I don't normally think of my iOS games as blog worthy, because I tend to write them off as simple. Sometimes simple is good. Puzzle Craft is a game about building a kingdom, growing it from a small camp to a large village. To gather resources to help construct the kingdom you play a connect 3+ style puzzle game. The game rewards you with resources to help upgrade your kingdom and make your ability to play the puzzle more efficient. This creates a pleasant feedback loop where the better you do the better you can do. More advanced resources are unlocked by getting longer sets of the simpler ones, they appear in the field so efficient clears can lead to more of an advanced resource. Once a resource has been unlocked the combo required to gather a crafting unit of it can be reduced. Buildings can be made to increase the frequency of a resource and reduce the code of gathering it. On top of this you receive, from buildings you place and can craft (using the resources you gather), tools to help clear a resource of some type from the board. This helps remove lone squares and clear out more common tiles.
To add some challenge there are two resource gathering areas; one is a farm, with food and wood, and the other is a mine with stone, metals and gems. The food is used as supplies to buy time in the mine with more advanced resources providing more turns. The farm costs gold to work which can be earned through taxes that are available to collect every couple of hours, this sets a cadence to the game. Every few hours the game will put up a push notification stating that taxes are ready (no visible way to disable the notification). This will generally get you into the click frenzy in your town of gathering all the tools that are ready and falling quickly into playing a couple rounds.
The game does offer a cash to gold store if you want to expedite your game, but I have yet to run into a situation where I have been motivated to use it. The cash store seems to allow you to buy gold so you can build buildings and avoid the game play ( grind) that it takes to gather the resources naturally. As soon as I can pay to avoid playing a game I'm unsure if I really want to play.
The core puzzles are fun but I don't see much longevity in playing this game for me. Its a great way to pass a couple minutes but the puzzles start to have fairly clear patterns after a few hours. It does have a great casual hook and has consumed many of my hours.
You can find it on the apple store for free at the moment, play at your own risk =p
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Monday, December 3, 2012
Dust Force
Dust Force manged to charm me right out of the game with the tutorial. The game features a set of four characters who are working to clean up the world. They run jump and slide through levels cleaning up dust and earning keys.
I loaded up the game not sure what to expect, and in my standard fashion when a game drops me in a wold with minimal instruction I start to hammer on random keys till something happens. I started with my standard WSAD and upon noticing no effect to my character I looked around the screen. directly above my character's head floating simply was press up for tutorial' so I jumped in. Right away I had learned that I could enter levels by pressing up. The tutorial ran through a level that never locked out any of my player controls. Rather is slowly revealed to me how I could inter act with the environment. It was rough the first time through, jumping into spikes and running headlong into walls. But the controls were solid, each key press had the character reacting in a fashion I understood and expected. The controls felt very tight, but at the same time allowed me to flow through the environment in a fashion I expected. At the end of the level I revived a score and discovered that I had not ranked well compared to many other players online. So I jumped back into the tutorial level to try again. At the moment I knew I was hooked.
The game works in a hub and rooms fashion, where the over map was it self a level that contained doors that led me to other zones each with their own levels. The harder it was to find a level the more challenging it was. After playing through some of the forest levels and cleaning off some woodland creatures I ventured into the castle zone. Near the top a man standing over a door mentioned that not all doors were easy to find. I was up till that moment proud at finding the door he was located near, but my gamer sense flared up. Nearby in a hard to reach location there must be a secret door! This investigation led me to the Tower level, where only very high precision jumps and ceiling clings and combos allowed you to float through the level. The gameplay mechanics I had learned on the other levels came out in amazing ways. Jumping between enemies and using them to gain the momentum to continue my assent. It was amazing to me how engaging the simple platforming was. It was a difficult feat but once I had completed it I felt like a king. With out that level's complexity I would of enjoyed my experience but never felt as if I had overcome any challenge. I found that feeling lacking when I moved back to other games. I heartily recommend checking out Dust Force, the game has the best platforming feel that I have encountered in over 10 years. Treat your self and enjoy the challenge and soothing appeal of an amazing platfomer.
Dust Force can be found at http://dustforce.com/
I loaded up the game not sure what to expect, and in my standard fashion when a game drops me in a wold with minimal instruction I start to hammer on random keys till something happens. I started with my standard WSAD and upon noticing no effect to my character I looked around the screen. directly above my character's head floating simply was press up for tutorial' so I jumped in. Right away I had learned that I could enter levels by pressing up. The tutorial ran through a level that never locked out any of my player controls. Rather is slowly revealed to me how I could inter act with the environment. It was rough the first time through, jumping into spikes and running headlong into walls. But the controls were solid, each key press had the character reacting in a fashion I understood and expected. The controls felt very tight, but at the same time allowed me to flow through the environment in a fashion I expected. At the end of the level I revived a score and discovered that I had not ranked well compared to many other players online. So I jumped back into the tutorial level to try again. At the moment I knew I was hooked.
The game works in a hub and rooms fashion, where the over map was it self a level that contained doors that led me to other zones each with their own levels. The harder it was to find a level the more challenging it was. After playing through some of the forest levels and cleaning off some woodland creatures I ventured into the castle zone. Near the top a man standing over a door mentioned that not all doors were easy to find. I was up till that moment proud at finding the door he was located near, but my gamer sense flared up. Nearby in a hard to reach location there must be a secret door! This investigation led me to the Tower level, where only very high precision jumps and ceiling clings and combos allowed you to float through the level. The gameplay mechanics I had learned on the other levels came out in amazing ways. Jumping between enemies and using them to gain the momentum to continue my assent. It was amazing to me how engaging the simple platforming was. It was a difficult feat but once I had completed it I felt like a king. With out that level's complexity I would of enjoyed my experience but never felt as if I had overcome any challenge. I found that feeling lacking when I moved back to other games. I heartily recommend checking out Dust Force, the game has the best platforming feel that I have encountered in over 10 years. Treat your self and enjoy the challenge and soothing appeal of an amazing platfomer.
Dust Force can be found at http://dustforce.com/
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Don't Starve
I've only got about 4 hours of play into this one so take the following with a grain of salt.
I picked the game up on steam just before lunch, I had read an article noting that it was released as a beta with the final version to follow in early 2013. I loved the look of the game from the trailer, and voila like a magician I was separated from my money and ready to play.
You start out as a man magically transported to an inland, your single entitled mission is to not starve to death. I started my adventure the same way I look at any survival game, pick up things till I can build things. After finding flint and some saplings I was able to make an ax and ensure that I would have a camp fire of the night. While gathering wood I found enough berries and carrots to sate my hunger. Survive the first night, check. The game was fairly straight forward until I decided to see how far I could explore, a couple islands away from my starting area some pig-men had a small village. I attempted to approch them to see if they were friendly ... but alas one attacked and being a weary adventurer I was defeated.
Not to be deterred by my single death I tried again. This time I managed to build a machine that allowed me to research about my surroundings, dropping items in and getting science points. An intention later and I had a hat and a razor, no more scruffy island man for me. Excited by the prospect of learning more new abilities I ventured off into the world and two islands out I settled down for the night. as I was tending my camp fire I saw tree age into its final withered form and decided to cut it down to replant. A treeant was displeased with my decision and attacked. Not one to fall easily I kited him through my camp fire setting the forest ablaze in the process. As dawn broke he finally collapsed in a heap and I surveyed the damage. Almost the entire forest had burned down, hefting my ax I began chopping down the trees planning to replant. Each charred tree gave up a hunk of coal and sometimes a pine cone. Feeling confident I attempted to make contact with the pig men on the next island only to discover that they had been defeated by beast men. One seeing my approach proceeded to chase me all the way back to my base. The onset of night no determent to his fury. Having exhausted the supply of one island and burned the supply on the next I attempted to explore the world and find more food. After ten days I fell to a mishap with monster meat, sometimes learning comes at a high cost.
Having braved ten days I unlocked a second character who started fired in the dark, feeling invincible against the night terrors I ran amok stocking up on as much food during the first day as possible. The ability was neat but secondary dialogue began to creep my out.... my character would ask who was there as she threw down a fireball. Uninterested in settling down since I had a mobile fire starter I adventured as far as I could, encountering a bottomless pond and a spiky tree. My victory over the spider monsters led to a bit of a big head, and I attempted to take on a purple tentacle, but was quickly laid to rest.
I had fun playing with the game and the art style is very charming. The world generation feels very rough right now, and I would love to see the islands be a bit less predictable in the future. I'm sure those changes will happen with updates on the way to 2013. The core game-play is solid, I enjoyed gathering resources and moving plants around the islands. Resources might be a little too abundant or maybe its a little to easy to grow a personal wood yard. Stone and flint feel very rare and for me were the primary reason to explore (all tools are made from flint). I would say hold off on this game for a couple months, it is still a bit too rough to enjoy the game much beyond the visual treat, or personally created challenges, but will defiantly be worth picking up once development is further along. I had fun with what I played so far and find my self trying to break down their art with a bit of motivation to create my own in such a quirky style.
If you are interested in checking it out Don't Starve can be found right there, the developer Klei has many other games I intend to take a look at in the future.
I picked the game up on steam just before lunch, I had read an article noting that it was released as a beta with the final version to follow in early 2013. I loved the look of the game from the trailer, and voila like a magician I was separated from my money and ready to play.
You start out as a man magically transported to an inland, your single entitled mission is to not starve to death. I started my adventure the same way I look at any survival game, pick up things till I can build things. After finding flint and some saplings I was able to make an ax and ensure that I would have a camp fire of the night. While gathering wood I found enough berries and carrots to sate my hunger. Survive the first night, check. The game was fairly straight forward until I decided to see how far I could explore, a couple islands away from my starting area some pig-men had a small village. I attempted to approch them to see if they were friendly ... but alas one attacked and being a weary adventurer I was defeated.
Not to be deterred by my single death I tried again. This time I managed to build a machine that allowed me to research about my surroundings, dropping items in and getting science points. An intention later and I had a hat and a razor, no more scruffy island man for me. Excited by the prospect of learning more new abilities I ventured off into the world and two islands out I settled down for the night. as I was tending my camp fire I saw tree age into its final withered form and decided to cut it down to replant. A treeant was displeased with my decision and attacked. Not one to fall easily I kited him through my camp fire setting the forest ablaze in the process. As dawn broke he finally collapsed in a heap and I surveyed the damage. Almost the entire forest had burned down, hefting my ax I began chopping down the trees planning to replant. Each charred tree gave up a hunk of coal and sometimes a pine cone. Feeling confident I attempted to make contact with the pig men on the next island only to discover that they had been defeated by beast men. One seeing my approach proceeded to chase me all the way back to my base. The onset of night no determent to his fury. Having exhausted the supply of one island and burned the supply on the next I attempted to explore the world and find more food. After ten days I fell to a mishap with monster meat, sometimes learning comes at a high cost.
Having braved ten days I unlocked a second character who started fired in the dark, feeling invincible against the night terrors I ran amok stocking up on as much food during the first day as possible. The ability was neat but secondary dialogue began to creep my out.... my character would ask who was there as she threw down a fireball. Uninterested in settling down since I had a mobile fire starter I adventured as far as I could, encountering a bottomless pond and a spiky tree. My victory over the spider monsters led to a bit of a big head, and I attempted to take on a purple tentacle, but was quickly laid to rest.
I had fun playing with the game and the art style is very charming. The world generation feels very rough right now, and I would love to see the islands be a bit less predictable in the future. I'm sure those changes will happen with updates on the way to 2013. The core game-play is solid, I enjoyed gathering resources and moving plants around the islands. Resources might be a little too abundant or maybe its a little to easy to grow a personal wood yard. Stone and flint feel very rare and for me were the primary reason to explore (all tools are made from flint). I would say hold off on this game for a couple months, it is still a bit too rough to enjoy the game much beyond the visual treat, or personally created challenges, but will defiantly be worth picking up once development is further along. I had fun with what I played so far and find my self trying to break down their art with a bit of motivation to create my own in such a quirky style.
If you are interested in checking it out Don't Starve can be found right there, the developer Klei has many other games I intend to take a look at in the future.
Sunday, November 11, 2012
Towns
The recently green-lit game on Steam called Towns has been occupying my play space for the last 2 days. I was initially skeptical of the game but the premise had me hooked. Minecraft + Dwarf Fortress Light? It was amazing to find an accessible format to enjoy some of the charm of Dwarf Fortress without having to scale the vertical cliff that was the on boarding. I know that Towns is not Dwarf Fortress but I consider it a step towards learning to play it eventually.
Starting off I played through the tutorials to build up an understanding of the game, the tutorials were all setup in plain text missions, They were well written and allowed me to gain a solid understanding of what I needed to do in order to succeed with the game.
My first few towns did not end well. I didn't realize that my game did not pause when I hit escape so I left the game running in the background and went for lunch only to come back to a world full of ghosts and frog men. Finding my town full of monsters drew me in, I had no idea where these had come from. So when I got home I tried again, this time I mined downward quickly in order to try and build a large fortress but ran into spiders that made short work of my ill equipped villagers. Each game I had tried something different and learned a little that I could use to improve my game moving forward.
Skipping past a few more towns at the end of the night I had created a stable town of 25 (the starting population is 12) that was relatively stable. My focus had been entirely on ensuring the happiness of my population. each villager had a personal space. there were farms for wheat, fruit and wood. The main dormitory was a three story building constructed of scaffolding with a carved wood door. The village was functional but lacked heroes. So I began constructing a grant tavern to help recuit some top men to help take care of the monster I knew lurked bellow.
My game-play experience began to breakdown around this time. No longer focused on he happiness of my town I didn't have a reliable way to ensure that every citizen stayed fed. As the dungeon was cleared out from the variety of monsters by the adventures I also started to mine downwards. When switching between the mine and dig commands I would occasionally dig down faster than I built ladders trapping townsfolk in giant pits where they would start to starve to death. These trapped folks were still attentive to my desire to build things crafting road segments and scaffolding in the pit and attempting to bring them to the surface. This start to lead to incomplete and buggy feeling interactions. It was frustrating to try and lay out a new bridge but have many of the blocks simply never appear because the required worker was trapped five layers down. Without the ability to build new structures the town I had created started to fail; harvests did not happen on time and resources on the surface were left un-gathered. I started to feel punished for attempting to mine out the country side. In some sense my poor planning in orders was punishing me, without feedback on the villager status I did not notice the mistakes until they had already killed off some of th evillagers. These were some of the most passive villagers I had met in a video game in a long time. Most games will have the NPC cry for help when they get trapped or start to starve.
In a previous incarnation I had expanded my town slowly and occasionally lost a villager to monsters or starvation. The adventurers in my town managed to reach level 12 by killing off all the threats on the first level of the dungeon and everything on the surface. I figured that at level 12 they would need access to the next layer of the dungeon and proceeded to mine downwards. The next tier of monsters promptly made short work of my heros and proceeded to battle their way through my villagers to the surface leaving me with no one to rebuild the town.. Without a way to know how difficult a given monster was got many citizens and all the heroes were killed.
Overall I did enjoy building construction, having to think about building structure when creating new floors and roofs was an interesting and different concept for me. I started to think about how the town layout coudl be changed now that I understood a little more about the game. When building my citizen's barraks I leanred a lot about building a prototype building from scafolding. It ended up a 3 floor monstrosity and I had to jimmy in some temp scafolding stairs to ensure that everyone could reach their personal rooms floors up. The simple trinity of carpenter, mason. bakery became my starting move since I learned it was the best way to build a stable happy population. I'm not sure what the best jungle or snow opening is yet since I've only played on the normal terrain so far.
Starting near monsters sucks. On occasion a world will generate that had nearby surface monsters. I wanted the ability to tag zones as no go but my villagers ran off into the wilds to gather a resource when I called for trees. While requiring more mico the gathering process or setting up a a wheat farm was better to me because then I had made the decision that ended up getting them killed.
I enjoyed my time with the game and wanted to get my first impressions down. The game feels very rough at the moment, and reminds me of an early Minecraft. There are many complex systems under the hood that need a little tweaking to get them all harmonizing. If the develops keep working on polishing this game then it will be a very memorable and fun experience I look forward to seeing that progression with all the awesome things they have in mind added to the game. Overall it is worth a look if you enjoy simulation and city building games. It falls close to a game like stronghold or settlers in terms of intimacy with the added excitement of monsters.
For those who wish to check out the game;
http://www.townsgame.com/
Starting off I played through the tutorials to build up an understanding of the game, the tutorials were all setup in plain text missions, They were well written and allowed me to gain a solid understanding of what I needed to do in order to succeed with the game.
My first few towns did not end well. I didn't realize that my game did not pause when I hit escape so I left the game running in the background and went for lunch only to come back to a world full of ghosts and frog men. Finding my town full of monsters drew me in, I had no idea where these had come from. So when I got home I tried again, this time I mined downward quickly in order to try and build a large fortress but ran into spiders that made short work of my ill equipped villagers. Each game I had tried something different and learned a little that I could use to improve my game moving forward.
Skipping past a few more towns at the end of the night I had created a stable town of 25 (the starting population is 12) that was relatively stable. My focus had been entirely on ensuring the happiness of my population. each villager had a personal space. there were farms for wheat, fruit and wood. The main dormitory was a three story building constructed of scaffolding with a carved wood door. The village was functional but lacked heroes. So I began constructing a grant tavern to help recuit some top men to help take care of the monster I knew lurked bellow.
My game-play experience began to breakdown around this time. No longer focused on he happiness of my town I didn't have a reliable way to ensure that every citizen stayed fed. As the dungeon was cleared out from the variety of monsters by the adventures I also started to mine downwards. When switching between the mine and dig commands I would occasionally dig down faster than I built ladders trapping townsfolk in giant pits where they would start to starve to death. These trapped folks were still attentive to my desire to build things crafting road segments and scaffolding in the pit and attempting to bring them to the surface. This start to lead to incomplete and buggy feeling interactions. It was frustrating to try and lay out a new bridge but have many of the blocks simply never appear because the required worker was trapped five layers down. Without the ability to build new structures the town I had created started to fail; harvests did not happen on time and resources on the surface were left un-gathered. I started to feel punished for attempting to mine out the country side. In some sense my poor planning in orders was punishing me, without feedback on the villager status I did not notice the mistakes until they had already killed off some of th evillagers. These were some of the most passive villagers I had met in a video game in a long time. Most games will have the NPC cry for help when they get trapped or start to starve.
In a previous incarnation I had expanded my town slowly and occasionally lost a villager to monsters or starvation. The adventurers in my town managed to reach level 12 by killing off all the threats on the first level of the dungeon and everything on the surface. I figured that at level 12 they would need access to the next layer of the dungeon and proceeded to mine downwards. The next tier of monsters promptly made short work of my heros and proceeded to battle their way through my villagers to the surface leaving me with no one to rebuild the town.. Without a way to know how difficult a given monster was got many citizens and all the heroes were killed.
Overall I did enjoy building construction, having to think about building structure when creating new floors and roofs was an interesting and different concept for me. I started to think about how the town layout coudl be changed now that I understood a little more about the game. When building my citizen's barraks I leanred a lot about building a prototype building from scafolding. It ended up a 3 floor monstrosity and I had to jimmy in some temp scafolding stairs to ensure that everyone could reach their personal rooms floors up. The simple trinity of carpenter, mason. bakery became my starting move since I learned it was the best way to build a stable happy population. I'm not sure what the best jungle or snow opening is yet since I've only played on the normal terrain so far.
Starting near monsters sucks. On occasion a world will generate that had nearby surface monsters. I wanted the ability to tag zones as no go but my villagers ran off into the wilds to gather a resource when I called for trees. While requiring more mico the gathering process or setting up a a wheat farm was better to me because then I had made the decision that ended up getting them killed.
I enjoyed my time with the game and wanted to get my first impressions down. The game feels very rough at the moment, and reminds me of an early Minecraft. There are many complex systems under the hood that need a little tweaking to get them all harmonizing. If the develops keep working on polishing this game then it will be a very memorable and fun experience I look forward to seeing that progression with all the awesome things they have in mind added to the game. Overall it is worth a look if you enjoy simulation and city building games. It falls close to a game like stronghold or settlers in terms of intimacy with the added excitement of monsters.
For those who wish to check out the game;
http://www.townsgame.com/
The Permise
Why am I writing this?
I enjoy playing games and tend to play a large variety of little indie titles, sometimes I'll play a new game every weekend but I don't always remember everything that I thought was working or a system I disliked. Hence the power of writing.
If you have any thoughts to share about what I write or want more information feel free to comment or email me.
I enjoy playing games and tend to play a large variety of little indie titles, sometimes I'll play a new game every weekend but I don't always remember everything that I thought was working or a system I disliked. Hence the power of writing.
If you have any thoughts to share about what I write or want more information feel free to comment or email me.
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