Game Review: Eufloria

I have a review of the awesome indie game Eufloria up on Bytten today:

Not since I first discovered Civ2 has a game made me late for so many things. Eufloria offers two of the same addictive qualities as the Civilization series, both the empire-spreading and the need to play just a few more minutes until the next mini-milestone. Eufloria simplifies the unit selection and improvement add-ons of the real-time strategy genre, presenting mystical space lifeforms in a surprisingly vibrant universe. You play not as a general or political leader, but as a collection of seedlings, and your goal is to grow, and spread, take over neighboring asteroids, and make the growers proud.

Read the rest over on Bytten

Popularity: 1% [?]

Do Tell

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.

Popularity: 1% [?]

JayIsGames’ Best of Casual Gameplay 2009

The awesome JayIsGames site is running a Best of Casual Gameplay 2009 contest.

Adventure is a hard call — since Monkey Island: Screaming Narwhal, Time Gentlemen, Please! and Wonderland Adventures: Mysteries of Fire Island are all in the running. I think Monkey Island wins for me… with TGP in second . I enjoyed Wonderland Adventures, but it just can’t compete with Guybrush Threepwood or foulmouthed Dan and Ben.

Some of my other favorites on this list are A Case Of The Crabs, under Browser Adventure, Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting To Danger under Hidden Objects. (I also helped out with NDD: Resorting to Danger so I’m not entirely unbiased) Faerie Solitaire is running for best Time Management… so is Build-a-Lot 4, which means I am officially the only person who hated Build-a-Lot 3. The frustrating Don’t Look Back under Interactive Art, although this game was made for  people with more patience and skill than me, I did like the myth theme.

Vote for your favorites, or just use this as list of games to check out.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Kill 10 Rats And Bring Me Their Tails!

Guest author Lexton “Lunarhound” Collins discusses the upcoming Guild Wars 2, believable NPC drama, heroic errand-running, and shares his perspective on what makes a good MMO great.

Most gamers, both fans and detractors, would agree that MMO’s need shaking up. It’s happened before, when City of Heroes and, shortly afterward, World of Warcraft made camp grinding a thing of the past and brought quest-based advancement to the mainstream. Suddenly, characters had purpose-driven lives. Other games followed suit, and life was good in cyberland.

Now, several years later, gamers are growing weary of the new grind. It’s tough to ensure that every single one of the hundreds of quests necessary to keep an MMO going are interesting, and players are growing weary of the endless variations on “kill ten rats and bring me their tails”. Mini dramas acted out by NPC’s cease to feel immersive when sticking around for a minute afterward lets you watch the world reset before your eyes so that the next players in line can ride. Collecting exclamation marks and running errands for people too lazy to deliver their own letters or fight their own battles feels less like an adventure and more like checking off a list of chores. Few want to go back to the way things were, but developers, and many players, seem to be finding it difficult to see a way forward.

There have been efforts to do something different but they’ve gone largely unnoticed. Guild Wars came hot on the heels of World of Warcraft, and attempted to remedy many of the ‘theme park’ issues that came with a static world that had to reset each quest for the next player by making heavy use of instancing. Players see each other in towns, but once outside, you and your party had your own private copy of the world. This allowed them to change things permanently based on your actions. Unfortunately, this lead to many players not considering it a real MMO and, despite its commercial success, it didn’t inspire many imitators. Additional problems came from the fact that players could not jump, climb or swim and the world was full of invisible walls that forced strict adherence to the current mission path. Dungeons & Dragons Online came along a few years later with a similar world structure coupled with much better implementation of the mission-based game play and a great new action combat system, but the facts that it couldn’t (at the time) effectively be played solo and it required a monthly fee, it also ended up being relegated to niche status.

Now, Guild Wars has a sequel on the way. ArenaNet was very secretive about it for quite some time after its announcement, and even now information is limited, but what is beginning to emerge paints an interesting picture of a title that is trying to shake up the genre all over again. With the inclusion of open world areas and much greater mobility (players will be able to jump, swim and climb as they can in most other MMO’s), as well as new attitudes toward creative use of instancing, they might actually succeed this time.

In a preview at Eurogamer, back in August, lead designer Eric Flannum states that “I think I can safely say that you won’t see a single exclamation mark floating above a character’s head in Guild Wars 2.” This one little sentence makes for a pretty bold statement considering the direction of MMO’s for the past few years and, luckily, he elaborates:

“We actually don’t have a traditional RPG/MMO quest system… Instead what we’ve got are Events. Think of them as group-orientated activities. This is one of the many things that will encourage the player to explore the world – you can wander through and never quite know what you’re going to see. You might come across a fortress that’s being attacked by centaurs, or it might be that the centaurs attacked half an hour before you got there and they hold it now. You might start walking along a road you’ve walked a hundred times and suddenly there’s a caravan traveling along that road that you may not have seen, and you can go help that caravan out.”

Supposedly, these events will form a complex web within any given public area, spawning new ones and phasing out old ones based on cause and effect. An older example given is that of a dragon attacking a bridge. Players can band together to defeat the dragon, which might open up a new chain of events that can be participated in. Alternately, they might fail, choose not to help, or simply not be there when the dragon attacks, which would result in the bridge being destroyed and a completely different chain of events opening up, revolving around repairing the bridge. The difference between this and something like Warhammer Online’s public quests is that they will not simply reset repeatedly so that players can do them over again. The assertion that there will not be a traditional quest system seems to indicate that public areas will consist of countless such events and, rather than wandering around looking for someone with an exclamation mark to tell them what to do, players will spend their time looking for something actually happening. The potential of such a system to change the way questing is seen in online games is staggering.

That isn’t to say that all adventuring will be completely directionless. Each player will have a personal quest chain to play through that reflects his or her own character. From an interview with MMORPG.com in December:

“When a player creates a character in Guild Wars 2, they will be able to answer many questions about their personal character history. These answers will help determine your personal story in the game. As many fans have theorized, one of the first things you choose is a ’subdivision’ of your race, which provides a more personal feel to your character’s history. For the humans, that means their ancestry–Elonan, Krytan, Ascalonian and Canthan–and also their social status as gentry or commoners of the city of Divinity’s Reach. For charr, it primarily means their legion, whether Blood, Ash, or Iron. The asura choose between the three most respected colleges of learning; Synergetics, Dynamics, and Statics. The sylvari follow the path of their seasonal cycle, or the time of day in which they awakened, being Dawn, Day, Twilight or Night. The norn choose their personal totem, and may choose to walk in the path of bear, snow leopard, raven or wolf. From these and other initial determinations, a wealth of personalized storylines develop, so that each player in the game experiences a story that is individually tailored to their character.”

According to ArenaNet, these choices, though part of character creation, will not affect class or power in any way. Their sole impact is on the player’s own personal narrative. This sounds tantalizingly like the Origins system in Dragon Age: Origins, and is an exciting thought when considered in the context of an MMORPG.

There’s no telling, of course, how much of an impact any of this will have or how well it will be received until the game is available to the public in some form. And if these claims were being made by a smaller developer without the experience or budget to back them up, they might be only a faint cause for hope at best. But ArenaNet has the budget and the talent to back up its big ideas, and it has already proven with one successful series that it knows what it’s doing.

Most seem to believe that the ultimate feat for an MMORPG would be to topple World of Warcraft. I’m not so sure. I think the ultimate measure of success is moving the genre as a whole forward. With a new approach to quest content, a strong focus on providing the player with a personal storyline, and the lack of any sort of monthly fee, Guild Wars 2 stands poised to do exactly that. Will it topple World of Warcraft? I doubt it. But it may force Blizzard to change in order to compete, which would almost certainly lead to other games following suit. Now that would be an accomplishment.

Popularity: 1% [?]

ThumbGods in 2009

In 2009, I reviewed indie games like Funky Farm 2, A Case Of The Crabs, Rotoadventures Momo’sQuest, Slayer of Dragon,  Democracy 2,  Electric Box,  Faerie Solitaire, and CyberWord. I plan to keep focusing on creative, indie games next year. I also played major mainstream titles, like Cartoon Network’s new MMO Fusionfall, and James Patterson’s Women’s Murder Club:  Games of Passion for the DS. ThumbGods reviewed the match-3 Atlantis, Totem Tribe, National Geographic’s Mystery of Cleopatra, Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal, Sims 2 on the DS, and Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting To Danger! Major misses  this year were  My Boyfriend,  Create-a-Mall,  the disappointing Build-a-lot 3, and Jack in Lost in Blue 2. (Not all of LiB2. Just Jack.)

I tried to branch out a bit from reviews, and started writing some hints, including a guide to solving MyTribe mysteries and hints for Nancy Drew Dossier: Resorting To Danger! I’ll probably keep doing this whenever I’m really proud of solving a puzzle and want to help out.

Thumb Gods had a great guest post when when Lexton Collins reviewed Runes Of Magic. I guest posted reviews of Cake Mania 3 and Ciao Bella, over on Casual Gamer Chick, Crayon Physics Deluxe review on Angry Gamers, Travians: Asterix Meets The Sims on SeeJaneGame, and contributed to several issues of Indie Game Mag.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Facebook’s Secret Code

Just in case you don’t have enough time-wasters on Facebook (I’m looking at you, FarmVille players), here’s something new to try:

The Konami code, named after the Japanese company behind classics like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and the Nintendo Contra classics, is one of video-gaming’s most storied cheats. During development of the 1985 Konami arcade game Gradius, a programmer found the game to be too difficult and programmed in a key sequence — up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A — that, if entered, gave the player a set of the game’s power-ups. As word of the shortcut spread, other programmers aped his cheat, working the same sequence into their own games. The Konami code works in nearly 100 video games now, including Frogger and Dance Dance Revolution.

And now it works for Facebook. Try it for yourself — log in to Facebook and type the code: up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, enter. It doesn’t matter where you type it: just have the Facebook page open and active. The result? Lens flares — those groovy circles that appear when pointing a camera into the sun — appear on your page with every click of the mouse. Useful? Not in the slightest. But they’re easy enough to get rid of — logout and they’re gone.

Reading this made me immediately made me tab over to Facebook and type in XYZZY to see what would happen

Via Konami Code: Facebook Uses Video-Game Cheat, Adds Flare – TIME

Popularity: 4% [?]

Beta Opp: Grand Fantasia

Open Beta has begun!

Grand Fantasia is now open to all, and the Item Mall has been released! Join the dynamic and quickly growing community now and experience the adventure. The Aeria Staff has a lot of thrills planned, and players can look forward to epic contests and events including the chance to win 1 Million AP!

Popularity: 5% [?]

Game Review: Cooking Mama 3

Game sequels are in a tough spot. Go too far from what we loved in the original, and players who loved the first game will lose interest in the second. Stick too close to the original game, though, and players feel like we’ve bought the same game in a pretty new case.

Cooking Mama 3 brings back all the usual chopping and frying fun, but adds new recipes and techniques. You’ll still use the stylus as a knife, a whisk, a rolling pin and almost any other kitchen implement as you practice cooking with Mama or prepare dishes for guests. You can also dress Mama in different paper-doll outfits, redecorate the kitchen or jazz up your picture diary, but that’s really secondary to cooking.

Translated instructions are still a bit vague, but the game isn’t too punishing for failure to understand what the arrow is telling you to do.

I could spend all day talking about the cutely addictive qualities of cooking with Mama. The stylized utensils, cartoon meat and produce, Mama’s unfailing ability to recover my burned food, and of course the fun of pretend cooking and pretend serving. Recipes come from all different cultures, with an definite Asian focus — some Western dishes are plated just like the UBC coffee menu.  Tempura and sushi offered my favorite minigames (chopping!) and prettiest final dishes.  I was especially fond of the dried-squid recipe, although the minigames were nothing special, because it reminded me of the rows of hanging squid, an everyday scene in beachside Shandong province.

CM3 has quite a few options involving de-veining shrimp, gutting salmon (slit the fish’s belly and rub the stylus over opening to clean), de-inking squid and other fish-preparation tasks that would be quite unpleasant off Mama’s pink cutting board. My kindergarten-age niece and Cooking Mama partner-in-crime found some of the seafood preparation tasks a little icky, which led to a long discussion about different cultures, and what we find gross, and why. Foreign customs through Cooking Mama! And people say games aren’t educational.

I loved CM2, so finding more of the same in CM3 was great, but there are also some new playmodes. One of the major changes in Cooking Mama 3 is a new multiplayer mode for competitive chopping, egg breaking and other prep tasks. (I often rant about technical issues interfering with game enjoyment, so it’s worth noting how fast Cooking Mama 3 found and connected with the second DS.)  There’s also a chance to make up your own recipes, using ingredients and techniques from other parts of Cooking Mama to make something new.

Cooking Mama 3 also offered a new shopping game, which sends players out to pick up ingredients without running into annoying store characters who’ll slow you down by trapping you into annoying minigames. It was uncannily like shopping in China. I enjoyed the cuteness of the supermarket  — Cooking Mama really is adorable without becoming an all-pink disaster –  but lost interest in the actual games pretty quickly, just like I did with Gardening Mama.

Overall, I found it a great new addition to the Cooking Mama series. If you liked Cooking Mama 2, and you’ve finished unlocking the recipes, rush out and pick up Cooking Mama 3!

Popularity: 8% [?]

BeeAppi’s CyberWord

New iPhone dev studio Bee Appi officially launches their first creation today. CyberWord is a candy-colored Bejeweled-meets-Boggle, built for whiling away time on the train or in the waiting room, but with an addictive blend of  match-3 mechanics and wordplay.

“Most word games simply ask the player to look at the screen,” developer Karen Jirak says, “but CyberWord adds a more interactive dimension by asking players to touch letters, swipe words, and shake the phone.”  CyberWord offers different playmodes, each with a slightly different twist on the swap and swipe mechanic. Challenge mode asks players to create 12 words before time runs out, with increasingly difficult levels. (Try the Easy setting for a particularly niece-friendly game, Jirak used her first-grade niece as a beta tester for the simpler vocab and easier goals.) Infinite mode adds a bomb, a familiar mechanic from match-3, and Puzzle is an untimed mode, requiring players to use up all the letters on the screen without replacement letters. Although you’ll spend most of the game rearranging the bright letter tiles, CyberWord also has adorable anime-eyed creatures cheering your successes and decorating the margins, for a sweet bit of character without falling into the pink trap.

Future updates include tying CyberWord in with Facebook Connect to share scores for a competitive wordsearch element. Don’t worry if you’ve been annoyed by the status-update barrage from friends playing FarmVille or recruiting mobsters, Jirak promises players can choose how frequently to share their scores on Facebook, and sharing on Facebook isn’t a requirement for progressing in CyberWord.

The BeeAppi team is downloading and playing a wide variety of iPhone games as they consider their next project, but we can expect this to be the first of many adorable BeeAppi games.

For more on Karen, BeeAppi and CyberWord, check out my full story in the next issue of Indie Game Mag.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Game Review: My Boyfriend

I was way too excited for the new My Boyfriend game. I anticipated all the fun of Sim dating, plus my favorite guilty pleasure (changing my avatar’s clothes every five minutes), without all that tedious eating and sleeping and meter-watching of actual Sims. I really wanted to like it. I wasn’t lying in angry-feminist wait for objectionable themes, I wanted to blog about frothy dialogue, cute outfits and imaginary boyfriends.

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.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Mystery of Cleopatra

Mystery of Cleopatra follows Herod’s Lost Tomb and other educational, casual games from National Geographic. In this one, you play as a trusted advisor to the queen, charged with solving a mysterious break-in at the palace.

Cleo is a gateway game,  a hidden objects game with elements of an adventure game. While there’s still a certain amount of searching, you aren’t just looking for objects for the sake of squinting at the screen, your character actually uses those items.

I’ve written before about losing interest in hidden objects play, but Cleo held my interest a bit longer with ancient scenes. Did I mention that there are Romans? I’m unable to separate my game reviews from my classicist side, and I have to admit that the later civil wars and the question of Caesarion and Octavian’s inheritance have always interested me. The story leads you through different famous places in Alexandria, like the library and the lighthouse, and touches on some of the Roman-Egyptian tensions at the time. As you click around the hidden objects screens, bits of information appear about the items you’re seeing. You’ll also come across scrolls with a paragraph or two of historical background information. (I soon found myself skimming these, but that’s mostly because I wanted to play more.)

Finding items was quite easy, since you can see silhouettes of the items you’re seeking. I found my location hints recharging much faster than I could possibly need, but of course I was playing in casual mode because I am a huge slacker I don’t like my games to scold me for pausing. At times, silhouettes of items that are used together will appear inside a jeweled circlet, and once all the parts are collected, you can make and use a new item.

The puzzles ranged from the usual reassembly of a torn-up note to really creative, clever puzzles. I particularly liked the logic puzzle to open the armaria (That’s classicist for storage box. You’re welcome.) and the code-breaking puzzle. The only disappointing puzzle was one that required players to arrange numbered scrolls. The directions were seriously confusing, it took me a long time using the red and green hints to figure out what the game was asking me to do. (If you’re stuck, it might be because “across” doesn’t mean what you think it does. )

Later in the game, your character remembers places you’ve previously visited, and you use your inventory and evidence to answer questions about them, a bit like the basic mechanic in Phoenix Wright and occasionally used in Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion as well.

Spoiler Alert! Caesarian gets killed so Octavian can be Caesar’s undisputed heir! Wait, wrong spoiler. The real spoiler is at the end of the game when your NPC sidekick, Kathya, who’s been mostly plot exposition and historical detail so far, turns on you and tries to frame you as the murderer!  The brutal backstabs of palace life!

Overall, Cleo is an engaging Big Fish-type game with great scenery and good puzzles. And Romans.

Popularity: 14% [?]

Upcoming Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop!

I’m almost embarrassed by how much I love Cooking Mama 2: Cooking With Friends, I even love when I mess up and Mama reassures me that she can fix it. And I can’t wait to play the next Cooking Mama. From the press release:

Mama is back in the kitchen whipping up 80 new recipes – including mushroom quiche, tulip chicken and more. Players use the stylus as an all-in-one cooking utensil to chop, grate, roll, slice, spread, sprinkle and more through over 200 manic mini-games. Eight gameplay modes allow them to shop for fresh ingredients, create custom culinary concoctions, compete with up to three friends in timed challenges and more. Additionally, players can send friends items they grew in Gardening Mama and use them to make meals in Cooking Mama 3: Shop & Chop!

And the screenshots look great too!

Info via GamesPress, CookingMama.com

Popularity: 14% [?]

Game Review: Women’s Murder Club

James Patterson’s Women’s Murder club has been a successful series of novels, a TV show and a series of casual mystery PC games before coming to the DS. The new Women’s Murder Club: Games of Passion seems designed for a casual DS gamer to tuck her into her purse, instead of a Patterson mystery novel. Most of WMC is played with the DS turned sideways, using the read-only screen to display a list of objects to find, instructions, or images to accompany the action in the interactive screen, which creates a book-like format for more of an interactive novel feel.

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.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Tales of Monkey Island: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal

I’d been meaning to play the new Monkey Island game since I first heard about the Telltale Games release, but it was the pirate-day free download that finally got me started.

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.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Crying Over Games

A few years ago, I met Brenda Braithwaite at a Cyberlore company picnic, when Cyberlore was working on the Playboy game, and Brenda was pregnant with twins. After we all ate, she told me — in no uncertain terms — that I was going to sit back down and let the men clean everything up. So if I wasn’t already impressed with her contributions to game design, she also encouraged me to sit around while Stick picks up after me. Score!

This article a few months ago in The Escapist, called How a Board Game Can Make You Cry discussed Brathwaite’s shift from computer games to board games, and creating emotional, educational unplugged games. The whole article is worth reading, especially if you’re interested in bringing games into the classroom, and not just as a reward for completing traditional assignments, but one part really stuck out.

The object of [Braithwaite's new game] Train is to get a collection of people from Point A to Point B by placing them in a boxcar and sending them on their merry way. Played among a group of three people, players draw cards from a pile that can impede other players or free them from existing obstacles. The first player to reach the end of the line wins.

The destination? Auschwitz.

Although the pieces are little plastic men in little plastic train cars, this game is creepy in a way that videogames with ever-more realistic gore cannot be.  By having players share their game goal with Nazi officers, this game evokes our own individual connections to the Holocaust.

I love the idea of an interactive educational aid that doesn’t try to cram facts into an existing game format. (Full disclosure: I have done flashcard Memory and Go Fish quite a few times in my classroom, and last year I introduced Vocabulary Survivor. I don’t mean to mock putting together flashcard games or study-question games, of course, but there’s a world of difference between blackboard Jeopardy and Train.)  I love that Train makes emotional points with a history lesson instead of distilling it to a list of dates and names, and it makes me wonder what other concepts would lend themselves to similar lessons.

Train doesn’t seem to have any replay value, except for a history teacher “playing” it with a new class every year, because it’s more of a shock, a gotcha moment when you realize what you’ve done. It is interactive and emotional, but I hesitate to call Train a game. It would be best described as interactive lesson, an experiment.

While I see Train as a classroom aid to give the numbers and dates of World War II a memorable, emotional tie, I’d really like to point out the reaction that Amanda d’Adesky, anothing game dev, posted on her blog. d’Adesky titled the post “The One Who Wept”:

As Brenda described the objective of the game, which was to get all your pieces from Point A to Point B, I became misty-eyed. She explained, “You see, I had made the pieces just a hair too tall to fit through the doors easily. Because of this, some players opened up the end of the boxcars and began “stuffing” the people inside to make them fit better.” That was when the first tears started silently streaming down my face. And when she said, “It wasn’t until someone ‘won’ that the destination was revealed: They had just shipped all those people to Auschwitz,” it was all I could do not to openly sob.

I’ve often written here contesting the idea that violent games cause real-life violence. I believe that angry people choose violent games, not that violent games bring out the crazy in nice boys, but I also think that we cannot ignore that games do cause an emotional reaction. That simulated destruction can be cathartic, a way to blow off steam, not to encourage real violence.

An emotional reaction from a game doesn’t have to be disturbing, of course. Why not use the increasingly realistic Sims to practice other stages of life? We focus on guts and explosions so often, when the same tech also lends itself to building fantasy worlds with believable, engaging relationships.

It’s also worth noting that Braithwaite chose a board game format. A demo showing the games’ simple rules and simple plastic pieces brought d’Adesky to tears. When was the last time a PowerPoint made you cry?

I still think Train is more of a shock than a game, game pieces and rules setting up to an emotional suckerpunch, but it reminds me what can be done with simple mechanics.  It’s disappointing to see so many new computer games becoming shooter clones, hidden object clones, or churned-out sequels of successful games, and it’s so good to be reminded of the possibilities for educational and artistic simulations.

Quoted text via The Escapist : TGC 2009: How a Board Game Can Make You Cry, and Sojourn In A Game Tester’s Headspace

Popularity: 22% [?]

Resorting To Danger! Hints

This is the second time I’ve done hints for a game (my first was the solutions to the wonders on MyTribe), so I should warn you that there are game spoilers in this post! If you’re just interested in the game, I have a non-spoilery review of Resorting To Danger, too. Are you sure you want to keep reading? You don’t want to try just one more time?

Don’t worry, I have the answers to the elements puzzle in the Zen room, the statues puzzle in the garden, and the icons puzzle to get into the bomb shelter.  Read on for the solutions!

Read more »

Popularity: 24% [?]

Indie Games Competition!

From the press release:

2BeeGames, the leading online community for independent games, has officially announced that their second Indie Game Competition has begun on August 1st. The grand prize winner will receive $10,000 and will enter negotiations with Zoo Games, Inc. for a multi-platform publishing contract.

Aspiring game designers everywhere are invited to create and submit a new, original title starting August 1st until September 15th. Throughout the six week submission phase, participants are encouraged to combine creativity and a passion for gaming towards the development of a new game. Once finished, the game can be submitted to the 2BeeGames.com website for judging. The 2BeeGames community, aka “The Hive”, will play and rate the contestants’ games and vote on their favorites along with a panel of judges. Finalists will be announced in October and a winner will be chosen November 3rd.

In the first 2BeeGames Indie Game Competition, rising developer Cipher Prime beat out intense competition to win $10,000 and is currently negotiating a publishing deal for its upcoming title, Auditorium, a unique and ethereal audio-visual puzzle game. Now, the call for the next game to shake up the indie gaming scene once again has gone out to be answered.

In addition to the second Indie Game Competition, 2BeeGames.com is hosting an “8 Weeks In 8-Bit” contest, where gaming fans are encouraged to submit original works of art inspired by the 8-bit gaming era. The first week of the contest called for gamers to create and submit the ultimate “8-bit Hero,” and the winning designs are up for display on 2BeeGames.com today. There will be a new theme for each week of the contest, with eight different opportunities to win great prizes from “8 Weeks In 8-Bit” sponsor, GamersGate.

For official competition rules and news on the second 2BeeGames Indie Game Competition, as well as information related to “8 Weeks of 8-Bit,” please visit: http://www.2BeeGames.com.

I blogged about the last set of winners, and I can’t wait to see the next winners!

Popularity: 20% [?]

Majesty 2 Preview

What happens when you take a pinch of fantasy RPG, a dab of Populous, and wrap it in a warm crust of Sim City? You get Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Majesty was a unique breed of RTS released for the PC in early 2000. …

Fans will be happy to hear that Majesty 2 is keeping very faithful to its predecessor. For those unfamiliar with Majesty (which I’m sure must be the vast majority of you; it’s pretty obscure), here’s the rundown: it’s sort of an RTS. You’re the king, and as the king, it’s your job to build, expand, manage, and defend your kingdom. Basically, it’s the base-building and unit production without the combat. Trust me, it’s more fun than it sounds.

This is a pretty detailed review, although it does include a major annoyance of game reviews: saying how obscure and unusual the game you’re reviewing is. This always rubs me the wrong way… if I’m reading it on a major site or in a major magazine, it can’t be too obscure, and if I’m reading a smaller indie site, then I wasn’t looking for Gears of War or Sims news.

I was already pretty enthused about Majesty 2, but it’s good to hear that the fun elements of Majesty will be kept and the game will be prettified and updated for a new release.

Via GamingEvolution.

Popularity: 28% [?]

New East India Company Video

I blogged about the upcoming East India Company game from Paradox Interactive a few months ago when I discovered their beta test. I’ve also been following the designer’s blog (well worth the visit if you’re at all interested in this game) and they’ve recently released a video of the new game too.

I admit that I’m fascinated by this era in history… after living in Asia, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the multi-side power struggle over resources, trade routes, colonization and sovereignty, the effects of which are still a major force in the development and the political borders of Asia. This lends itself well to a strategy game (although there are so many factors, can a game include them all?) and seeing the graphics in the style of old-fashioned paintings just makes me more excited to see this game.

Popularity: 25% [?]

Using Firefox? Microsoft Says To Get Lost

In a move that sounds like a joke, Microsoft is offering $10,000 as a prize for using IE8. They specify that Firefox users need to switch, or get lost! I’ve been accused of blog hyperbole once or twice, but that’s a direct quote from the contest site:

We’ve buried $10,000 somewhere on the Internet and if you’re the first one to find it, you get to keep it.
But you’ll never find it using old Firefox.
(So get rid of it, or get lost.)

It seems as if the big M is paying users to risk giving up the convenience and stability of FireFox, but if the choice is between a distant shot at a $10,000 prize, or using a stable browser with virus protection everyday, well, that’s not much of a choice.

….

Even though there’s a $10,000 prize that can only be seen with IE8, I’ll be staying with FireFox. So, Microsoft, since you put it that way, I think I’ll get lost.

This is an excerpt from a post on my personal blog at Simpson’s Paradox, because I thought the $10,000 bribe to give up Firefox was just too hilarious not to share here.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Indie Game Mag, Issue 5

The newest Indie Game Mag comes out today. Issue 5 promises to have some great games and interviews, including my piece on Wonderland Adventures: Fire Island.

The July/August Issue of the Indie Game Magazine hits news stands everywhere today. In Issue 5: We have a brand new roundtable feature where 4 reviewers rate 10 of the latest indie game demos. This issue is chock full of indie goodness with over 20 indie games featured. We have an extensive interview with Edmund McMillen, Fling around bodies in Ragdoll Cannon, Solve some family friendly puzzles in Wonderland Adventures, Build an empire in Romopolis, and take a look at the IGF student finalist City Rain.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Women’s Murder Club Coming To The DS

After  Women’s Murder Club: A Darker Shade Of Grey, and Women’s Murder Club: Death In Scarlet comes a new WMC, Women’s Murder Club: Crimes of Passion, this time for the Nintendo DS and DSi.  I think the portable DS system, with the stylus-driven games, is perfect for casual gaming, and I’m seeing more and more story-based casual games coming out. I’ve been carrying the  Sims (or Sims Castaway!) in my purse, and I also saw a Nancy Drew game for the DS the other day.

From the Women’s Murder Club: Crimes of Passion press release:

“When I dreamed up the ladies of the Women’s Murder Club, I knew they were women of action; women on the go,” said James Patterson. “I never dreamed they could come to life like they have in the Nintendo DS version. This new game gives fans a chance to become a member of the Women’s Murder Club anytime, anywhere.”

And by “anytime, anywhere” I think he means “while waiting at the airport”.

I was lucky enough to get a look at some screenshots from the upcoming game. I had to include this one, because there just aren’t enough science-themed puzzles in games targeted to women!

Obligatory hidden objects minigame. It works well in a mystery-solving game, but I just don’t see what’s fun about squinting at the screen.

Nintendo DSi users will get a special feature that uses the camera, (can’t wait to see how they integrate that) but the game will also be available for the regular DS.

Popularity: 34% [?]

Free Realms Prizes

Free Realms has just hit 2 million players, and to celebrate, those first 2 million players get a package of treats, including Cotton Wool Candy, Silver Surf n’ Turf and special boosters. So, if you’ve already made a Free Realms character, go get your special early-adopter pack! (Don’t worry, we won’t tell anyone you play a pixie online.)

Popularity: 26% [?]

Upcoming Majesty 2

CrispyGamer has this to say about the upcoming Majesty 2:

Do you remember when Cyberlore Studios was the only name one would associate with Majesty – you know, before it decided to develop a simulation game about the Playboy Mansion? Yeah, those were good times. But Majesty is no longer owned by Cyberlore – Paradox bought the franchise and decided to create a brand new game in the series. To its credit the company is trying to create a fantasy kingdom simulation that adheres closely to the formula that made the first game such a sleeper hit.

While I was sad to see the end of Cyberlore, I was pleased to hear about the possibility of a sequel. (Disclosure: My boyfriend worked for Cyberlore, on the Playboy game) Paradox Interactive was totally unknown to me when I heard that someone else had bought the Majesty line and planned to make a sequel, but since the nI’ve seen the Paradox name everywhere. They’re behind the upcoming East India Company, the new Restaurant Empire 2,  Elven Legacy and others.

I was not overly impressed by the trailer, it looked a bit generic, but this presentation makes the game look awesome:

Are you excited?

Info in this post from CrispyGamer and Paradox’s YouTube channel.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Restaurant Empire 2

Paradox Interactive — the people behind the upcoming Majesty 2 and East India Company games — is releasing Restaurant Empire 2 today.

Paradox Interactive today announced that Enlight Software’s Restaurant Empire 2 has been released worldwide. Restaurant Empire 2 builds on the highly popular Restaurant Empire franchise, a title that has already sold over 300,000 units in the United States alone.

With two handfuls of cash and a dream of creating a legacy; build, cook and hire your way to the very top of the culinary world, where tasty food is king and smart management reels in the dollars. If you’re skilled enough in the kitchen and behind the management desk, you just may go further than any aspiring restaurateur before you and cement your status as a true legend of cuisine.

You know what they say about keeping your fingers in as many pies as possible? It pays to diversify. In Restaurant Empire 2 you get the chance to grab a slice of the lucrative café and dessert house markets. Both types of establishment are available when playing the sandbox scenario, or throughout the second campaign, where you must help Delia carve out her own business empire.

Sprinkle your magic on a failing franchise, yet be wary of spreading your finances too thinly as your empire grows. Tailor your menus to include the very best and most popular beverages from teas and coffees to shakes, coolers and smoothies. Whip up some tasty treats for your customers in the form of sandwiches, salads, ice-creams, cakes, tarts, pies and many other items. Then set about decorating the interiors and exteriors with more theme-specific items, some of which must be unlocked through game events. Finally, invite the very best entertainers to perform exclusively in your outlets, making them stand out more from the competition.

If you still believe running a restaurant empire is as easy as baking a cake, here’s your chance to step up to the plate.

Via VerticalWire .

Popularity: 22% [?]