Category: video games

Things worth checking out

This year’s One Room Game competition. Can’t say anything at all about the games because of the comp rules, but, um, they exist! Voting closes Dec. 28.

The TIGSource Commonplace Book comp, of which some entries are IF. Haven’t gotten a chance to try these yet, but they look intriguing.

(Not IF): The Majesty of Colors, featured today on Jay Is Games and written by sometimes-IFfer Gregory Weir. It’s strange but nifty, and tells its story through a series of vignettes that reminded me of some art/concept IF of recent years.

Kudos on Homer in Silicon

My latest GSW column looks at the original Kudos. A new version is now out, and I may do a comparison in the future.

However (warning): on my last column it was mentioned that I seem to spend more time critiquing unsuccessful narrative approaches than analyzing good ones. I promised to come back with more positive reviews — and still intend to — but, er, this is not one. Or at least, not in unmixed form.

Further Guilty Pleasures

I tend to variously rant and rave about the casual-type games that cross my path: it’s a genre I want to love, but often don’t.

But here’s one that offers considerably more depth of game play than you might initially expect: Gabob‘s “Now Boarding”, a game about airplane routing. You own an airline and airplanes; you get to direct them where to pick up passengers, but you also get to hire and fire airline employees, decorate the terminal, and buy upgrades for your equipment.

Continue reading “Further Guilty Pleasures”

Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone

…being the SEGA game transferred to the iPhone platform.

Once again, my total lack of arcade skills tells against me. I cannot prevent my monkey from diving to a watery doom.

I think it’s to do with the fact that the camera angle changes constantly, making the tilt difficult to control because the meaning of your tilt input is also being changed from moment to moment. (And it’s as motion-sick-inducing as The Blair Witch Project.)

What happened here? Is it an unwise combination of tilt input device with camera code developed for a different platform? Or am I just Bad At This?

Casual games and marketing

Gamasutra has an article on Big Fish Games’ CSO explaining that the “hardcore” and “casual” aren’t sufficient categories to divide the market up, and arguing that we need more categories with more kinds of game. Which is true, but I can’t help finding it a little ironic considering the source.

Meanwhile, I’ve been playing some of Chocolatier’s The Great Chocolate Chase, which is a time-management variation on their usual theme. It’s almost entirely a replay of Diner Dash, Cake Mania, Vogue Tales, etc., which is disappointing. It’s also not as well tuned as it could be: at least, I got relatively smoothly through quite a few levels and then have completely bombed out at level 40, which I can’t pass despite many replays: even if I manage to serve every customer without turning any of them away (quite a feat at this level), I’m not making my target for the day.

I’m very slightly curious about the (slender, minimal) threads of story built into the game, but that may not be enough to propel me past this plateau.