Zombie Apocalypse. Reviews of indie adventure games, roguelikes, board games, and video games

Introduction to the @

Austin Auclair — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 19:08:37 GMT

Video games as a whole have never really fit into genres very well. For a time I had a Google alert set up for the search phrase “adventure game” so that I could try and catch gaming news as it happened, but found that the word “adventure” was being used too broadly. I was looking for point-and-click adventure games while the term was also being used to describe platformers and other action-oriented titles.

Lately the video game genre label of “roguelike” has been applied to games that borrow elements from the genre and its founding game, Rogue. Sometimes the comparison seems reaching as the game described may only be tenuously related to roguelikes, but I think the term’s use is ultimately a good thing. There are many reasons Rogue spawned its own genre and video games iterating and borrowing from the game can only stand to keep Rogue’s memory alive. Further, it has attracted players like myself, who want learn more about the genre’s history and are curious about what the term “roguelike” actually means.

It was not until fairly recently that I realized that I had more experience playing roguelikes than I had thought, not previously connecting Castle of the Winds, RogueSurvivor, and Dungeons of Dredmor. However, having playing roguelikes with graphical tile-sets still didn’t quite feel legit. I wanted to delve the dark and scary depths of ASCII art roguelikes where you the player are a simple “@”.

I had heard of Brogue through a few channels and thought it would be a good game to try first. Upon starting the game I was immediately dropped into a terrifying land of confusing symbols with a non-existent user interface. It took some focus and patience but as I played, the interface slowly didn’t seem so obtuse, moving around the game’s dark dungeon became clear, and I gradually began to see symbols not as abstract representations but as the things they were actually supposed to be. That musical note over in the corner? That is a mysterious magic scroll waiting for me to come pick it up. What is that left bracket across the line of red dots? Why, it is a shining suit of armor sitting on an outcropping of rock, reached by a rickety rope bridge of course! When my wife asked what the heck I was playing, I joked that I was reading the matrix. I was no longer seeing a series of symbols but a world full of adventure and a dank dungeon filled with danger.

Moving past Brogue’s dense presentation I quickly discovered a game that is incredibly fun to play, entertaining, and yet difficult to master. The first few levels are fairly easy and give you a chance to stock up on supplies but thereafter the game quickly punishes sloppy game play. Each step in Brogue needs to be carefully measured and enemies approached tactically. Most importantly, your inventory of items must be carefully managed and used appropriately. Even worse is when you find items that aren’t labeled, and you won’t know their use until you take the risk to try them. Is that red potion an elixir of healing or a flask of incineration? You had better stand next to a body of water before opening it just in case. Luckily once you’ve tried an item any future versions of that item are then labeled. This creates an identification sub-game within Brogue as using an unknown item in the face of danger can save or end your life.

My favorite thing about Brogue is its emergent game play. You never know what the effects of particular actions might be and your approach to a situation is always different. Once, I crept into the entrance of a room that opened onto a giant underground lake. The room was filled with goblins and I, having just survived a tough fight, was in no condition to take them on directly. I threw a potion of incineration at the goblins and mis-clicking, accidentally threw it into the lake. The potion exploded and turned the water into a cloud of steam which quickly scalded the goblins to death. Brogue is full of such moments where confrontations with monsters are often better resolved in ways other than stand-up fights.

Fear my army of Monkey Allies!

Despite my initial fears, Brogue’s interface actually is quite good, and besides its deliberate item description masking, the game is very generous with its information. Highlighting enemies provides a helpful description of them and any special abilities they may have. Practical shortcuts abound in the game as well. I simply adore Brogue’s auto-explore function which puts the game on autopilot—extremely useful after you have died for getting through the first few levels again so you can quickly get back to deeper floors of the dungeon.

Brogue is a brutal game and I have yet to get past the 20^th level (there are 25). Bad luck and inattention will bring a quick death, forcing you to start the game completely over. Typically such treatment would cause me to abandon a game but I have yet to die and not be able to identify my misstep. Items are randomly generated so sometimes you may get an inferior selection but in most cases my death is directly connected to some bad decision on my part.

Brogue has turned out to be the perfect starting place for someone new to ASCII roguelikes. The game is smart, well-designed, and it forces its players to be patient and efficient. Also, Brogue makes no apologies for its toughness but does so without compromising the user’s experience—a rarity in today’s gaming. Now that I have crossed the barrier of entry into roguelikes I am excited to see what else is out there.

The Floppy that was Left Behind

Austin Auclair — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:34:34 GMT

Years ago, shortly after my family’s Commodore 64 died, my parents bought a used IBM. It came fully loaded with Window 3.11 and everything! My young brain immediately started dreaming of all the new games I could cram on to the thing. It would be many chores and weeded vegetable beds later until I had the cash to start buying new games, but providence was on my side. Whoever had sold the PC to my parents had left a floppy disk in the drive: Castle of the Winds: Lithransir’s Bane.

A rogue-like with a graphical tile-set, Castle of the Winds: Lithransir’s Bane was my first introduction to the genre. I was stunned to discover the game’s depth, the vast range of items to be found, and the zoo of monsters to fight. In the game I soon found a love for battling elemental dragons, finding swords specifically enchanted to fight giants, and for chasing purse-stealing thieves. Castle of the Winds gave me my first experience with “character builds” where you did not just develop your character by assigning particular skill points but you also collected certain magic items to complement those choices.

Recently I have been delving deep into the world of rogue-likes, learning their history and how modern releases continue to draw inspiration from the game for which the genre is named. Now armed with a bit of knowledge I see where Castle of the Winds borrowed heavily from the genre and even blasphemously deviated from it with mouse-based mechanics and save states.

Sadly, re-visiting the game after getting a little bit of education about the genre makes Castle of the Winds lose a little of its luster for me. I have quickly grown to enjoy the emergent game-play rogue-likes tend to encourage and there really is not any of that in Castle of the Winds. Now I want to be able to throw items at monsters, interact more with the environment, and run into random situations I may never encounter again in another session with the game.

Even so, I continue to load Castle of the Winds from time to time as it, like many rogue-likes, is the perfect game for the person who likes to multitask. If I suddenly get the urge to check Twitter or need to check my email, it is very easy to Alt+Tab away and come back later as the game waits for you. Also, to the game’s credit, it is not easy to beat, especially now that I’ve restricted myself from saving the game.

I do not know if the person who sold my parents our old PC meant to leave Castle of the Winds: Lithransir’s Bane in the disk drive and I certainly would have missed the game if I were them. But I like to imagine that they did it on purpose, somehow knowing that some kid needed a video game for their new computer, and for that I am grateful.

(For those of you who might be interested, Castle of the Winds' developer, Rick Saada, has both installments of the game available on his site: www.exmsft.com/~ricks/)

Slaying monsters with my upgraded tears

Austin Auclair — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Sometimes all it takes is an unusual concept to make me interested in playing a particular video game. When I first heard that you shoot enemies with your tears in The Binding of Issac, I was instantly curious. It is funny to me though, as once I actually started playing The Binding of Issac, it was not the game’s theme that kept me around but its very solid design.

Loosely following the biblical tale, you play as a little boy named Issac whose insane mother watches too much evangelical Christian television and thinks that God commands her to kill Issac in God’s name. The game starts as an escape fantasy for Issac as he “finds” a trapdoor in his bedroom floor and then progresses through different levels fighting gruesome parts of his psyche.

The Binding of Issac’s developer, Edmund McMillen, specifically modeled the game’s play after the classic Legend of Zelda and that influence definitely shows as you move room to room attacking monsters and finding keys and bombs. As I mentioned before, Issac’s main weapon is his tears which he emits in a steady stream to kill his enemies. The upgrades to his tears, so to speak, are a lot of fun and so are the various other special weapons you can get. The “laser” tears are among my favorites.

What I like especially about The Binding of Issac is that it rarely misses the mark on pure game mechanics and its extra little details are more than just window dressing. The game’s controls are very smooth and perfect for its style of play where precision dodging is needed to avoid enemy attacks. Also, each special item Issac picks up is drawn onto the character model itself resulting in a quite spooky and unique-looking character each time you play.

You will indeed play The Binding of Issac quite a few times since it is set up in a rogue-like style where you cannot save and if you die, you start completely over. Considering that the items and levels in the game are randomized, this can make play-throughs quite varied---in some sessions you will get a great combination of weapons and in others the items you find are rather ineffectual.

From what I understand from interviews with the developer, The Binding of Issac was a bit of a side project for him but even so, the game was clearly made with a lot of love---a creepy, skeletons-in-the-closet kind of love. The game is full of smart and thoughtful design and if you were ever a fan of Zelda’s game play it is well worth picking up.

Resolution to Explore

Austin Auclair — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:00:00 GMT

It was a childhood dream of mine to discover Bigfoot. I had a map showing all of the U.S.’s major sightings hung on the wall next to my bed and I looked at it every night before I went to sleep. I watched the grainy, shaky Patterson video a billion times, analyzing that hairy mammal’s awkward gate and cursing the footage’s lack of focus. I read every book and article a kid with limited transportation options could get a hold of in the days before the internet. I soon became the preeminent expert on tall tales, fairy tales, fables, myths, legends and parables—anything unbelievable, far-fetched, or grossly unproven fell into my realm.

I focused on Bigfoot mainly because it was a creature that seemed accessible to a kid living in southern Maryland. The lochs of Scotland were too far away and even traversing the wilds of New Jersey to find their devil was beyond my reach. But Bigfoot sightings had been reported all over the country and my family living in a rural area made it seem like a reasonable target.

I was no fool though. Deep down I knew there was no Bigfoot. I wanted there to be a large, elusive beast still somehow living undiscovered, shunning civilization at every turn. Drunk, lonely, crazy— even at the age of twelve I could read between the lines of the accounts from people who saw the creature. Still, I ran around our fields, pretending to find tracks and even made a plaster cast once, insisting the resulting mold looked like a footprint of a large humanoid.

It was never really about the creature. Like many young boys I craved adventure, wanting to be the hero and intrepid explorer of my own great story. I mapped my family’s property, marking places likely to hide treasure. I pined for the next chance to go into our house’s crawl space and look for hidden caverns under our home while my father worked on the plumbing. When the limits of our land became too cramped for my exploration I would walk through the woods and fields of several neighbors’ properties to a secret pond deep in the forest that had been formed by converging streams dammed by beavers. The journey to get there was always filled with peril and marked by strange monsters like huge deer leaping rows of eight-foot-high corn in a single bound, barking foxes, and dive-bombing hawks carrying away fat rabbits in their sharp talons.

Today, my home is littered with dragons, the slightly newer symbol of that desire for adventure and legend since Bigfoot-themed art is too hard to come by. They represent my search for something bigger and greater but also the many dragons I have had to slay in my own not-so-mythical life. I realize that I do not do enough exploring these days, something I resolve to fix in this new year, both physically and creatively.

Deception and Dead People

Austin Auclair — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:26:33 GMT

Sometimes when you play a video game it just clicks with you. Sometimes, while playing, you have to stop for a moment and exclaim, “Wow!” These moments can be experienced with many games, even if in some small way, but they are mostly fleeting. Games that consistently inspire that exhilarated feeling throughout their play are special works indeed.

The morning I decided to start playing the indie adventure Blackwell Deception I couldn’t stop until I finished the game. I kept running into chill-inducing moment after moment and had to see it to the end. I enjoyed the first three games in the Blackwell series and was curious to see where developer WadjetEye Games was going with its fourth installment. One of the best parts of playing the first three, since I played them back to back, was that I got to see their growth over time. This fourth game continues that maturation with thrilling storytelling mixed with smart game play.

Blackwell Deception’s storytelling is so strong that I largely forgot that I was even playing a game. Its puzzles are a mystery and their connections can be solved through investigation, logical deduction and footwork, but they never obstructed the game’s focus.

You play as writer turned medium Rosangela, and are accompanied by her sarcastic spirit guide, Joey. Rosa and Joey continue to find and help restless ghosts move on to the afterlife and their story continues with the deeper and darker tone that the third game initiated. The duo find that they are unable to ignore events larger than their business of helping dead people.

It’s this business of helping murdered spirits that I enjoyed the most. Like many movies or books, there’s that fun period before the main conflict occurs where the characters are going about their lives with no huge consequences. The Blackwell series uses this structure as an opportunity to teach players its game mechanics by having players help a ghost who is not necessarily related to the main plot. I like this short prologue as it revels in the pure, fun idea of being a medium who helps dead people.

Every game in the Blackwell series has great graphics and animations but their professional voice acting is what truly sets the mood. Blackwell Deception is no exception with every character perfectly cast, especially Rosa and Joey. That voice acting combined with well-drawn character portraits communicate exactly the story the game is trying to tell.

I love the emotional highs and lows I experienced with Blackwell Deception. It was a weird combination of satisfaction helping these poor murdered people and melancholy brought about by the realization that despite my assistance there was no bringing them back to life.

Simply put, you need to play the Blackwell series of games as soon as possible. Each of them is well made and this new, fourth installment is no exception.

Getting Back to Adventure

Austin Auclair — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 13:00:00 GMT

I have been on hiatus from adventure games, reaching this stopping point after playing a few indies that I did not enjoy and then playing the very enjoyable Gemini Rue. My patience for decoding adventure designers’ logic had reached its limit and then playing the masterpiece Gemini Rue made me feel like I had reached a place where I could freely invest some time in other video game genres.

After a good detox period the list of adventure games that had since been released got too long for me to ignore and I decided to play Arden’s Vale, an indie adventure that looked interesting. Screenshots on the AGS forum very much reminded me King’s Quest 4, one of my all time favorites.

A short adventure game, Arden’s Vale is a bit a fun. It has a very clean and confident art style—it knows what it wants to be. The game’s story is simple and to the point which is what I needed to play coming back to the adventure game genre.

I would not recommend Arden’s Vale to non-adventure game veterans, especially if you have not played Sierra's games, as classic adventures are heavily referenced, almost to a fault. I do not like it when games break the 4^th wall and Arden’s Vale goes a little too far acknowledging you, the player. It seems at odds with the game’s grim opening sequence which is not lighthearted at all. Also, blatantly self-depreciating moments exist in the game when the developer seemed to want to cover for supposed shortcomings—unnecessary in a game otherwise so skillfully made.

I enjoyed Arden’s Vale for a quick reentry into the adventure game genre. It gave me a few nice reminders of basic adventure game mechanics-- at one point I was stuck in the game as I hadn’t thought to interact with items in my inventory. Arden’s Vale is a cute indie project and I am very interested to see more games from its developer.

Only Cowards Turn Off Perma-Death

Austin Auclair — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 14:49:17 GMT

It seems that I’ve been playing a lot of rogue-likes lately. One in particular has stuck with me for a few weeks now, Dungeons of Dredmor by indie developer Gaslamp Games. I call it a rogue-like but it’s really more of a turn-based RPG. This is kind of the same thing though; video game genres are silly.

One of the best parts of Dungeons of Dredmor is that it dumps you right into the action from the start. What’s the story? A big, bad guy is doing bad things and you have to stop him. Sure there’s not much to that and I usually prefer that my games have good stories, but game-play is where Dungeons of Dredmor truly shines. The game has a tongue-in-cheek approach throughout its design that is frequently hilarious but which also creates a clean simplicity in its mechanics. Its energy is spent on giving the player a host of character customization choices, tons of loot to find, and magical abilities to use while slaying monsters.

Dungeons of Dredmor’s list of character customization choices is especially what has kept me playing. The character I’ve built is a Viking knight of sorts who can take a lot of damage and bash foes with a mace. Next time I’m going to go with a vampire who’s an expert at building traps and eating mushrooms— you know, that old RPG trope. No matter what silly combination you come up with the recipes for fun characters seems endless.

Being a rogue-like, Dungeons of Dredmor is intended to be played with perma-death turned on (the games ends completely when you die, no reloading allowed) and I definitely tried that with my first few run-throughs. Perma-death adds a nice layer of suspense to the game as one mistake ends all your work and you really need to think carefully and strategically about how you’re playing. I had to turn it off after a while however as in one particular play-through I got very far, ran into a monster that was entirely impossible to fight, was quickly killed, and had to start over. It was disheartening having invested so much time in the game only to lose it all. Plus I really wanted to see what the later game looked like and never surviving past the first level was getting boring.

I know, I know, how dare I call myself a fan of rogue-likes… but in my defense I eventually felt guilty and started a new session, with perma-death turned back on.

MONSTER ZOO!!!

Dungeons of Dredmor’s graphics are simple but effective. It’s great that Gaslamp Games has continued to invest in the game by releasing numerous patches to fix problems and add major features—that’ll keep me coming back for quite some time.

You should definitely purchase Dungeons of Dredmor as it’s time well spent and will definitely stay in your playlist for a while; I know it will stay in mine. I’m not sure why Lord Dredmor needs to be stopped but I’ll bash his head in with my mace just the same.

Damn those Ziggurats

Austin Auclair — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 14:00:00 GMT

It is Saturday morning and I am up early. Why? Because work has programmed me to wake up at this time. Also, I suck at sleeping in. I am like a little kid (or an eighty-year-old man), once awake I am incapable of just lying there. The problem with that internal programming, along with the black tar coffee I have consumed immediately after rising, is that I am raring for some intellectual stimulation. Typically that need is fulfilled (and crushed) by a heavy work day of budget projections, copy writing, and problem solving. On the weekend I have to fill that need in some other fashion.

Enter the strategy game Bronze by Dreamspike Studios. I first heard about the game on the strategy podcast Three Moves Ahead and was quickly sold simply by hearing about the game’s theme.

Bronze is a territory control game set on an eight-by-eight grid where players represent different civilizations from the Bronze Age. I have always been fascinated by this particular era, the veritable dawn of modern man, and have thought that it is under-represented in gaming. Sure, the Babylonians have been thrown into a few games but to my knowledge the Assyrians, Hittites, and Elamites have largely been ignored.

Realistically, however, Bronze doesn’t particularly represent those ancient cultures very well either but at least it gives you a fine history lesson between each scenario you play. Instead it’s more of an abstract game that loosely gives certain factions benefits and penalties symbolically based on their culture. For instance, the Gutians, being a barbarian culture, cannot build more advanced structures but can build military barracks for less cost than most other peoples.

I like to think of Bronze as a twist on Go where you try to establish territorial holdings, blocking the growth of your opponent. The twist over Go is that you are not just grabbing territory but also placing buildings that can acquire additional territory, earn money, or conquer enemy squares. It is easy to get caught up in the special abilities of those buildings and is important to remember that holding the most territory and denying squares to your opponent is the only way to win.

Again, damn those Ziggurats

The campaign mode of Bronze often feels like a puzzle where the strategy for defeating a particular enemy relies on a specific set of moves. The A.I. in the game is fantastic and rarely makes big mistakes, using the strengths and weaknesses of its particular culture very well. A multiplayer mode in Bronze would be nice but honestly I would never actually get around to using it.

My only complaint about Bronze would be its steep price, currently at $29.95. While I have not regretted the purchase in any fashion and have steadily played the game for months now, I can imagine it being a major hurdle for most people. It took the enthusiasm of the 3MA podcast and their interview with Dreamspike Studios’ Alex Kutsenok, to convince me to take that leap.

I have found Bronze to be a great brainteaser for those early weekend mornings and the game is just light enough where I can quickly play a couple rounds if I find myself with a few extra minutes. Even after repeated play I have not tired of solving Bronze’s puzzles and if you can see past what initially seems like a high price tag you will find a solid and smart game.

Day of Days and dice

Austin Auclair — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:37:19 GMT

For a long time I’ve been itching to play “war” board games. Sure, Risk and Stratego were staples in my house growing up but there’s a whole other degree of game that I didn’t even know existed until I started falling deeper into the board game community. It seems that many “true” war gamers scoff at Risk and even Axis and Allies, preferring to move detailed chits across an intricate map and refer to complex tables to resolve movement and combat. I want to be one of those hipster war gamers.

The problem is time and finding opponents. True war games are heavy affairs with tons of rules and require hours to play. You also need an opponent who’s as dedicated to learning the rules as you are since there’s no playing these sort of games half-assed.

I daydreamed of diving into Advanced Squad Leader and various Napoleonic-themed games right away but knew that I wouldn’t easily find someone to play, at least not immediately, in my gaming circle. I had to set my sights a little lower and hope that I could trick friends into learning war game systems along with me.

Memoir 44 had been on my radar for quite some time. It looked like a fun and basic war game that I could start off with. I know that those aforementioned war game purists also sneer at Memoir 44 for not being hardcore enough but for me it seemed like a good gateway into that board game genre. I bought it and waited for my opportunity to get someone to play.

It turns out that the trouble in getting someone to play Memoir 44 wasn’t because people were scared of it but more that it’s hard to find time for two-player games. Most of the time when I play board games it’s with groups of people and generally we all want something we can play together. It’s funny, the number of players a game accommodates was never really something I thought about when I first started getting deep into the board game hobby but is now something I very much consider before a purchase; I have several great games from those early days that are rarely played as they require a specific number of people to be properly enjoyed.

Thankfully my friend Jason also wanted to try Memoir 44 and on a day when his partner was working and my fiancée had plans, we scheduled a day of two-player board game madness. A few minutes into that very first game with Jason I immediately fell in love with Memoir 44.

What immediately struck me about Memoir 44 was how simple its rules were, at least from the first scenario. Memoir 44 is played in scenarios, various battles from different parts of World War II, and each set up of those scenarios has different elements. The game starts off very simply with only infantry units and few terrain hexes so you only need to learn the rules for those things. Later, after you have become comfortable with those basic units, you can try other scenarios which add tanks, artillery, hills, beaches, and much more. This was also the first time I had seen in a board game an escalating approach to acclimating players to its system of play. Video games, especially games in the real-time-strategy genre, have been starting players off in that fashion for years by only giving them basic units at first and then upping the difficulty on each level.

The main mechanic in Memoir 44 that has kept me playing over and over again is how you decide which units are ordered to move and attack. The game board is divided into three sections. Each turn you play a card from your hand that only allows you to order units within a certain section. This creates quite an atmosphere of tension when you need to manage an attack on a particular side of the battlefield but don’t have the cards to order units in that area. In one recent session against my brother, his attack was coming in heavy on my right flank but there was nothing I could do to deflect it as all my cards were for left flank orders. In a dramatic turn I later started getting the cards I needed and managed to defeat his assault. Between the dice you roll to determine the results of attacks and this system of command cards, Memoir 44 has a great mix of different types of luck mechanics that add some nice randomness to the game without making bad luck feel too out of control. While the dice may not be going your way you know what cards are still in the deck that could still very well turn the tide of battle.

The next best thing about Memoir 44 is how quickly each game goes. Most often scenarios can be played out in 30 minutes or less, creating opportunities for several rounds of play. Since the scenarios are historically based it’s not uncommon for one side of the battle to have a definite advantage. Memoir 44’s fast play time means that a player can be the Allies for one session and then swap sides to play the same scenario as the Germans. It’s a lot of fun to be that disadvantaged side trying to pull off an improbable victory.

With a rule book full of scenarios and a ton of expansions to add even more depth and war-fronts, I don’t think I’ll be getting bored with Memoir 44 any time soon. Also, now that I’ve gotten my brother hooked on the game he’s pushing to try something even more complicated. Sounds like I’ll be breaking out that game of Victoria Cross I bought even sooner than I had hoped and my dreams of wading into that insane pool of hardcore war games is coming ever closer to being real.

Minecraft Revisited

Austin Auclair — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 17:12:53 GMT

When I first played the game Minecraft I knew that it was going to stick with me for a while. My enthusiasm for the game knew no bounds and I played it for hours, digging deep caverns and building high towers of stone. Minecraft spoke to me in a way that few other games ever had.

But I eventually lost interest in Minecraft. It was an odd end to my time with the game as the reasons I loved it so much had become marks against it. I loved the idea of being a crazed hermit, surviving alone in a hostile world and trying to build a self sustaining home. But soon a strange depression of sorts set in. I was proud of the huge stone castle I had built with its main battlement rising high above the clouds, allowing me to see far into the distance, safe from the monsters that prowled the land around me, but a nagging thought wouldn’t leave my mind; a twist on an old question. “If I’ve built a spectacular monument in Minecraft but no one is around to see it, does it even exist?”

I didn’t know anyone who ran a Minecraft multiplayer server so I scoffed at the idea of playing with other people. “There’s no way it would be fun”, I insisted. But suddenly my interest in the game completely hinged on my work not going unappreciated and with no server to join, I stopped playing altogether.

A year went by and while I kept an eye on the updates Minecraft’s developer continued to release for the game, I wasn’t drawn back in. It wasn’t until the website and online community I haunted, BoardGameGeek.com, started its own server that my interest once again piqued. Here was an opportunity to start fresh with the game but with the new experience of playing with actual people. The world in Minecraft is huge so even a populated server would allow for room to build things unhindered like the single player experience, but the idea that someone could then wander upon and admire some odd work of mine was exciting.

So after a long break, I’m back!

I love this game. Some people have criticized Minecraft for being pointless and in many ways it is. There are no objectives other than those you set for yourself and some people can’t handle that lack of direction. That, however, is exactly what I want from this game. After a long day of work, sometimes I just want a game where I’m not in a hurry, where no faceless NPC is shouting orders, and where I’m not tied to a log of rote quests that supposedly advance a weak story. My mission for the evening may be to find a node of gold ore – my last compass was destroyed when I fell into some lava - or to dig the moat around my castle just a bit deeper. Or really, I can work on the forty other projects I have going if I so choose.

My stairway of insanity

I love that this is the image that spawned for the first painting I placed by my front door.

I planted a deep forest around my base to ensure a steady supply of wood as I had a big project in mind. Not far from where I had established myself another player had already built a large castle. I decided to play a little prank on him and built a giant wooden Trojan Horse next to his castle. I have no idea what his reaction to finding this giant horse hanging its head over his walls ended up being, but it was a fun I never had while playing in a single player world.

Nothing suspicious here. Just a giant, gift wooden horse.

I enjoy wandering the world map looking at the crazy structures other people have built. Among other things, I’ve encountered a huge reproduction of Tower Isengard (from Lord of the Rings), a fully reproduced football stadium, and an amazingly detailed sushi restaurant. My main project recently was building a rooftop garden that contains every block type in the game. It’s been an enjoyable search looking for some of the more obscure block types and then fussing over their placement in the garden.

Saved as the wallpaper on my work desktop, this image keeps me sane during a busy workday.

While the server I play on has strict rules about not destroying other players’ work and not stealing their stuff, it’s still fun to build my fortress to withstand imaginary attacks. My staircases always spiral upwards clockwise, my deep moat is filled with sharp cacti, and I’ve placed many defensible fall-back positions within my lair in case of an invasion. The deep, dark forest I’ve grown around my mountain spawns innumerable monsters so even getting to my base is a struggle.

The sea-side of my floating gardens.

I realized while typing this that waxing poetic about a video game in this fashion seems incredibly silly. Nonetheless, Minecraft is a cathartic, “sandbox” experience that I enjoy jumping into whenever I can and I’m glad that trying the multiplayer experience caused me to rediscover what I loved about the game so much in the first place. The game itself continues to surprise me and now that I’m playing along with real people the potential for new astonishment seems endless. I can still be that crazy hermit, hidden away deep in a mountain, but if someone ever makes it to my castle I’m more than happy to give them a tour of my place.

** Addendum

I wrote this post before the 1.8 patch to Minecraft. Sadly the BGG server closed the old 1.7 map since it wouldn’t be readily compatible with the features of this new patch.

Thankfully the server’s admin let me download a copy of the old map which I’m now playing in single player. It’s a weird experience wandering the old (and dead) world in single player, encountering structures built by other, now non-existent people. It feels very post-apocalyptic and while strange, is actually very fun. Out of politeness I never wandered other people’s structures but now I can walk around admiring their work and poking into their treasure chests.

On a multiplayer turned single player map, this tamed wolf is waiting for a master who is never coming back.

When I come across a half-finished work it’s like an archeological study trying to figure out what their intent was with the building and knowing that unless they’ve deliberately left a sign, I’ll never know who did it. The range of buildings I’ve encountered has spanned from breathtaking to laughably creepy.

Encountering a spectacular pyramid

The inside of that pyramid - screenshot doesn't do it justice. Breathtaking.

From breathtaking to creepy, stumbled into this. Umm... what the hell is this room?

I’ve joined the rest of the crowd and am playing on the new 1.8 multiplayer server but doubt I’ll sink as much time into it as I did with 1.7. It was heartbreaking enough to find out that all my work wasn’t going to carry over with the new patch. I won’t invest that kind of time again until Minecraft is finally “released”. Until then I’ll keep messing about in my single player world, wandering its expanse, and having fun guessing at what I’ll come across at the next turn.

Beauty and Violence

Austin Auclair — Thu, 26 May 2011 12:49:14 GMT

Steam sales are an evil, evil thing. Games that I’m only slightly interested in suddenly become attractive thanks to their limited-time-only rock bottom price. I’ve been repeatedly seduced into buying games that I don’t really have time to play and sadly have amassed a nice collection of un-played blockbusters.

No more. I’ve made it my goal to start getting through these games and not let those purchases go to waste. One of those untouched games I’ve picked up is Far Cry 2. You play as a mercenary dropped into a war-torn African country with a mission to kill an infamous weapons dealer. You cruise about dirt roads cut through thick forest and hire yourself out to the highest bidding faction for whatever contract work they throw your way.

Far Cry 2 earned a lot of critical praise for its “emergent” game-play. Situations in the game can be resolved in different and often unexpected ways. Attacking an enemy camp you can assault it head-on, guns blazing, or try a more creative strategy. A fun approach, among others, is to light nearby brush and let the wind encourage the fire through the dry landscape, forcing your terrified enemy from their entrenched positions for easy pickings. Far Cry 2’s fire propagation mechanics are incredibly developed so this strategy is a favorite of mine. After several hours of playing, however, I found that the game wasn’t quite as flexible as some have declared. Gunfights often fall into a formulaic narrative and what were unexpected events at first become commonplace. When an errant grenade blew a hidden ammo stash, chaotically spewing bullets everywhere and killing an entire camp of enemy soldiers, I was flabbergasted. But after the third time I saw that event happen it didn’t seem nearly so revolutionary.

Thick forest, rolling desert dunes, and murky rivers leaping off of high cliffs make up a small part of the beautiful world that is Far Cry 2. Once time I was driving a dirty jeep down a narrow road, pursued by gun-toting thugs. Busy looking over my shoulder, I crashed into a herd of antelope crossing the road and was forced to fight with only a rusty pistol through the enemy soldiers who now surrounded my smoking vehicle. It’s a scene played out over and over again in Far Cry 2: beauty marred by violence.

Part of the story that’s explained to you at the beginning of the game is that the citizens of this country are being held hostage by warring factions. You’re portrayed as a “good guy” of sorts, above the low level of the murderers and thieves who control the region. But after a while, you don’t really feel like it. I wish Far Cry 2 had regular people trying to live their lives while a war rages around them. Since the game is devoid of actual civilians and everyone you meet seeks to take your life, you develop a “kill or be killed” mindset. You’re never forced to check yourself – is the person walking along the road a murdering guerrilla, or just some guy on his way to work? Unfortunately, in Far Cry 2, the answer is always the former.

Standing and watching the world burn.

Far Cry 2 is great at keeping you in its world with small details, like how it handles its interface. If you need to look at the map while driving, your character pulls out a map while keeping one hand on the wheel and the action continues; most games pause to show the map or embed it into the interface. This basic idea feels very real – I can only imagine the statistics on the increased number of car crashes when players are trying to both look at their map and hurtle down the road at high speeds.

Far Cry 2’s plot, while ham-fisted at times, was interesting enough to keep me playing. Like many games of its size and “open-worldlyness”, it’s very easy to get sidetracked on missions not relevant to the story and when I found myself getting bored with the game I had to remind myself to keep pursuing the main story.

While certain shortcomings take you out of the experience, Far Cry 2 provides an incredible experience nonetheless. I thought I would quickly burn out with the game, especially after seeing much of what it had to offer, but I found myself returning to see it to its end. Far Cry 2 was a great purchase, especially considering how little I actually paid for it.

The Best Adventure in Years

Austin Auclair — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 12:04:00 GMT

I’m going to cut to the chase on this one. I absolutely loved playing Gemini Rue from start to finish. It’s easily the best adventure game I’ve played in years. Even though the game was released after I received a promotion at work, and I therefore had even less free time than usual, after a few minutes into Gemini Rue there was no question that the game was something that I had to make time for.

Set in a sci-fi universe with a film-noir atmosphere, Gemini Rue splits its time between an ex mob-employed assassin, Azriel, and a man named Charlie, Delta Six, a patient in an unnamed (at first) rehabilitation facility. You switch between both characters in the game as the plot unfolds and slowly connects. The dual storyline helps keep the game moving since when I got stuck on one side of it, I’d switch to another character and pursue their story further.

The world of Gemini Rue matches the story it tells perfectly. The scenery and the game’s characters are simply drawn but detailed where important. The mining town of Pittsburgh is eternally raining thanks to weather control systems created for the industry. Rain constantly gushes, streaming the city’s trash and filth through its streets. The rehabilitation center is white and sterile but certain parts of it reveal a rusty and corroded infrastructure.

Gemini Rue flows well with an investigative approach to the adventure genre. Light on inventory items, instead you mostly gather information and apply those clues to further the plot. During the few occasions when I was stuck in Gemini Rue I was always confident that it was because I had overlooked a detail or hadn’t thought things through. The game never had me making odd leaps of logic.

Interspersed in Gemini Rue are action sequences of gun play. At first these moments of action seem out of place, especially for an adventure game, but as I progressed through Gemini Rue I began to understand their value. Adventure games often have problems with pacing. It’s hard to convey a sense of urgency in the video game genre because of its basic structure of solving puzzles. Most adventure games speed up the plot or communicate danger to their players through cut-scenes and then dump them into the next moment of calm. Gemini Rue’s action sequences create heart-pounding moments that complement the cerebral mystery-solving parts of the game without taking you out of the experience.

Fantastic voice acting (I heard a few WadjetEye Games veterans in there), intriguing story, and engaging characters all make Gemini Rue a video game that shouldn’t be missed. Joshua Nuenberger, Gemini Rue’s developer and designer, has done an amazing job. Even if you’ve never played an adventure game or don’t like them, go buy this game right now.

*Sorry for the lack of screenshots, my graphics card has died. I'll update this post once it's fixed; didn't want to sit on this post any longer. Please check out Wadjet Eye Game's site linked above for screenshots and the game's trailer is below - you definitely want to check this game out*

Nostalgia isn't always rose-colored.

Austin Auclair — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 14:00:00 GMT

As discussed many times on this blog, I grew up loving all of Sierra On-line’s now classic adventure games. A gift from my grandparents, King’s Quest V was my first true entry into the adventure game genre and I was instantly hooked. Once I had enough money saved up from doing chores I rushed out and bought the boxed set of the King’s Quest series (games one through six at the time). After playing through the first two installments I fell in love with adventure games even further.

It was reaching King’s Quest III: To Heir is Human, however, where the video game genre almost lost me. I was shocked to learn that the game didn’t star King Graham but some young boy named Gwydion, a slave to an evil wizard. Even worse for me was that King’s Quest III was designed in a completely different style from the other King’s Quest games.

As Gwydion you must find a way to escape captivity by collecting ingredients to magic spells from around the wizard’s home and the surrounding countryside. But if the wizard catches you with any of the forbidden items he immediately kills you.

The game becomes a matter of timing as you must gather materials as quickly as you can and hope to return to your room in time before the wizard returns from a trip or wakes up from a nap. Your room is the only place the wizard won’t go and you can hide your goods under your bed. What made the game frustrating was that there wasn’t an obvious way to gauge when the wizard would return and if you didn’t save cautiously you would have to start the game over again. It was King’s Quest III that forced me to learn to keep many save game slots in case I saved at what turned out to be a dead end.

Another wearisome aspect of King’s Quest III was the magic spells you had to cast, as they were essentially a copy protection program built into the structure of the game itself. A grinding and tedious process, you had to apply the ingredients in a very particular fashion and would only know what to do if you had the game’s manual, which listed very specific instructions.

These prejudices against the original version of King’s Quest III are what fueled my excitement upon hearing that Anonymous Game Developers Interactive (AGDI) had been quietly working on a remake of the game and that it would be ready for release soon. I had played AGDI’s remakes of the first two King’s Quest games and found them to be excellent. Not only did the developer remake the games visually, from EGA to VGA graphics, but they shored up what were fairly thin stories; especially King’s Quest II. Receiving a review copy of the game I could not wait to play to see what AGDI had done to fix my least favorite King’s Quest.

At the start I found that AGDI hadn’t let me down as their version of King’s Quest III was beautifully rendered and highly interactive. “Interactive-ness” is something I rant about when it comes to adventure games. It drives me crazy when games give their players a generic, canned response to everything they do. A player should be rewarded for trying random solutions to puzzles and for exploring the world the developer has worked so hard to create. Another indie adventure developer, Infamous Adventures, also remade King’s Quest III a couple years ago and while it was a good game, its lack of interaction with its own world ultimately made playing the game a boring experience. AGDI was quite thorough in its creation of the King’s Quest III world and nearly every rock and tree elicits a unique response, making exploring every screen a pleasure.

There are many things I enjoyed about AGDI’s remake of King’s Quest III – like great voice acting, good sound design, and its novel approach in addressing some of the original game’s problems.

In one part of the game you must sneak into the tree house lair of some bandits. There’s always a bandit inside (who immediately kills you) but sometimes you can catch the bandit asleep, allowing you to steal their bag of coins. The only way to catch the bandit asleep is to save the game right before entering and repeatedly load it each time you’re killed – eventually you’ll walk in and find him asleep. The fact that collecting the bag of coins is necessary to advance in the game makes the saving/loading process exceedingly frustrating and infuriating.

I realize that the tree house problem is just a carry-over from the original version where you had to do the same thing (which was exasperating back when I first played it too), but in a remake that sort of poor game design should have been rewritten. A representative from AGDI emailed and said that they would look into this particular problem and would possibly fix for the next version of the game. Another problem I brought up here seems to have been a bug and they'll fix that too; removed my mention of it here. Thanks guys!

AGDI fixed many of King’s Quest III’s other problems. They added a timer at the top of the screen that changes color based on how much time you have until the wizard reappears, giving you plenty of warning to hide illicit magical items under your bed before he returns. Also, when playing the original version of the game you were killed by the wizard quite often for carrying what seemed to be innocuous items. All illicit items in the remake are highlighted in your inventory screen with a blue glow which is immensely helpful for knowing what needs to be hidden before the wizard returns.

Fans of the King’s Quest series should most certainly play AGDI’s remake of King’s Quest III but should first realize that it hasn’t gone too far from the original game. I hope that by pointing out the problem I encountered everyone else will have a much smoother experience. AGDI has added a lot to the ending of King’s Quest III (once you’re captured by pirates) and is worth playing through. There are a lot of allusions to future King’s Quest installments that weren’t in the original game and also forms its own story line. AGDI often releases updated versions of their remakes so I hope that the problems I encountered will be phased out later.

I, however, am done with playing King’s Quest III. The original game and its remakes have their place in the canon of King’s Quest games, but no amount of revamping has been able to fix what wasn’t a great game in the first place.