Robot Unicorn Attack
Just... play it. If you haven't already.

Persistence is futile!

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:50 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Command & Conquer - free!
The ol' classic Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (+ Expansion), and C&C: Red Alert are now available for free, to help promote the release of Command & Conquer 4.

Command & Conquer - Classics

It took me a while to realize "Tiberian Dawn" was actually the original C&C. I am so old-school. Back then we knew it as, "The unofficial sequel to Dune 2." Yeah, they aren't harvesting spice on Arakis, you were harvesting tiberium or whatever-it-was-called on Earth... But yeah. It's perhaps not THE great-grandaddy of RTS's, but it's definitely one of the classics that spawned the genre.

(Tangent: my first RTS game was the much-forgotten MindCraft game, "Siege.")

I spent a few very late nights back in the day playing the first one, but never played the other two. Should be fun!

Labels: Free Games, retro, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:01 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Voxelstein 3D
A bit of indie randomness for your day:

Voxelstein 3D

"Voxelstein 3D is a voxel based FPS game in the spirit of Wolfenstein 3D. It uses Ken Silverman's Voxlap engine."

Unlike the original Wolf3D, this game plays in actual 3D, with stairways, jumping, and so forth. But this is certainly an homage to that original game, done with a pretty unique - and rarely seen, nowadays - technology. It needs some serious coats of polish, but it's entertaining and reasonably playable now.

I understand development is continuing, but the public release hasn't been updated in a while. Hmmm, that sounds awkwardly familiar... Besides, now in 2010, the picture of George W. Bush in the Nazi stronghold is now not just silly but dated.

Some background: A voxel is effectively a 3D pixel - so the entire world here is created out of tiny 3D cubes. It was pretty impressive technology back in the early 90's, but when modern 3D cards took hold - and because of patent limitations - it pretty much disappeared. Ken Silverman, the creator of the engine, was the brains behind the engine that fueled Duke Nukem 3D (among other games). Old fart that I am, I actually recognized his name from Ken's Labyrinth, an indie game (back in the day it was called "shareware") he created in response to Wolfenstein 3D. That little project was what got him the job with Apogee / 3D Realms in the first place.

While the beginning of Voxelstein 3D is a bit tedious, I did like how you have to cut your way through the bars of your prison with a knife. That's an interesting use of voxel technology. Hint - you just have to cut a hole in the top and bottom of the bar... the rest will fall away.

While the game is not yet anywhere near what I'd consider a commercially viable release (and the use of the Wolfenstein 3D intellectual property is definitely a no-no), this is one of those examples of indie cleverness that I love to see.

(Hat Tip to IndieGames.com)

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:34 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Visions & Voices
Lovecraftian RPG using the RPG Maker system:

Visions & Voices

Hat tip to (and mini-review at) Play This Thing!

Labels: Free Games, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:46 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Quest for Glory II Remake
The Quest for Glory II: Trial By Fire remake is now available. The original is now almost old enough to vote. So I guess a remake is reasonable.

AGD is also famous for having done the remakes of King's Quest 1 and 2. According to some reports, the remake is superior to the original not only in graphics quality, but in gameplay as well. Several of the original game's rougher edges have been smoothed out, and combat is reportedly much cleaner.

Note: They do have a commercial game available, as well, entitled Al Emmo and the Lost Duchman's Mine. Now, creating a full-on remake and giving it away for free is a stupidly hard way to market one's own game (as is most of game development), but it's clear the Quest for Glory remake was more of a labor of love than a marketing strategy.

Anyway, the QFG2 remake clocks in at about 85 megs.

For interested developers out there, the remake was created using AGS - Adventure Game Studio. It's free, for those who would like to try their hand at developing old-school point & click adventure games.

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Free Game - Titans of Steel: Warring Suns
I just got this last night from local indie author Eric Peterson, letting me know that his mecha combat game (with RPG elements!) Titans of Steel: Warring Suns is now available as a free download.

He writes:

Titans of Steel: Warring Suns now a complete free download. If anyone wants to know what its like to sit and pull at your chin whiskers this is the game for you. Servers have had overload problems which in a small way has made me happy.

http://www.gamershell.com/pc/titans_of_steel_warring_suns/

I dig giant mecha battles, as an old Battletech / Mechwarrior fan, and I dig turn-based, hex-grid combat just fine, so I'm grabbing myself a copy. You can also get it from other mirrors listed at the publisher's site, Matrix Games.

Grab it now, and rip off a mecha's (er, titan's) arm in full top-down, turn-based glory today! (Can you beat a titan with it's own torn-off arm in this game? I'm sure it's cool either way, but hey... you KNOW you were gonna ask...) It's a 300 meg download, so you'll need to give yourself a few minutes of head-start time.

Labels: Free Games, strategy games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:34 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Flash Element TD 2
Oh, dear.

As if I needed another distraction.

Flash Element Tower Defense 2 is out.

New maps, new sounds, new graphics, same addictive save-for-better-interest-rate mechanic. And while it's done up more cutsey than past games, the quotes from the game have a little bit of bite. Like the red groupers complaining, "Safety in numbers, my a**!" In this one, they can pick up your elements and move them back to the starting point. If you kill them on the way home, they'll drop the element where they stood, making it a shorter path for the next creep to grab your stuff.

Besides the tower upgrades found in the original game, there are improved versions of the basic towers like those found in Vector TD. There's a store where you can buy things (like improved interest, or resetting your elements back to their starting positions) in-between rounds with tokens (not cash), while towers can be bought and upgraded with cash. Towers can also improve with experience, giving you more incentive to keep 'em around for a while.

All-in-all... this seems to be a dangerous little game. Very dangerous. Do Not Play. You have been warned.

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:27 AM (Permalink) 11 comments links to this post

 
Free Game: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
This has been around for a couple of years, but I became re-acquainted with it yesterday.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Steve Meretzky and Douglas Adams, was one of Infocom's most popular (and most difficult) text adventure games. Naturally, it was based on Douglas Adam's hit book series of the same name. The BBC has created an online version of the game - with illustrations. Your saved games go to a public registry, so you need to name your game carefully to avoid getting it stomped on by other players.

Play The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

For yet more entertainment value, the BBC has an interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams in the 1980's to produce The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Adams and his agent actually approached Infocom with the idea, as Adams was a fan of Infocom adventure games (particularly Suspended, by Mike Berlyn).

An excerpt from the interview: "At first I was a little shy to speak my mind, given Douglas' fame and brilliance and given that we were adapting his material. As a result, the early parts of the game (which are the parts we designed first) are structurally weakest, in terms of being too linear and relying too heavily on prior familiarity with the Hitchhiker's story. I'm referring to the Earth and Vogon Ship sections of the game. Later, as Douglas became more comfortable working in a non-linear medium, and as I became more comfortable making my opinions known, the game became much stronger. I think that once you arrive at the Heart of Gold, the structure of the game changes for the better, becoming less linear, more original, fairer to the player, and just plain more fun. Douglas always described the structure of the game as "pear shaped" - narrow toward the stem end, then suddenly ballooning wider, and finally coming together at the end. "

Another little tidbit from the interview that I didn't know: The "biscuit story" from So Long and Thanks For All the Fish really happened to Adams!

Interview with Steve Meretzky about his collaboration with Douglas Adams

Curiously enough, the babel fish puzzle is listed as one of the nastiest puzzles in adventure-game history, yet I was never stumped until I got on board the Heart of Gold. However, I do remember that puzzle with great fondness...


(Vaguely) related semi-random stringing together of verbs and nouns with the occasional article, adjective, and adverb:
* Adventure Gaming Alive and Well?
* Indie Interview: Mike Rubin
* Does Textfyre Have a Chance of Reviving the Commercial Text Adventure?
* A Twisty Little Maze of Passages, All Different
.

Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
Free Adventure Game: Emily Enough
I guess I do have a closet fascination with the macabre, after all. Via TIGSource this morning, I learned about this adventure game called Emily Enough: Imprisoned, a graphic adventure game which is entirely sick and wrong in a darkly humorous way.

You play Emily Enough, a cute, extremely precocious and unrepentant 11-year-old girl who has been committed to a mental institution for murdering her parents and servants with a knife. Your job, naturally enough, is to escape the institution, which is now being run by a nearly bankrupt, amoral pharmaceutical company.

The game is plainly sick, twisted, and wrong. Yet also funny in a very black-humor kind of way. To keep the tone light and humorous, the violence is kept off-camera for the most part.

It can be argued that the humor and entertainment value of the game is dependent upon it dealing with such an incredibly uncomfortable, disturbing subject. The characters and situations are deliberately over-the-top in order to divorce the game's subject matter from anything resembling reality. It's like the schoolyard songs about doing violence to teachers. Taken completely out of context of real-world shootings, they are funny hyperbole.

Likewise, the unreality of the context is what makes it possible to consider grisly murder as a possible solution to puzzles. The game's "safe" environment makes the unthinkable sound reasonable. But try and describe it outside of the context of the game, and it sounds like a poster-child candidate for anti-game legislation.

And maybe that's why Emily Enough succeeds, from my perspective, where "Super Columbine Massacre RPG" failed. SCMRPG tried to straddle both sides of the line, ambivalently alternating between being an over-the-top parody and a serious exploration of a brutal, emotionally-charged real event.

Emily also doesn't limit itself to its principle subject matter, nor at any time tries to take itself too seriously. It pokes fun at everything from the media, to the Bush administration, to the conventions of the graphic adventure game genre. As an example of the latter, at one point she refuses to pick up an object as directed by the player, stating, "Why would I want that cord? Do you think I just go around picking up odd objects in order to use them at some point in the future to complete some inane task?"

As a game, it suffers from some of the problems of other games of this type. Some puzzles are introduced before they are solvable. Not only does this make the solutions feel forced and arbitrary (and thus, frustrating) in their sequencing, but it also requires the player to go back and revisit the entire game world in search of inexplicable, mysterious changes that have happened just because you happened to talk to someone about something peripherally related. In addition, the game has its share of "hunt-the-pixel" puzzles.

But it's a quick, funny game. Oh, and it's free.

With strong language, morbid subject matter, and twisted humor, this game is most definitely not for everyone. It's also a game that would never be a major commercial release for several very good reasons. Download at your own risk if you think it might be your cup of arsenic-laced tea:

Emily Enough: Imprisoned


(Vaguely) related stupidity:
* Super Columbine Massacre RPG Too Hot For Slamdance
* Coming Soon: More Graphic Adventure Game Goodness?
* Game Design: Tough Choices

.

Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:18 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Time to Freely Command & Conquer
The original Command & Conquer (gold edition) is now available for free from EA, to celebrate its 12th anniversary of its release. You need to burn the ISO images onto CD-ROMs in order to play the game, but hey.... free classic game!

Man, has it been that long? Freaky. Still, it was a very good game... though I preferred Warcraft II at the time. While its origins have been obscured over time and multiple sequels and prequels, Command & Conquer was originally something of a sequel to Westwood's earlier Dune II - but without the encumbering license. They just substituted Tiberium for Spice, and ... voila!

So if you are in the mood for some old-school RTS actions, give it a try!

C&C 12th Anniversary - Download C&C Gold Free!

Labels: Free Games, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:21 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Free Game: Rose and Camellia - In English!
Perhaps the most unusual fighting game ever... Rose & Camellia... is now available in English.

Rose & Camellia is a web-based fighting game. But unlike other fighting games such as Street Fighter or Soul Caliber, you are not some highly trained martial artist with a mysterious destiny. You are a low-born woman wed into the noble Tsubakikoji family, turned widow on the day after your marriage to the eldest son of the clan. The other women in the household refuse to recognize your authority.

So you get into slap-fights with them until they bow to your claim!

Rose & Camelia uses the mouse to control your attacks and defense. You have to move the mouse across their cheek to attack - poor aiming results in a missed shot, and leaves you open to a counter attack. Proper mouse movement during your opponent's attack phase allows you to evade and counter-attack them. Each woman of the household has a different critical hit spot on their face where you can do extra damage to them.

So get to slapping those ladies silly!

Rose & Camellia

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:44 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
New Desktop TD Version Is Out
Dang it!

There's a new and improved version of Desktop Tower Defense - version 1.5 - now available.

Evil, evil, evil.

The new version "fixes" a popular exploit of making the creeps switch directions constantly to keep running the gauntlet. It now increases the amount of time it takes to sell a tower a little bit for each tower sold. It also includes new tower type (an ink tower, plus snap and boost towers), new creep types (dark creeps and morphing creeps), an improved bash tower, and more game modes. And new graphics and sound.

Yet another very easy way to lose a couple of hours of your life with little to show for it but a smile on your face.


(Vaguely) related running roughshod over seriousness:
* David Scott's New Tower Defense Game
* How To Earn $8000 / Month By Making a Free Flash Game
* Picking Apart Flash Element TD
.

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:37 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Vector TD Updated
So Vector TD has already been updated - there are now 50 levels instead of 40, the maps have been arranged a little differently (there are now easy, medium, and hard levels), and the game has been made a little easier to handle at earlier levels (it seems you get more cash for the early creeps), and a bit HARDER as the game progresses.

Very very cool.

This game is already eating up my free time. And now the two web-TD game masters, David Scott and Paul Preese, have teamed up to create an uber-partnership making web-based games.

This is gonna be a very interesting thing, indeed.

(Vaguely) related stuff:
* How To Make $8000 / Month Making a Free Flash Game
* David Scott's New Tower Defense Game
* Design: Picking Apart Flash Element TD

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
David Scott's New Tower Defense Game
David Scott is at it again with more "Tower Defense" addiction. The guy who addicted us to Flash Element TD (and the prettier but slightly less fun, IMO, Flash Circle TD) has now released the third - and probably best - game, Vector TD.

The new game brings back the ability to build up the interest rate between waves, which was by far the most compelling part of Flash Element TD. The new game also offers several different maps, from the easy "Switchback" map above (I "beat" it on the first try) to maps with far more challenging layouts and less obvious optimal placement locations. At least one map (I haven't tried them all) has a twist where path crosses over itself (making the corners where it crosses very obvious prime spots for towers).

As in most other popular TD games, the trick is tower placement, combinations, and upgrades. There are six colors of enemies (Blue, green, purple, red, yellow, and gray). All towers are the same size now, and there is no overlapping from Flash Element TD. There are 11 different kinds of towers, of four different colors. While each tower type offers unique behaviors, they are all strong versus one color of creep, and weak against one other color of creep. So while one red tower has the advantage of splash damage against all creeps, it works exceptionally well against red creeps but fares poorly against green.

As you can see, the graphics are clean and abstract. In the words of my daughter, when she saw me play, "That looks fun and the music's cool!" Curiously, there are no sound effects outside of the music.
At least in the switchback map I played, the creep paths are double-wide, and the creeps come in two columns. This makes ranges more interesting than the single-file line of Scott's earlier games. Though not quite as psycho as the random masses in Desktop TD.

One really nice "indie evangelism" bit I'd like to note here is that even though the game was funded / published / sponsored by Candystand.com, Scott gets his name placed prominently at the bottom of the game screen throughout. How many mainstream game designers dream about this kind of thing?

Anyway, this game looks quite likely to hammer my precious little spare time for the next while. Particularly with the multiple maps... Dang you, David! But congratulations!

VECTOR TD
(Vaguely) related vowels and consonants haphazardly grouped together:
* Design: Picking Apart Flash Element TD
* Rampant Coyote on Flash Element Tower Defense
* How To Earn $8000 Per Month Making a Free Flash Game
.

Labels: Free Games, Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:40 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
How To Earn $8000 / Month By Making a Free Flash Game.
Wow. It is possible to earn six figures in annual income on a single game programmed in approximately one month. The trick is - you have to make a really popular Flash game. Which is about like catching lightning in a bottle. But GigaOM has an interview with Paul Preese, author of Desktop Tower Defense, which shows just what is possible by a solo programmer.

I was pointed in the direction of this game by community members here after I evangelized Flash Element Tower Defense a few months ago. Like most Tower Defense games, it's wonderfully addictive and fun. And it's free. Yet this free game is clearing $8000 / month for the developer, with 20 million pageviews per month.

Why am I wasting my time writing games in Torque, I wonder?

Oh, wait, right... the trick is writing the RIGHT game. There are zillions of Flash games out there right now (some that are even pretty good) that aren't earning diddley. Like all successful games , it is just a combination of a great game, the appropriate marketing, and good luck. But in the interview, Paul outlines several things he did to increase his odds and help make the game the success it has become:

#1 - Take a Well-Known Genre and Make It Better
Ouch. Once again, pure innovation doesn't seem to cut it. Paul borrowed from the popular Warcraft III mod, and even from Flash Element TD, and built on that solid foundation. But he didn't just create a "me, too" product - he added some new ideas of his own. So yes - there's definitely some innovation in there. Sometimes it doesn't take much.

#2 - Promote Through Web Aggregation Sites
I'd say promote through any means possible. But it is interesting to see that as word-of-mouth (and word-of-social-bookmarking) grew, its slow start began to snowball.

#3 - Profit Through Ad Revenue
Once you get up to 20 million pageviews per month, I guess Adsense begins to make some real money. Though he's also getting some direct advertising deals as well. He's probably making much more than he'd have made if he tried to sell his game for $5 or $15 a pop.

#4 - Keep the Budget Low
Paul thinks he can create a game the scale of Desktop TD every month. It costs him $130 a month in server fees. If the game had cost a quarter-million to make, it might never have become profitable.

So there you go. This is not a formula for success by any stretch --- but indies should take note and learn from each success. Congratulations to Paul Preese for not only a successful game, but a truly fun and entertaining game. And a tip o' the sombrero to Coding Horror for the link!


(Vaguely) related envy...
* Design: Picking Apart Flash Element TD
* Quick Strategy Games
* RPG In a Week
* Should I Become An Indie Game Developer?
* The Ten Commandments of Indie Game Developers
* 20 Ways to Make Money Making Indie Games
* How to Avoid Making Money Making Indie Games

Read or Post Comments on the Forum. Or Not!

Labels: Biz, Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:49 AM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Now That's a Way To Say Thank You!
I wanted to point folks in the direction of this free game download from Battlezero.com: Trouble In CloudLand. I got an email from one of the developers saying that he was inspired to research Python and PyGame based upon my article in GameDev.net, "How To Build a Game In One Week From Scratch With No Budget."

Gotta say, they did a better job with it than I did :)

Anyway, this is a pretty simple but cure shooter with an interesting gameplay twist - you have to move towards the creature you are trying to shoot in order to shoot at it.

Congratulations on your game, Joshua and Jony! I hope this is the first of many!

Read or Post Comments In Our Forums

Labels: Free Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:43 PM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Quick Strategy Games
I'm as much a fan of good strategy games as I am of RPGs (in fact, that may explain why I have a greater attraction to more cerebral or turn-based RPGs than other kinds). I have a weakness for Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games - as my wife can probably attest, during the last two weeks of crunch mode at the Day Job, I found it very hard to jump right back into working on game development at night, and found myself either playing a flight sim or an RTS (or watching a video) when I got home.

I'm already anticipating lost productivity when Supreme Commander comes out next week.

Sometimes all I need is a "quick fix" - a little dose of exercising decision-making skills (hunting down a human opponent can be too taxing when I'm in one of THOSE moods) and I can get back to what I need to do (like writing a blog entry, or finishing my darn game!). I need an entire game which can be completed in just a few minutes. What are the options?

I can suggest a few. Of course, being who I am, I'm gonna recommend some good indie games. There are a ton of them out there, and I've only played a few, but here's what comes to mind:

FastCrawl is actually more of a roguelike RPG, but it is designed (on the quickest settings) to be playable from start-to-finish in less than twenty minutes. Like many other RPGs, the strategies include party formation against opponents, target selection, and resource management.

Slay is one of the best, quick (well, for "very small" islands) strategy games I've ever played. It boils down the concept of a wargame to its barest essentials. The graphics are almost ludicrously simple (it was originally designed to run on PDA's, IIRC), the game rules are likewise few and easy to understand. There is no randomness except for the AI's moves. Yet the game is very addictive and involving.

Empires and Dungeons is a "Strategy RPG" that's more like a boardgame. The strategy elements aren't exactly Chess, but there's the usual risk- and resource-management common to most RPGs. Know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. The larger scenarios against three opponent knights can sometimes take a little while, but against fewer opponents a game can take as little as fifteen minutes.

For traditional strategy board games, there's the popular Internet Go Server on PandaNet for playing the ancient strategy game of Go against live opponents. Go is notoriously hard for AI to handle, but if you download the OpenGL Client, you can hook it into GNU GO for a pretty tough opponent against a beginner. Choose a smaller board for a quicker strategy fix - a full 19 x 19 board can take a while. Go has relatively simple rules, but the complexity is in the implementation and understanding how they are coming into play. And the AI Go player kicks my butt, unless I go for the easiest setting AND crank my handicap up. Unfortunately, it also gets kind of predictable, which is how I can beat it even on the "lamer" settings.

Styrateg is more strategy-oriented than E&S, much more of a turn-based wargame (with levels, loot, and stores where you can buy things). Again, nothing resembling hardcore strategy. It's still at only $12.95, so it's cheap. The game itself might take a while to complete, but each scenario is pretty short.

Flash Element Turret Defense is free, addictive, and a lot of fun. To be honest, I'm not really sure how long the full game takes to play... I THINK it can be fully played within about 20 minutes, but it's one of those games where you lose your perception of time while playing. That's just a LOT of creeps marching around the screen!

Outpost Kaloki offers some "Tycoon" management-style gameplay, and most of the scenarios are also pretty short. If you are done with the story mode, there are some stand-along scenarios to try out. And hey, it's only one of the Coolest Games Evar!

I've only played a little bit of Age of Castles - I wouldn't consider it to be an incredibly quick strategy game, but it is easily played in smaller increments. It's casual, non-intensive, and amusing (kinda like Empires & Dungeons, though I prefer the more direct approach of the latter game).

I haven't played Laser Squad Nemesis yet. I should be ashamed, but I haven't. It's primarily a multiplayer game, but apparently it has a single-player campaign. However, it's an indie game by the Gallop brothers --- the same guys who brought us X-Com (or UFO: Enemy Unknown in the UK). I keep telling myself that I've GOT to try this one out.

Master of Defense is another "Tower Defense" game, done indie-style with 3D graphics. This unfortunately suffers from scenarios which can get a little long with only very short breaks between waves of bad guys. However, unlike an RTS game, you'll never have to worry about the scenarios going into overtime in a stalemate situation. The monsters keep coming, and you either deal with them, or lose all your villagers. I don't think I've gotten good enough at this game yet to really appreciate it - it has very different strategies, from, say, Flash Element TD --- showing how different "tower defense" game really can be from each other.

The danger of these "quick" games is that since they are (somewhat) fast strategy games, it's very easy to play "one more game" - over and over again - and watch your entire evening dissapear.

Anyway, there's what I came up with. I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. What are some good ones that I'm missing? Any good "quick strategy games" out there that can be played to some level of completion (the end of a scenario or whatnot) in no more than 20 or 30 minutes?

(Vaguely) Related Junk
* New Game: Empires & Dungeons
* Design: Picking Apart Flash Element TD
* Game For the Weekend: Styrateg
.

Labels: Free Games, Game Announcements, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:03 AM (Permalink) 9 comments links to this post

 
Design: Picking Apart Flash Element TD
I haven't played the original Warcraft III mod on which Flash Element TD is based, but I have put way too much time into playing the flash game. Well, not so much now that I nearly broke 100K. But while the praise may belong more to the fans and developers who created and evolved the gameplay that the flash game was modeled after, I think David Scott's game is a model of simplicity and elegance in game design. And I'm really excited about his new project, "Flash Circle TD" (which he's shown a WIP video below).



So what has made Flash Element TD so popular? Besides the fact that it's free...

I don't think it's not the ripped-off Warcraft III graphics. I believe it's *gasp* pure gameplay. There are a few simple factors that interact together to form an elegance of decision-making. I don't consider myself a very good game designer by any means, but since I have been paid to do work in that capacity before, I'll pretend that I know what I'm talking about.

First of all, the game has a direct contention between long-term and short-term goals. Short term safety is only gained at the expense of long-term gains --- both in points, and in the capacity to provide further safety. The interest gained at the end of each turn - especially with the interest rate upgrades - is not only a huge factor in the final score, but is absolutely critical in surviving the later rounds. Spending all you have to fight off the critters will soon lead you to a point where you can no longer keep up.

To make the delicate balance even more interesting, being overly cautious in favor of the long-term view will not only bring you closer to losing the game, but will also impact your gold, depleting the very resource you were trying to save. Also, if you find that you erred on the side of being too conservative, rushing to remedy the situation later rather than sooner may end up costing more than if you'd done it correctly in the first place.

Each tower and its upgraded versions have three major, differing characteristics: Fire Rate, Damage, and range. They always seem to fire at the furthest-along creep that is within their fire range. With this standard behavior, on a linear track with no overlapping fire zones you could calculate exactly how much damage a tower could do to a line of creeps of given length. You could divide this damage by gold piece cost and probably figure an optimal cost / damage strategy based on that.

But there are some really fun wrinkles that give the game the "Emergent Complexity" Noah Falstein talks about. The biggest is placement. Because the path the AI takes twists and bends around, not all positions are created equal. So the equations to calculate the optimum cost-effectiveness of a tower is much more complex. For the arrow towers, which have increasing ranges as they are upgraded, it's even more complicated, as optimal positioning for a level 1 arrow tower isn't the same as a level 3.

Then there's the issue of two towers with overlapping firezones, and "spillover" when a unit is killed (the extra damage that would have been done just "goes away"), and gaps in the line as critters in the middle of the line get taken out. But wait, there's more!

A huge factor is the special abilities of certain weapons and levels where the critters are immune or resistant to those special abilities. "Splash damage" radius for several weapons acts as a multiplier to their damage when creatures are not spaced far apart. The water tower slows creatures down, allowing other weapons within range to do more damage to a line (especially with splash-damage weapons, as slowed creatures tend to bunch up), but certain levels have creatures immune to their effects. Cannons and air towers have restrictions on what creatures they can hit. And then there's the boss levels, where optimum placement for defeating lines of creatures might be less effective against a single, high-hit-point boss.

The ability to sell off towers - even in mid-level - is another very interesting mechanic that throws a wrench into the works of the best-laid strategies. Because levels contain uniform groups of creatures (something I once thought was a design flaw, but I've changed my mind on it for this very reason), sometimes towers might only be desired for a single level. Once the last critter has passed that tower's range (or possibly even before), it's possible to sell it off for a 75% refund. Interest is only calculated at the end of a level, so if you have your towers places so that you can sell unneeded towers before the last critter dies, you can still use that gold to earn more money.

As to deficiencies, the biggest is a lack of any sort of "save game" option. In order to go back and tinker with your strategy, you have to start over from the beginning. That's a big reason I haven't gone back and tried to break 100,000 points.

You can overlap tower positions, but it's a pain in the interface. Either that ability should have been removed entirely from the game, or made simple to do. Apparently, for the upcoming circle TD, that will no longer be possible.

The interest rate research item is such an overwhelmingly potent factor in final score that there is really no choice in the matter for your first researches. This is too bad, as the other tower types can be interesting choices earlier in the game. The uniform monster types are another factor that discourage selection of certain research items until late in the game (if ever). For example, the levels consisting entirely of "immune" creatures makes the selection of the water tower ineffective until after the last "immune" level. Since you are going to have to be able to take on several levels without them anyway (except for their damage - which is small but rapid and splashing), there's no point in incorporating them into your overall placement strategy.

While it's hardly a deficiency, I can't help wondering what interesting twists a different map layout would have. Though with the limited screen real-estate available for the map, I don't know how much layout variety would be available beyond what's already there.

Ultimately, the thing that fascinates me about Flash Element TD (and all Tower Defense style games, from the limited number I've played) is how the interaction of simple elements can combine to create such compelling gameplay. It gives me something to think about.


(Vaguely) related howlings at a digital moon:
* Designing a Computer RPG Rule System
* How Do You Create "Fun?"
* Free Game: Flash Element Tower Defense
* Mistakes in Game Design

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Labels: Free Games, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:50 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Free Game: Flash Element Tower Defense
Curse you, Damion, for providing me with this link late in the evening when I actually intended to get something done!

If you like Tower Defense missions in RTS games, well, here you go... in Flash. Simple, straightforward, and annoyingly addictive:

Flash Element Tower Defense

UPDATE: Woot! Finally beat the game, albeit with only 9,858 points. My upgrade path was fire -> Interest Rate -> Interest Rate -> Water. I didn't bother placing any water towers until the first of the bonus levels, and never did end up with any wood or combo towers. But going into the bonus levels I think I had just under 4,000 gold saved.

UPDATE #2: The game has been modified *again*. Now the air-only tower is more powerful, and there are three boss levels (making those high-damage, non-splashing attacks like the wood tower more potent). I won it with ease thanks to three extra levels of time to invest :) I made around 14,000 points this time in my first try, and then 17,799 on my third...

UPDATE #3: The game keeps changing. It now has an extra level beyond the previous "last" level. New score: 27045, and I survived until the end. Pretty much wall-to-wall fire towers.


UPDATE #4: Just shy of 100K. Ah, well. I could probably have cleared 100K if I was stingier with the towers during the last level - nothing survived past the bottom loop. This time I upgraded interest rate ONLY for the first three upgrades.

Labels: Free Games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:53 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Enjoy an Oldie But Goodie

Labels: Free Games, Game Moments, retro

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 12:02 AM (Permalink) 10 comments links to this post

 
How to Turn Façade Into An RPG
Scorpia took me to task on my little CRPG definition from last week, but the discussions we've had here and on her site and here, I'm feeling a bit more confident about my breakdown. Though Gegi also offered a really good suggestion (an addition) that you need some level of choice over your character's attributes or development of their attributes over time for it to count.

The point of my breakdown is that while things like combat systems, storyline, inventory systems, and so forth are all very important, they are NOT the defining attributes of RPGs. For story --- well, it's too fuzzy of a line to draw. Almost every game has a story, even if its just a simple one-line setup. There's definitely a qualitative difference between the story of, say, Empires and Dungeons, and Final Fantasy VII.

So as a fun design experiment, I thought about what it would take to turn a non-RPG into an RPG. Specifically, let's take one without combat of any kind and see how it might be done. As an amusing example, let's take the experimental indie game, or "interactive story", Façade. I consider it to be an adventure game, personally. A very unusual one. But that kind of gameplay. ("Action-adventure?" Since timing is important...)

So, in playing Façade, you start out by choosing a name, and then knocking on the door of some old college friends, Grace and Trip. You use typed text to hold a conversation with them, and you can also manipulate certain objects in the apartment. The game can branch many ways, but in general you discover that Grace and Trip are having marital problems. As an interested third-party, you influence them in several directions, or simply leave the status quo the way it is. And you can get thrown out of the apartment for being too rude (been there, done that!)

So lets see how to turn this into an RPG. I'm not saying this would make a good GAME, necessarily (I don't actually think Façade is that great of a game to begin with, but it's an interesting experiment).

Step 1: Identifying with the Avatar
We'll start with criterion #4 (and add Gegi's suggestion), and give you more customization of and identification with your avatar. You are already pretty much acting in the first-person perspective, which adds some identification, but the game really has you playing yourself. The person through who's eyes you see doesn't really have an identity. So let's fix that.

Lets say you have a choice of backgrounds and two attributes / characteristics. For backgrounds, maybe you can choose whether you were, at one point, closer friends with Grace, Trip, or neither. Perhaps you could also choose to be an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend of either one, depending on the gender you chose. Maybe we'll add a profession as well. So you could be John, the artist and old friend of Grace's, or Jane, a doctor and Trip's former girlfriend. Or lots of combinations in-between. You are now playing SOMEONE ELSE, not just yourself.

On top of that, let's give you a choice of traits. Let's stay away from numbers, necessarily. Let's say you get to pick one trait that descibes your character - or at least how you are perceived by others. Funny, Sincere, Serious, Impulsive, Smart, Rich, Persuasive, and Argumentative.

Step 2: Your Avatar's Attributes
Now, we've got some interesting customizations for your character in the last step. Now we need to address criteria 1 and 2: You avatar's attributes need to influence the game, and there needs to be some randomness.

I'm not familiar with the AI or the nuts and bolts of the rules of Façade. But let's make things easy and say that rather than your responses always influencing the AI of Grace and Trip by a specific amount, instead it's fuzzy. So if a particular comment would normally irritate Grace by 5 points, it instead becomes a range. +/- 50%, so it can be anywhere from 3 to 7 points.

Now we've laid the foundation for your character's attributes to have an affect on the game. First off, your choice of backgrounds may influence the reactions of Trip and Grace. If you were a closer friend of Trip's, then maybe your actions will have a stronger influence on Trip, and your actions may be met with some suspicion by Grace. And so forth.

Your professional skill might give your actions a bit more credability when the conversation moves around to those topics. For example, if you are a professional artist, then any time the conversation moves around to art, you might get a bonus to your credability and the "weight" of your comments. So instead of 3-7 points, maybe you get 4-8 points for how much your words influence the AI of either character in ANY direction.

Your chosen trait also plays a roll. If you chose "Persuasive," you get a bonus to the chance to steer a conversation in a particular direction. If you choose "Funny," you have a bonus to any attempt to "lighten" the mood. Serious has the opposite effect. Impulsive reduces how much Grace or Trip get offended by your actions, since they are used to you being that way. If you are rich, there are some very definite bonuses that can occur in certain parts of the conversation. And so forth.

Step 3: Avatar Growth
Okay. We're now left with the third criterion --- your Avatar's attributes / traits must have a strong correlation with the progress in the game.

So now, we take Façade 2 and Façade 3 --- the second and third acts of the story (maybe each act takes place in a future date) and combine them together into one giant game. Between each act, you get to "level up." You get to choose one additional trait. This isn't necessarily the acquisition of a new trait, so much as it is also the perception of this trait within you by the NPCs. If you choose the same trait a second or third time, then you get two or three times the bonuses. They shouldn't be contradictory. If you choose both serious and funny, for example, you might be able to influence the tone of the conversation in either direction.

I've Created A Monster!
So now, do we have Façade, the RPG?

Well, we've now probably multiplied the content requirements by about 6x. Not only did we triple it by adding a second and third act, but we also increased the complexity by requiring that Trip and Grace respond to your chosen background information. The fact that you were Grace's ex-boyfriend could come up more than once in a conversation. And to take advantage of those professional skills, we need to make sure that the player who chose to be a doctor will have a few chances to throw their medical credentials around. That's a lot of additional conversation to create and record! Not to mention test.

We've also greatly increased the complexity of the game engine, and the AI. Adding a bit of randomization shouldn't be too hard, but figuring out all the bonuses that could apply could be a little tricky. And then there's game balance issues! Does choosing "rich" or an artist background give you undue power in the game? (Since the game really doesn't have an "objective," then arguably it doesn't.)

But I'd argue that, should we take upon ourselves this foolish task, what we've ended up with at the end is an RPG - the genuine article. There's no fantasy, no combat, no inventory system, and the storyline is extremely open-ended and untraditional.

But yes, I'd argue that at this point, we have an RPG.


(Vaguely) related steaming piles of insight:
* Non-Combat RPG: A Fool's Errand?
* The Rules of Role-Playing Games
* RPG Conversation Redesign
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Labels: Adventure Games, Free Games, Game Design, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:00 AM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Airport Security Parody Game
Why should games be a form of protected free speech?

Well, for one thing, you've got games like Airport Security. The description of the game, from the website:

"They say the front line of the War on Terror is the airport security line. See if you’ve got what it takes to keep airline travel safe in this hysterical game of airport security. Better not let that tube of toothpaste get through your checkpoint — it could be a terrorist’s weapon against freedom (or maybe it just fights gingivitis)!

FREEEEEDOM!!"

Sorry, this week PANTS are on the prohibited list, because in the hands (or on the lower body) of a terrorist, pants can be used as a weapon of mass destruction. And, as a current pop-culture reference, snakes may or may not be allowed on the (expletive deleted) plane.

So far I've managed (on the easiest skill level) to get about 20 passengers through before losing the game.

This game is frankly awesome. And it's actually kinda fun, too, besides driving home it's point.

Labels: Free Games, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:06 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Free RPG: Dungeons of Fargoal
Time to enjoy a free game!

I found this is a cute little freeware "roguelike" role-playing game called the Dungeons of Fargoal, inspired by an old game called "Sword of Fargoal." I never played the original, so I can't speak to it's pedegree:

Click Here For The Dungeons of Fargoal

The game is very simple. You control a little bobble-head guy with a roman helmet as he kills monsters through an infinite number of randomly-generated dungeon levels. You move about by using the cursor control keys.

Combat is initiated by touching a monster. If you are brought down to zero (or less) hit points, your character will automatically consume a potion to get restored to full health if he has one, otherwise he is killed and the game ends. Killing monsters nets you experience points, which increase your level so you can do yet more damage and take on more powerful foes in the levels below.

Your goal is to collect all the treasure on the level, which unlocks the stairs down to the next level. In addition to treasures and monsters, there are some special magical items available, which can do things such as reveal the full map of the level, make you invulnerable for a short period of time, eliminate all the monsters on the level, and more!

It's simple but fun. The "strategy" is very simple, mainly deciding when to engage the monsters and when to avoid them. I'd suggest that this kind of a game might make an awesome "Game In A Week" project for aspiring game developers. And it's a bit more entertaining for players than my own effort, IMO :)

(Thanks to Independent Gaming for the tip).

Labels: Free Games, Game Announcements, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:34 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
An RPG in a week
Woo-hoo! I finished another game! Well, kinda. Some blogs I post both here and at GarageGames - but this time I'm simply going to link to the one at GG:

http://www.garagegames.com/blogs/27747/7537

If you want to play a new, free game - I won't say it's any GOOD, but it's free - you can download the fruits of my labors here:

HACKENSLASH - A game built in a week!
http://www.rampantgames.com/hackenslash.html




So what the heck is this?

Basically it was a dare. Build a game in a week, using NOTHING but free tools / content, WITHOUT using a higher-level engine (some of those are free) - just an API. Since there was no way I was going to get my boss to give me a full week off of work to crank out a game (and my wife has WAY better things for me to do if I find myself with a week off), I decided to define a week as a work-week: 40 hours.

Now, this was an extremely PRODUCTIVE 40 hours. I didn't count time spent web-surfing or answering emails or writing documentation or playing Unreal Tournament when I was SUPPOSED to be working on Hackenslash. So it's pretty close to an ideal 40 hours of time spent working on a game. I used Python + Pygame - raw installation, compiled with py2exe.

There was a learning process involved - I'd only had one aborted 6-hour project done in PyGame before, and I didn't remember anything about how to do it. But it proved to be extremely easy to do.

Now, I fudged a little on the time. I actually clocked in a little over 40 hours by a few minutes - but not 41 - finishing this thing up. The 40 hours was to get me to a "feature complete" condition. Afterwards, I had to spend some time getting py2exe to create a distribution for the game (so people wouldn't need to install Python to play), and fixing up some crash-bugs. After some discussion with Steve Taylor, I was convinced that I'd ONLY fix crash-bugs with the post-development time... so the game has plenty of other bugs from it's rapid development. For one thing, the display to the right doesn't display the player's correct armor class (or some other stats).

Oh, well.

I originally intended there to be a much bigger dungeon - with a big quest item at the bottom that you had to bring back to the starting area to win. And there was supposed to be a merchant with whom you could buy magic items and potions from (using some of that hard-won silver for something more than bribes). And LOTS more monsters - I didn't intend it to be a dungeon of only goblins.

My brother even did some great music for the game that didn't make it in.

Oh, well. Five more hours and I could have had a LOT more cool things in the game. But I'm pretty happy with how it ended up. No, it's not the best game EVAR. It's mildly interesting for a few minutes, and I'm pretty proud of the complexity that got in there.

Anyway - I'm anxious to see if anyone else will do the Game In A Week in the future. Consider the gauntlet thrown!

Labels: Free Games, programming, Roleplaying Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:49 PM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post