Aztaka came out on May 7th, and a demo was released a few weeks later. Despite looking like a rather large-scale and polished independent game with painted graphics, the game was released with relatively little fanfare. After playing through the demo recently, I can kind of understand why – though it has its bright moments, I found it to be lackluster overall. Most parts of the demo simply don’t reach quite far enough, or aren’t bold or coherent enough, to be considered great.
The game is a side-scrolling platform game that uses the mouse for attacking, manipulating the environment, and casting spells using a gesture-style system. You also use the mouse to drag around various energies that are left behind in the world, by fallen enemies and from other sources. These energies can be stored in containers or used to solve the majority of the demo’s puzzles. Along the way you can also level up, equip magic items, and drink potions, like in Diablo or other RPG-likes.
It has to be noted that of the demo’s 1.5 gigabytes (!), 800 megabytes are dedicated to the gigantic textures. The graphics are definitely one of the best features of the demo, although they can lack a certain vitality and coherency at times, especially with the characters and enemies. Overall, Aztaka looks pretty good, though, and the levels I played give a wonderful sense of scale, whether you’re running up a temple’s stairs with a vast jungle beneath you or spearing giant bugs deep in an underground cave.
Unfortunately, the overall design seems bland. The combat in the demo was about as dull as you might imagine a side-view version of Diablo to be, and can get unnecessarily frustrating, like when a giant beetle’s ass deals you multiple hits that each take off half your life and you have to restart a level from scratch! The story, which begins with a, in my opinion, very slow-moving and boring scrolling text prologue, doesn’t provide much impetus to move forward, either, and is surprisingly hard to follow at times, despite being simple at heart.
What keeps you going, of course, is the potential to get stronger, to obtain new abilities, items, and spells, and to see the new environments. And yeah, that can actually be enough – by the time the demo ran out (at the end of the Underground Passage), I was interested in playing more. Certainly, the demo got better as it went along, so I’m hopeful that the “Fun Factor” (to unabashedly steal a term from GamePro) continues heading in that direction in the full game ($24.95).
Squids may not be ‘ballin’’, you may be certain of that, but the game is pretty fun, kinda similar in style to the Karoshi games, the principal concept being that you sacrifice your friends in order to acquire the shiny white box (Greg possibly using this symbol to evoke thoughts on racism?). The game gets pretty frustrating in the last couple levels, relying more on timing than puzzle-solving, but overall it’s a good game and the inter-level blurbs are pretty charming; they got me all hot and bothered.
I do prefer the WIP title the game had, ‘Use Friends’ more than the final ‘Use Boxmen’.
Enter the Story: Les Miserables: The Game of the Book by Chris Tolworthy is an adventure game adaption of the book by the same name. It’s quite different from the book though: you play Peri’s ghost and have to “suggest” things to people still living by clicking on them and then on something else. Through solely this mechanic of suggestion from the afterlife, you solve puzzles and progress through the game.
The game has very nice silhoutte-style graphics, which remind me of the art in Chris Crawford’s old game Balance of the Planet, but that’s the only comparable style I can think of; it’s pretty unique.
One bit of trivia that I love is that this game was made by a Georgist, and all profits from the game go into researching a way to end global poverty. This is also the first in a series of games: the next is, coincidentally, The Divine Comedy.
It’s $14.99, and the demo seems to only have the sewers, which is a shame because it’s confusing to navigate and because doesn’t get to the really good parts of the game.
Classic abandonware/freeware portal Home of the Underdogs has brilliantly returned from the grave. There really isn’t much else I need to say, except that it has been sorely missed and I will forever owe a debt of gratitude for being the site that introduced me to Nikujin.
Posted by Brandon "BMcC" McCartin
Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:32:00 GMT
Crane Wars, the eighth and latest web game from Phoenix-based Flashbang Studios, is now playable on Blurst, continuing their proud lineage of fun, funky, free, and (often) physics-based games. Crane Wars is a game of dueling construction sites, and the classic battle of Union vs. Scab. Using the crane, stack your buildings high before funding runs out, but beware of sabotage (or should I say scabotage, ho ho). As with other Flashbang games, it starts with this simple, clever mechanic, but quickly turns to madness, with burning rubble covering the ground, trucks flying through the air, and so on.
This post took hours to write cuz I couldn’t stop playing it. You too may play it right here.
Oh yeah! Excellent music by the similarly excellent Alec Holowka. It quite reminds me of Rare’s games on the N64… must be the tuba?
Alabaster is a new interactive fiction game from Emily Short and various other authors that takes place in the world of Snow White. In the game you’ve been asked by the Queen to execute Snow White in the woods and bring back her heart in a box. Snow White, however, has another plan. Now that you’re out in the woods and alone with Snow White, which of the two women do you trust?
There’s a lot in this game to be interested in, starting with the game’s dark fairy tale setting and the themes that the game touches upon throughout the course of your conversation with Snow White. Secondly, there is the conversation system itself – it’s designed by Short, who laid out some of the concepts behind the system in her article about conversation in games. Alabaster also utilizes simple procedural illustration to lend a little more depth to the story without showing up the player’s imagination.
Finally, the creation of the game was rather unique in and of itself – although Emily Short wrote the introduction of the game, the conversation pieces, or “quips” were written by numerous contributors (John Cater, Rob Dubbin, Eric Eve, Elizabeth Heller, Jayzee, Kazuki Mishima, Sarah Morayati, Mark Musante, Adam Thornton, and Ziv Wities) and then tied together stylistically at the end of the development. The result is 18 different endings and over 400 quips, many of which have alternate versions, depending on the situation. The entire conversation tree is available for download, along with the game’s source code.
But is the game a success? Well, my early impressions of the game is very favorable. The story and writing are, naturally, very good. I love the idea of unraveling characters through conversation and the way you must use this information to ultimately make a decision to trust one person or another. Short’s conversation system is adequately complex, too, although the recurring problem in IF games – namely, how do I phrase what I want to say so that the interpreter understands it – is there. Conversational hints and the “CHANGE THE SUBJECT” action are very useful, but I’m still slightly resentful of them (they can be turned up or down). Still, this system is a step forward from the other (admittedly few) IF games I’ve played, and the story is well-worth following through.
Dammit, I did not realize that the latest Attract Mode/Giant Robot gallery game was premiering last night at the GR2 store in Los Angeles. Jottobots is a team-up between the illustrious indie game developer Kyle Pulver (Bonesaw, Snapshot) and developing indie gamer and renowned illustrator J.Otto Seibold. Are there any photos up from the event?
Gamejolt are apparently a portal for freeware/opensource games similar to Kongregate. They’re also running a weeklong contest ending on the 20th of June where contestants are being asked to finish a game simply surrounding the theme of SHOCKING..
whatever that exactly means to you!
The twist here is that the three chosen winners will be placed into the closed beta of Gamejolt’s Ad Revenue Sharing system, which is designed to allow games featured on the site to accrue income via advertisments. First place also wins a free game from Steam, which whilst not exactly as exciting as the other prize is still pretty damn swell given there’splentyawesomeout there you should have your eye own if you’ve somehow missed them. Good luck to any entrants!
As well as the XNA Creator’s Club Package being updated to version 3.1, one of the changes being brought about will be how Community Games will no longer be titled as such. Instead they will be headed by the title ‘XBox Live Indie Games’.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this. It does seem to be part of a much wider movement to try and promote the more interesting XNA titles out there with a new User Ratings system which will hopefully give Hexothermic and its kin the recognition they deserve.
However, if this new branding is to include titles like “Clock 24-7” and “Remote Masseuse” then I can’t help but feel conflicted on this, as if this rebranding is simply using the wake of recent indie successes to make the questionable content of the Community Games catalogue somewhat more respectable in the public eye. I don’t mean to suggest any kind of ‘ownership’ of that word specifically, however after all the work from many communities across the world who have given the word such a prestigious weighting behind it, I just want to see it treated respectfully.
So, should we be concerned? Or do you think there could be some other positive to the name change after all?
Minecraft is a first-person building/digging game that is based on another game called Infiniminer, except that it’s prettier to look at and is playable in a browser using Java. In the game you can move around and add/remove various blocks, and that’s about it… fortunately, that’s all you really need to be able to do to have a fantastic time with it.
The creator, Notch, recently implemented a multiplayer mode, which makes the game even more enjoyable. I entered a public server where one guy was building a giant tower and two other players were helping each other with a stairway into the sky, where there were floating platforms all over the place. Someone else was asking for help repairing a road. I spent some time wandering around and eventually decided to build a Moai-like statue with a secret passage behind it that took you to an underground lake. It was pretty neat.
Minecraft is free-to-play right now, but will not be for much longer (10 euros or roughly $14 USD for pre-order). Development is moving quickly – I’ve heard of plans to implement everything from monsters and Dwarf Fortress-type features to various competitive multiplayer game modes like Capture-the-Flag. But for the moment it’s just a single-player and (mostly) cooperative sandbox. Also there’s no sound or music. But you know what, I rather like how tranquil it all feels right now…
