Sunday nights are made for gaming, and here are a couple picks to help you forget that tomorrow is Monday…
The Game that Takes Place on a Cruise Ship
Dierdre Kiai is now an intern at Telltale Games. In addition to being a charming gal and possessing mad programming skillz, she has also created this tongue-in-cheek gem of an adventure game. The game does, in fact, take place on a cruise ship, and a stylish cartoony one at that. Everything is very bright and unmenacing, making one long for a long relaxing trip on the high seas….sigh…. The characters are interesting and weird, and for the most point not the kind you would want on that trip with you. The dialog is funny, with alot of situations that poke fun at the classical adventure genre in general. The puzzles are much less frustrating than those in The Longest Journey, and there are some real brilliant activities (like having to find a contact lens on the carpet of a changing room). The interface is a Sierra-esque style click the verb and then click the object, and may take some patience for those of us used to new-fangled streamlinedness. But that only barely detracts from a really fun experience. Rumor has it that this game was originally created for a school project. Based on the fact that it is actually a complete game whereas my school projects pretty much stayed in the prototype phase, I am going to have to assume that this rumor is a complete fabrication. >ahem< Oh stop looking at me that way and play it already!
Our second pick is a game that is actually still in Beta, but the beta is wide open to anyone who would like to give it a try. Bang! Howdy is a game by our Puzzle Pirate buddies Three Rings Publishing. It is a very different game however, having more in common with a table top collectable miniatures game than cooperative puzzling…uhm…madness. Some of the details need a bit of smoothing out, but they already have a game that looks great (much nicer than Puzzle Pirates) has a nifty western soundtrack and a really fun core set of mechanics. You take your little cowboys, Indians and steam punk gear and wage war with the other person’s little gang. Currently there are three game types: Gold Rush (collect all the gold you can), Claim Jumper (collect gold and steal it from your opponents) and Cattle Rustlin’ (”brand” more cattle than the other guys). There is already a nice collection of maps so there is enough of a variety to keep interested. What is really interesting to me is the real world to game world economic system. When the game is live you will be able to buy gold. You win scrip for playing game matches. You also have the option of buying gold for scrip, instead of paying real money. Most things cost a combination of gold and scrip, so it isn’t just a matter of the rich kids having all the cool stuff. You still have to be willing to work for it some. Expect some bugs, but check it out. It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes…
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3 Responses:
June 7th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Hey,
I don’t mean to sound whiney and all, but I really hate not being able to read the whole post on the home page. (also the “[...]” link doesn’t work…well, asumming it’s a link!)
Cheerio!
June 7th, 2006 at 2:06 pm
Hey, you blogged about my game! This makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
To clarify, TGTTPOACS wasn’t a school project - I did it all just for fun. My school projects also tend to be either prototypical or ridiculously short, for what it’s worth.
And for future reference, my name is spelled D-E-I-R-D-R-A. Forget all that “I before E except after a C” nonsense. (You do, however, score major points for properly spelling my last name.)
September 11th, 2006 at 1:03 am
[...] I also played TGTTPOACS a month or so ago, after not having even touched it for a while either. It was definitely much of an improvement in my eyes over Cubert, especially in terms of writing and design. Even Heather Logas liked it, which definitely must mean something. And yet, after reading someone over the Internet complain that TGTTPOACS barely had any animations in it, playing it again made me realise, “my God, he’s right! What was I thinking; I’m no artist! I animate like a programmer! Serves me right for studying computer science…” [...]