A Brief "Vacation"

"Vacation" being in quotes because it's actually the opposite of vacation - a nonstop barrage of work - that's keeping me away from games and writing about them at the moment, but that's how it goes sometimes.  Circumstances of the day job have been such over the last couple of weeks that I haven't really touched anything gaming wise, and so I don't have much new to share.  Hopefully this will turn around soon, but even if it doesn't, PAX in Boston is rapidly approaching at the end of March, and I can't imagine that I won't have things to say about that.

In the meantime, I would like to quickly mention that I had a fun chat with Devin Passage of Martian Arctic Games (who recently released a neat little action strategy title called Cyber-Wing) on the most recent episode of the Immortal Machines podcast.  He talked about his experiences in indie game development, DRM, his love of DOTA clone Heroes of Newerth, and a bunch of other stuff.  A good time was had by all, though I will warn you that there are some real Total Annihilation afficianados on the show and they ended up talking about that game a lot.  Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of cool things to say about TA, but if hearing about decade-old strategy games isn't your thing, there's a 10 or 15 minute segment in there you may need to play at 2X speed.  Anyhow, if you're in the mood, go check it out.

And with that, I'm off to get some sleep.  I'll be back when I can be.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 35

Sometimes, you have to let a game grow on you.  It's easy to be turned off by a steep difficulty curve, or an obtuse UI, or a lack of direction.  Sometimes these warning signs are well-heeded;  there's certainly no lack of bad games in the world.  But sometimes, pushing through them can yield something special.

I say this, as I'm sure you've already discerned, because this week's Free and Worth Every Penny installment might not be for everybody.  I almost walked away from it myself.  But if you're up for something different, I can promise that the investment level isn't too high and if you let yourself get into it, you can lose an hour or two here pretty easily.

Sound good?  Great.  Get ready to join.... the

Super Space Rogues was Ted Lauterbach's entry into the Rogue Compo at Gamejolt back in January - also the winner of that competition - and was whipped together in Game Maker in a rather shockingly short 2 weeks.  (I know, it's another roguelike.  This one is in space!  And much more action-packed.)  Drawing painfully obvious plot inspiration from Star Wars and gameplay that feels like a mix of Space Miner on the iPhone and Transcendence, Super Space Rogues gives you a straightforward goal - get $50,000 - and a couple discrete ways to go about it.  Collect minerals to sell, and bounties for hunting pirates.  Sounds simple, but as usual, the Devil's in the details.

"Jabbot"?  ...Really?  ...Okay.

When you start up Super Space Rogues, it's entirely likely you'll have no idea what's going on, so allow me to walk you through the likely course of events.  The game will tell you to "Click Items for Information", and you'll spend a few minutes trying to figure out what it means, because there are no "items" to click and nothing gives you any information.  (I guess I just saved you that hassle.  You're welcome.)  You'll also notice that you can right-click to switch to Combat Mode, though, and then you can shoot your guns.  You'll shoot your guns at stuff, and that stuff will explode.

Eventually you'll see that in Navigation Mode, you can direct yourself towards unexplored planets and, if you're in range of one, interact with a trader to sell collected minerals and buy upgrades.  Navigation Mode, however, won't allow you to monitor incoming threats, so you'll switch between it and Combat Mode frequently as you fly around.  You'll blow up some asteroids and collect the minerals therein, maybe sell them to a trader and buy an upgrade or two.  Then a group of pirates will find you and quickly destroy you, and you'll get a Game Over screen.  This part may happen repeatedly.

The opening of the game.  Also, effectively, the instruction book.

The inexplicable sudden deaths very nearly drove me away from Super Space Rogues - you get no information about whether the pirate attacks are totally random, or whether certain areas might be more dangerous than others, or anything helpful at all, really.  It was frustrating, and felt poorly designed.  If you feel like saying "screw it" at that point, I understand, but I would encourage you not to.

Because soon, the tide will turn.  The controls will start to click better, and you'll start making quick trade runs to nearby planets.  You'll stumble across a trader selling homing missiles, and you'll have the money to buy them.  You'll start winning fights against the pirates.  You'll start feeling like a pretty serious badass, and enjoying the random battles instead of dreading them.

The action gets enjoyably hectic.

Then, finally, with perseverance and a little luck, you'll collect your $50,000.  And Jabbot will come to collect it from you in turn.  Will you give it to him?  I didn't want to.  I was given the chance to challenge him instead, and I took it.

I lost.  But as soon as I'm done writing this, I intend to try again.

Super Space Rogues...

• is a simple and straightforward action roguelike in space.
• has enough random battles to fight and upgrades to buy to keep you engaged.
• absolutely will not hold your hand.
• provides a surprising level of satisfaction, in part because of that lack of handholding.
• could not have been easy to make in 2 weeks.

This one is Windows only and comes in just under 15MB.  Pick it up here.

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

And Now You're a Laughing Stock, to Boot.

I posted last week about how disappointed I was to see the draconian DRM restrictions that Ubisoft is putting on its upcoming titles;  Assassin's Creed II and Splinter Cell: Conviction in particular, both of which I was planning to purchase and enjoy on the PC but no longer will, as I'm unwilling to financially support this sort of blatantly consumer-unfriendly behavior.

Well, it turns out that defeating this amazing new anti-piracy measure (and lest you should think this was about anything other than piracy, Ubisoft has been very clear that this is an attempt to thwart pirates) was so complicated, it took less than a day.  Silent Hunter 5, the first game to use this always-online DRM scheme, has apparently already been cracked and uploaded to torrent sites around the 'net.  The pirated version - assuming these reports are accurate - can be played whether your internet connection is active or not, meaning that in at least one respect the people who steal the game are actually getting a product that is measurably superior to the one other people paid money for.

Way to put your customers first, Ubisoft.

I Don't Have a DSi.

I don't really have any serious intentions of buying one, either - the promise of the DSiWare store seemed powerful upon its release, but has largely turned out to be a disappointment, no-one had (yet) given a convincing explanation for what cameras are doing on that thing, the price is still higher enough to be a significant factor, and it loses the GBA port from the DS Lite, something I do still enjoy having.  They really didn't make the case, in my opinion, for those of us who already have and enjoy their Lites to want to upgrade.

Having said that, this video is fascinating.

Anyone who remembers Johnny Lee's Wii projects will recognize the basic elements at work here. (And you should really watch those videos if you haven't; they're great, and it's a crime that in almost two years we haven't seen much of anything come out of that.)  But certainly nothing like that has been done on a handheld before that I'm aware of, and it's a reason, finally, for those cameras to exist.

According to BoingBoing, "Rittai Kakushi e Attakoreda" (Hidden 3D Image: There It Is!) is showing up in the DSiWare store in Japan this week; no news as to whether it will see a release in the U.S.  I seriously hope they're localizing this or something like it, though, because this is the sort of thing that gets people excited about incremental upgrades to gaming hardware.  Show us that it really can do something the previous iteration couldn't do, and then show us reasons to care.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 34

You could say that I've been on something of an RPG kick with my freeware, of late.  In fact, you could easily make the assumption that RPG's are damn near all I've played, if you looked at the last couple installments of this column I've written.

Tough.  You're getting more.  This is what the Internet has brought me, and I dutifully pass it along to you; no fair blaming the messenger.  If it's any consolation, this game kicks ass.  ;)

Written by Rodain “Nandrew” Joubert to be "a quick-session Roguelike, designed to be played casually and for as little as ten minutes at a time," Desktop Dungeons is reminiscent of FastCrawl with simpler mechanics (and a $20 cheaper pricetag), or maybe the LucasArts Desktop Adventures series with less action.  It's bite-sized, to be sure, but don't mistake that for "easy" or "shallow".  There's quite a lot to Desktop Dungeons, and if you aren't paying attention, it'll be happy to destroy you.

Upon starting Desktop Dungeons, you'll be presented with a screen familiar to any Roguelike aficionado - the character and class selection.  Only a third of the classes and one of the two difficulties will be open to you, however; the rest require unlocking through victorious sessions with the available classes.  Winning with the Priest unlocks the Monk, the Fighter unlocks the Berserker, etc.  In my many playthroughs of the game so far, I've only managed to defeat the dungeon's final boss with the Priest, but as with any good Roguelike, learning more of the game's quirks and secrets through experimentation and failure makes success more likely on future adventures.

So how does it play?  Well, kind of like Rogue, but also kind of like a puzzle game and, strangely enough, more than a little bit like Solitaire.  The numbers are all there for you in plain view, you just need to be smart enough and lucky enough to make them work out to a positive conclusion.

You'll start out in traditional dungeon crawling fashion, with only your character and a few squares of the map revealed to you.  Moving your mouse around the map will show a movement path, assuming one is available to the spot you're pointing at.  Clicking on an empty space will move your character there; clicking on an enemy will attack it.  Here's where Desktop Dungeons' most unique feature reveals itself: your enemies never move.  You can stand next to them and move around them forever and they'll never attack - entering combat is always your gamble to make.

In fact, nothing on the map moves but you, which is why I say that the game is as much a puzzler as an RPG.  The strategy is entirely made up of deciding the order in which you should take your actions.  Enemies' levels are displayed prominently on them, so you can avoid taking on too tough a monster too early and getting killed.  If you can get away with it, though, taking on something at a higher level than you will yield much higher experience rewards, and level you up faster.  Revealing a new square of the map will restore some of your health and mana, while traveling over revealed tiles will not; there are only so many tiles in the dungeon, so the unrevealed ones effectively become a resource, because health and mana potions are scarce.  Also scarce, in a strange way, are enemies; the dungeon's final boss is Level 10, so you need to boost your own level high enough to take him on, but there are only so many monsters of each level scattered around the map.  Trying to find more monsters at or below your level will yield easier fights, but will expend more of those precious unrevealed tiles.  It's all about trade-offs.

Augmenting the straightforward combat mechanics are the usual trappings of a Roguelike RPG; glyphs scattered around the map can be picked up and slotted into spell slots (the names are humorous and indicative of function - attack order is pretty critical in many situations, for example, and "GETINDARE" guarantees you a first attack), or can be destroyed for a permanent skill bonus.  Potions for health and mana can be found, or purchased at shops.  Shrines will give you mini-quests, with bonuses for completing them.  All the aesthetics are in place, but at its heart it remains a numbers game: use the finite resources of the map, both items and enemies, to gain enough power to beat the boss before they run out, and do it without getting killed.

The game as it stands is at a pretty early build (0.4), but is fully playable and is, in my opinion, a hell of a lot of fun.  Mr. Joubert is still working on the next version, and v0.5 will come with a new tileset and the ability to import your own, as well as a host of other surprises I'm sure.  I'm really looking forward to watching its continued development; even early on, there's something really special here.

Desktop Dungeons...

• will beat you more than you beat it, at least at first.
• has considerably more to it than is immediately apparent.
• still manages to be done in 10 or 15 minutes.
• has probably earned a permanent spot on every PC I have.

A little tip from my numerous deaths: At least one of the non-combat glyphs is useful in a slightly non-obvious way, so don't destroy it without thinking it through.

Desktop Dungeons is less than 5MB, and runs on Windows PC's.  Pick it up right here.

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