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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Tiger Eye: Curse Of The Riddle Box

Posted on May 5, 2010 by Meg

Passionfruit Games‘ first title, Tiger Eye Curse Of The Riddle Box> is out this week. This new game blends casual adventure gameplay with the paranormal romance novel Tiger Eye by Majorie M. Liu. I was in the beta last month, so I was excited to see the finished game.

Players take on the role of Dela, a psychic metalsmith who’s visiting Beijing when she stumbles upon a magical puzzle box with an enslaved tiger-man inside. (Sorry, family, all I brought you from Beijing was scarves and pajamas.) As players solve the mysteries as Dela, Tiger Eye blends hidden object environments with puzzles. I’m not enthralled with HO gameplay in general — there are only so many times you can find and reassemble a note or pry open a door with a conveniently-placed crowbar — but the hidden object scenes do follow the story.

Beijing DVD store

I think this shop sells DVD in the back.

The puzzles really shine, blending match-three,  spacial relations puzzles, codebreaking, and other minigames for engaging gameplay. Tiger Eye adds to the usual simplistic jigsaw puzzle. The puzzles here aren’t square, so no looking for corners and edge pieces, and the edges of the pieces don’t follow a regular grid or jigsaw pattern, so you can’t see if you’ve left a decent shape between pieces. There’s also an ideogram-matching puzzle, using some of the basic radicals and stylized pictures of the definition.

Someone was supposed to fix the shower? Hey, that happened to me in Beijing, too!

I’m always impressed when real Chinese characters are used any place that pretty red squiggles would have done just as well. I couldn’t read everything in the environments, but it was great to see “dragon woman” written over a shop doorway and recognize other words throughout the games. My hours upon hours with ChinesePod (Tip: Don’t ask me what level I am now. It’s quite sad.) brought in-game foreshadowing and huge excitement!

The setting was gorgeous, the puzzles were varied and engaging, the HO scenes and minigames followed the story logically, and the protagonist had clear motivations. Tiger Eye had everything I’d ask for in a HO adventure.  Unfortunately, I was disappointed by a couple of the usual romance-novel cliches and a shovel-faced heartthrob in what’s otherwise a great game.

This is Passionfruit Games’ first release, so I’m really interested in seeing what comes next.  You can check out the demo of Tiger Eye or buy the game here.

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How LOST Will End

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Meg

I started watching LOST in Yantai, so it’s been years now that I’ve been hoping to get a job working for the Dharma Initiative.  I’ve fallen a month or two behind on this season (which requires avoiding Twitter on certain evenings), but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking about it. Here’s how I think the show will end:

It turns out that when Juliet set off the bomb at the end of the last season, it caused a temporal anomaly preventing her from ever being seen in any of the flashbacks, flashforwards or alternate-timestreams. In fact, if you go back and watch previous episodes, there won’t be any scenes with Juliet. The time we had been spending watching Juliet looking sad and being sneaky is now spent developing backstories on the Temple-Others, Illana and her sidekicks, the Still-more-others, and all the rest of the red shirts who keep appearing on the once-deserted island.

Miles is walking through the forest when dead Charlotte asks him to tell Daniel how much she always loved him. Dead Daniel sends a message of love, via Miles, right back to her. Charlotte sends one back. Miles has to walk back and forth in the jungle, which isn’t entirely bad because he stumbles across Nikki and Paolo, who mention the diamonds. They’re actually worth $8, 151,623.42

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says no, but actually means yes.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable questions. He says “I’m just trying to get off this rock!”

Sayid is left alone with the Others’/Dharma Initiative’s power station for about ten minutes, and runs a secret wire out to Rose and Bernard’s hut in the woods so they can have a hot shower and a reading light. Rose and Bernard also have takeout from the Mr. Cluck’s Chicken Shack (it was on the island the whole time, but it was over on the side with the lighthouse) sometimes. They hold hands a lot and smile.

A flash-sideways shows Rose and Bernard driving past a Mr. Cluck’s on their way to another restaurant. They bicker.

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says yes, but actually means no.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable questions. He says “We have to get off this rock!”

Jin and Sun have a tearful reunion. He gives her a flower, and she shows him a picture of their daughter, who’s talking in her timestream, but hasn’t been born in his. More crying.

Meanwhile, Team Whitmore, Team Linus, Team Smoky, Evil Sayid and Jacob’s ghost all have a giant faceoff battle. With giant killer robots. When asked about the giant killer robots, Ben Linus gives the intense stare and says “Oh, those? Peter built them. Peter built everything here.” There’s dramatic music.

After the break, a random new character called Peter appears, he joins the epic battle.

Someone asks Jack a perfectly reasonable question. He pulls a gun on them and says no.

Someone asks Kate a perfectly reasonable question. She pulls a gun on them and says yes, but actually means no. But then she means yes.

Someone asks Sawyer a perfectly reasonable question. He says “It’s the only way for us to get off this rock!”

We trace the history of Hurley’s numbers through a series of flashbacks, each leading to a new revelation about the numbers and Hurley’s bad luck. At the end, he falls madly in love with a games blogger with purple hair.

Did I miss anything?

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Lollicup

Posted on April 27, 2010 by Meg

My friends are all big fan of bubble tea, and I was happy to go along to Lollicup, a bubble-tea spot, because wherever there’s boba, there are also delicious crazy juices. Like watermelon. Yum.

Lollicup Denver on Urbanspoon We’d planned to take our drinks to go, and continue on Hugo and Diana’s tour of all the reasons we should move to Denver, but were distracted by the toys, games and Asian magazines in Lollicup.

There was also a stack of I have a desperately uncool habit of looking at anything written in Chinese and announcing the characters that I can recognize.  It’s lame and annoying, and yet I’m so incredibly proud of myself that I can’t stop. Eventually I will progress beyond just reading the date aloud and actually know what’s in the paper.

DSCF4131

We played some foozball, too, blaming any mistakes the headless players and the rogue Red Shirt on the Blue Shirts’ team.  It was pretty close, but eventually Stick and I pulled into the lead. (This has more to do with Diana scoring on herself slightly more often than I scored on myself, but let’s not talk about that.) (We are prize girlfriends, let me tell you!)

And then Hugo turned Lollicup into yet another reason we should move to Denver.

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Still Here

Posted on April 26, 2010 by Meg

Perhaps I’ve mentioned this once or twice, but I was recently in Denver visiting my friends. And before that, I was at the Triangle games conference. I’m back working my usual shift in the restaurant now, with a refreshed appetite for mango lassis. (I’m also trying not to kill a certain prep cook who cannot seem to remember that every single main course comes with bread. He’s mixing it up a little, instead of staring at the order in confusion for several minutes and then asking me if it has bread, now he’s handing me the finished plate and then asking if there should have been bread. A wise teacher, and a teaching mentor, once told me that getting things wrong in a new way can be the start of learning. I don’t know if it applies here, but I’m hoping.)

Two fairly regular customers came in today. At first, I was flattered that they seemed more than a little pleased to see me. “You’re still here! That’s great!” the husband greeted me, with huge enthusiasm. “We didn’t see you last time, so we figured you’d quit and gotten something better.”

“We thought you’d gotten a new job.” His wife agreed. “You’re so bright and efficient, and waitressing is such a dead-end job.”

“Waitresses have such low pay and such long hours standing and all that running around and no prospects for advancement and customers are rude to you all day long. But you’re still here!”

YES! Okay! Got it! My job situation still sucks! Can I get you a drink?

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Virtual Mooncake Exchange

Posted on April 22, 2010 by Meg

A friend of mine, who’s going to go nameless in this post, called most Facebook social games “window dressing on the poke application.” He wasn’t specifically referring to FarmVille, but it fits.

FarmVille’s genius is turning our contract with society into a game. The addictive side of play is not so much the virtual sheep or farm improvements, but because we have social expectations surrounding favors and gifts (even if they’re pretend ones).

I really like farming sims, I’m having fun with MyTribe on Facebook, and I love the idea of a casual MMO game, so I was expecting to enjoy a recent assignment on FarmVille. But as I played, I saw less of the pretend raspberries and coffee beans, and more of a social currency.

Sure, I noticed the addictive powers of game mechanics like limited-time availability of items, the slot-machine draw of random gifts, the timing and variety of in-game achievements, and the pull of FarmVille status updates, but what fascinated me most is the gifting system.

We have social expectations around gifts and favors, but FarmVille turns the guanxi network into a game. FarmVille encourages you to send free virtual gifts to your friends!  Who wouldn’t spend a couple mouseclicks on a gift to a friend? You do have friends, right? You aren’t some kind of friendless pariah, are you? And you’re not some horrible jerk who won’t share, right? Look at this poor homeless calf! You’ve got to find a home for it!

And then, you have to respond to gifts. Of course you’re going to send a thank you gift — who wouldn’t spend a few moments responding to a virtual sheep? You’re not totally lacking in social graces, are you? And now you’ve exchanged your virtual items, you’re locked in. It would be kind of mean to accept their help for a barn-raising and then not offer them a pink cow or perfect bunch of daffodils. It’s window dressing on our social contract.
That is also the problem with FarmVille (and similar games). The frustration comes when invitations and free sheep from distant acquaintances on the far edges of our social networks seem more like spam than actual connections.  I’m beginning to see Easter eggs or pear tree exchange the way I saw certain Chinese English students accosting me to practice their English on a real foreigner. Somehow the personal connection is missing from what seems like a personal interaction.
What do you think? Is FarmVille brilliantly turning our social contract and expectation into huge fun (and huge profit for Zynga)? Or are we fake-interacting with each other, like the mall greeter, as we grow our pretend crops?
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The Argonautica

Posted on April 21, 2010 by Meg

Apparently the oxygen-free heights of Denver city aren’t the real mountains, so we drove out to Idaho Springs, a gorgeous mountain town that made me want to be a pioneer even more than usual. We stopped at an a former gold mine called the Argo. Our guide told us that it had originally opened as Newhouse Mine during the early days of the gold rush. When he told us it was renamed the Argo after Jason’s ship, we all cheered. And then we asked if anyone had ever lost a sandal in the nearby creek. (Classicists find this endlessly amusing.)

DSCF4076

After a film strip of photographs of dioramas showing the history of the mine, our guide drove us up a hillside to the mine. Then he gave us maps and said he’d see us back at the bottom when we were through. I don’t think this had anything to do with our debate about which of the Argonaut’s heroes would have made a good miner…

Detect Secret DoorsI try to detect secret doors.

We walked ourselves down, following the map. This wasn’t a particularly long walk, but I was still feeling the effects of  stupid altitude sickness, so I kept falling behind or stopping to pant.  Along the path, there were piles of abandoned tools and equipment, all sharp edges and rusted metal.

DSCF4075Also, I would not want to chaperon a field trip here.

The inside was equally rundown. We climbed rickety steps, crossed uneven floors, and looked down over wildly unsafe drops, to see the wildly unsafe old-fashioned mining equipment. That description sounded a bit like weathered boards in a charming old farmhouse, and it was, while at the same time, there are nails sticking out of this charming antique handrail. It was really interesting to see the old-fashioned mining equipment up close, but we also spent a lot of time joking about getting killed by a falling beam from the Argo.

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