Angelus the Necromancer and Adventure Solitaire

By: Guest Reviewer

On: March 31st, 2008

[Guest review by gnawingonfoot. Thanks!]

Jim DuBois, the guy behind Arcane Journeys, has released two upgraded Windows ports of his Palm games. While he’s just now getting around to releasing Windows versions, I’ve been a huge fan of his Palm stuff for several years now, and I’d love to see him get some more exposure. His are among the few games for Palm that don’t play like casual shlock. They’re very original and interesting, though I think some better pixel art wouldn’t hurt them.

Angelus the Necromancer feels and plays like a slimmed down roguelike, but I’ve never actually seen it discussed within the roguelike community, so I don’t know whether or not that term actually fits. The game certainly shares the difficulty of most major roguelike games, but this is a lot shorter.

Adventure Solitaire sounds bland, but it is easily the best game I’ve ever played on my Palm. It’s a mish-mash of strategy and puzzle in the sense that it has the depth and diversity of a typical strategy game and the presentation and gameplay of a puzzle game. I bought the Windows version as soon as it was released because it is just that amazing!

Demos are available for both games, but unfortunately they feel really limited, especially the Adventure Solitaire one. I’m tempted to write the guy and tell him that he needs to open the games up a bit more if he wants people to like them enough to buy them. But that aside, both are worth checking out, especially Adventure Solitaire.

Posted in Mobile / Handheld, Puzzle, Roguelikes, Windows | Tags: ArcaneJourneys

First Post Getter

It is I. I rock youse all.

So fuck off.
Moose

Um.. I just finished almost all of the Adventure Solitaire demo by just clickong on the bottom of every column over and over again. There doesn’t appear to be any way to fail. Was this another April Fool?
gnawingonfoot

Moose- Well, you’ve got the basics of gameplay down, but did you follow the numbers on your stats to the right to see how the various encounters affect them? Both of these campaigns are ‘easy’ and introductory types. They’re more geared towards familiarizing you with the gameplay mechanics. I’m sure I could fail them if I tried, but they’re really supposed to be about teaching you how to use the gold to upgrade certain stats and learning how to use weapons in a way that will help you get a better score. (My current high score for the intro campaign is 1783. You can probably beat that once you figure out what everything does.) Pretty much all of the other campaigns fall into either ‘medium’ or ‘hard’ difficulty, and actually being able to clear a campaign is much more an issue with those than with the easy levels. I’ll mention this to Jim as a possible way for improving the demo.
gnawingonfoot

Moose- Also, I don’t know how much the of the full version is left out of the demo, but try playing the ‘Ruins’ scenario alone, outside of the ‘Back & Forth’ campaign. That’ll give you a much better idea as to how the game can be more difficult.