New Homer in Silicon is now up. (Yeah, it’s soon after my previous column, but that one was a bit late coming out, I think to avoid overlap with the GDC coverage.)
Category: video games
Latest HiS
Homer in Silicon
My fuller analysis of Emerald City Confidential is now up.
Fun Thing
Courtesy of Play This Thing!: the unimaginatively named “The Space Game”. It’s tower-defense in space!
The curious thing is, I found it more absorbing on a personal level than the average tower-defense game, and I’m not sure why. Usually with TD games I sit back comfortably, enjoying god mode, and not really worrying too much if I lose and have to replay a level. Here, though, I was more invested in my little mining colony. In the final level where the pirates come in thick and fast and my colony gets completely massacred, I had to give up after a couple of unsuccessful tries — it just felt too much like one of those really grim episodes of Babylon 5 where everyone is dying left and right and I cannot make it stop.
But, er, you may not have that same problem! And it’s fun, though not remotely IF-like.
Chocolatier 3 on Homer in Silicon
My take on the latest Chocolatier game (“Decadence by Design”) is now up over at GameSetWatch.
Emerald City Confidential
I’ll cover this in more detail over on GameSetWatch later, but some people here may be interested in Emerald City Confidential, Dave Gilbert’s new graphical adventure with a film-noir take on Oz. Though it’s marketed through PlayFirst, it’s a lot less casual and a lot more adventure than most of their other offerings. The puzzles tend toward the easy side, but they’re fun and generally fair (and there are built-in hints, so you probably won’t spend too much time stuck).
I did run into a couple of surprising bugs in the late game, which I hope will get patched for a future release. But even counting that into the experience, not bad.
Emily Short's Interactive Storytelling 