The 2012 IGF Pirate Kart: 323 x 10 Words

by berv

Some months ago, I heard of the Pirate Kart: a collection of quick jams, abandoned projects, works-in-progress, and strange experiments deemed by their creators to be unworthy of entry into the annual Independent Games Festival. Fool that I am, I decided it would be a good idea to play through all 323 entries and attempt to review each of them in exactly ten words.

I’ve since found that expressing anything in ten words is, at its best, a damned challenge, and at its worst, not at all fair to the items under review. Attempting to balance description of the games with my reaction to them while at the same time trying to make the snippets enjoyable to read was quite a challenge that I definitely won’t claim to have overcome. I’d like to apologize in advance to those developers who I haven’t really done justice to and applaud everyone who participated for doing your thing, regardless of how much or how little I might personally have enjoyed it. I also appreciate that many of these games might never have been intended for review and so have tried to curb my snarkiness where possible.

I’d definitely recommend giving the Pirate Kart a try, if only to see sampling of the huge range of work contained within. The best way to appreciate it, I think, is to boot it up, take the random ordering it provides you, and start working down the list until you’ve had enough. Iif you’d prefer a little direction, though I’ve marked a few of the games below that I thought stood out. Games that are bolded and italicized are my top picks, notable in some way that made them clearly stand out from the pack. Games that are simply bolded had some sort of stand-out element and are certainly worth your time, if only to appreciate the idea or it’s potential.

But really, what I’d rather you do is throw yourself against the will of the Pirate Kart and see where you end up. Best of luck.

Retroactive storytelling and character definition in Unmanned

by berv

Now that it’s been a few days (and I’ve had the chance to bounce it off a few people), I wanted to comment on Unmanned, a browser-based game by Molleindustria. Though I would describe it as more of an interactive story than a game in the traditional sense, I found it to be an incredibly compelling journey of character definition.

Unmanned has the player inhabit the character of a predator drone operator for a day, tending to the oft-monotonous tasks of his day to day life and spending his idle moments introspecting and chatting with the people of his world. The game runs with a split interface, forcing the player to perform simple actions (e.g. shaving, staying in your lane on the highway, etc.) on the right half of the screen while choosing from dialogue options on the left. As a mechanic, I thought this was a solid mirror of how we seldom give anything our full and undivided attention and appreciated the light task-juggling required. But it’s the dialogue that really drew me in, and that’s what I’d like to discuss.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoned

by berv

I had downloaded the demo to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning about a week ago, watched the intro cutscene, ran into graphical issues, and promptly uninstalled it, but yesterday’s launch event persuaded me to give it another try.

First, I’d like to talk about the launch event. A sizeable number of popular videogame webcasters, many of whom I recognized from Starcraft 2 casts, agreed to promote the game on launch day by streaming themselves playing it. Being able to check in with each of these personalities as they explored the game did a great deal to win me over to the merits of the game. Seeing each enjoy the game despite their different approaches and in-game character builds drew me in and, on a basic level, made me want to have the same fun they were having.  Additionally, some of the streams featured interviews with particular bigs involved in the game (Curt Schilling, R.A. Salvatore, Todd McFarlane, Ken Ralston), which added a little bit of additional spice to the presentation and context for the product. All this was combined with periodic giveaways of the game itself and larger sweepstakes running over the course of the day to produce a very successful kick off and managed to get me excited about a game I had given up on.

#sworcery

by berv

Just moments ago, I finished the last segment of Superbrothers’ Sword & Sworcery EP (iOS) and am so moved by the experience, I am compelled to write in the hopes that I might persuade at least one other person to take the same journey.

Where to begin? S&S EP is so tightly put together I feel as if I’d be doing it a disservice to discuss it as anything less than the whole. If you can play it (and you trust my judgement well enough), you’re best to pick it up and experience it for yourself. For everyone else, I will attempt to break it down.

Losing and other such nonsense

by anbrewk

Despite my enjoyment of playing games, I do sometimes get frustrated when a game is not going my way – that is to say, when I am losing.  I’ve spent some time thinking about those feelings afterward and wondering what causes them – if it is really my losing that makes me frustrated or something else.  There is an inconsistency in my feeling frustrated that does not always coincide with losing. Sometimes I lose, or am losing, and I am perfectly happy to continue playing.  Other times I lose, or am losing and I want to quit or leave.  Recently, I had a similar feeling of frustrating and coupled with a desire to escape that mirrored this feeling of frustration I feel when losing in games: I was a guest at a persons home who kept insulting me (probably unintentionally) yet consistently enough and in such a way that I felt there was little I could do to stop it. I wanted to escape. In that situation, I had a similar desire to quit and leave. I had the desire to quit the activity which was frustrating me and leave the situation which marked my frustration.  I wanted to distance myself from something that wasn’t working for me.

The common denominator in my frustration is not that I am losing, because sometimes when I am losing I don’t feel like leaving or quitting and I often lose and have a great time. It isn’t as though every game I play I win and only the games I win at I have fun at. I have never won a single game of Brass yet I like that game very much.  I have won games of Through The Ages that I have been frustrated with because I felt my decisions didn’t matter and I won for arbitrary reasons.  More so than in either of those cases, I have won and lost games of Roma that I thought were trivial in both cases: I would now just as likely ignore a request to play a game of “flip the coin!” then play Roma.

The powerful nature of games.

by anbrewk

First, the idea that games have a ‘nature’ requires some kind of explication which I am totally unprepared to do.  However short-sighted my title may be, I’m am excited enough about games as to consider that ‘game’ is some kind of limiting concept that not everything falls into and in this very liberal sense, I think games have a nature that other things don’t have.  Essentially I am saying there are things that are games and there are things that are not games and that the things that are games are of the same kind, despite perhaps appearing different. In this limited sense I’m saying they have a ‘nature’ – something that ties them together as being the same kind. Before I continue with what I know is going to be a feeble attempt to describe what strikes me as the nature of games, allow me to direct you to another post on another blog that does a really nice job talking about games. Now that you have that, I feel less bad about what I am going to write and what you’re going to end up reading.

I don’t really want to set out to define games so I don’t know why I started with such an epic opening paragraph. And I don’t even like the term ‘nature.’ It’s so messy and normative. But I’m going to leave that paragraph up anyway and continue on just like we were talking. All I really want to do is talk about games. I want to express my enthusiasm for play and gaming and maybe organize the thoughts I’m having in my head.  I think I’ll start by saying that play and games are different.  While play may be described as a  joyous expression, games are structured events.  If play was an ephemeral moment of joy, a game would be a mechanism to capture that moment.  Though maybe not all games. War games are not about joy, they are about practice and training. Play amongst predatory animals is closer to war games than hopscotch and hopscotch isn’t much of a game at all.  But let’s not worry ourselves with answering the questions these examples seem to bring up. Let’s worry ourselves with thinking of examples and then maybe try to sort them. I don’t want to solve anything here. I just want to talk about games and then maybe make a couple helpful distinctions here and there.

Why Dota?

by anbrewk

Alright, I’ll write an article. You twisted my arm with the weight of my burdens of responsibility.

A Game of DOTA in progress (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

I’ve been thinking about Dota (Defense of the Ancients) a fair amount lately. Mostly because I want to escape but also a little bit because of all the dota clones in the works that lead me to recall my past interest in the beast that is DOTA. Among the contenders for the throne are Blizzard and Valve among a bunch of  lamer gamers with their own shitty free versions.

If you are at all interested in why Dota is a big deal, read: Basshunter. O.K. now this is just a total aside but at one point in my life having babes watch me play Dota with a bunch of my dude friends would have been super great.  Or at least I would have perceived that as super great. That sort of ties into how I feel about the game in general. The appeal found within the idea of someone actually wanting to watch me play dota is the same illusionary appeal that actually playing dota holds. Neither are actually appealing. They both just represent me and a bunch of other people wasting a lot of time.

As another aside, playing dota with an actual team of 5 players on a dedicated ventrilo (as suggested in the aforementioned basshunter music video) would be pretty awesome. Even if Dota sucks, which I’m vaguely suggesting it does, that again still appeals to me.

Winslave’s Paradise

by anbrewk

Another one of my lil’ minecraft dudes died today – just now, actually.  He carelessly fell down a hole and died from fall damage. It was a really deep hole.  He was wearing a full set of diamond armor with an enchanted sword that he put 37 levels into. Because he had just dug that hole, his falling down it could have been avoided if he’d only shown the appropriate due care around such a dangerous thing.  Because he died and because he was hardcore, his world died with him.

His world was called “Winslave’s Paradise” and it was made with a seed of the same name.  It was named after another hardcore guy who died in a different game, Terraria, before ever getting to enjoy his existence. He, Winslave, spawned in a world in Terraria with no idea how to play.  It was a dark night and he was beside hungry zombies that ate him alive. Where Winslave died, a tombstone was left.  Because he died right beside the spawn, his tombstone was the first thing every subsequent character saw – a reminder of an event none of them knew enough to care about.  It was the tombstone that marked the death of someone who never really lived.  In Winslave’s memory, a paradise was built for him in minecraft.  All of the useless blocks collected in deep dark dangerous caves- gold, extra iron, pumpkins, TNT, lapus lazuli dye, whatever, were built into the walls of a great cave in Winslave’s memory. Despite Winslave dying in another world, he would be remembered here.  It started with gold and blue dye but then it was everything: sheeps’ wool and the dyes needed to color them with every color, every different kind of leaf, grass, wood, vines, flowers: everything.

Strategic Bluffing: A Review of ‘Lord of the Rings – The Confrontation’

by frangibility

I’ve recently been introduced to Reiner Knizia‘s Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation by one of my room-mates and I have to say that it is every bit as good as I hoped it would be. If I had any trepidation going it, it was simply due to the good doctor’s prolific output: over 350 games at last count. As such, even though he has designed some of my favourites (including Tigris and Euphrates, Modern Art, Samurai, and Battle Line), you will also see his imprimatur on far less noteworthy titles. Fortunately, I didn’t need to worry: LOTR – The Confrontationis a clever and engaging two-player game that packs a lot of strategy and enjoyment into 30 minutes or less.

So, what kind of game is LOTR – The Confrontation? If you imagine taking the fun part of Stratego (i.e., the initial stage of planning and set-up) and combining it with a system of semi-blind bids for combat resolution (think: Dungeon Twister), as well as asymmetric player powers and victory conditions, you basically have this game. To be more specific, it plays out as follows: each player selects one of the two sides (Fellowship or Sauron), retrieves their single-sided counters and freely positions them upon their side of the diamond-shaped board, following some fairly simply placement rules. The Fellowship player’s goal is to run the ring-bearer into Mordor – the region that represents the Sauron player’s “base;” conversely, the Sauron player’s goal is either to kill the ring-bearer (easier said than done) or to run any three of its units into The Shire (the Fellowship base). The movement rules are very simple: on each turn, a player *must* move a unit forward (or sideways if you are in the forest squares on the Sauron side). Since the board is diamond shaped, this means that each move on your side of the board allows you to choose between two different target squares, whereas moving onto enemy turf is always going to be unidirectional.

Another one bites the dust.

by anbrewk

Today, I died in my hardcore game of minecraft. Today’s death was an important death as it marked the end of a two week run at trying to reach The End. In order to reach The End, I had to find a stronghold, place 12 Eyes of Ender in the end portal and then beat an enderdragon. In my two weeks of playing, I didn’t get to do any of those things because I never managed to find a stronghold.  I built an entire suit of diamond armor, multiple enchanted diamond swords, built pillars of gold, found multiple records, cocoa beans, pig saddles, and all the rest but never a stronghold. I searched through huge underworld caverns, I followed the paths of a dozen Eyes of Ender but never did I find a stronghold. I traveled to the Nether world, killing blazes for their blaze rods but never did I find a stronghold.

The experience of hardcore minecraft is much like many experiences in hardcore mode games – that of a hard life followed by a sudden, meaningless and final death. But looking back on that run, I don’t consider it a defeat.  My lil’ guy died with a diamond helmet of underwater breathing on his head that let him swim down to the bottom of the ocean where he happened to accidentally fall into a lava filled chasm that, combined with fall damage, burnt his health down to one little half heart. If it wasn’t for my quick thinking and preparedness with that bucket of water, he would have died right there but he put out the fire and lay standing on the hard rock floor of that chasm for a good full second before that creeper showed up and blew his little half heart body apart.  He was an adventurous lil’ guy with much to show for.  He lived a long and prosperous life in search of an elusive stronghold that he never did find.  He died like he lived, uselessly searching for something seemingly impossible to find. R.I.P. lil’ minecraft dude.