Did You Learn a Lesson? I Won't Hold My Breath.

Just an observation - I saw an announcement from the Amazon Games account on Twitter that Assassin's Creed II for the PC is on sale for $15 "while supplies last".  That is, of course, an absurdly low price for a triple-A title that came out less than 5 months ago and reviewed extremely well.  It's the sort of thing you might expect to see in a Steam seasonal sale, except that this is a boxed copy, not a digital one.  The platform-specific nature of the sale is also interesting.  Let's take a look at the listings for each platform for a moment.

Here's the XBOX 360 version of the game:

The PS3 version:

And the PC version:

You may recall that back before the game came out on the PC I wrote about Ubisoft's anti-consumer DRM scheme - how I felt it was going to give Ubi's legitimate customers a worse deal than the pirates they were ostensibly fighting.  As a commenter noted below that post, there were many reports of the DRM doing exactly what I thought it would after the game released, locking out paying customers and preventing them from enjoying the game they bought.

Now, a deep sale on a recently released game isn't solid proof of anything, but notice that the PC version of Assassin's Creed II enjoys only a 1.5 star rating on Amazon, while the two console versions each have ratings of 4.5.  It's a great game, and there's no difference at all between the PC and console versions except for the DRM on the PC (though the PS3 version was noted in some reviews to have performance problems compared to the X360 one).  In fact, the PC version has the DLC from the console versions built-in, so it's otherwise a slightly better deal even if the price were the same.  That low rating is 100% due to the DRM; reading just one or two of the user reviews bears that out.  And a 1.5 star rating probably isn't too great for sales.  And now, after less than half a year on shelves, ACII is $15 on the PC while its 360 console counterpart still sits happily at more than twice that, even though it's been out 4 months longer.

Unfortunately I fully suspect that if any lesson is taken from this by Ubisoft, it will be only that it isn't worth making PC versions of their games at all anymore.  On the other hand, though, if this was the only way we were going to get them?  We're better off without.

Forbidden Island! (and Other Board Games)

Non-digital gaming time!  If you happen to read my Twitter feed - which I suppose there's no reason to assume you do, but at this point I think a fair number of my readers are from the same community I interact with over on Twitter - you may have seen me begin a strange and rapid love affair with the board game Forbidden Island over the last week.

I heard about it for the first time last Sunday, when Mike from Penny-Arcade mentioned it.  As both a huge Penny-Arcade fan and someone who likes tabletop gaming, that was enough to send me off in search of more information, and the game's page on BoardGameGeek finished selling it by telling me that it's essentially a faster-playing, lighter-themed version of Pandemic.  And that it's only $15.

Now, Pandemic and I have a rocky relationship.  If you aren't familiar, it's a cooperative game in which all players compete against the board - everyone wins, or no-one does.  Diseases are spreading across the globe, and your team of medical professionals / disaster movie cliches (the medic, the dispatcher, the ops expert, etc) must scramble to contain and cure them.  I've played it several times, and while I'm playing it I'm always having fun, but far too often after the game I feel like I've wasted my time.  Pandemic can seem like it's going well for much of the game, and then all fall to pieces really quickly.  That can be frustrating when it feels like there was no way to prevent failure.

Forbidden Island shares the same problem to a degree, but minimizes it by both playing faster and being a shorter game overall.  The game mechanics are almost identical, though the theme is different - instead of four diseases, you have four lost treasures that your team of treasure hunters / adventure movie cliches (the pilot, the engineer, the diver, etc) must rescue from a sinking island.  The board is randomized each time, which is a notable difference from Pandemic, and since the island is sinking as you play, your plans will change frequently as the game progresses.  By the end of every game I've played so far it's felt frantic and fun, whether we won or lost.  I've tried it with 2, 3 and 4 players, and have enjoyed it each time.  And it's $15!  Fifteen bucks for a game this good and pieces of this quality in a nice metal tin is crazy.  If you've played Pandemic and really hate it or something, this might not be for you, but otherwise, go read the BoardGameGeek page linked above.  If it sounds like your thing, snag a copy.  I think you'll like it.

My frequent Twitter ravings about the game prompted a couple of questions, so I'll address those here.

(1)  Do you usually get your [board] games online?

I try not to, but more often than not the answer is yes.  There are some good board game shops here in Pittsburgh, and one in particular over by the CMU campus that I try to make a point to go into every month or two and pick something up if it looks good and is at a reasonable price, but it's really, really hard for those shops to compete with the 'net.  I knew on Monday that I wanted to pick up Forbidden Island, so I called every shop in town to try to buy it locally.  I know the game is relatively new, but not only did nobody have it, nobody even knew when they would have it.  They all offered to make calls and call me back, but that would mean probably at least a week, maybe 2, before getting it, and I wanted a copy before Friday because that's when we play games at lunch at my office.  Amazon had it to me by Thursday.  Add in the fact that most online game retailers can offer the games at a lower cost, and... well, it's rough.

In terms of online shops I have used and can recommend, obviously Amazon's a pretty trustworthy site, as long as they're selling it directly and not through a reseller (though even then it's probably fine).  Funagain Games has never done me wrong, and will frequently have prices a few bucks below Amazon and several bucks below a retail store.  The guys over at Troll and Toad are okay, as well.  Sometimes you can order directly from the publisher, as I did with Steve Jackson Games when I got Zombie Dice.  In general, I'd recommend just doing a Google search for the game you're looking to buy, see what kind of prices come up, and then shop intelligently from there.  [Edit: Adam in the comments also recommends ThoughtHammer - I haven't purchased from them yet, but their site looks good and I can confirm after some quick browsing that their prices are nice.  Thanks, Adam!]

If you have a local shop, though, at least give them a chance, and maybe say a little prayer for them as you browse.

(2) Could you do a top 5 rundown of board or dice games good for 2 to 6 teams/people?

Well, I can give you some of my favorites.  Meghan and I play games between just the two of us fairly frequently, so I tend to prefer games that at least CAN be played well by two, though we also get together with friends at least a couple times a month and need games that roll with more.  Here are some that always end up getting pulled out, with BoardGameGeek links and summaries:

Carcassonne:  The game the defines tile-laying gameplay for me.  Very easy to teach, but highly variable on each playthrough and with a lot of depth, especially depending which expansions / variants you have.  Players take turns drawing tiles at random and building a map, placing units on the map that will score them points during the game and at the end.  Plays 2-5.  I'm a big fan of the Hunters & Gatherers variant.  It can also be played free online at BrettSpielWelt (I could write a whole 2nd post about BrettSpielWelt, and may at some point).

Ticket to Ride:  One of Meghan's favorites and also very popular with our friends, I get cajoled into it even though it's not my favorite, but I seem to be the outlier, everyone else loves it.  Earn points by building train routes across the U.S. / Europe / other places depending on which version you play.  Plays 2-5, also depending on what version you play.

Ruse and Bruise:  Very few people have heard of this one, and it's a shame because it's great.  All players start out with the same deck of cards, but will draw randomized hands and use them to bid on point cards.  Each card has a special effect, and many of the cards counter each other - cards are played face down, so you don't know which card an opponent played until you challenge their bid to reveal it.  Lots of psychological warfare and trickery goes on with this one.  The rules are terribly translated from German, but the folks on BoardGameGeek have done an admirable job of clearing them up on the page linked above.  Plays 2-6.

Plunder!  Another hidden gem that sold poorly and very few people have played, but almost everyone loves it when they do.  Unfortunately, I'm not sure whether you can still buy Plunder!; I believe it may have gone out of print.  If you stumble across a copy like I did, pick it up.  Players build a map of the Caribbean dynamically using the map cards in their hands, and then compete to pillage it for the most gold.  It has some great, subtle mechanics, all based on the same deck of cards, it plays out differently every time, and it's got a really solid piratey theme.  Plays 2-4, or 2-6 if you print the optional ruleset from BoardGameGeek ("Commodore Rules").

Zombie Dice:  This is a "filler" game, but a good one.  Essentially a press-your-luck game, players roll dice trying to eat brains and avoid being gunned down.  Get gunned down 3 times, and lose your points for that round.  First player to 13 brains wins.  Cheap (about $10), quick, and plays however many people you've got.

Dominion:  Take a collectible card game.  Now take out the "collectible" part.  You've got Dominion.  ...Okay, sorry, that's a little oversimplified.  But if you've ever played Magic: The Gathering or any other similar CCG, you know that the appeal is in building a deck to beat your opponent's.  That's the appeal of Dominion as well, but all the available cards - attack cards, defense cards, victory point cards, etc - are on the table, and you build your deck as part of the gameplay rather than beforehand.  By making smart choices about which cards to buy, you can open up your purchasing options on later turns, and limit your opponent's.  Of course, they're trying to do the same to you.  Plays 2-4, or up to 6 with expansions.  This one is also available on BrettSpielWelt.

So there's six, in addition to Forbidden Island of course (which plays 2-4) or Pandemic (the same).  Meghan and I also have some favorite two-player-only games like Lost Cities and the Settlers of Catan Card Game, but I'll leave it to you to follow those links if you want more info about them.

Happy gaming!  I'm going to go see if I can convince my wife to go treasure hunting with me again.  I don't want to burn this game out... but man, right now I'm really kind of hooked.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 51: Mardek

We gave you a brief hiatus to recover after Mike wrapped up our "Best of Indie" lineup with Cave Story, figuring that after such an onslaught of quality freeware, maybe you needed a breather. But now we're back, and I hope you spent the time well, because if you're a fan of classic 8- and 16-bit RPG's, you may be lacking free time for awhile. This week's installment contains not one game, but three, and they aren't short. ...Well, okay, the first one is. After that, no.

First released back in 2007, Pseudolonewolf's Mardek series is a loving part-homage, part-parody of the RPG genre. Backing tried and true gameplay with a wry sense of humor and a classic aesthetic style, he's managed to amass a respectable following for these games, and it's easy to see why. Best of all - and the reason for my focusing on it now - in honor of the new release of Chapter 3, the first two chapters have been updated and revamped, so if you've never heard of Mardek before, this is the perfect time to jump in.

This is the sort of dialogue you can expect from Chapter 1. Mardek is not ashamed of its cliches.

Gameplay-wise, what you'll find here is almost exactly what you remember from the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games of our youth (well, my youth... I don't know when your youth was) - you'll guide your party through towns and dungeons, opening chests, managing items and equipment via a fly-out menu system, talking to NPC's, saving your game at save crystals, taking everything that isn't nailed down, etc. The overworld map is slightly more abstracted than those of most classic RPG's, with characters traveling between nodes rather than trudging across the world one step at a time, but once you enter one of the game's main areas, the look and feel will be very familiar. The plot, on the other hand, goes to some rather different places, but I'll let you discover that for yourself.

Dragon's Final Fantasy Quest XIV?

In combat, things are again more or less played by the traditional book, though there are a couple of changes that make the game feel a bit more engaging than your standard turn-based RPG. A timing mechanic accompanies each attack and defense action, similar to the one found in the Mario RPG and Paper Mario games. It isn't implemented in quite as nuanced a way as it is in those series, but it still keeps you on your toes. Experience gain is also handled in an unconventional fashion - every successful hit against an opponent grants XP, so characters will on occasion level up in the middle of a battle, rather than at the end. Not a huge shift, but an interesting one. Otherwise, it's standard fare - the usual Fight, Magic, Item menu - but be warned that the combat in Mardek is not easy, once you pass the short introductory first chapter. Early fights can still pose a serious threat to your party, if you're not careful.

Sure, you start out with rags and sticks...


...but keep at it, and maybe this is in your future. Maybe. No guarantees.

There isn't a whole lot else to say - if turn-based RPG's are your thing, there's a surprising amount of game to sink your teeth into, for a free Flash project. The gameplay is solid, the writing enjoyable, and the atmosphere nostalgic. The most recent installment is hypothetically Chapter 3 of 8, so there may be much more to come, though if it took three years to get Chapter 3 out, I must admit some skepticism about 5 more chapters showing up anytime soon. Still, what's there now is no less impressive for that, and worth checking out whether more ever arrives or not.

Mardek is...

• an ambitious project, well-handled so far.
• happily self-aware, something I'm always glad to see.
• very traditional, but in ways I appreciate.
• certainly worth a spin if you ever entered BKMG or THEF as a character name.

A note: The claim is made that you can carry your saves between the game's chapters. I tried transferring my save from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 without success. I haven't yet tried doing it with Chapter 3. Let me know if you have better luck.

Mardek plays anywhere Flash works - Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3.

Tally-ho! (Play the first chapter. You'll get it. It's something adventurers say.)

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 49: Iji

I'm going to admit up front that I wrestled for a bit over whether or not to include this game in our "Best of Indie" line-up.  It doesn't quite measure up to some of the others we've featured in terms of polish.  It's a little easier to levy criticisms against it, and I suspect there may be a few raised eyebrows about putting this in over some other possibilities.  But we didn't set out to make a Top 10 list (besides, we're not doing 10 of them).  This series is about our personal favorites, the freeware games that are most memorable to us, and I'm choosing to favor ambition over proximity to perfection in this case.  Great ambition deserves recognition, I think, and I'm hopeful that once you try this game out, you'll agree that despite its blemishes, it deserves to be featured among the best.

Set in the wake of an alien invasion of Earth, Iji tells the story of a young woman by the same name who wakes up with only a strange weapon and a disembodied voice to keep her company.  With most of her family presumed dead and her brother Dan able to communicate to her only over the facility's PA system, she is surrounded by hostile creatures who will attempt to shoot her on site.  She needs to survive, and if possible, she needs to either destroy the Tasen invasion force or get them to call off their attack.

How she does this is completely up to you.

While much more of an action game than an RPG, Iji takes a lot of its design cues from games like System Shock 2 and Deus Ex, presenting the player with a myriad of options for developing their character and encouraging them to experiment with solving problems in different ways.  Experience ("Nanofields") can be absorbed through combat or exploration, and after gaining a level points can be put towards any of seven primary attributes:  Strength, Attack, Assimilate, Health, Crack, Tasen, or Komato.

If that sounds like a lot, it is, and each one of those can have wide-reaching ramifications.  Some, like Health and Attack, are fairly obvious.  Strength allows you to break open security doors, potentially opening up alternate routes that avoid enemies or lead to hidden items;  it also allows you to engage in melee combat more effectively.  "Crack" levels up Iji's ability to tamper with electronics, and the game's hacking minigame (shown briefly in the trailer above) is employed all over the place - you can hack into some doors, you can unlock crates with special items, even the weapons and armor of your foes can be hacked, if you have the skill.  Crack will also allow you to combine weapons more effectively at stations scattered around the map.  Assimilate lets you regain health and armor from pickups more quickly, as well as increasing your ammo capacity.  Tasen and Komato increase your affinity for the weapons of these alien races, allowing you access to better guns as you progress.

Of course, you won't have enough points for everything, especially early on - you're going to have to choose your path and change your playstyle to match.  What's special about Iji is that to a surprising degree for a freeware title, the game will change to suit you, as well.  Play Iji as a bloodthirsty warrior, and her tone and the tone of characters who interact with her will noticeably shift.  Events may transpire differently than they would if you played her as a pacifist, sneaking and hacking your way through situations without violence.  There are even enemies who will treat you differently if you haven't been aggressive towards their comrades, and overtly passive or aggressive playthroughs will each yield their own rewards in the end.

Iji begins as a blank slate.  What sort of hero will you be?

Aesthetically, Iji alternates between pleasing and passable, depending on your tolerance for decidedly low production values.  The visual resemblance to 2D sidescrollers like Out of This World and Flashback is strong, for any who played those games in their youth, though the animation isn't nearly as detailed.  Level design is somewhat spartan, with a lot of repeated areas and not a whole lot of graphical variety.  Some nice special effects help to make up for the otherwise bland look, though - explosions and particles specifically are well done, with some nice rudimentary physics taking over when things start blowing up.  Frequent cut-scenes also provide a break from the sameness of the early levels, and they're generally well made.  The music is good - it does get a bit repetitive from time to time, but never to the point where I turned it off.

From a gameplay perspective, there are also a few complaints to be made:  for as many places as it gets used, the cracking minigame is extremely straightforward and not actually that much fun.  Iji isn't quite as agile as I'd like her to be, even after leveling up - at no point can she shoot her weapons in midair, and avoiding enemy fire is often a practical impossibility, so you just need to level her Health up enough to take the damage until she can find pickups and recharge.  Playing as a pacifist is also a little less satisfying than one might hope, and while it is a valid option, it often just involves running away.

Despite these minor issues, Iji is an impressive title and deserves to be played.  Iji's developer and author, Daniel Remar, also created the previous Free and Worth Every Penny entry Hero Core - if that was his attempt at making an incredibly tight, focused game, then Iji was his "everything and the kitchen sink" game.  Spanning 10 chapters, the game tells an intricate story that shifts to accommodate your actions;  tension and uncertainty will chase at Iji's heels as she attempts to secure humanity's survival and her own in the midst of battle between two alien species.  And please don't let the quibbles I wrote above mislead you.  At some point you'll find yourself running down a hallway, ducking rockets from the sentry behind you and deciding on the fly whether to take the time to hack the door in front of you, turn and fight, or jump down the nearby elevator shaft and hope it isn't a jump out of the frying pan and into the fire, and you'll realize:  Iji is serious, can't-believe-this-is-free fun.

Iji...

• is one of the most ambitious freeware games I've ever played.
• encourages you to play your way, and responds when you do so.
• might be a tad too broad for its own good, and won't win any beauty contests.
• has nonetheless stuck in my head ever since I first played it, more than I can say for many games I've paid for.

Iji is Windows only, and comes in a little under 40MB.  Pick it up here.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 47: Spelunky

It occurs to me that Derek Yu may be a saint.  And if not sainthood, surely he holds some revered position that implies near-superhuman charity and grace.  Derek, you see, is no stranger to developing excellent games - his 2007 title Aquaria was the Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner of the 2007 Independent Games Festival, and is a great Metroid-esque action game with a unique control scheme that's (in my opinion) well worth your time and money.  You should play it.

But last year, Derek made an action adventure game that easily stands among some of the finest of all time.  A game that looks and plays like the best titles the 16-bit era of videogaming ever produced, but lives in a genre none of them lived in.  It's a hybrid of platforming and Roguelike dungeon-crawling that will delight and humble you.  It's simply sublime.  And he gave it away.

For this week's "Best of Indie" installment of Free and Worth Every Penny, we examine Spelunky, easily one of my favorite freeware titles of the last 5 years.  If you've paid attention to the patterns between my entries in this column and Mike's, you may have noticed that I have a pretty serious fondness for Roguelikes and their derivatives.   You might call it an affinity.  I'd appreciate it if you didn't label it an obsession, but if you want to use that word, I'll understand.  Something about randomly generating an unforgiving world and then giving the player just enough in the way of tools (and usually not nearly enough in the way of instruction) to conquer it taps into the most addiction-prone pieces of my psyche.  So I'm prone to ramble on about games like Desktop Dungeons, or Super Space Rogues, or ro9, or Torchlight...  you get the idea.

Spelunky is nothing like any of those games in terms of presentation - 16-bit sidescrollers provide the visual inspiration here, and the controls feel much more like those of a Capcom title from the 80's than a methodical turn-based dungeon crawl.  But make no mistake, from a game design perspective Spelunky is a Roguelike through and through, and it's one of the best to come along in a long time.

You won't start Spelunky in traditional Roguelike fashion, picking a class and other attributes.  No, your hero here is always the same, an adorable Saturday morning cartoon version of Indiana Jones, equipped with a few lengths of rope and some bombs - and, of course, his trusty whip.  From that point on, though, the similarities to games like Nethack are deliberate and delightful.  Each level is randomly generated, and fraught with peril - an arrow trap or a fall from a great height poses as great a threat to your adventurer's well-being as enemies do.  Randomized, too, are your rewards, with breakable pots, crates and chests holding the promise of treasure (a promise that is, on occasion, a lie).  The variety is almost overwhelming - you'll have the chance to stumble on or purchase climbing gloves, spring shoes, parachutes, a jetpack, and all manner of other useful items to help you in your quest.  Damsels in distress wait for you to rescue them...  or use them as bait to distract your enemies.  And golden idols tempt you from conspicuous pedestals - if you think you know what happens when you pick those up, you're exactly right.  As in most Roguelikes, you have only one life and no saves, so tread carefully.

Yes, the blonde is just as annoying as the one from Temple of Doom.  Saving her is profitable...  but optional.

Luckily, for a game with so many challenges, the control scheme is simple and extremely precise.  When I compared it to a Capcom sidescroller, I meant it;  Spelunky sometimes demands as much precision as a Mega Man game, but it gives you the tools to live up to the challenge.  Running, jumping, climbing and attacking are all performed with only a few buttons, and the game handles equally well with a keyboard or a gamepad.  It's a tremendously scalable game, as well, and while it looks great blown up to 4X and fullscreen on my desktop, it also plays just fine in a window on my underpowered netbook.   An included config utility helps you tweak it to fit whatever settings you need.

I want to take a moment and make note of some of the little touches in Spelunky, the details Derek Yu put in there just to let you know he cares.  Arrow traps are triggered not just by your character, but also by any thrown object or other character;  how and when to set them off becomes a strategy all its own.  Shopkeepers, in classic Nethack tradition, may be robbed.  In the same tradition, there are dire consequences for doing so - but of course, they can be avoided if you're clever.  Most of each level is destructible, and you can use bombs and other tools to forge your own path.  Experimentation with attacks and enemies will sometimes yield fruitful results;  blow up a giant spider by catching a bomb in its web, and sticky bombs are your reward.  The secrets and unlockables in this game run deep.  There's a Wiki out there, of course, but I'm not going to link it.  You can find it when you're ready...  first you should discover some things for yourself.

There's a lot more I could talk about - how delving deeper into the dungeon reveals entirely new tilesets, enemies and traps;  how tense the levels without easy access to light sources can be;  how much you'll come to dread the words "A chill runs down your spine!  Let's get out of here!" - but the bottom line is that Spelunky is an incredible achievement and it's amazing that we all get to play it at no cost.  I was very happy to hear earlier this year that Derek is revamping the game to sell on XBox Live Arcade.  I certainly intend to purchase it when he does, but the original is and will remain free to download.  If you haven't, you should do that, right now.

Spelunky is...

• one of the most polished freeware games I've ever played.
• tremendously challenging, and equally addictive.
• an excellent blend of genres, full of both creative experimentation and loving homage.
• a permanent resident on the hard drive of every PC I own.

It's easy to make it a permanent resident on yours, too;  it's a less-than-10MB download, and it's zipped up to make it portable.  (I keep my Spelunky folder sync'd to all my machines via Dropbox.)  Derek has even released the source code, if you're into that sort of thing.  Like I said:  he just might be a saint.

Windows only - get it here.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.