New development studio Passionfruit Games plans to release a casual adventure game Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, based on the paramornal romance novel Tiger Eye by Marjorie M. Liu. Romance games are a wildly popular genre in Asia, but in the US, they’re hard to find and usually pretty second-rate games.  (Did I mention how bad My Boyfriend was?) We have high hopes for this one because new Passionfruit is made up of many HER Interactive veterans — the game team who put together Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses! and NDD: Resorting To Danger.  The game is currently in beta.

From the Passionfruit press release:

Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box also officially marks the launch of PassionFruit Games and represents a unique moment in the history of gaming.  Although a market for romance themed video games has existed abroad for years, these games are essentially unknown in the U.S.  Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box will be one of the first romance casual games to hit the U.S. market when it goes on-sale in April 2010.

In discussing PassionFruit Games’ decision to launch their company with Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box, Melissa Heidrich, Studio Director, expressed her enthusiasm for reaching out to romance readers: “The majority of casual gamers are women aged 25-65, who report they play casual games mainly to escape.  Interestingly, those same attributes apply to romance novel readers – so it’s surprising that there are currently so few romance casual games on the market.  That’s why we’re excited to bring Tiger Eye to life as interactive entertainment.”

For Marjorie M. Liu’s fans, it will be a great chance for them to experience a game written by, designed by, and created for women. Mari Tokuda, one of the designers translating Marjorie’s novel into game form, says: ““There just aren’t many romance games in today’s market.  And, for many women, romance novels are not interactive enough.  That’s where we come in – we are giving players a chance to experience the romance through fun gameplay and sensual cut scenes that further the relationship.  This game will really appeal to players who want a storyline and those who want to BE the smart, down-to-earth romance novel heroine.  And of course, we’ll have a sexy leading man heavily featured in the game.  A game like Tiger Eye is one of the most engaging ways for readers to experience characters’ relationships.”

Fans will also be able to experience things that weren’t in the book and to search for hidden objects, play minigames, listen to a film quality soundtrack, and solve puzzles, all the while following the storyline as the main characters’ relationship deepens emotionally and grows in intimacy, though there will not be explicit sex scenes.

PassionFruit Games acknowledges the challenges of turning a popular book into digital entertainment and of adhering closely to the book’s storyline.  In their quest to stay true to the novel,  all members of the team—from artist to programmer—read Tiger Eye, as well as other novels in the Dirk & Steele universe, to get a feel for the “essence” of the game.  The producer and lead designer held regular video conferences with Marjorie to go over the latest design ideas and Marjorie herself wrote the script for the game and is involved with the game every step of the way,  giving input on scene art, character design, and voice actor selection.

Says Marjorie, who is well known for her New York Times bestselling Dirk & Steele and Hunter Kiss series and for co-authoring the hugely popular Dark Wolverine Marvel comic book series, about playing the game’s early build: “I was amazed by the beautiful cinematic cut scenes and the way players could actually experience things my characters had done.  It’s an incredible feeling to not only see favorite characters brought to life but to experience life through their eyes as you progress through the game.”

The Tiger Eye novel, which Publishers Weekly praised as a “first-rate debut” and “a striking paranormal romance,” tells the story of Dela, a woman with psychic abilities who buys a riddle box in Beijing’s Dirt Market and opens it to find an ancient warrior, Hari, bound to serve as a slave to the person who has opened the box.  The action moves between China and the U.S. and PassionFruit Games will mirror this international scope through two games, the first to take place in China and the second in the U.S.  PassionFruit games also plans to involve readers in the release of Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box with the chance for a select few fans to be Beta testers and with fan voting on looks for the character, Long Nu.

More on Passionfruit Games and Tiger Eye: Curse of the Riddle Box from Simpson’s Paradox.

Passionfruit Games is a post from: Thumb Gods

The new party game DoTell sets up simple rules for a social game of truth-or-dare. Players race a simple spiral path, moving ahead for completed tasks, but I use “race” loosely, since the focus is on the journey, not the destination. (Quick sidenote: Play makes use of clear icons that didn’t rely on distinguishing between colors or, my personal game hate, squinting at tiny symbols. I’m looking at you, Magic:The Gathering.)

We quickly came up with game mods, swapping the game’s two six-sided dice for two four-sided dice to regulate movement. Even through Do Tell is not very competitive, the variation in 2d6 for movement can frustrate the player who rolls a 3 early on and never catches up.

The game offers eight pastel tokens, but it’s easy to add a mancala gem or a Monopoly boat to mod it for a larger group. Do Tell is so interactive that it works well with a large group, and each turn is independent of what’s gone before, so it’s a perfect choice to begin with on game night as you wait for guests to arrive.

Tell cards ask players to answer a questions and share something (The DoTell Facebook page offers a list of possible questions), and players quickly begin to share stories and laugh.

Do cards ask a player to sing a song, do an impression, dance, pose or act something out. These were a hit with strangers and long-term partners alike. Other players loved dancing or singing along, or just clapping after performance.  One Do asks the player to be the devil preparing his to-do list, which is a fantastic chance to see if your friends would plan plagues and worldwide floods, or just legions of telemarketers and poorly designed parking lots.

A Mirror question has one player asking a Tell, instead of answering, and all the other players try to figure out what he or she would answer.  When we started playing, Mirror questions slowed the game to a crawl, as players who didn’t know each other fumbled for some innocuous answer to a soul-baring Tell.  But after a little while, answers to other questions made it easier and easier to guess. For a group of long-time friends, the Mirrors were hilarious.

The official rules for Mirror questions have a note that some Tells don’t make very good Mirrors, so they should be skipped. No legalese about how they should be skipped, no tiny icons in the corner of the cards to let know which ones should be skipped. We think this refers to the Tells that ask the player to draw a Risk or a Do, but we really liked this rule. Think this is a bad Mirror? Draw again! This is exactly what we were looking for in a party game.

On my second playthrough, we opened up the, ahem, adult Risk cards, glanced at them, and added house rules.  Take a spicy Risk instead of a regular Risk at any time, but it can be swapped for a regular Risk if it’s too risque. Don’t like the card you’ve drawn? Swap any underwhelming Tell or too-wild Do for the next spicy Risk! (You can also get the Family Version for Spicy-free play, or just put those cards away when you have the fam over to play)

With the exception of one reference to American Idol, DoTell does not require pop culture knowledge (my one complaint with usual party games like Cranium or Apples to Apples is the number of celebrities I don’t know), but feel free to work random trivia or favorite songs into other questions.

Overall, this is a hilarious social game. Sure, you can race to the center, but the real focus is on laughing with friends.

Do Tell is a post from: Thumb Gods

Cake Mania 3 is an adorable time-management game for the Nintendo DS. Jill, our heroine from Sandlot Games’ PC versions of the Cake Mania imprint, is cheerfully preparing for her wedding day when she accidentally breaks a time-bender (I suppose it was wedding decor), and sends herself and her loved ones off through space and time, only to be saved through extensive cake baking! Jill must rescue her displaced friends and family, repair the time-bender and make it back for her wedding – all by making and decorating cakes.

Once Jill lands in a new location and sets up her bakery (“Oh look,“ Jill notices, “My oven works in ancient China! That’s not weird at all!”), the top screen is used for progress stats, like time spent and money earned, and icons of waiting customers. The bottom screen is Jill’s bakery. Players send Jill rushing from oven to customer with a tap of the stylus. A checkmark appears over the future actions in Jill’s queue so you can easily keep track of what she’s doing. Tap the checkmark to remove a planned action from Jill’s to-do list.

Read the rest of my Cake Mania 3 review over on Casual Gamer Chick.

Game Review: Cake Mania 3 is a post from: Thumb Gods

But it was awful.

The game opens with you and your best friend arriving at a resort full of  fun activities and hot guys! Unfortunately, the dialogue is stilted, partly because it’s EFL, and partly because I hoped for witty banter. There’s a lot of clicking ok, only “ok” is an awkward agreement. The dialogue was so awkward that I couldn’t always tell who was supposed to be an attractive possible friend and who was a mean girl to be thwarted with my killer wits. I could tell which guys were potential boyfriends, though, because the minor NPCs only had one line to say.

As you walk around the resort, white stars appear over activatable items, and you have the option to participate in different resort activities. Whether you choose to relax in the sun, rent waterskiis, or swim in the pool, you don’t play a minigame or even watch a little cutscene animation. You watch a clock tick. I’m not exaggerating. You watch a pink clock tick. Um, when does the fun start?

Other activities do involve minigames. These are activated by talking to an NPC. I’m usually a big fan of minigames (see also: all my recent hidden objects game reviews), but these minigames were awful. AWFUL. We’re talking incomprehensible directions, repetitive gameplay and bizarrely uneven difficultly levels. For Step Aerobics, you need to click the right color in the right order five times to complete level one. For Kareoke, you need to click the right color at the right time FORTY EIGHT times to complete level one. Wait, one is more difficult than the next by a factor of ten?

Your character can also experiment with makeup, but the extremely limited choices forbade either adorable looks or hilarious fashion trainwrecks. (If you think makeup doesn’t lend itself well to a videogame, check out the facial minigame in Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting To Danger for a makeup game done right, or Sims 3 for recreational avatar decoration.)

I really wanted to like My Boyfriend, but we have to break up. This just isn’t working out.

Game Review: My Boyfriend is a post from: Thumb Gods

WMC follows the usual pattern of story cutscenes, hidden objects and minigames. The hidden objects casual adventure game is a pretty crowded genre, so it’s hard for a new game to really stand out. Probably the most unique characteristic was the James Patterson characters.  Players solve crimes and meet with the WMC ladies as Patterson’s detective Lindsay Boxer, and supporting characters with solid personalities made this more that just a reskinned HO game.

The story progresses via cutscenes and dialogue options. Players have some choices for what to say, but it was more of a quiz on recent plot events. Believable banter makes the cutscenes worth reading, and the linear storyline makes it feel like reading a novel, not being hemmed

Random side note: The mysterious Chinese markings found on the victim actually do say bu zhong, Not Loyal. My Chinese  literacy is just good enough to be completely thrilled with the developers for using real words when dramatic red scribbles would have acceptable. (It always cracks me up when I see upside-down characters or random other words.) Good work, THQ.

A lot of the game was hidden objects, whether it was tidying a crime scene or looking for clues, but this was a particularly bad HO. The small DS screen doesn’t really lend itself to searching, and players search a picture that’s larger than the screen, for maximum squinting-at-the-screen annoyance. It was also the Highlights magazine type of hidden objects, instead of the cluttered-room HO. It felt oddly childish to look for giant peace signs and lightning bolts, especially on crime scenes with mysterious dead bodies. The game does mix up the hidden objects a bit by giving players a clue instead of a list of items, but still gives the feel of an activity book more than an adventure game.

The story leads to several minigames, which were much more engaging than the picture find. When I got the Women’s Murder Club press release, I was pretty excited to see the game included a science lab minigame, and the puzzle’s gameplay didn’t disappoint.

One of the minigames was a mah-jong game, which is also accessible under an icon that says China (This character is a different zhong, an object lesson on why I am not so good at Chinese!). I usually consider mah-jong games to be computer solitaire 2.0, but I found something charming in the tiny tiles and stylus interface, and ended up playing this minigame more than I’d expected.

Women’s Murder Club: Crimes of Passion offers a solid storyline and characters from the popular novels to fans of the hidden objects mystery.

Game Review: Women’s Murder Club is a post from: Thumb Gods

Telltale’s new Monkey Island is not to be confused with the LucasArts updated re-release. No, the Screaming Narwhal is an all-new tale in the saga of Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate. Elaine and LeChuck (and at least one other familiar character!) are back as well, revamped from their grainy 2d incarnations, but following the spirit of the originals.

Goofy dialogue, creative uses for found items and pirate-y silliness are the hallmarks of the Monkey Island games, and the Screaming Narwhal has them all. Guybrush uses his razor-sharp wits to deal with the wacky denizens of Flotsam Island, whether that’s a clever ruse of selling fine leather jacket, an amazing use of misdirection (Look! It’s Louis XIV!) or coming up with a believable excuse on the spot. The dialogue is not a memory test of in-game facts, but a chance for zany interactions.

The freedom of the old Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck’s Revenge options was in stark contrast to the thousand ways to accidentally off the protagonist in the punishing other adventure games I played around the same time. (Getting killed by a passing car when Laura Bow crosses the street still sticks in my memory as the finest example of the I Made This, You Play This, I Hate You mindset.) Guybrush can stick a bomb in his pocket or attempt all sorts of athletic feats without any ill effects.

The Monkey Island games make you wonder What would happen if I…? and then encourage you to try it out! When you try to pair two objects that didn’t belong,  use something in the wrong way, or say something ridiculous, Guybrush makes a joke instead of a beep, an error message, or a score punishment. LucasArts rewarded creativity by offerings zany responses to zany questions and zany actions. The object was not to beat the level, the boss, or the game, but just to see what would happen next!

The Screaming Narwhal contains the old Monkey Island mechanic of an old pirate map for Guybrush to decipher. I don’t want to give away too much, but this isn’t the usual hidden object standard, there isn’t any squinting at the screen to find map pieces. If you’d like to make the puzzles easier or harder, the hint frequency is on a slider in your options menu, so you can adjust how much Guybrush tells you.

When I think about it, the only thing that could possibly be improved is the inventory. Oh, no, not the actual inventory, the U-tube and manatee monocle and breathmints leave no room for improvement. But the way to access the inventory is to mouse over the right hand edge of the screen. This is also the way to walk off the right hand edge of the screen or look at things on the far right of the screen. It is not a game-breaking mechanical failure, but a minor annoyance that came back every time I mean to look at something on the right and opened my inventory.

Go check it out and remember why Monkey Island was such an awesome story.

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal is a post from: Thumb Gods

Cool minigames make use of the the DS’s capabilities, but the hundredth time you have to light a fire, it stops being fun. The same can be said for cooking, fishing, catching animals, and every other repetitive action. I’m a big fan of Cooking Mama 2, but this is no Cooking Mama. Also, the actions you need to perform repeatedly are hidden in sub-menus or are only available after a chain of choices, instead of being accessible, one-click actions.

The story begins as two high-schoolers are washed up on a beach after a shipwreck. Players can choose Jack or Amy as their primary character, but they are responsible for the survival of both.

Jack, your companion on the island, is not the brightest bulb in the box. You need to feed him, making him more like a rather dim pet than a boyfriend. Every time he gets hungry, you need to let go of his hand (one click), target Jack (varies), select Talk (one click), tell him you have something for him (one click), wait for him to ask what it is, tell him it’s something to eat (one click), wait for him to ask what he’s eating, and then select the item from your backpack to feed him (varies, but you select, choose ‘give’ and confirm), he says it’s delicious (one click to confirm). Early items, like raspberries and coconuts, fill his meter between 3 and 5 percent, out of a possible hundred percent, so even if he doesn’t perform any physical labor — like a million walks to the stream to quench his inexhaustible thirst — which makes the hunger meter empty faster,  you’ll need to do this series of actions between 20 and 33 times in a day to get him full.

Items must be fed from Amy’s backpack to Jack. You cannot feed him items that he’s carrying, and he will literally die of starvation with a backpack full of lunchboxes and fruit.  To exchange items between backpack, you need to let go of his hand (one click), target Jack (varies), select Talk (one click), tell him you have something for him (one click), wait for him to ask what it is, select give  (one click), wait for him to ask what you’re giving him, and then exchange items between the backpacks. If you play as Jack, Amy becomes similarly dim-witted.

A lot of the game involves learning about the island… read the rest here.

Game Review: Lost in Blue 2 is a post from: Thumb Gods

I reviewed Totem Tribe about a month ago, after getting it on BFG, but I had no idea of the politicking behind the scenes. Totem Tribe is still available on Big Fish Games even if it’s not on the top 100 list.

The game was released silently on BFG, with no front page coverage, and still manged to get to number 13 on BFG’s top 100 games within a few days of being released, but on the next day, the game vanished from the top 100 completely. On the day BFG removed Totem Tribe from its top 100, the game was the top game on Reflexive, two on Shockwave, and three on Real Arcade. Since, the game has reached the top ten on Amazon, Arcade Town, iWin, Logler Global, Real Arcade, Reflexive, and Shockwave, and, on many of these, reaching the top place.

The game’s best rank on Big Fish Games was 13 of 100, but now the game is no longer to be seen. Moral of the story? Never rely on portals. Build up your own site, and work on developing strong brands that consumers will remember and want more of.

I agree, but I think CasualInsider’s moral isn’t as pat as it sounds. How is a casual game-player going to find the indie websites of small developers, or even hear about those developers and games at all? Portals like Big Fish Games have a massive advertising budget to spread the word about new games. It’s also easy to bookmark and check back. If I don’t use a portal — and I’ve blogged about my concerns with portals before — how will I even hear about games I might like to try and buy?

Once I discover the site and play a good game, I try to remember the developer’s name but that’s because I blog on gaming. I didn’t care about that before, and besides the big names, I didn’t really follow any development news.

So, how do you hear about new games? Portals? Word-of-mouth? Word of, um, keyboard? And, when you do play a good game, do you remember the developer and check back for new things?

Via Portal Wars: Exclusive, or no deal | CasualInsider.com.

Thoughts on Game Distribution is a post from: Thumb Gods

Um, back to the games. Usually the price of shipping or the wait time can be a deal-breaker for online discount sites. You save $6 only to pay $10 in shipping. But they offer free shipping on orders that total over $25 or you can pay extra for faster shipping, like on Amazon.

You might also be able to sell games that you’ve beaten (or gotten bored with) to JJGames, if they’re in good condition. See if the games you have gathering dust qualify here.

Definitely worth checking out before you pay full price for your next game!

Used Console Games From JJGames! is a post from: Thumb Gods

But I do have huge admiration for indie developers, and I hope to focus on lesser-known titles here on ThumbGods.

Cliff Harris of Positech Games talks about making independent development profitable. Cliff is behind the Positech Games titles Democracy 2, Kudos (and Kudos 2!) and others. The entire interview is worth reading, if you’re all interested in what makes a game succeed, but one statement really stuck with me.

Who will survive in the casual game business in 2010?

Big Fish Games, Popcap.
I think I’ve got the full list there.

Big Fish Games is an awesome casual games portal. The “new game every day!” works perfectly for repeat business.  They’re a total giant, even my mother-in-law has a Big Fish Games account. But I worry that massive portals like BFG (much as I love them!) and now Amazon are making it harder for the guy-with-website development model to succeed.

Not to be all doom and gloom, because as Cliff’s interview shows, an indie game developer and creative marketer can still do very well.

Via Interview with Cliff Harris (cliffski) from Positech Games | Sell More Games.

Thoughts On Casual Games Dev is a post from: Thumb Gods