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/
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