qrp

By: Derek Yu

On: March 5th, 2008

This one’s been out a while, but I just played it and I figured some of you might not have seen it!

By Sean “Wyrdysm” Chan (the developer of Battleships Forever), qrp is, in the author’s own words, “about daydreaming about girls in class. It’s a simple expression of how I felt as a silly little boy going through school.”

Really cute and charming little game.

Battleships Forever

By: Xander

On: October 19th, 2007

First off apologies for my recent absence, and by recent I mean for about the last month. I’ve moved into University for my second year and things are a little crazy. The good kinda of crazy. Science of Sleep kinda crazy.

To catch up I had a quick browse of the IGF Entries this time around, and came across a game I’d forgotten about for some time. Battleships Forever! A great space-based tactical RTS which borrows aesthetic influences from the classic boss-battler Warning Forever. Created by Sean “th15” Chan, it heavily features ship-to-ship combat, where design of each craft is incredibly intricate. Much like ‘Warning’, each ship is made of of individual pieces and weapons, which can be destroyed however you wish to provide yourself the best advantage in combat.

Battle is relatively straight forward mouse control, to move you click the ships and then the area you wish to travel, however holding it in-place there allows you to change your ships facing direction as you do so. Positioning is crucial to doing well at the game as the usage of deflectors, which render certain areas of the ship invulnerable, become your biggest defensive asset as well as your most common obstacle. Used well, it can defend a single ship with ease. Used damn well, and as illustrated above you can create a fleet that causes red-shirts to wish they were back in that Galaxy of Fantabulous Wonderment.

(Hit the extended for less front-page hogging text!)

There’s a number of other weapons available, including the Flux Projector which is an impenetrable forcefield drawn through mouse movements, as well as a host of 17 different ships all with their own load outs, and numerous game play types to sink your teeth into (Highly recommended is the campaign, at least to get used to controlling the ships. Though if you’ve played any RTS before you should have some idea). Though it’s still technically in the Beta phase, it’s a solid enough title to warrant some decent playtime, especially given the almost endless array of tactics you can develop on the fly to try to obliterate the enemy. The only real disappointment at moment is that it’s lacking any multi-player modes, and I’m not entirely sure when or even if they’re going to be implemented. Here’s hoping…

And yes, for you Fraxy fans there’s a built-in ship-editor! I’m a little sickly currently and sadly mucus is not a creative juice, but I’m sure you guys can come up with some truly devious contraptions, right? In anycase, Enjoy!

(Image courtesy of the IGF, as it was far more awesome than the one I had prepared)

Further Gaming; A nice, though less free 3D alternative is Threadspace: Hyperbol. It’s more focused on single tank-like ships battling it out, but it does feature 16-player multiplayer, and your ships are fairly customisable as far as weapon upgrades are concerned. Worth checking out the demo at least, available at the link above!