So the good people at Zachtronics Industries sent me a review copy of their latest puzzle game, SpaceChem. After playing the game for a bit, I ran into a problem that I have never run into when reviewing a game.
I can’t finish the tutorial.
It’s not that I’ve run into a bug or anything. I just can’t figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. I feel like I missed a prerequisite college class that’s required to understand the game. What’s truly infuriating about the whole situation is that the game has been receiving rave reviews left and right, so obviously, I’m the one who is broken, not the game.
I know there’s a demo for the game on Steam so go ahead and download that. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did. It really does look like it’d be a neat game once you figure it out.
EDIT: And now I feel silly. Right after writing this, I gave the game another shot and I figured out the solution to my problem right away. The tutorial wanted me to move a bonder from one place to another on the board, whereas I was erroneously trying to create a new bonder.
Ever since I played Puzzle Quest on XBLA, I’ve thought that it would be cool to make a real puzzle RPG. Fun though Puzzle Quest was, it was basically just Bejewelled with a fantasy setting, character customization, and special moves. In my mind, I pictured a puzzle game where you’d have an RPG character or party and you’d have to get through carefully designed puzzle dungeons, doing all the things you’d normally do in an RPG, but in bite-sized portions with a limited number of solutions.
Well, it’s not quite what I had in mind, but Desktop Dungeons is the closest thing I’ve seen yet and it’s even more fun than I expected. You pick a race, a class, and a gameplay mode, and off you go to solve a single map dungeon, fighting monsters, learning spells, gaining XP, items, and other bonuses in an attempt to become powerful enough to defeat the boss or bosses. In about 10-20 minutes, you can get the full RPG experience, going from a LV1 nobody to an unstoppable force of nature…assuming you don’t die.
One of the most clever design choices in Desktop Dungeons is how it gives the player a sense of progression even though a single game can be finished in under half an hour. As the player wins games and succeed at specific challenges, they unlock a host of new features like more races & classes (in total, 7 races, 15 regular classes, and 3 special race/class monster hybrids), new theme dungeons, better items and more. There’s even a super-hard three part campaign.
The game has a surprising amount of depth to it – in just a few hours, I’ve already learned a number of neat strategies that I wouldn’t have thought of early on. Most of the different classes are well designed and several of them require the player to completely rethink their common strategies to be effective. Shops and different gods to worship (each with their own pros & cons) keeps the game from becoming boring and the constant desire to win a new mode with a new class and unlock something new or just to boost your gold maximum or improve the quality of shop items keeps the player coming back for more.
If there is one thing that will make or break this game for some people, it’s the randomness. Unlike the game idea I’ve been considering for years with its predesigned dungeons, Desktop Dungeons is highly random. Sure, when you enter the Crpyt dungeon, you know you’re going to run into zombies, skeletons, and vampires, but from game to game, the dungeon layout and items change. On the plus side, this gives the game a great deal of replayability. On the negative side, sometimes you get very unlucky. It’s quite possible to possible to play the same mode with the same character class and have an easy time the first time and then get a layout that’s literally impossible to beat the second time because you’re stuck in a small room and every exit is blocked by a high level monster. It’s not so common that it’s a dealbreaker and it only takes a moment to start a new game when that happens, but it’s still an annoyance.
Annoying randomness aside, Desktop Dungeons is a highly engrossing, entertaining, and unique game that has provided some of the most enjoyable hours of gaming I’ve had this year. Best of all, it’s completely free! The developers are currently working on a paid version with new features and higher production values, but in the meantime if you like RPGs and puzzle games, I highly recommend playing the current free version ASAP. You can get it here.
It’s time for a whole bunch of mini-reviews! Let’s get started!
First up, it’s Vorpal for XBLIG. It’s a rather good vertical bullet hell shmup. Unlike most shmups, there are no real levels – the entire game consists of boss fights. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though – the boss fights are fun and there’s enough variety in bullet patterns to keep things interesting. As far as bullet hell shmups go, it’s pretty easy on the Normal mode, but of course, pretty easy for a bullet hell shmup means that it’s still fairly difficult. Wasn’t a big fan of the trance music, but the visual style – consisting of only black, white, and red – works surprisingly well. At only 80 MS points, it’s well worth a shot if you’re a fan of the genre or would like to give the genre a try.
Next up, we have Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes. This is one of those insanely hard platformers like I Wanna Be the Guy or Super Meat Boy. If you have a masochistic streak or are just really skilled, then you’ll definitely want to pick this game up since it’s very well done – clever level designs and nice retro aesthetic. Everyone else should probably stay far, far away. Only 80 MS points.
Next, Astroman and A.R.E.S. Astroman is an XBLIG title for 240 MS points, whereas A.R.E.S. is a Dream-Build-Play winner that is now available on Steam for $10. Both games have a Metroid-lite feel to them – you explore large levels, shoot monsters, and find upgrades that make yourself (and in the case of Astroman, your space ship) more powerful and versatile. Of the two, Astroman has more of a focus on exploration, whereas A.R.E.S. has a greater focus on combat. Both games are pretty good and offer a nice amount of content for the price, however, there are better Metroid-style games out there for download like Cave Story (PC/Wii), Shadow Complex (360), Iji (PC), and Hero Core (PC) so pick those up first if you haven’t already.
And now for my favorite game of this bunch, Atom Zombie Smasher for the PC ($15) from the creator of Flotilla (360/PC). Atom Zombie Smasher is a great puzzle/strategy hybrid that puts you in charge of a zombie apocalypse evacuation. The primary gameplay places you in a section of city with a variety of tools (Evac Helicopter, Barricades, Artillery, Infantry, etc.) and your goal is to rescue as many people as possible before the zombies get them. Between stages, you gain XP for your different tools (which can be used to purchase various upgrades) and see the zombie infestation spread on a Risk-like map. You and the zombies also gain points which can unlock new features (or problems in the case of the zombies) like research scientists, giant zombies, and orbital death beams. All of this would be enough to make for a good game, but then you also throw in a strange sense of humor, mod support, and a number of gameplay options, and you’ve got a very addictive game that you’re sure to replay again and again. Very highly recommended.
It’s very obvious that the developer of Bonded Realities is a big fan of Earthbound. From the cartoony visual style and silly enemies to the menu and font styles to even using PP instead of MP, everything about Bonded Realities screams Earthbound. So is this the fan-made Earthbound sequel we’ve all been waiting for? Sadly, no.
That’s not to say that Bonded Realities is horrible or anything. The music is good and there’s a number of amusing lines of description and dialogue. The monsters are generally based on bad puns which I’m all in favor of and each enemy has a good number of unique lines of description for attacks and the like. A save anywhere feature and the ability to turn off encounters increase accessibility. And at 80 MS points for about 3-4 hours of content, it offers a decent value.
Where the game falls down is in the gameplay. My strategy for most random battles consisted of mashing the A button (selecting Fight) while surfing the Internet. Later on (after buying a bunch of PP restoration items), I would occasionally throw a Group Attack technique in to make it go a little faster, but otherwise the Fight-Fight-Fight-Fight strategy served me well. Monster groups cap at 3 monsters per battle and generally monsters in a single location all have similar HP & offensive capabilities. Unless you’re severely underleveled or start a fight in critical condition, you’re never in any danger from a random encounter. Moreover, your characters don’t have very many abilities to begin with so even if I wanted to be more strategic with the combat, it’s not really an option (even at the end of the game, I only had 4-5 spells per character). Boss fights require a little more strategy and the final boss fight changes things up some, but overall the combat is very shallow.
There’s next to no character customization. LV-Ups bonuses and abilities are all predetermined and most equipment falls under a strict Sword 2 is better than Sword 1 line of progression. There are also a few minor annoyances like the Menu button being Start (instead of Y like pretty much every other RPG) or the fact that the game doesn’t tell you how much damage enemy attacks deal (you just see your HP drop). On the plus side, LV-Ups come at a relatively fast pace, and there are a few puzzles and mazes to add variety to dungeon exploration.
Overall, I had mixed feelings upon finishing Bonded Realities. Although I enjoyed the game’s quirky style, I found the gameplay generic and boring. I’d love to see a sequel that builds on the first game’s strengths while offering more sophisticated and better balanced gameplay, but in the meantime, I can only recommend Bonded Realities to novice RPG players and those who can overlook poor gameplay.
Longtime fans of the site will know that I am a huge Pac-Man: Championship Edition fan and have the highest recorded score in the game (well, before they wiped the leaderboards clean a few months back anyway) so it was with great anticipation that I took some time out from developing to play the sequel, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX.
I can say without hyperbole, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is a worthy sequel to some of the best games ever created (the original Pac-Man and Pac-Man: Championship Edition) and is probably the best game that will come out this year. Given that this is a year that has included gems like Super Meat Boy & Civilization V, that’s saying a lot.
The style is a little different than the original due to a few new additions. Ghost trains – long processions of ghosts that follow your every move, just waiting to be devoured in a score boosting massacre of awesomeness - are great fun and bombs that can be used at any time to scare all ghosts back into the trap in the middle (albeit at a hit to your speed level) help to make the game more accessible to beginners. To go with the ghost trains, sleeping ghosts are scattered throughout the maps and by running past them, you can wake them up and add them to your ghost train. Oh and some sleeping ghosts have power pellets within them to add to the ghost clearing combo craziness. A bullet-time effect when you’re about to die, thus allowing you to avoid defeat helps to make the game more about strategy and planning rather than just quick reflexes. That’s not to say that quick reflexes aren’t necessary, just that it’s a bit more manageable. Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is now more about good strategy and planning and less about having your perfect run ruined because the ghost with the random AI decided to step in front of you.
There’s a lot more game here this time. Whereas the first game only had 5 courses, this one has 9 – Championship Edition I & II, Highway, Junction, Spiral, Manhattan, Dungeon, Half, and Darkness. Each course has a number of modes as well – Score Attack in both 5 and 10 minute varieties, various Time Trials (stuff like eat 6 fruit as quickly as possible) and Ghost Combo mode. There’s a Free mode with unlimited lives and bombs where you can turn off random ghosts that is great for beginners or experts trying to perfect their technique. You can choose between 3 difficulties – make it easier for more lives & bombs or make it harder for a higher initial speed level (making it easier to get points). Oh and there are also 5 songs you can choose from (the original only had one song) and a number of graphic skins that you can use to customize your playing experience.
Even more than its predecessor, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is a game about high scores. Thanks to the close shave slowdown effect & your bombs, it’s much easier to stay alive than it was in the first game – in fact, one of the game’s achievements is to play a perfect game. However, mere survival isn’t the goal – the goal is to climb through the leaderboards with better and better scores. And what leaderboards! There are a ton of leaderboards to compete on (just about 1 for each course & mode combination) plus there are total score leaderboards for the truly dedicated. And as a nice touch, your current rank in each mode is shown when you select a course to play.
The User Interface has been upgraded to be more useful. A bar that shows how much power pill charge you have left is useful to both novices and experts alike, but expert players will especially appreciate having the current speed value displayed as well as a number total of how many fruits you’ve eaten for each side – very helpful if you want to plan out more complicated board clearing combinations than just keeping both sides equal.
There’s more content, more customization, improvements for both beginners and expert players alike, but most importantly, Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX is simply more fun than its predecessor. The gameplay style is a little different than the first Championship Edition due to the various additions they’ve made so you might want to keep the first game installed for nostalgia and the occasional change of pace, but all in all, I can say that the new additions and improvements to Championship Edition DX make for a much more enjoyable game that rewards skillful play with pure joy. If this game was a full retail release at $60, I would still recommend a purchase – at a mere 800 MS points ($10), your course is clear. Pac-Man: Championship Edition DX needs to be the next game you purchase.
No shooting this time – a first for Radiangames. Don’t let that stop you from downloading it though, because Radiangames Fluid is just as excellent as his other games. Race around collecting pellets that turn into enemies – kind of like Halfbrick Echoes. And just like Halfbrick Echoes, Radiangames Fluid has quickly become one of my favorite XBox Live Indie Games. 30+ levels, time-based medals to earn, and an attractive visual & audio style round out the package.
It’s only 80 MS points so it’s a no brainer – go get it!
Just a quick update on Cthulhu Saves the World – we’re approaching the finish line! Bill is working on the final dungeon and I’m working on monster stats & abilities. We were planning an October release, however it turns out that there are already 3 big RPG releases on the XBox 360 in October – Fallout: New Vegas (10/19), Costume Quest (10/20), and Fable III (10/26). That’s quite a bit more competition than we would like to go up against as a small indie group so we’re probably going to push the game’s release to November so that we aren’t overshadowed by the other releases (November is pretty dry for RPGs outside of another Ys game on the PSP). Plus this gives us a little extra time to polish things up and make sure there aren’t any bugs.
In other XBox Live Indie Game news, radiangames Crossfire’s price has dropped to 80 MS points. At 240 points, it was one of my favorite games on the service so now it’s definitely worth it.
Also, there are a couple of new XBLIGs that are worth checking out. The first is Explosionade from Mommy’s Best Games. It’s a 2D score-oriented mech shooter. Past games from MBG include Shoot 1Up and Weapon of Choice so their background alone should be enough to convince you that you need to check it out.
Second, Coral’s Curse is quite the interesting game. It’s a 2D exploration game like Metroid & the DS Castlevanias, however there’s one big twist – your main character has been turned into a half-snake monster. This results in some rather interesting gameplay where you control your front half with one analog stick and your tail with the other.
While I was playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent late one night, I noticed a huge spider crawling on the wall near me. I paused the game, killed the spider, and then tried to play the game some more. Nope, my nerves were too frazzled at that point and I had to call it quits for the night.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is the new survival horror game from Frictional Games, makers of the Penumbra series. Like the Penumbra games, it is a first person survival horror game with an emphasis on physics puzzles. Even more so than Penumbra, you’re out of your league in Amnesia. Not only do you not have a weapon, but just looking at a monster causes your sanity to drop. How’s that for Lovecraftian?
I thought the game took a little too long to get to the good stuff (the first 30-60 minutes were decidedly unscary), but once it hits its stride, it’s well done and plenty scary. You can tell this is an indie game – the graphics look about a generation or two behind the times – but when you’re hiding from an unkillable monster or fleeing in terror, it’s easy to overlook such things.
Amnesia reminds me a great deal of Call of Cthulhu – Dark Corners of the Earth, one of my favorite horror games in recent years. I’d say Amnesia isn’t quite as good as the Call of Cthulhu game - understandable since I’m sure that the Cthulhu developers had a much bigger team and budget to work with. Still, not quite as good as excellent still equals a great game. Great horror games are a rare commodity these days so it would be a shame to pass up on one as good as Amnesia.
Old School Adventure is a platformer, but rather than having separate levels, there’s just one big interconnected world to explore similar to games like Metroid & Castlevania. There are several different power-ups that you can gain like spike armor & flying boots and a number of colored keys scattered here and there and it’s up to you to figure out how to get through the big maze that is the game’s world.
Old School Adventure does something I’ve rarely seen before – it makes backtracking interesting. You’ll go through a set of obstacles and then later, you’ll have to go back through this set again, but with a different power-up active which ends up transforming the experience drastically. This kind of intelligent level design is common throughout the entire game.
The game is fairly difficult, but you have unlimited lives and checkpoints are frequent so it doesn’t become oppressive. The game will probably take about an hour or two to finish the first time which is a little on the short side, but I’d rather have a tightly designed shorter game than a longer game with a lot of pointless filler.
Ignore the mediocre user ratings (which are probably mostly due to the game’s MS Paint-esque visuals), Old School Adventure has it where it counts – great gameplay. At only 80 MS points, it’s an easy recommendation.
Hypership Out of Control is a vertical scrolling dodge-em-up. Sure, you do have a gun that helps you take out small obstacles (and big obstacles when you have the super gun powerup), but that’s not the point. See, your brakes are out, your ship is accelerating to crazy speeds, and it’s up to you to stay alive as long as possible, while trying to wrack up a fantastic score by collecting coins, bombs, and power-ups.
The 10 levels are well designed, the animation is smooth (60 fps, baby!), up to 4 player support, and deeper gameplay than it seems at first – featuring a nice mixture of strategy, trial & error, and reflexes – however the game doesn’t stop there. Besides Normal mode, Practice mode, and Hardcore mode (1 life), there’s Super Speed mode (no speed limit), and Coin Down (unlimited lives, but your coin total counts down constantly and you lose if it reaches 0). 20 “awardments” give you a variety of goals to strive for beyond just high scores. However, high score chasing is plenty rewarding since Hypership Out of Control includes online score sharing for the 4 main modes if you have a Live Gold account.
With its authentic retro graphics and music, dirt cheap price tag (80 MS points, i.e. $1 USD), and addicting “Just one more try” gameplay, Hypership Out of Control is one of the finest XBLIGs to be released to date. If you like old-school high score chasing arcade games, you need this game ASAP.
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