Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 78: Legend of the Golden Robot

The Puzzle-RPG hybrid is not, at this point, a particularly novel genre.  Obviously, Puzzle Quest is the game that comes most readily to mind, but other games have picked up the idea and run with it in the time since;  Gyromancer fits the mold, as do iPhone success stories like Dungeon Raid and Sword & Poker.  Today, though, I do have something a little different for you.  Today I have the brainchild that comes about when somebody decides that the game that really needs a little RPG love...  is Minesweeper.

Tongue planted firmly in cheek, Legend of the Golden Robot riffs on pretty much all the stereotypical RPG tropes, tossing them on top of a gameplay style that I certainly didn't expect would accept them as well as it does.  While I don't think it's going to hold anybody's attention for weeks to come, there's more to like here than I anticipated, and I'm excited to share it with you.

As soon as you start up Legend of the Golden Robot, you'll know that it isn't a game that expects you to take it at all seriously.  With a hero who's a thinly veiled Indiana Jones parody tossed into a world where Indy has no place being, a deep story is obviously not the focus here.  There's an evil wizard.  If you collect a whole lot of treasure, you can defeat him with a golden robot.  Go.

Yeah, that's how it tends to go with evil wizards.

So what is the focus?  Progressive exploration, handled through a combination of Minesweeper-style area maps and battles that take place as you explore them.  The basic gameplay structure is this:  you have 24 hours of in-game time to explore each area map.  Digging up a tile might take 1, 2 or more hours depending on the terrain type and your equipment.  Moving between tiles also takes up time.  So does fighting.  There's no game-ending "explosion" equivalent to Minesweeper's risk/reward equation, but there is a different balancing act to manage:  entering a map costs money, and you need to recoup your investment.  Later maps require a higher investment to enter, so you must prioritize your movement and your digging to try to ensure finding the best treasure.

I wonder why the elves never dig for the treasure. They clearly spend all day here.

It's remarkable to me how engaging the Minesweeper formula still is after all these years.  Much like a Sudoku puzzle or any other "logical elimination" challenge, I found myself carefully considering my options before any move or dig attempt, as a wasted dig costs precious time, and time is money.  There is, of course, the classic annoyance of needing to essentially start blind, and occasionally needing to simply guess when enough information isn't there to lead you to a conclusion, but the lack of an instant-fail condition mitigates that problem.

As for the battles, they're a fairly straightforward and frankly kind of tedious affair that I'm not really sure the game needed.  It's an excuse to give you more stats to grind and equipment to buy with the money you're earning, but just having equipment that lets you play the Minesweeper-inspired part more effectively probably could have scratched the RPG itch for me.  Turn-based battles with few options most often devolve into repeatedly clicking the same thing, especially once the enemies are less of a threat to you, and that certainly held to be true here.

Oh no, not a Dwarf Soldier, whatever will I do. Yawn.

Still, I do think the RPG elements bring more good than bad to the table.  It's fun to head to the shop and see what new equipment can make you either a better fighter or a better treasure hunter between expeditions;  there's the usual stat allocating after gaining levels;  there are even minigames you can play at the tavern for bonuses, if you feel so inclined.  It's a casual experience for sure (even death is easily recovered from via a Typing of the Dead style minigame), but one that kept me more engrossed than I gave it credit for initially.

Mmmm, delicious, delicious stats.

So there you have it;  yet another gameplay style on which the RPG can be layered with at least a modicum of success.  What'll be next?  Snake?  SkiFree?  Let me know your predictions, and we'll all find out together.

Legend of the Golden Robot is...

• self aware and lighthearted, which always earns points with me.
• not a great RPG, but still a pretty great idea.
• a neat spin on one of the oldest and most-played PC games around.
• worth at least a few minutes of your time, even just as a curiosity.

It's a Flash game hosted on Kongregate, so you can head over there right now and give it a whirl.  Enjoy.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 76: NEStalgia

It has not generally been the purview of this column to discuss MMOs, for reasons that at one point would have been self-evident;  not long ago, most of the free MMOs (aside from MUDs, which I wouldn't even begin to know how to narrow down) just weren't very good.  As we all know, though, there is an ever-increasing tendency for even highly anticipated MMO games to take a free-to-play approach, even if it's usually accompanied by an optional purchase incentive.  Today's column is not about one of those highly anticipated games.  It isn't even, strictly speaking, about an MMO, if you consider that the server population tends to stay well under 100 people per server.  But it's the closest a game that looks like it belongs in the NES era is ever likely to come.

Silk Games' NEStalgia bills itself as "Dragon Warrior 3 meets World of Warcraft", which is a pretty specific (and, in my brief experience with the game, accurate) description.  The setup is purely classic 8-Bit RPG, with your standard selection of classes [half of which are behind a pay wall, but the game is fully playable without ever paying a dime], an overworld map with random battle encounters, zoomed-in town, castle and dungeon maps...  everything you remember, be it fondly or otherwise, from the RPGs that sucked away so much time in many of our early gaming lives.

And thus did the career of RNGR begin.  ...Sorry. 8-Bit humor.

There is a bit of a disconnect, plot-wise, right from the start.  Like most old-school RPG's, you're immediately set up to obviously be a special, chosen "Champion" who's thrust into the middle of an ongoing intrigue where you are unexpected and potentially unwelcome...  just like the other 30 "champions" running around with you on the server.  Even in the very first introductory dungeon where the exposition is given, you'll see other players wandering around, getting started on the same 'special' path you're on.  Granted, to some extent almost every MMO has this problem, but it stood out for me a bit more than usual here.

I don't foresee bad things happening to First Wizard Roen at all.  He'll probably be fine.

If you can get past the thin plot, though, there's plenty going on here to like, especially for the price tag.  You'll be thrust pretty quickly into the quest and grind loop, but I found that 'the grind' in NEStalgia didn't bother me all that much, for some reason - perhaps because I always expected to need to battle a bunch of enemies in order to progress when I was playing a Dragon Warrior or a Final Fantasy of the 8-bit era.  It's just what you had to do.

The battle system is run along the standard Attack / Magic / Item / Flee lines, and doesn't mess around too much with what you'd expect to find.  It's easy to use, and the developers have done a good job of walking you through the necessary mechanics early in the game so you understand how they work in context.  NPC's that you come across will give you quests to complete, some plot-related, and some of the "fetch 5 widgets" variety.  As you level up, character points are auto-allocated and new abilities are gained at set level intervals.  There's nothing really new here, per se, except for all the other people playing it with you.

You... don't look like the slimes I remember.

So how does that factor in?  Well, given the apparent limitations of the tech, surprisingly well.  You can, of course, group with other players to fight as a party, which I understand is pretty much necessary to take on some of the game's bosses.  PVP is also available, though given the game's unexpectedly popular public debut (it's been in beta for months), the developer has temporarily switched all servers to PVE [PVP still optional, but never required].  Eventually, there will be both forced-PVP and RP servers.  More surprising to me was that NEStalgia also sports guilds with customizable clothing and has a full auction house where players can trade items across the server.  All in all, it's pretty impressive stuff.

Obviously the aesthetics aren't going to be an area I can lavish a ton of praise on - it's designed to look and sound like a primitive RPG, and it does.  But the sprites are generally well designed, the music is listenable, and all the sound effects you would expect to find - the battle victory fanfare, the "going up the stairs" sound, and so on - are accounted for.  If you're into this sort of thing, you'll probably dig it, and if you're not, you've probably stopped reading by now.

Yes, this is considerably more familiar.  Here's my gold, I'll stay the night.

I haven't played more than a couple hours of the game, so I can't speak to the late- or even mid-game content, but there's an extensive wiki that can give you some idea of NEStalgia's depth, if you're interested.  I don't know how much time I'll end up putting into it, but it's a neat idea and I'm really glad it's out there.  Maybe the next time I get a hankering to play a NES RPG, I'll decide that having 40 other people along for the ride would be just the ticket.

NEStalgia is...

• a lovingly made 'MMO' throwback to the 8-Bit RPG.
• clunky in all the ways you remember those being, but not offensively so.
• surprisingly fully-featured in its multi-player aspects, considering how traditionally single-player the games it imitates are.
• ambitious, quirky, likeable and worth a try if you have any fondness for this sort of thing.

NEStalgia is Windows only, and runs on the BYOND platform, which means you'll need an account to log in and play.  You'll be walked through account creation on your first time, though, and it isn't complicated.  Should you decide to subscribe, $9 per year will get you the 2nd four classes, the ability to run a guild, and some extra content and abilities.

If you want to try to catch me on there, I'm playing on the Zenithia server.  Happy hunting!

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 74: Tiny Barbarian

He didn't even know she was there.  Not really.  Which was a hell of a thing to admit, given what he was prepared to go through to have her.  To risk one's life for a mirage - to push the limits of strength and endurance for what might have been no more than a specter - was a stupid decision.  But a string of such decisions had made him who he was, and he was not going to change now.  He had seen her;  he had wanted her;  she had eluded him.  There was no choice to be made.  Only commitment and execution.  The Gods help whatever stood in his way.

I don't have a terribly long list of things to say about Tiny Barbarian, other than that it's charming and fun and I think you should try it.  Michael Stearns' videogame homage to the Robert E. Howard short story The Frost-Giant's Daughter plays out as a straightforward action platformer, but I think it has the right combination of gameplay variety, pleasant aesthetics and reasonable duration to stand out as being worth your attention.

Barbarians are singularly unconcerned with dressing for the weather.

If you've ever read a Conan the Barbarian story, you'll know that they aren't exactly weighed down with unnecessary plot detail, and Tiny Barbarian is well-served by having an extremely simple premise that doesn't require a lengthy explanation to get you going.  "On a frozen battlefield, a love-struck barbarian chases a mysterious woman who does not reciprocate his feelings."  There you have it.  She evades, and you pursue.  It's simple, but being a fan of the original story already, it was certainly enough to hook me in.  And let's be honest:  this is the story games have told almost from the very beginning.  "Thank you, Conan!  But your ghostly apparition is in another castle!"  Indeed.

With narrative swiftly out of the way, the game is free to focus on a small, dense set of gameplay mechanics with which to challenge your mini muscle man.  It starts off easy enough - jump over some pits, avoid some spikes - but soon, you'll be fighting your way through undead soldiers, fending off nimble wolves, leaping over archers' arrows, dodging falling obstacles and dealing with the scorn of your quarry - who, as it turns out, really doesn't want to be caught.

Really should have started by buying her dinner.

Controls are minimal and suitably tight;  arrows to move, Z to jump, X to attack.  Jump height is variable based on how long you hold down the key, which you'll need to handle deftly for some of the more challenging leaps in the game.  Your sword provides your only attack, but stringing together several hits yields combo strikes that do more damage and knock your opponents back, hopefully off a ledge or into something sharp.  I was glad for the assistance of a gamepad, especially during the notably difficult final battle (notable enough that the developer has mocked up a Nintendo Power "Counselor's Corner" segment with tips on beating it), but the difficulty level was quite reasonable for the rest of the game.  Each screen is its own checkpoint, meaning that death will never set you back too far, and every enemy has a pattern to exploit, given some trial and error.

The graphics deserve special mention as being atmospheric and very well drawn.  Your barbarian's animations are excellent, and the ambient visuals do a great job of keeping the screen interesting without making it too busy.  Enemy design is a bit spartan, but effective, and the whole thing has the look of a lost, high-quality NES title, which is pretty clearly the intent.  The music is also good, if a bit repetitive at times.  My only real aesthetic complaint is with the sound design;  very cliched "jump" and "you got a coin!" noises serve to constantly remind the player that they're playing an 8-bit-style videogame.  Given how consistently themed to fit the minimalist narrative the rest of the design is, I thought that stood out as being somewhat out of place.

It's a matter of taste, though, and at worst a minor misstep in an otherwise very solid effort;  certainly not enough to dissuade me from recommending that you play it.  A full playthrough can easily be done in under 20 minutes, though if you want all the collectibles (I didn't) I expect you'll be going through several times to find them.  Will you get the girl in the end?  If you've read the short story, you already know the answer.  If not, you'll have to find out for yourselves.

Tiny Barbarian is...

• a great example of restrained design leading to a short but really enjoyable title.
• great looking, even if the sound design made me raise my eyebrows a bit.
• not terribly challenging until the end, but solidly engaging he whole way through.
• inspired by an 80-year-old barbarian pulp fiction short story, and can't we always use more of that, really?

Tiny Barbarian is a less-than-5MB download for Windows only, and you can get it right here.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 72: Pixel Force Halo

I'm a sucker for re-envisioned games.  Always have been.  I know there's a point of view that sees derivative works to be lacking in creativity, but I've always thought that a loving homage is one of the nicest compliments a game can receive.  Way back in Issue 29, I wrote about Pixel Force Left 4 Dead, in which Eric Ruth "de-made" the best zombie game around into a top-down 8-bit style shooter.  Well, Eric is back, and this time he's applied his skills to an even more ambitious undertaking.

Pixel Force Halo takes the same 8-bit aesthetic that took Left 4 Dead so gracefully into the top-down shooter genre, and uses it to re-paint one of the world's most beloved FPS games as a side-scroller.  I think you'll find the results, while mixed at times, to be well worth your attention.

For a complete change of perspective and an obviously vast reduction in technical complexity, Pixel Force Halo manages to keep a surprising amount of the material on which its namesake hung its hat.  Your diminutive Master Chief will face off against the expected arrangement of Covenant forces, using an array of weapons, exposives and vehicles.  Only one gun can be carried at a time (though the infinite ammo pistol is always available, should your primary run out of clips), so you'll be constantly switching weapons and tactics based on what you can find in the field.

While generally limited to 8-directional firing (the needler being a marvelous and powerful exception), all the weapons do a surprisingly good job of mimicking their console counterparts.  The plasma pistol is a peashooter unless you power up its shots, at which point it becomes formidable.  The rocket launcher is slow and devastating.  You will, at some point, get a plasma grenade stuck to you, and shout obscenities as you try to run away before it blows you up.

Plasma grenade RUN!!

The gameplay notes are retained just about as clearly as the weapon variety.  You will face off against Grunts, Elites and Brutes;  you will run over enemy infantry with the Warthog;  you will chuck grenades at unsuspecting enemies who haven't seen you yet;  you will frantically dodge fire as you face off against a Banshee all by yourself;  you will shake in fear a bit the first time an Invisible Elite or a Hunter shows up.  For a game in a different genre, it all still feels very Halo.

Unfortunately, there are places where strict adherence to the Halo legacy does the game no favors, and some bits aren't as tight as others.  The Flood is still awful, and I really never enjoyed them in Pixel Force Halo any more than I did in the original.  The top-down vehicle sections, while a neat diversion, all end up feeling a bit same-y, even when you get to switch to the Scorpion Tank, which you'd think would be more satisfying.  And several times the narrow multi-tiered level design got me trapped in enemy fire I couldn't avoid, leading to deaths that felt a bit cheap.  Checkpoints are mercifully frequent, but with no recharging shields and few health packs, I still spent more time cursing at the game than I might have liked.

The Warthog IS pretty sweet, though.

Still, there's a whole lot to like here, and I was glad that I played through the whole thing.  It's meatier than you might expect, summarizing the entire story of the first Halo game over the course of some 9 or 10 missions that took me the better part of two hours to complete.  There's a Hardcore mode waiting for you after you're done, too, if you can handle it.  With completely custom-made graphics, sound effects and music (including some very well composed NES chiptunes), it's clear that a lot of love went into making Pixel Force Halo.  I'd say it's worth giving it a little bit of yours in return.

Pixel Force Halo is...

• a charming "de-make" of one of the most popular console games of all time.
• a surprisingly accurate translation of Halo into the style of something more like Contra.
• sadly burdened by some of the same problems Halo had, and a few new minor ones.
• nevertheless a very impressive effort and well worth your time to download and play.

The game is keyboard-controlled by default, but I was glad for the services of a gamepad and some key mapping to make it more playable.  Button use is minimal, but intense at times.

Pixel Force Halo is Windows only, weighs in under 15MB, and can be downloaded right here.  Remarkably, this showed up as a news item on Bungie.net, which I'm guessing means that they know about it and have no issue with it.  So it may be here to stay, safe from legal challenge.  ...You might want to get it now, though, just in case.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 70: Rapid-Fire Strategy

Between a BBS love story two weeks ago and Mike's choose-your-own-adventure look at the virtual end of the world last week, I feel like the column is once again veering off into "what is a game anyway?" territory (spoiler:  I don't know any more, and neither do you), as it is wont to do every so often.  This week, let's put things firmly back in the wheelhouse of PC gaming, and talk strategy.  Not slow, methodical strategy, though.  No plodding, Civ-style games in this roundup.  This week your strategy fix comes in a double dose, and it comes fast.

To start us off, let me give you possibly the most stripped-down approach to the Real Time Strategy genre I've seen in years.  Pixel Legions hands you control of squads of highly energetic, somewhat unpredictable tiny soldiers as they square off against similarly diminutive enemies in extremely fast-paced warfare.

In some respects, this reminded me of Galcon, a game I first played on my iPhone which later ended up on Steam and - well, pretty much everywhere - but there are several things that set Pixel Legions apart.  The ability to move your base, which spawns new squads of soldiers at a more or less constant rate, is critical to success on many of the levels.  Also, the maps have a bit more of a puzzle feel to them than the big multi-planet setups of Galcon;  here, everything happens in very tight quarters, and you need to execute your strategy immediately and with precision in order to win.  The levels play out quickly enough that re-starting them to find a better strategy becomes commonplace, and while the first couple of them are simple tutorial fare, press on and you'll find a challenge waiting for you.

I actually feel like the game gets a bit too quick and chaotic at times - you need to micromanage every squad and your base constantly, and things can take a turn for the worse very fast - but I chalk that up to a general aversion I have to that sort of gameplay in any game.  Pixel Legions does a great job of stripping the RTS formula down to just tactics.  No resource gathering, no base building, no tech tree.  Take your tiny army and make smart decisions to lead it to victory.  It's very satisfying to see how much difference a good flanking maneuver makes, or to lure your opponents into an ambush.

Pixel Legions is a Flash game, so head on over there with a supported browser and take command.

Next up, a very different type of strategy game - you may even feel like I'm cheating a bit, putting it in the same genre.  I went back and forth on it a bit myself, but while it certainly does require more twitchy reflex ability than Pixel Legions, I think you'll still find that it's brains rather than brawn that get you through Ten Second War.

Describing this is going to be a little bit tricky, since it's something I had to play myself to really understand, but I'll do my best.  Each level in Ten Second War takes, at most, ten seconds, because that's all the time you're given to control the units at your disposal.  The twist is that you get to repeat those ten seconds for each unit on the field, in sequence, until every unit has its orders and they all execute them simultaneously.

In some ways, it feels like the planning phase to a game like Rainbow Six (the original, young'uns, not this Vegas stuff)...  select a guy, tell him where he's going to go, who he's going to shoot, and move on to the next guy.  Where Ten Second War gets brilliant is that it lets you keep giving units orders during their ten second phase even if they've been killed, banking on subsequent units to keep them safe.  I know, that doesn't make much sense.  Let me explain.

You start controlling Unit 1, and take him out around a corner, where three turrets are waiting.  He blows up turrets one and two, but turret three manages to hit him at the six second mark.  You keep giving him his orders, though, taking him down a hallway to take out two more turrets before his ten seconds are up.

Unit 2 is now under your control.  As long as Unit 2 manages to take out the third turret that killed Unit 1 before the six second mark, that event will no longer happen.  Unit 1 will head down the hallway and keep carrying out his orders, safe and sound.

Repeat that for as many units as you have control of:  each unit has the ability to not only carry out new orders, but also to protect prior units from the enemies that destroyed them, erasing those events from the final result.  With 6 different unit types that have differing abilities, around 40 levels, and a level editor, there's a lot to dig into here, and the concept is unique and solid.  Don't miss this one - it's a treat.

Ten Second War is a 2MB Windows download, and you can pick it up right here.

That's it for this round - have fun, and see you next week.

"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers.  This piece also appears there.  If you're done with this one and want more, feel free to browse the archives.