to offer in multiple finishes.

So… these are an oddity, a rarity… something that may never really see the light of day for sales.  (The Mechanika guys may do another print run someday using these, but for now, if I understand the production company correctly, there are only these four and two others in existence.)

But they are still pretty cool, and I wanted to share the photo to show you what they are doing with the designs.  I’m quite happy with their work, and I’m really looking forward to getting all of the dice made and shipped out to everyone.  I’ll share more prototype photos as they come in.

Thanks!

Oh, and as a reminder, we’re approaching the main goal on our sister project, the Tinker Deck, and we’re really looking forward to going for the stretch goal of the Rusty Tinker deck.  Thanks to all of you who have joined that campaign, too!  If you have a minute and the interest, please spread the word about the cards.  We’d love to get them out to as many people as we can, too!

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Rusty Diamond

Just a quick sneak peek at the next big announcement for the Tinker Deck campaign.  It’s been fun, doing the new oxidation messy pass on these.

The campaign is around 80% funded, so thank you everyone who has been a part of it!  If you’ve a moment, please spread the word.  There are miles to go before we sleep, and plenty of fun places to take the campaign if we get into the “stretch goals” segment.

Thanks!

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Stretching Metal: Gearpunk Dice!

OK, so over 100 awesome people have blasted through the Tinker Dice base campaign funding goal and hit the first stretch goal in just a little more than 24 hours.

Wow.

Just… awesome.

As a result, we have before us a fantastic opportunity.  I’ve had my Gearpunk Dice available via Shapeways for a while now, but now, finally, we have the chance to make them in solid metal.  I dreamed of this, but didn’t think it likely.

It might just work.

So if you have the time, please go check out the Tinker Dice campaign on Kickstarter and please spread the word!  The more the merrier, and maybe we can make these Gearpunk dice happen!

Thank you all!

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Rolling Metal, Tinker Dice Funded!

Holy schamoley, guys, the Tinker Metal Dice project funded in less than 12 hours!

Wow.

I’m… floored, and extremely grateful for all of your support!  I’ve been more than a bit preoccupied of late trying to get these things going, and it’s been a humbling and exciting morning for me and my cohorts at Project Khopesh.

Just… wow.

Thank you, very, very much!

We do still have plans in the works for the FATE/Fudge dice, and it’ll be great if we can get those as well, so there’s potentially more good news in the pipe… but man, it’s been a really good day so far.  Thank you to each and every one of you, and I’m looking forward to getting these made up and sent out to you!

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3D Printed Gaming

This.  This is what I want for Zomblobs!… someday.  I saw the trend, the potential, but I’m not sure that my timing will be sufficient.  Trying to chase new markets in game design isn’t something that’s easy to do when timing is a factor, and I can only put hobbyist time (and barely that) into the process.

3D Printed Open Source Game

Zomblobs! may never really happen as a product I can make money from, or even be as finalized as I’d like (real life is a beast sometimes) but it’s nice to see that it could have, and that I wasn’t the only one to see the potential there.  Yes, technically, that’s an open source game, not really a commercial product, but still… 3D printing can be a great tool for indie-scale game design.

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