Dungelot: Amazing Dungeon-sweeper

Posted on February 14, 2013 by Meg

dungelot-android-0

New article on Hardcore Droid, talking about lite roguelike dungeon-crawler Dungelot:

Since Dungelot is described as a roguelike, I’d expected the usual endless player deaths, punishing difficulty (especially through bad luck), and a lot of mind-numbingly repetitive replay. The game opens with a warning about just how often players will meet death in the dungeons, and, yes, there is a certain amount of hero death in the dungeons, but I was pleasantly surprised with how delightfully replayable Dungelot was. Was it the cute monsters? Goofy distilled missions? The addiction of finding magical items? I kept promising myself I’d start taking some notes after just one more run.

Via Dungeonsweeper!. Also on Hardcore Droid, I recently reviewed Dark Arcana, Zenonia 5, and Knights of Pen and Paper, and wrote a player guide for Rebuild.

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Speaking Simlish

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Meg

I play a lot of games. I also read about games, and think about games, and work on games, and write about games. Sometimes my game development work gets in the way of my games journalism, and my editor at Hardcore Droid sometimes has to remind me about using developer vocabulary in magazine copy.

I don’t frequently go to brick-and-mortar shops, but I went by a GameStop to get The Sims 3: Supernatural the other day. I sold off most of my games hardware when I was extremely broke, and living in Scep and Kate‘s study, and I never replaced it because I moved to Brooklyn and you can’t have game consoles in a Brooklyn apartment! That’s just crazy talk! I need that space for my bed!

The kid working in the shop was very nice, and kindly explained what an expansion pack is and made sure that I already had the main game, because otherwise, this wouldn’t work. I hadn’t actually asked him what expansion pack means, and it was a little odd to be on the receiving end of the clerk’s help, but it was really charming that he was so worried I’d get it home and be disappointed.

Sure, I’m a game writer, but I’m also a thirty-year-old woman buying The Sims.

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Find The Lamp, The Oil, and The Wick

Posted on February 5, 2013 by Meg

 I wrote about that adventure game with hidden object elements, Dark Arcana, for Hardcore Droid. I enjoyed playing it, and would recommend the game, but couldn’t resist a little snarking at hidden object cliches.

 

In a typical HO game, players need a pretty strong suspension of disbelief. Sure, clicking the number five on the wall or collecting eight clothespins will advance the plot. Whatever, just roll with it. Since adventure game Dark Arcana has a stronger narrative than the standard HO game, some of the typical HO silliness is more pronounced. Why did I throw the saw away after one use, forcing me to find an axe, shears, scissors, and a collection of other one-time-use cutters? Why does knife thrower Jim keep locking doors and chests but not so cleverly hiding the key in the next room? Sure, there are probably detective rules about not pocketing the suspects’ valuables, but did I really just use that giant diamond to cut glass, and then toss it away?

Via Dark Arcana: The Carnival on Hardcore Droid.

 

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Made Glorious By These Sons of York

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Meg

I stayed off social media last night because I didn’t want Downton Abbey to be spoiled for me. Catching up today, it looks like a lot of my friends were drunkenly liveblogging the Superbowl. I’m not entirely sure who was playing, and I think most of Twitter was just watching the commercials, but I found out who performed at halftime, because my entire Facebook feed posted that the football was great, and imma let you finish, but Beyonce had the greatest halftime show of all time! Also I’m not sure who won but they got to put a ring on it.

Also the power went out in the Superdome which is a real thing that happened yesterday and not heavy-handed symbolism in a self-pubbed dystopian novel about the decline of the American empire.

My friends who weren’t commenting on the Superbowl were all posting links to this story about the discovery of the body of Richard III, and making really elaborate jokes hinging on the Battle of Bosworth’s Parking Deck or Alas, why would you heap this tarmac on me? or Zounds, he dies; I had forgot the grave.

And in conclusion, my friends are pretty awesome.

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The Love of My (Other) Life

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Meg

The Love of My (Other) Life, by Traci L. Slatton, is a cute sci-fi romance. Brian chases Tessa all around Manhattan, telling her she’s his wife in an alternate universe, and making really terrible physics jokes. When Tessa isn’t trying to get away from the crazy man, she’s snarking at Chelsea “art” galleries and the insane cost of NYC rent. Favorite scenes include alternate-Brian and our world-Brian arguing in unison about alternate dimensions, and Tessa and Brian wandering into an empty room at a gallery and ending up accidentally making performance-art p0rn.

Plus, I think it takes serious chutzpah for a romance writer use ejaculate when referring to a loud and emotional exclamation. That’s what the word means, but… (My favorite word like this is the Victorian meaning of “promiscuous” meaning mixed or jumbled, so one can have a promiscuous bookshelf, or drop one’s shopping in a promiscuous heap.)

I received a review copy of this, and I have a second copy to give away! If you’re interested, leave a comment with the email address associated with your Amazon account. (The email field in my comments sections is screened, obviously.) At the end of the virtual book tour, a random commenter will win a Kindle copy. I think seven people read my blog, so your odds are pretty good.

This post is part of The Love of My (Other) Life blog book tour but you do not get any cover art here because it has a butt on the cover, and I don’t want your bookshelf to start getting too promiscuous.

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Recent Posts

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Meg

Two recent pieces on Indie Game Magazine on serious sim games. First, I loved the concept of Auroch Digital’s relevant sim Endgame Syria, even if I ultimately thought the execution was simplistic and somewhat lacking.

Then, I broke my rule against posting about indie Kickstarters for Neocolonialism. (I get way too many pitches for indie game project Kickstarters to cover that realm with any fairness or depth.) Seth Alter’s Neocolonialism is a very playable strategy game that’s simultaneously an interactive lesson in global finances.

I’ve played Sid Meier’s Civ a few times with a non-violent house role, battling friends and the jerk Montezuma to control the globe by dominating trade routes, controlling resources, and spreading culture. Players who enjoy that sort of strategic challenge will enjoy the gameplay involved in Neocolonialism. Alter has aligned gameplay goals with economic exploitation, which uses both the moral thoughtfulness players have making virtual political decisions in Positech’s Democracy or Max Barry’s NationStates, and our desires to succeed in multiplayer games, and he creates a strategy sim that’s serious, moral and still engaging.

Via Neocolonialism: Fill Your Bank Account While Ruining The World on IGM

And a not-so-serious one on Greg’s new cow-tipping Facebook game.

 

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Zenonia Hates Me

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Meg

New post on Zenonia 5 on Hardcore Droid:

Zenonia 5, Gamevil’s latest installment in the Zenonia series, is a fantasy action RPG for Droid.  Players enter an engaging fantasy world, with charming characters, oddly adorable monsters to fight, an epic destiny, and all the other J-RPG standards, but a frequent need to spend premium currency to progress, and storyline events that require familiarity with previous Zenonia make this delightful world very hard to access.

….

The story opens with a confusing argument between a king, a girl in a bikini, someone who seems to have killed a witch, and a dude who is becoming the devil because the wealthy have oppressed the poor. Then they battle! For folks unfamiliar with the previous Zenonia mythos, this is all pretty obscure, but in a moment, it seems that this sequence was all a dream! Your character is just as confused as you are! Phew! Your first action as a player is to have your crazy dream interpreted.

Via Love and Loathing in Las Zenonia on Hardcore Droid (No, I didn’t title it, I just wish I’d come up with that title myself.)

This was a fairly difficult review to write. I really wanted to enjoy a fantasy adventure, but I just felt like Zenonia hated me. There was too much — storyline, controls, etc. — that players were just expected to know going in, and while I usually prefer jumping in over a slow tutorial, the cost of that exploration was premium currency. I enjoy magic circle of exploration and interaction too much to love Z5.

Many thanks, and possibly many apologies, to Matt (of Matt Barth Sucks fame) for listening to my love/hate rantings and helping me refine it.

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Winter Wedding

Posted on January 29, 2013 by Meg

Just before Christmas, Harold and I went to the wedding of a high school friend in my New Jersey hometown. I basically cried from when we sat down,  because I always cry at weddings, and also because I’m over thirty now and I’m engaged now and I just have all these feelings.

A bunch of my high-school girl friends were the bridesmaids, and at the reception, the DJ introduced them all by their married names, because they have husbands now and that’s what people do. It suddenly seemed like it would be romantic and right to be Mrs. Harold Sipe, and that feeling lasted until I thought about how many credits I have as Meg Stivison, and, well, tradition can suck it.

Harold and I were seated with bunch of my old friends and their spouses, catching up, eating way too much amazing food, and dancing a lot. Meredith and Rob had a great DJ with a perfect mix of songs (Did you know that music selection is just one out of the ten thousand decisions you are supposed to make when plan a wedding?), and it was kind of awesome to be dancing around with friends from fifteen or so years ago, doing the same ridiculous hyper dances we did at eighth grade dances in the gym, at parties and proms.  Only, you know, one of my girlfriends gave birth just a few weeks ago and another was still nursing her daughter, and I hurt my stupid back, so the dancing was slightly more restrained than when we were younger. But no less exuberant!

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Because Science!

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Meg

We are not wired to control our emotions. We now know that the amygdala can send signals to the prefrontal region of the brain, where the orbitofrontal cortex is located, but the prefrontal region cannot send signals directly to the amygdala. That is, the emotional part of our brain is wired to send signals to the thinking part of our brain, but not the other way around.

From The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley by Victor W. Hwang and Greg Horowitt

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On The Future

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Meg

I’ve started contributing to Geek Magazine recently, and my first piece is about future tech.

It’s exciting to think about a pocket app that learns about what you like and finds it for you, and, on a larger scale, about omnipresent technology learning from our choices, and predicting our needs. Still, there’s plenty of fodder for a dark sci-fi future in which privacy is over and Big Data tricks mindless consumers into buying more and more mass-produced junk. As everyone who’s used the musical taste-discovery Pandora knows, the program learns from upvoting and downvoting songs, but it also has an uncanny ability to whip out one’s guilty pleasure songs at inopportune moment. It’s probably not self-aware and doing it on purpose, bent on phase one of destroying all humans, is it?

Via Niantic Lab’s ‘Field Trip’ and the Future of Ambient Intelligence

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