Stranded Without A Phone

Posted on June 8, 2010 by Meg

This morning, I reviewed Stranded Without A Phone over at DIYgamer. I’m particularly proud of this review, it’s great when I can articulate exactly which parts made a game annoying and which made it awesome. (Spoiler alert: Most of it’s awesome.)

Stranded Without A Phone  is an iGadget game from indie developer Gilligames, set in the same  universe at their previous release Space HoRSE. (No knowledge of Space HoRSE is required to play and love Stranded, but it does explain why the protagonist is wearing what looks like a stylish dress-shirt-and-diaper ensemble.) I enjoyed the island survival and crafting found in Sims2 Castaway and Lost In Blue 2, so I went in with high hopes for Stranded Without A Phone.

 

Story:

You play as the lone survivor of a rocket crash en route to a new colony. You have no food, no water, no shelter, no way to call for help, and apparently no pants, either. On the upside, you’ve landed on a tropical island and not, say, a gas giant with a methane atmosphere.

Via Stranded Without A Phone [Review] | DIYgamer

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Choice of Dragon

Posted on June 1, 2010 by Meg

Playing Fantasy University reminded me of how much I enjoyed text-based adventure games. Not that FU is entirely text based, just the the quest texts and item descriptions are meant to be read.

I checked out Choice of Dragon, a free text-based adventure game  for a web browser or iToy.  The multiple-choice interaction gave me the opened-ended storyline I loved in text games, without the turn-key-in-lock frustrations of a game that parses text entry. (Hey, I wasn’t THAT nostalgic) You play as a dragon in a generic fantasy land, full of princesses to capture (or princes, your dragon can be an equal-opportunity kidnapper), adventuring parties to torment, and treasure to steal.

CoD is a solid IF game. Engaging descriptions of scenes and character never become long-winded. The story uses fun fantasy stereotypes, without going into the complete parody in Fantasy University or Kingdom of Loathing, and uses light sarcasm, but never takes on the unhelpful DM’s tone from Zork or Adventure. The game is fairly short, but reading the game is such a delight, it’s practically impossible not to play through a few times for different stories.

Each decision players choose has an in-game effect. You can fight or flee, split the booty or turn on your ally for the whole thing. Burning the village increases your infamy and treasure hoard, while letting the villagers live as your vassals increases your honor. Your stats continue to affect your abilities and choices, giving you more story options and personalization.

The game could be improved with a way to save the game. At several interesting crossroads,  I was sorry I could not travel both / and be one traveler, long I stood / and looked down one as far as I could. What works in poetry could be greatly improved with a saveslot. Right now, an incomplete game is stored for further progress next time, but there’s no way to return to a particular place besides restarting the game and trying to make all the same choices to lead back to that point. Knowing how way leads on to way, it’s a poor solution that could be solved with an option to save the game.

Choice of Broadsides, another similar game from Choice of Games, won my love with a choice of gender. Some games give you a female avatar, or swap some pronouns around to make the ladies feel at home, but CoB creates a world when young ladies sail the high seas and young gentlemen are sweet domestic angels. You encounter mutinous sailors, brave enemies and honorable sea captains, all female. Later, when one of your salty companions suggests you marry, and give yourself an attractive mate and the comforts of home life, you can choose a husband from an array of accomplished young gentlemen.

I didn’t enjoy the naval adventure quite as much the fantasy one, partly because I’m more of a princess-capturer than a vessel-seizer. I also felt like there were some choices that could be made in CoBroadsides that were just wrong, that in certain crossroads there was a distinctly correct and incorrect choice to be made, while in CoDragon I felt like different dragons and different choices led to different but equally valid stories.

If you also have fond memories of text-based games, both games are available online here or on the App store.

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E3

Posted on May 30, 2010 by Meg

Stick brought in the mail yesterday, and brought me a book I’d ordered and a couple adverts, and then asked if maybe I was waiting for something else to arrive. I guess in the excitement of getting my press credentials confirmed and booking my Los Angeles solo trip, I’d completely forgotten that a physical E3 media pass was on it’s way!

Yeah, I’m going to E3 next month! I first blogged about wanting to see E3 in 2006, so when my press pass came yesterday, I was more than little excited. I’ll be covering some events for Indie Game Mag, and then I’m going to go into the press room and file my stories, the way a real games journalist does. I’ll be the kind of games journalist who’s completely starstuck by who else is in the press room… but still.

Think I have time to find an old-fashioned press hat before the expo?

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Truth In Advertising

Posted on May 29, 2010 by Meg

This awesome recommendation appeared on the side of my Facebook page today.

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Chinese School After-Action Review

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Meg

Chinese school is over for the semester. I’ve been teaching here for two years now, the longest time I’ve worked in one school. RACL is really a special place, I’m glad I could work here. I had the best class this semester, thanks to a perfect combination of students, parents and administration. Oh, and my awesomeness.

I had a couple of boys in my class who competed to answer the most questions, win games and generally succeed in class. In doing so, they made it cool to raise your hand, and cool to have the answer. This lifted a lot of the burden of encouraging class participation from me, and all but eliminated two of my unfavorite classroom events: the horrible dead silent stares following a question, and the hilarious hipness of not having a clue.  The downside was that I also had a class cheater, a boy who desperately wanted to compete with the others, and it was weird for me to create classroom games with anti-cheating mechanics.

I believe that anti-cheating measures and dire warnings about plaguerism set up an antagonistic relationship between teacher and student. I want students to feel comfortable asking me questions and relating what we’ve covered to their other interests.  How can you ask questions of someone who’s just told you they think you’re lying scum, that you’d be downloading a term paper right now if they hadn’t thwarted your sneaky plan with threats of CopyScape? 

On the first day of fall semester, I told the kids they if they needed to come in late, leave class early, or go to the bathroom during class, they didn’t need to ask permission. They should just do what they needed as quietly as possible and catch up what they missed from a classmate or on the class blog. Thanks to years of asking permission and requiring a hall pass for everything, they couldn’t believe it at first. I don’t know if this system would work in a bigger school (I probably wouldn’t be allowed to do that in public school), but it was a great policy for this group. Now I didn’t have to spend ten minutes listening to stories about why it really, really, really wasn’t their fault they were two minutes late, and we didn’t have to interrupt the flow of discussion to request and give permission get up for a tissue or go to the toilet.

I didn’t have any helicopter parents. This is one factor over which I have absolutely no control, so I’ll just be grateful it happened.

My classroom this semester shared a wall with an awesome teacher who saw (or, I guess, heard) my students cheering or laughing as a sign of a successful, active learning environment. Let’s just say that has not always been the case for me, and it’s been quite hard for me to turn a roomful of duds into active participants and then face criticism over my unruly students. No scolding about noise, or veiled remarks about uncontrolled students, from my classroom neighbor this term!

Some of this great semester is me and my teaching awesomeness. A last-minute room reassignment to a room without a whiteboard doesn’t mean a botched lesson. Six new late-adds can be added into my lesson plan.

Let’s talk about classroom nirvana. This is the state where I’m pitching my lesson difficulty right to hit the mainsteam kids without boring the highest achievers (easier to do here without a Charlie Gordon in class!), I’ve split up the chatterboxes, I know who’s listening without taking notes and who’s just staring off into space, I can recognise whispers and rustles without turning around, for that magical “James, leave Kimmy alone!” while I’m writing on the board.  It takes me a long time to become an education jedi, so I usually get to this state towards the end of the semester, and have two or three great lessons before the class ends and I have to start learning names all over again. I got to classroom nirvana about halfway through this semester, and just had a string of really good classes.

Blah blah blah, the kids learned a lot,  I could see their vocab improve and their understanding of  poetry deepen, and more blah blah blah. But most importantly, the kids were my evil minions.

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MyTribe’s Second Island

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Meg

I finally built the Great Ark and got off the island. Oh, hi, I’m talking about MyTribe again, not LOST.

When your tribe completes the Ark and sails to a new island, they’ll bring everything from the first island’s storehouse, even if that’s more than the tribe’s new storehouses can hold.  Making sure your stocks are full before leaving seems like a good idea, but it can create a small problem because if your tribe already has more rocks and wood than your starter storehouses can hold, you can’t clear any trees or rocks.  I arrived with lots of skilled people and lots of supplies, and no places to build all the housing my tribe needed. Oops!

Your tribe also retains everything they’ve found, harvested and made (under Supplies and then Raw Resources)

When you choose a new island, you can also choose three new mysteries. (Details on unlocking all of them are in my MyTribe mysteries walkthrough, if you’re stuck) The fountain of youth is probably the most valuable island mystery. It wasn’t so important in the old single-player version, but keeping your tribespeople young is essential in the Facebook MyTribe. Adding to your tribe becomes prohibitively expensive in stork feathers, so you need to keep your tribespeople young and fit. A drink from the fountain of youth makes your over-forty crowd feel 40, and your under-forty crowd feel 24, permanently.

The mysterious stump may be the worst possible mystery. The resulting Ever Tree is pretty useless, since you can replenish your wood source by planting saplings at any time. A sapling doesn’t cost any resources, just a tribesperson to tend it, and there’s also a MyTribe achievement for planting 20 saplings.

I knew I didn’t want a star rock or moon rock, since I already have more stardust and moondust than I can use.  I also didn’t need the Cornicopia Bush, because I kept all the stored harvests of berries and the ability to plant all the seeds gained from having a Cornicopia Bush on my previous island.

I picked a new island with a fountain of youth, the tiki head, and the fossil rock. The science bonus for the fossil rock is pretty helpful, but it would probably have been more beneficial on my first island, when I had fewer people and they were producing science more slowly.

The tiki head, well, I should just admit that I picked it because it was pretty. The powerup for any new babies is good too, but I won’t be using it all that often, since it costs me over sixty (!!!) stork feathers for a new tribesperson, and by the time I finish unlocking the tiki head, it’ll be even more expensive.

Collecting stork feathers is where MyTribe turns into a typical Facebook game. To accumulate stork feathers, you’ll need to visit your friends’ islands. Since players will more friends will progress faster, it only encourages the annoying friend-spam cycle. For maximum progress, players need to sign in daily to collect the feathers, but at least MyTribe doesn’t actively punish players for not checking in. (I’m looking at you, Farmville, Island Paradise, and the rest.) I’ve never had a problem telling my friends to play a game I enjoy – I blogged about enjoying the original MyTribe without the possibility of stork feather benefits from newly converted players – and I don’t want a game that requires players to participate in chain letter invitations.

Fortunately, most of MyTribe is a light strategy game on a cute tropical island, without the constant requests to exchange gifts or sign up for email updates.

What do you think are the most helpful mysteries? What would you pick for your second island?

Edit: Just added the solution to the new mysteries, Flotsam’s Call and the Jewel Vault.

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Fantasy University Preview

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Meg

Fantasy University is an upcoming Facebook game from Simutronics Corp. (If you’re asking yourself why that name sounds familiar, it may be because you’re old enough to have played DragonRealms on AOL.) I’ve been playing the current alpha build —  not everything is implemented, but it’s a stable, smooth alpha, and shows how much potential this game has. Fantasy University’s closed beta is planned for June and open enrollment in July.

Players begin by choosing a character class, either Dodgebrawler, Emomancer, Slackninja, Cheermonger or Mathemagician. Player classes are based on everyone’s favorite RPG stereotypes, crossed with everyone’s favorite college stereotypes. Next, players select hair and face options from an equally-recognizable list of options, and enroll in classes at FU.I picked a Slackninja (What can I say? I shrug at the idea of combat.), prettied up my hair, and set off to explore campus.

Players stats are Beefiosity, Zip, Loathing (like Willpower, only you despise instead of overcoming), Smarts, Charms (looking adorable always helps in difficult situations) and Durability. As you run round fighting hilariously-named bad guys and carefully choosing your side in the Juice Wars, you’ll increase your stats, and earn the local currency, Fubars.

The game is geared for adults, specifically adults who grew up playing Roger Wilco and Leisure Suit Larry. Every bit of flavortext  is worth reading — the place names, NPC names, the captions, the item descriptions — for pop cultures references, riffs on the classic hack-and-slack RPG, and the kind of snark that made text-based MUDs great.

Players will be able interact with Facebook friends on FU by buffing their BFFs and forming guilds, but the constant harassment to share every event won’t be included. (There’s nothing more annoying that a game that asks me every five seconds if I want to share this with my Facebook friends, especially with a giant Spam all my friends! button in the middle, and a tiny Piss Off button over in the corner.) There’s also no need to log on at a certain time to play, and you can play for as long or as little as you’d like, which seems like the ideal browser game.

(He vants to suhk your juice.)

Fantasy University also offers an in-game crafting system. A good crafting system can be my favorite part of an MMO.  FU crafting is done by following a recipe (if you’re into rules, and following rules) or by putting things together randomly and seeing what happens. (Oh, come on, like that’s not exactly how we played Monkey Island games!) A lot of the recipes aren’t implemented yet, so randomly trying to make stuff is about as rewarding as recipe invention in Lost in Blue 2. I did discover that a string of yarn plus a bit of yarn makes one sock, and, man, was I excited about that sock! But, sadly for me, an untied lawlerskate and another untied lawlerskate didn’t make a pair. The crafting system is easy to use, just pick two or more items and see if they turn into anything new and cool. Random drops used for crafting include elements like Easytogetium, and all the item descriptions are worth reading. (Unless you’re trying to play subtly while at work).

FU quest text is always well worth reading, another hallmark of text-based MUD developers, although long stories are summed up in bold for those who want to rush out and slay villains without all that tedious storytelling and motivations. Multiple storyline options, like choose-your-own adventure book, make FU feel more open-ended and individualized  than the usual kill-ten-rats-and-bring-me-their-tails of the usual MMO. Players can pick up quests all over campus, and beyond. Although you can stumble into a tough fight as you explore random areas, truly frustrating areas are blocked to lowbies.

The finished version of FU will be free to play, and offer a cash shop for upgrades and special items… This can be a great model, but I hope they’ll be nonintrusive. I never mind buying a game or paying a monthly subscription, but I feel scammed when huge portions of a supposedly free-to-play game are available only for meteor credits, pearls, platinum points or whatever cutesy term means real cash.

Fantasy University doesn’t try to impress with flashy graphics, choosing simple black-and-white sketches filled with sarcasm and snark. The puns, bizarre storyline, wacky names for everything, crazy characters, and general FU insanity carry the game perfectly, bringing everything I liked about zany text-based adventures without that turn-key-in-lock syntax frustration.

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Mr. Darcy Takes A Wife

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Meg

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any Pride and Prejudice sequel will be a complete disaster. But like every other former English major, I’m so fascinated by Mr. Darcy that I can’t stop reading the knockoffs.

Despite having highwaymen, attempted ravishment by said highwaymen, a tragic blindness that turns out to be temporary, a tragic deafness that turns out to be temporary, tragic miscarriage, secret babies, secret babies who are the product of the lord of the manor and a commoner, dubious paternity, tragic death of the unfortunate maid before said dubious paternity can be resolved, surprise paternity that creates creepy incest in the original book, sex scenes that are more cringe-y than steamy, metaphors that cry out for a thesaurus, and a whole host of bad period-romance cliches, almost two-thirds of Linda Berdoll’s Mr Darcy Takes A Wife is acceptable train reading.

The final third is when all characters become completely unbearable caricatures of themselves.  Mr. Collins dies when, upset over a ridiculous hunting accident that has left Mr. Darcy (tragically and temporarily) deaf, he goes for a walk, upsets his beehives and runs from a swarm of angry bees into a cowpond. As he flails in the muddy water, Charlotte’s cape, which Mr. Collins has unaccountably worn to tend the bees, becomes waterlogged and he drowns face-down in the mud. His corpse is found by the sighting of his upraised legs in the muck.

I’m oddly impressed with the author for working that in with a straight face.

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TGConf After-Action Review

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Meg

Right before I went to Denver, I went to the Triangle Games Conference.  It was a great two days, I met a ton of creative people and heard about a lot of interesting projects. This meeting-strangers thing is getting a lot easier, by the way, but I’m still not particularly good at it. I thought that once I got over my nervousness about walking up to strangers and introducing myself, that would mean I was good at smalltalk. Um, no. See, if it goes well, you’ve just struck up a conversation… and now how do you disengage? What if I say goodbye, and then run into the person again a minute later at the next panel? And there’s another level of awkward from vaguely recognizing someone from another local game dev event… What if I say hello and they don’t remember me? What if we do the acquaintance nod and then I don’t remember their name?

Yeah, I can turn hello into awkward in milliseconds. (And that’s without the bizarre attraction-avoidance of being a girl at a game event.)  I’m surprised no one came after me to revoke my press pass for such a stunning failure to network.

I went to a couple sessions on media and games, and got into a few impromptu discussions on marketing indie games. At one point, an indie developer and I were nodding and chatting about the difficulties of getting information from game studio to game journalist, when I realized we were on completely different wavelength. He was bemoaning the impossibility of marketing a game without skilled writers to compose a press release and a list of journalists to receive the press release, money to advertise the game, and so forth. And I thought we were talking about how I often try to find out more about a game or an indie game company, only to discover their web presence is a MySpace page from 2006 or a domain name with the game’s logo and the words coming soon.

Oops.

There was a truly fascinating discussion on augmented reality, which will have to be its own post, because I have so much to say there. It makes me so excited that the cyberpunk future is now, which is good, because I’ve been sorely disappointed on the moon colony front.

Oh! And I went to a lecture by Phaedra Boinodiris of WomenGamers.com, which was interesting in it’s own right but personally pretty exciting because WomenGamers hosted my very first gaming article, ok, not the first piece I’d ever written, but the first that was read by someone other than my parents and my boyfriend.

There was also some kind of discussion over giving game companies special tax breaks in North Carolina, and Bev Perdue stopped by, which meant some news crews stopped by, but I wasn’t really following that part. In fact, I started to feel sensory overload from all the conversations and information flying at me. I had to hide out in the press room for a little while to blog and make some mental room, and that led to a quiet chat with a couple other games journalists (the kind who aren’t also waitresses), and that was one of the nicest parts of the conference for me.

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Osmos Reviewed

Posted on May 6, 2010 by Meg

My review of Osmos in Indie Game Mag, issue 10.

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