I’ve played web-based MMO rpgs and strategy games occasionally, usually in streaks. The other night I started a campaign of Imperia Online. The game is very basic turn-based (or time-based) strategy / kingdom management game, with lots of optimizing, number-crunching and prioriting to do. Basically you build resource building facilities to be able to produce your fighting forces and keep the production up as going to war is gonna eat a lot of those forces. So, in a few words, lots of fun for your war-monging geeky engineer type, right?

Despite the appealing (if not so much innovative) concept I gave up the game pretty quickly. The reason was (more…)

Steampunk Action

The player controls a stempunk-style flying copter thingy which drags a massive rock on a chain behind it. The basic idea is to swat at enemies by swinging this rock-in-a-chain. The copter is controlled with the mouse; the rock follows behind following the laws of physics (yes, this game uses physics engine, too). The player can swing the rock into action with a circular flying motion. (more…)

As a result there have been many attempts to list, categorize and capture the rules for game usability. One such effort is Interaction Design Patterns, an on-going project of Eelke Folmer, assistant Professor at the Univ. of Nevada and a game and software engineering scholar. (more…)

Not the download sites, mind you. It is just the fact that a game that has not really garnered enough interest (yet, I’m sure it will pick up from this) that anyone would have written reviews or even small features about it is already cracked and available on a dozen or so torrent sites. These are really diligent and active types, these warez dudez. With a lot of free time to boot.

And for a game that has a free demo and a really competitive price ($9.95). That sucks. That just sucks. I’m not saying that the availability of the pirated version would necessarily effect the amount of purchases of the game (that is too complex a subject to tackle right now in this space), but the other side of this coin as well. If someone has time to crack a game, I would hope that someone else would have time to give the game a little spotlight on some of these indie game sites or blogs or somewhere. Just to keep the world in balance and in good karma

Rant off.

Fragile Ball is a puzzle game for Windows machines developed by Hirofumi Hattori of Bimboosoft. You can download a five-level demo from the game’s web site. The idea of the game is simple: You have to guide the fragile ball to the end of the level, but instead of controlling the ball you can only tilt the rest of the level to let the ball roll towards the exit. (more…)

• Fez,
• Gish 2,
• Global Conflicts: Palestine,
• Penumbra: Overture,
• Schizoid,
• Virtual Villagers 2 and
• Vox Imperium to name a few.

So it is going to be a very busy Autumn, in a good kind of way: I will be introducing the IGF2008 entrants all Autumn while continuing my series of IGF2007 finalist reviews. Stay tuned is all I can say. BTW, the IGF2008 entrant list is so huge that I cannot imagine to be able to pick out every interesting item on there, so if you see anything interesting, let me know by posting a comment and I’ll write a feature about the game.