Some Links You Might Enjoy While I'm Away

My apologies that I've been extremely content-light for the last couple of weeks; I've had a bunch of things I've been playing and wanting to write about (I still really want to do an iPhone roundup, because that platform continues to surprise me with its quality, especially for the asking price of most of its games), but I've also jumped feet-first back into community theatre, and between that, work, and a wedding my wife and I attended last weekend, my free time has been more or less erased.

However, there are a few things that might interest you that I thought I'd share before leaving town again for the Memorial Day weekend. Firstly, I had the chance to interview one of the co-founders of Mode 7 Games for Immortal Machines about their upcoming multiplayer tactical strategy game Frozen Synapse, and I link to it both because I think the interview went well - Paul was a pleasure to talk to, and we got some fun and surprising details about their design process - and because Frozen Synapse is really awesome and I want more people to know about it. It's in beta right now, and pre-ordering will get you two copies, one for yourself and one for a friend. I've been playing a lot of that, and very pleased with my purchase. You can stream that interview over here, and there's a discussion thread on Colony of Gamers if you want to provide feedback.

Secondly: In my virtual absence, Mike Bellmore has started doing a "Best Of" series for our Free and Worth Every Penny column, and he's been knocking it out of the park with his choices so far. To kick off, Battle for Wesnoth, a great turn-based fantasy strategy game that's been in development for a loooong time and is very solid because of it. Then, switching genres, the hilarious adventure Ben There, Dan That!, which will instantly be familiar and fun for anyone who grew up with either the Sierra or Lucasarts adventure game series (King's Quest, Sam & Max, etc). It's well-written, challenging in the right ways, and generally a joy to play. Well done, Mike - I'm going to have to step up my game when I get back.

Aside from all that, I've been putting a surprising amount of time into Red Dead Redemption on the XBox 360. Well, maybe not that surprising, given how glowing its reviews are, but let me echo them in saying I think this is Rockstar's best open world effort yet. I also just got Super Mario Galaxy 2 in the mail on Wednesday, and it's fantastic - say what you will about Nintendo using the same basic ideas over and over again, they still make the best platforming experience in videogames, hands down. Like the original Mario Galaxy and several of my other favorite games from the last few years, it's in no way easy - there are some absolutely devilish challenges in there - but it gives you the tools to master them and encourages you to keep at it until you get it right. It'll be coming with me this weekend so that I can share it with others and watch them get the hang of inverted gravity and all its other perplexing mechanics.

And on that note, I need to finish packing and get out of here; as we've done for the last 2 years, my wife and I are hosting a bunch of friends for Memorial Day weekend up in northern PA at her family's cabin for a party we've dubbed Cabin Con - lots of board games, bonfires and creek swimming are all in store. Maybe I'll take that as an opportunity to write about some non-digital entertainment when I get back. Have a safe holiday, everybody.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 44: Hero Core

The side-scrolling action adventure genre seems to be a very popular one for freeware game developers to dive into, perhaps because the mechanics are so well understood by so many gamers. You don't need to spend a lot of time explaining how it works, you just drop your players in and let them explore the world and shoot things. This may in part explain why several of the best-made (and hence best-known) freeware games are in this category, some of which we've featured - Star Guard and Knytt, for example - and some of which we're still saving for a special day, like Cave Story and Iji.

Today is not that special day. But today is certainly A special day, because today's game looks and feels like a lost classic more than any game I've featured recently - even Action Fist. If your childhood ever included holding a Gameboy in your hands (the original monochrome one) and straining your eyes until they couldn't stay open anymore, I think you're really going to have a soft spot for...

Developed by Daniel Remar (who also made the aforementioned and wonderful Iji), Hero Core is, in his words, "a combination of NES, Atari 2600 and C64 games but in pure black and white." It's actually the 2nd game in a series, the first simply being called Hero, but no knowledge of the first game is required to play or enjoy the second. To me, largely thanks to the blank and white aesthetics, Hero Core felt like a Gameboy game all the way - albeit quite a bit better than most Gameboy action adventures actually were, if we're being honest about it.

Adhering closely to the classic Metroid style, Hero Core places you in a large, unexplored map and constantly teases you with areas you can't yet reach, gently nudging you in the directions you can go to find the upgrades that will let you further explore the map and conquer the final boss. The gameplay video below might lead you to think at first that this is a slow-paced game, but keep watching; Hero Core is no walk in the park.

If this doesn't hit your nostalgia bone, you played the wrong games as a kid.

As shown in the video, the eponymous "Flip Hero" of Hero Core is not bound by gravity, and the game is in no way a platformer, though some of the rooms certainly do have navigation puzzles that bear resemblance to platformers. The combat design, though, draws much more inspiration from the side-scrolling space shooter, with an emphasis on dodging fire and positioning your shots to hit the weak spots of your opponents. As the game progresses you'll be taxed by increasingly powerful and difficult opponents, some of which can only take damage in certain locations, and being struck yourself not only lowers your health, but also renders you incapable of shooting for a period of time. Especially in the game's many memorable boss battles, this can get extremely challenging - not to the point of feeling unfair, but you probably won't be making it through this one without dying a few times.

Luckily, the game includes a very forgiving checkpoint system. Also seen in the video above is the overworld map, which is littered (as in most Metroid-style games) with save points. Death will simply respawn you at the nearest one, and in a lovely update to the classic formula, Flip Hero is allowed to warp at any time to any save point he's discovered. As was the case with another recent favorite of mine, VVVVVV, Hero Core wants you to work hard, but not to be driven away. Retrying a failed challenge never takes a minute more of your time than it needs to.

One of Hero Core's many excellent bosses.

It's little touches like the combined save/warp system that make Hero Core such an unqualified pleasure to play. This feature is getting posted later than I intended, and it's because I stopped halfway through writing it to play through the entire game again. That's not a quick task, either - my first playthrough took me well over an hour, and when you're done there are bonus modes and advanced difficulty levels waiting for you if you're ready for more.

This is the spot where I'd nitpick about the game's most notable flaws if I could think of some, but honestly, I'm coming up empty. Obviously it's not a perfect game, and having played through it twice tonight I'm a little too close to it for much objectivity. The graphics are spartan, yes, but they pull a lot more weight than I thought they would, with some great effects and distinctive enemy and level design. The controls are tight as hell, and native gamepad support is included - I used my XBox 360 pad and it controlled as well as I could possibly ask it to. (If you end up doing the same, left bumper is auto-fire. Very useful.) The boss battles are plentiful and genuinely inventive. And I haven't found nearly all the secrets the game has to offer; from what I've read, you can "sequence break" the game, and there are even multiple endings.

Bottom line: You should play this game.

Hero Core is...

• a great throwback to the 2D "Metroidvania" formula with a few welcome enhancements.
• very challenging in spots, but never unfair.
• a remarkable amount of game for a freeware title.
• deserving of a spot on every machine I own.

The game is Windows only, and comes in a less-than-5MB zipfile you can get 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.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 43: Zombie Movie

I know, zombies are a bit played out. You've done your Left 4 Dead, you've done your Resident Evil and your CoD: World at War zombie mode, you've done your Dead Rising and your Nation Red and your Zombie Apocalypse. You're a little tired of it, I get it. But could you just do one more? Just for me? There you go, that's a good chap. Oh, and move a little to your left, so you're more in the shot, okay? Perfect. Don't mind that pallid looking guy, he just wants to be your friend.

Tom! It looks too easy down there, we need more zombies! ...What? Oh, nothin', I'm just talking to Tom. Don't you worry. You're gonna be just fine.

Zombie Movie, made by Miguel Paquette Gaulin and Maxime Binette of EdM Games (listed as "NextDoorGames" on GameJolt) is for the most part a very straightforward top-down zombie shooter. You've played this before - you'll be swarmed from all sides, you'll run frantically, searching for cover, you'll run low on ammo, you'll make a desperate last stand, you'll finally be overwhelmed. The difference this time is that you'll look fantastic on film while you do it.

You have a partner in Zombie Movie, you see - floating above you, circling in his helicopter, making sure that every moment is captured for posterity. But you'll notice I call him a "partner", not a "friend", because he doesn't care about you. Sure, he'll drop health packs and ammo from time to time, and he'll even shoot some of the zombies from the safety of his whirlybird, but all he cares about is the quality of his footage. Get too far from his camera range (denoted by the chopper's shadow), and it'll cost you. Make it look too easy, and he'll actually summon tougher zombies to come after you. Die, and -- well, actually, you're expected to die. But make it look good, okay?

Things really could be going better here.

This is a high score chase, with points being awarded for not just killing the most zombies, but for doing so stylishly - which is to say, getting kill streaks and doing it as close to the shadow of the helicopter as possible. You'll want to stay close to the chopper anyhow, since that's where all your supplies are coming from, but it quickly gets harder than you might think. In the end - most likely, your end - your film will be ranked with a slew of statistics and a handful of critical reviews. Do try to make the critics happy. Theoretically, if you survive for six and a half minutes, they'll even pull you out of there, but let me tell you going in: the odds aren't good.

The aesthetics are spartan but effective, spawning you into either a desert wasteland or a sleepy, suburban town before throwing the hordes your way. Some environmental interactivity is present as well; cars behave the way you expect them to in a movie when shot, for example, so you might want to take advantage of that. The longer you live, the better guns you get to help you deal with the tougher enemies you'll face. You're going to need them.

In this one, you actually do want to shoot the cars.

Zombie Movie has a neat hook, neat enough to largely take it past the "been there, done that" feeling most zombie games instill in me these days. There's something appealingly dystopian about the idea that when the zombie apocalypse finally comes, as humanity tries desperately to survive there'll be some jackass there with a camera trying to make a profit off it (as opposed to trying to expose it, Frank West-style), and while such concepts have certainly made their way into zombie fiction and film, it was cool to see it in a game. I had no problem with the simple graphics - they do the job - and the progression of the gameplay feels good.

If the game has a serious flaw, I think it's the controls - this begs to be a WASD+mouse controlled title, but instead it controls like every flash game ever, even though it isn't one - arrow keys to move, Z to shoot. You can only shoot in the direction you're facing, and the nature of using the arrow keys makes keeping a diagonal aim a real pain. Things get a little better with a gamepad and mapped keys, but not much. Also, a tip: as often as possible, shoot horizontally, because the zombie hitboxes are taller than they are wide.

Still, even with the shortcomings of the control scheme, I think Zombie Movie is worth downloading and spending some time with. I never made it longer than about 3 and a half minutes of the 6 and a half before they hypothetically save you; maybe you'll do better. I doubt the game will stay on your hard drive forever, but it's a fun diversion and a neat take on the zombie genre that I'd like to see expanded on in the future.

Zombie Movie is...

• a clever idea developed just enough to justify another zombie game.
• difficult even without taking the controls into account.
• occasionally really frustrating because of those controls.
• nevertheless, straightforwardly fun and addictive in short bursts.

The game is Windows only, and can be played online through the GameJolt plugin, or downloaded at a size just under 10MB - both things may be done here.

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

Hey Look, Frozen Synapse is 20% Off.

I promise the entire content of this site isn't going to turn into attempts to get you to buy stuff (though honestly, how much game journalism isn't centered on either trying to get you to either buy something or not buy something, really? ...anyhow), but there's a one-day-only sale going on right now that might interest you.

Frozen Synapse, a really unique turn-based tactical game by Mode 7 Games, is on sale for today only in recognition of the UK election. If you enter the code "WELLHUNG" (...don't look at me, I didn't pick it) when pre-ordering, you'll receive 20% off the price, which means that you'll pay about $20USD for two copies of the game instead of $26. If you can convince somebody to go in on it with you, $10 apiece for this game is a steal, in my opinion.

I'll probably write more about Frozen Synapse here soon, as I'm really enjoying my time in the beta and we're trying to line up the developer for an interview on Immortal Machines, but for now, if you want more information feel free to read Kieron Gillen's take on it over at RockPaperShotgun, and watch the following trailer to see if it appeals to you:

In terms of quick-playing but very detailed turn-based combat, it's not quite like anything I've played before (though certainly it has similarities to X-Com, Laser Squad Nemesis, Jagged Alliance, and many of the other games it visually resembles). It's certainly the most fun I've had micromanaging in awhile. If you pick it up, leave me a comment and let me know. I can always use more people to play against.

Oh Wow. Five Indie Games, Pay What You Want.

I sadly don't have time just now to go in-depth and explain why these games are great - well, I know why four of them are great, I haven't actually played Penumbra - but right now a crew of excellent indie developers have teamed up with Wolfire Games to offer their extremely popular and well received games (World of Goo, Gish, Aquaria, Lugaru HD, and Penumbra) in a bundle for whatever price you want to pay, in the Humble Indie Bundle.

Better than that, you can decide exactly where the money goes. Give some of it to each developer, or all of it to your favorite, or - best of all in my opinion - give some or all of it to charity. They're allowing you to allocate your money to Child's Play or the EFF, both extremely worthy causes.

Here, I'll just let them pseudo-rap about it:

I can vouch for Aquaria, Gish, World of Goo and Lugaru as very high quality, really entertaining titles, any one of which would probably be worth whatever number you're going to put in that box (and most of which probably cost more than that number, too, on a normal day). I can't speak to the merits of Penumbra, but if it's keeping company with the other four it's probably got something going for it. Bottom line: This is a great deal, getting you a ton of gaming while supporting the good cause(s) of your choice, so if you're even a little interested you should take advantage of it. The sale runs all week.

Indie Games - Mostly Reward, A Little Regret

I've been playing and enjoying a few independent titles over the last month or so, and I've had the chance to talk about them a bit on podcasts and with friends but I really haven't made any mention of them here, so that ought to change. I'm not going to try to "review" any of these, as I don't feel I've put enough time into them for that, but (with one partial exception which I'll explain when I come to it) I feel confident in saying that I feel I've gotten my money's worth out of all of them, and if they sound interesting to you I wouldn't hesitate to recommend trying them out - especially if there's a free demo, of course.

Plain Sight

This one was recommended to me by Chris Remo of the Idle Thumbs podcast via his Twitter feed, and I'm glad it was because I probably wouldn't have given it a look if all I'd had to go on was the screenshots on Steam.

It's a game about robot ninjas. Specifically, it's a game about robot ninjas in space. Very specifically, it's a game about kamikaze robot ninjas in space. If you're somehow still not sold on the premise, the basics are these: It controls like Mario Galaxy, except that you can cling to walls and you target-lock your enemies to rush at them in any direction, including through the air.

The WASD keys and the spacebar control your running around and jumping, while the left mouse button locks onto a target and then charges and releases an attack. Right mouse button blocks. Shift makes you drop quickly towards the nearest solid surface. There's a little more, but that's the core. Every time you get a kill, you gather energy. The energy makes you physically larger, and hence an easier target, but it also allows you to make a bigger explosion when you self-destruct, potentially taking out more opponents.

The hook is, you can only score points by self-destructing, so if someone kills you before you do that, that energy goes to waste. It's frantic, and silly, and I've had a blast with it in time I've given it. If you'd like to see what it looks like in motion, here's a gameplay video (it starts with a tutorial, skip ahead to about 3:00 for more gameplay footage):

Sadly there's still no demo yet as far as I know, but the $10 asking price is very reasonable, and if you have 3 friends who are interested, they'll sell you 4 for $30. You should be aware that while it does have a practice mode, it's definitely designed to be a multiplayer experience; there's no single-player campaign or anything like that.

Flotilla

I went into this one not knowing whether I would end up giving credit for it to the Immortal Machines podcast I co-host, or blaming them, since I picked it up and played it entirely to be able to talk about it during our most recent, space-themed episode. Happily, it's an excellent title I'm glad to own, so credit it is.

Years ago, I bought a game called Strange Adventures in Infinite Space. (It appears that the game is actually now free to download at that link, if you decide after reading about it that you'd like to try it for yourself.) SAIS put you in the role of a starship captain, and gave you an overhead map of a randomized galaxy, and a set number of turns in which to explore it. On your adventures, you would encounter aliens both helpful and hostile, find upgrades for your ship, trade in mysterious cargo, and, if you were very lucky, achieve fame and fortune. It was a rather simple formula, and designed to be played quickly and repeatedly - good for a lunch hour or a lazy evening chasing your previous high score.

Flotilla is cast from the same mold, but places an emphasis on battle that SAIS didn't have, using a fully 3D combat engine that resembles nothing so much as a turn-based Homeworld, which for many will be a happy reference indeed. The combat is simple in design - attack from below and behind, defend from the front whenever possible - but satisfyingly deep in execution, and like the aforementioned SAIS, the whole thing is built to be played quickly and often. The randomized adventure map has less options than my memory tells me the older game had, but the much more fleshed out combat makes up for it in my mind. Flotilla has a demo, so you've got no reason not to give it a try, if it looks or sounds appealing.

Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West

Sadly, this is the "regret" part of the post, but not because I don't enjoy the game. On the contrary, the time I've spent actually playing Lead and Gold has been extremely fun. I love westerns in general as a rule - it's a terribly underused genre in videogames - and this one captures a lot of the atmosphere very well. No, the problems here aren't with theme or gameplay, so let me talk about those a bit before I get to complaining.

Lead and Gold plays out a little bit like a 3rd person Team Fortress 2 in the Old West. Players choose from four classes - gunslinger, trapper, deputy, and "blaster" - each with its own weapons loadout and skill set. The classic team split of red vs. blue takes place, and then the teams set to shootin' it out through various game modes. As you'd expect, there are deathmatch maps, maps that amount to being capture the flag (robbing sacks of gold), and objective-based maps where one team defends points on the map and the other assaults them. All basic - though enjoyable - stuff.

Where the game differentiates itself is in what it calls "synergies" - in addition to having their own weapons and skills, each class grants a specific bonus to their teammates as long as they stick together. The gunslinger, who can "fan" his pistol for very rapid shots, makes his teammates more accurate. The trapper (read: sniper) increases their percentage chance of a critical hit. The deputy can "mark" enemies for his teammates to see even through walls, and grants his teammates' weapons extra damage. And the "blaster" can chuck explosives and increases the defense of his nearby comrades. It's a subtle system, but like most good game design choices it rewards the player for playing the game well. Stick together and divide up the class roles logically, and you'll have a huge advantage over a team made of all snipers who just find a camping spot and try to pick you off.

So, a good theme, pretty graphics, solid gameplay and a bunch of game modes - what's not to like? That sadly, almost nobody is playing it. Lead and Gold released without the support for dedicated servers (a weakness not shared by Plain Sight, which I never had any trouble finding opponents in), and it seems to have absolutely killed the community. I tried to play a couple of nights ago and according to the server browser, 20 people were playing. Split across 3 servers. I tried to join one and couldn't connect, then played a couple rounds on another before the hosting player quit and we all got dumped. After that there were less than 10 people playing, and I gave up.

Browsing the Steam forums for Lead and Gold reveals that pretty much everyone is complaining about the same thing - the peer to peer hosting system is so unreliable that nobody wants to play the game. The developer, Fatshark, claims that dedicated servers are in testing and should be released "soon", so hopefully the situation will improve, maybe with a nice Steam sale and a demo to drive interest levels back up once things are fixed. For now, though, I can't in good conscience recommend picking this up. Which makes me sad, because it's really a neat game at a good price, if only you could play it. If things change in the future, I'll make a post here saying so.

That's it for now. There's a game called Frozen Synapse that I'm itching to try, but I haven't yet. If I get the chance to, odds are I'll be talking about that soon.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 41: Action Fist

For this week's installment of Free and Worth Every Penny, we have something of a throwback, and I don't think I'll have to sell you too hard on it, because it kind of sells itself. It's the story of a man who has his scarf stolen. Also his girl and his dog, but that's incidental; nobody ever - ever - gets away with stealing a man's scarf. This is the story of...

Action Fist is everything you love - and hate - about classic 8- and 16-bit scrolling shooters. It's swarms of enemies pouring in from all directions. It's switching weapons on the fly and powering them up to be unreasonable killing machines. It's a vehicle level where you somehow stand up on the vehicle while still driving it. It's bosses so big they can't fit on screen. It's climbing up the side of a rocket, while that rocket flies into space. It's completely absurd and completely great. Allow me to step back for a moment and let the game speak for itself:

Yeah. It's like that.

Developer Beau Blythe of Teknopants.com has added some refinements to the traditional formula, or in some cases culled from other genres and later games to enhance the experience. A wall jump and double jump assist your platforming escapades, while color-coded enemies match up to color-coded weapons that will do more damage to them. There are three colors, and you can carry only two weapons, so you'll have to make decisions on the fly as to which ones will help you most.

For the most part, though, the mechanics are exactly what you expect them to be if you grew up on Contra, Mega Man, and Metal Slug. Where the game earns its place among those giants, in my mind, is in the aesthetics. Every level is lovingly crafted and the backgrounds, while simple, differentiate the levels nicely. Animations are well done, with some excellent explosions, especially in the memorable boss battles, where truly massive creatures and machines test your pattern-matching and precision. And the entire experience is supplemented with excellent music by Beau's brother Austin; I felt right at home wasting baddies to the retro score the whole time.

And make no mistake, it's not a short experience. While not approaching the depth or breadth of something like Cave Story, Action Fist still ran quite a bit longer than I expected it to. The length isn't oppressive, though, as each level is split up generously into checkpoints that prevent you having to replay too much of the level when you die (and oh, will you ever die). Pretty much every level also has at least one "Oh $#!t" moment where you simply rush forward praying for that next checkpoint, especially in the final levels, but with only a few exceptions, they never felt too unfair.

This isn't the largest boss by a long shot.

I should warn you that there were occasional moments where the game got controller-smashingly difficult - I won't lie, the final boss nearly had me rage-quitting several times before I powered my way through. (You remember Dr. Wily, right? How every time he's dead, he's not dead? It's one of those.) But the charming ending and credits sequence were suitable rewards for my efforts, and I certainly came away from the whole thing happy that I spent the time. Multiple difficulty levels allow you to turn down the heat, too, if things get too rough. The game also features a co-op mode which sadly I didn't get to try, but if any of you do, please chime in and let me know how it is. I have to imagine it only gets better when shared. Which, of course, is why I'm sharing it with you.

Action Fist is...

• unashamedly, gloriously over the top.
• filled with affection for the side-scrolling action genre.
• one of the most technically competent freeware games of its sort I've played in a long time.
• a game you should not miss.

The game is Windows only, under 10MB in size, and can be downloaded right over here.

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

The Promised PAX Wrap-Up Post.

Sorry it's more than a little late, I suppose it got lost in the shuffle a bit when I got back from Boston. To recap the stuff that's already out there in case you missed it (or in case I didn't link it yet, which is true for a couple of these things):

• Here's a preview of Civilization V that I wrote after getting a closed-door demo.
• I also wrote a piece about InstantAction.com, and the pretty cool direction they're trying to take web-based gaming.
• I recorded two miniature podcast episodes with the guys from Immortal Machines; they can be listened to here and here.
• I talked to Realtime Worlds about their upcoming multiplayer game APB - that video is here. I'm also now in that beta, though the NDA prevents me from saying anything else about it at the moment.
• We got sort of ambushed by a very friendly lady from Becker College, and talked to them about learning to make videogames, though the audio for that turned out... not good.
• If you didn't read it already, please take the time to read about Of Dice And Men, which was for me the best surprise of the show.

Video of the interviews I did with Firaxis about Civ V and with InstantAction are also at the above links, if you're interested. I promised to mention something I left out when writing up the Civ V preview: the game will now include AI-controlled "city states", essentially NPC nations that never grow beyond the size of a city and its surrounding areas. These city-states can be allied with, warred with, protected, abandoned to enemies, conquered, etc, and while unfortunately nothing much was shown about them in the demo (part of the reason I left it out), it sounds like a very cool addition to the gameplay.

Beyond that... well, to be perfectly honest there isn't that much to say. If you don't feel like listening to the podcast episodes, they can be summed up by saying that nVidia's 3D tech really failed to impress me, as did ATI's 6-monitor "eyeFinity" setup (six monitors? ...seriously?), and that while indie games had a very respectable showing on the floor (I'm looking forward to playing more of Joe Danger, Shank, Monday Night Combat, and Slam Bolt Scrappers), major publishers really weren't there with a significant presence, especially compared to what I saw at PAX in Seattle. Blizzard and Nintendo essentially didn't show up at all (Nintendo had a phone booth-sized display with a few DSi's), and a lot of other publishers were there with games that were already released or the demos of which we'd already played. The only big-name unreleased game I played was Mafia II, and while I'll give it another chance later, it didn't demo very well on the show floor at all.

Our interview with Perfect World unfortunately never happened - essentially, they bailed on us - and the crowds prohibited me from checking out Red Dead Redemption and Crackdown 2, both of which I was curious about. Honestly, I have to echo the criticism of a lot of other folks who have written about it and say that the size of the venue was a problem. There was essentially no chance of getting into a popular panel unless you were willing to wait several hours in line, and the whole thing in general just felt... well, rushed. That might have had something to do with suddenly having responsibilities there, though, as opposed to just being a gamer at PAX. I'm told they'll be moving to a larger space next year.

I don't want to paint it as a negative experience on the whole; it absolutely wasn't. In addition to the stuff I wrote about and talked about above, I got to meet and chat briefly with Jeff Green, whose GFW Radio podcast was one of the shows that got me wanting to start podcasting and whose signed poster from their live "reunion show" at last year's PAX I have up on my wall.

That guy on the left? He's a pretty cool guy. Yes, I'm a nerd.

I also got to talk with Luis Gigliotti - an executive producer at THQ who just released Metro 2033 - about what it was like to work so closely with Dmitry Glukhovsky, upon whose wildly popular Russian novel the game is based. That was a really great chat and I'm hoping I can get him on the podcast for an interview sometime in the future. The American Classic Arcade Museum had a room set up on the top floor with a bunch of classic arcade cabinets that was really fun to walk through, and right next door to that PAX had its traditional "console classics" room, where I got to play a few rounds of SNES Super Mario Kart with friends I almost never get to see.

So yeah, minor complaints and stolen iPhone notwithstanding, it was a great trip, and if you're a gamer that's never been to PAX, you should make a point to go. I have little doubt that they'll fix up some of the quirks that arose during their first show in Boston next year, and if you can make it to Seattle, obviously that one's been running smoothly for years and I'm sure will continue to do so. PAX really is like nothing else I've been to, and I certainly intend to go again, though I suspect cost will restrict me to the East Coast version, at least for the near future.

Oh, and speaking of cost, I did replace my iPhone. Which is really not cheap to do at all. Maybe I'll write about some iPhone games next, and see if that makes me feel any better about it.

Free and Worth Every Penny - Issue 39: Tiny Castle

It's going to be a quick hit this week, guys, because I'm being run a little bit ragged at work and while I didn't want to leave you hanging, I also didn't have time to dig into anything terribly epic. Lucky for me, though, I'm not being run as ragged as the knight you'll be controlling in this installment of Free and Worth Every Penny. Ohhhhhh no. That guy is having a really bad day.

Tiny Castle is a flash game by Nitrome, known for their pixel art and charmingly retro game design. Their work shows up over on Bytejacker on a regular basis (FYI, if you don't watch Bytejacker... you should watch Bytejacker), and with good reason: they make games that are usually easy to get into while providing a pretty high entertainment return on your time investment.

You'll take charge of a miniature knight, tasked with saving a damsel in distress from her imprisonment... or at least, that's how it's presented to you. She's trapped in a one-screen-high castle, and you need to make it to the top... or at least, that's how it's presented to you. I'm sure you're getting the idea: Tiny Castle is all about turning the tables on you as you play, and they do a good job of re-using the map in clever ways to keep you on your toes as you fight and puzzle your way through. It isn't a terribly long game, but it will probably take you longer than you initially assume it will based on your first few minutes with it.

This castle? It is full of lies.

Controls are tight and simple: arrow keys to move and jump, spacebar to swing your sword around. Enemies move based on simple patterns and frequently drop health refills when killed, so excessive combat difficulty shouldn't be a problem. What was a problem for me was a little too much emphasis on making the player guess which action would allow them to proceed; there were a couple of times when I definitely felt like Nitrome was padding the gameplay length by making me pick one of multiple directions to go with no guidance, and making me trek all the way back across the map if I guessed wrong.

In the end, though, that didn't keep me from finishing the game, and I'm glad it didn't. There's a charming atmosphere to the whole thing, with enjoyable background music (I have it going in the background while I write this, in fact) and some really excellent, detailed animation that was a pleasure to watch while I played. Having to figure the castle out anew each time it changed was a fun challenge, and the payoff at the end, while not exactly mind-blowing, at least earned the grin and chuckle that it was going for.

Tiny Castle is...

• perfectly suited to being a webgame; plays well in a small box, done within a lunch hour.
• full of some really top-notch pixel art and animation.
• occasionally frustrating in a bad way, but never for long.
• ultimately a forgettable diversion, but a pleasant one.

It'll play anywhere Flash does (sorry, new iPad owners, but it wouldn't really work on a touch screen anyhow), and you can check it out right over 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 38: Devil's Tuning Fork

As a child, I was terrified of the dark. This was a deeply serious affair for me, one that required a couple sessions with a child psychologist to work out; for awhile, I absolutely could not be in a place without light without starting to panic. My case was extreme, perhaps, but for most children some level of fear of the dark is common. It is, after all, our first and most prevalent encounter with the unknown. As soon as we learn that "if I can't see it, it can't see me" isn't true, we begin to fear that which we cannot see.

In this week's installment of Free and Worth Every Penny, you cannot see anything. At all. Ever.

But you can hear.

I should explain a bit more. Created over the course of six months by the DePaul Game Elites team from DePaul University's GameDev program, Devil's Tuning Fork was one of the winners of the 2010 IGF Student Showcase and explores "a new mode of perception through sound visualization." The screen is not dark the entire time you're playing Devil's Tuning Fork, though most of it is dark an uncomfortable amount of the time. The game's conceit is that your character has been rendered blind, and can only navigate through echolocation, sending out sound waves to find the boundaries and objects of his environment. The visual representation is quite similar to that in Daredevil, if you were unfortunate enough to have seen that movie. It's probably easier to show than to describe:

The very minimalist and somewhat contrived plot of the game tells you that children everywhere are falling into comas, their minds being held captive by some nefarious force, and that as one of these children you must rescue the others by collecting stuffed animals scattered around treacherous rooms. These details serve very well to provide atmosphere (the voiceover work is appropriately creepy, and establishing your character as a child works the aforementioned fear of the dark angle quite well), but from a gameplay standpoint the proposition is simple: You are trapped. Escape.

Devil's Tuning Fork will probably remind you of Portal - or at least, it reminded me of Portal. Luckily, the similarities felt like a happy coincidence rather than a heavy-handed reference or a lack of conceptual originality. In both games, you must navigate deadly environments. In both games, you have only a non-violent tool with which to do so (though in Portal the tool was occasionally used for violence, which does not happen here). Both are puzzle games at their core, though they live in a first-person platformer shell. Devil's Tuning Fork never plays for laughs, and has a much more consistently disquieting tone, but the gameplay is definitely cast from the same mold.

On that point, the mechanics of the Tuning Fork are not quite as mind-bending as those of the portal gun, but yield a surprisingly wide range of functions in the game. The "primary fire", so to speak, sends out a sound wave in all directions, briefly illuminating your surroundings. The right mouse button will emit a lower frequency sound, primarily useful for revealing the floor immediately around you - it can identify weakened floor areas which need to be avoided. By charging up and then releasing a sound wave you concentrate its aim, directing it at a point to activate triggers in the room - ringing bells, reflecting sound off a mirror, etc. You'll switch between these three functions constantly, monitoring and conquering your environment, but the Fork cannot be used indefinitely, and its recharge meter keeps you from ever escaping a distinct feeling of vulnerability.

Don't look d--too late, you looked down.

It's a very strange kind of tension, playing Devil's Tuning Fork - the game has no enemies, so nothing is coming for you if you just stand still. But every step feels fraught with peril to some degree, because you only see your surroundings in flashes. I became competent at the controls quickly, and you probably will too, but I never felt comfortable in the game. I'm pretty sure I was never supposed to.

There are a couple of problems. The movement controls occasionally feel a bit off, like I'm not sure how fast I can start or stop, which made getting on and off moving platforms a harrowing experience, especially when I couldn't see what I was doing all the time. And the puzzles got a little less satisfying as I neared the end of the game; there are really only a couple of different types, and it becomes a bit of a "spot the trigger" hunt in the last level. Without the addition of more gameplay mechanics, I was ready for it to be over when it was.

But I'm still extremely glad I downloaded the game, and I strongly encourage you to do so as well. If you were one of the people who tried Narbacular Drop before it became Portal and thought, "Man, these guys might really be on to something," you may find yourself with similar thoughts here. The last time I saw a first person puzzler this refreshingly different was when The Unfinished Swan was making its way around the internet back in 2008, and... well, that hasn't come out yet. This has.

Devil's Tuning Fork is...

• a captivating premise, well executed.
• more than a little unsettling.
• about the right length, for what it has to offer.
• at least in some respects, something genuinely new. How often do we get that?

The game is Windows only, and the download is just under 30MB. Snag it here. If you're interested in reading about how they made it, the team recently did a postmortem with GameCareerGuide.com which you can read here.

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

The Best Thing I've Seen at PAX.

I've seen quite a lot of stuff this weekend - an almost overwhelming amount, really - and before I leave today I hope to get to see more. I've seen indie games and AAA titles; I've seen gaming hardware that might merit the term "excessive"; I've seen folks learning how to make games, and folks teaching the same; I've met producers and designers and press and a whole lot of marketers; I've seen some very creative cosplayers... good and bad.

The best thing I've seen at PAX is a play about a group of friends who play D&D, and what happens when one of them enlists to go to Iraq.

Last night at 10PM in the Naga theatre, a staged reading was held for Cameron McNary's play Of Dice And Men, and it was a wonderful surprise at the end of a very long day. I hadn't heard about the show at all until a few hours before, when I had the good fortune to run into a couple of the cast members wearing Critical Threat Theatre shirts in the elevator of my hotel; when somebody's wearing a shirt with a 20-sided die and the word "theatre" on it, you ask why. Well, I ask why, anyhow. And so I ended up laughing, applauding, and occasionally having something in my eye for a few hours last night when I probably should have been sleeping. It was an excellent tradeoff.

I didn't know what to expect going in - "Great Plays. About Geeks." is a catchy slogan, but I know firsthand that when gamers decide they want to engage in something creative, the results can be fantastic, but can also be fantastically bad. It's not an entirely untrue stereotype that leads to Youtube videos of hilariously awful live action roleplay, or the infamous "cast magic missile at the darkness" sketch. I wasn't sure whether I was in for something special, or just a run of really bad dwarf puns.

I needn't have worried. McNary's writing was genuinely funny the vast majority of the time, and surprisingly touching in the scenes where it needed to be. The play avoided tackling some of the bigger issues that might have arisen from its premise, but did so honestly; it isn't a show about the rightness of war, it's just a show about how the reality of it impacts a group of friends. It's a show about gaming culture, and how gaming together helps people relate to each other, helps them grow, and helps them cope. In its own words, it's a show about how sometimes (maybe "all the time"), pointless things really matter. Not coincidentally, that's also what PAX is about, so it played to a very receptive audience.

It also did have some really bad dwarf puns. They actually worked out pretty well.

The cast deserves mention for coming together very quickly as I understand it and doing an excellent job. Ordinarily when I'm talking about a play I would put a comma there, and continue with "especially so-and-so", but it was such a strong ensemble (and the play is so much an ensemble piece) that I'll just link to their cast page and tell you that everyone on it performed honestly, with a lot of humor and obvious love for their characters. Considering the difficulty of getting a work across in a staged reading, it was a very compelling performance, and I would pay to see them do a full run of it.

As luck would have it, I was able to do just that in advance, and so can anyone else who wants to. Critical Threat is trying to raise money for that cause, as the company itself is basically just the playwright, his wife, and a friend, and putting up a full production isn't cheap. I wouldn't expect anyone to donate money to them sight unseen, but the good news is you won't have to. The staged reading we saw last night was filmed, and some or all of it should be online in the not-distant future. When it is, if you have any love for this sort of thing (games, or theatre, or both - the first is assumed, because you are here), I recommend checking it out and deciding whether you'd like to help them out as well. [I should mention here perhaps that it is an adult show in language and nature, and while I certainly wasn't offended by anything, it probably shouldn't be screened for your kids without you seeing it first.]

My thanks to Cameron McNary and the cast & crew of Of Dice And Men for lifting many spirits last night and embodying successfully so much of what PAX has come to mean for its attendees. I wish everyone with a pass could have seen your show, and I hope that someday they get the chance to. Speaking for the sizable crowd that did make it, it certainly didn't seem like anyone went away disappointed.

Speaking for myself, my time was well spent. It was the best thing I've seen at PAX. Bravo.

I Wrote About Civ V. Also Recorded Some Stuff.

Expanded thoughts about a lot of the things I've seen at the show are still "coming soon," since I haven't really had any time today where I wasn't actively running around or recording / writing for Colony of Gamers. If you're interested in reading about what I saw of Civilization V, that writeup is over here. I actually forgot a couple details from the demo in that writeup, and I'll cover those here later.

If you'd like to hear some brief chats between myself and the crew I podcast with about that and a bunch of other PC gaming related things (headphones, video cards, indie games, "gaming eyewear" and more), you could go here and do that.

Any other requests, please stay on the line. Your call will be handled in the order received.

A Very Fast PAX East Update

Boston is beautiful, but cold.  Snow was on the ground (in small amounts) and still falling when we arrived;  that stopped shortly thereafter, but it's definitely still chilly to walk around.  Luckily, my hotel is directly connected to the convention center via a labyrinthine series of shopping centers and skyways, so my feet are tired, but warm.

More thorough thoughts about the things I've seen today will come later, but here's a very quick summary.

I've seen:  Civilization V, Mafia II, Bioshock 2's multiplayer DLC, Tritton's gaming headphones and branded "gaming eyewear" (yes, really), ATI's multi-monitor output video cards, including one that spreads a game across six(!) monitors.  I'm not sure that's actually as awesome as it sounds.  Actually I'm not even sure it sounds that awesome, but Warren sure seemed to like it.

I've lost:  My iPhone.  Well, lost or had it stolen, it's hard to say.  If some nice person returns it to the hotel staff, then it was the first one.  Unfortunately this means I'm only connected when I'm sitting in the media room with my netbook, which is not how I wanted this to go down, but what're you gonna do.

I wish I had:  More sleep.  Also, my iPhone.

I'm looking forward to:  Meeting with Perfect World Entertainment in 20 minutes, hopefully to talk about their MMO iteration on the Torchlight universe; having a nice dinner out with Meghan; the press-exclusive hour tomorrow morning where the crowds will be lessened and we might have a little more time to go in-depth with things.

More updates later, with expanded thoughts about the above and anything else I see.  I'll also be doing some podcast recording and probably some writing for Colony Of Gamers which I'll link to.  Happy Friday!  Happy PAX!

Oh Hey, Torchlight is $5 Again.

I'm not going to spend any more time writing about how great Torchlight is. I've done a lot of that. Please feel free to read it. What's important here is that if you somehow don't have Torchlight yet - and honestly, if you read this blog that seems unlikely, I bought it for like 10 of you guys at Christmas! - Steam has it on sale at 75% off - five dollars - for the weekend. Go on, buy one for a friend. Pay it forward.

In other news, Red Steel 2 is actually getting better the more I play it, but I don't have time to write about that right now because I need to sleep, wake up in < 6 hours, and go to PAX East in Boston. I'm sure I'll be posting more from there.

(Go buy Torchlight.)

I'm Pretty Sure Red Steel 2 is Something Special.

I still haven't had much in the way of gaming time over the last couple of weeks - I can report that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 is a sound investment, but that's no surprise to anybody who reads gaming news at this point; the reviews have been out and everybody know it's a solid product. I've also had more fun with the Just Cause 2 demo (after applying some minor changes - see the trainer linked from the SomethingAwful page and the one in the notes of the Youtube video) than I've had with some full games. The 30 minute demo as it stands is great fun, but adding unlimited health and ammunition and removing the time limit turns it into a sandbox of terribly impressive scale. My suggestion: take a helicopter and fly it as high as you can - this will be very, very high - and then free fall back down. It may surprise you that it takes literally minutes to do this; the bigger surprise is that it's totally worth it, just to see that you can.

Anyhow. This post is no longer about that; it is to tell you that I did make an hour or so last night to pick up my pre-order of Red Steel 2 and give the opening of the game a spin, and that I feel pretty confident in saying at this point that if you have a Wii, you should play this game. Everywhere that the original Red Steel made a design misstep - and there were several - the sequel makes strides to improve on them. Your swordplay is no longer limited to scripted encounters, and is now the central mode of play. Red Steel 2 is in fact a first person beat 'em up as much as it is anything else. From the combo-based fighting system (which strings gunplay and swordplay together in some really satisfying ways) to the game's penchant for hiding money and ammo in objects scattered around the world for you to smash, it feels as much like an old school arcade brawler as it does a modern FPS, and so far I think that's great.

My biggest concern going into the game, having not had a chance to try it at PAX last year, was that there would be trouble for the player in switching between "sword mode" and "gun mode" - since you can literally do this at any time, but one involves aiming carefully with the IR pointer and one involves wide swings of your arm, this seemed fraught with peril for losing track of where the player wants to go or mistaking a turn for a sword swing (or vice versa). Luckily, in practice, this hasn't been a problem for me at all so far. As you roam around the world, the IR pointer controls your view direction and aiming as it does in any other Wii FPS, but as soon as you engage any enemy (or breakable object) at close range, the game switches into a Zelda-esque "Z-targeting" mode where your view is locked to your opponent and the nunchuk allows you to circle-strafe around them. In this mode, you can swing your arm around for sword strikes as much as you like without worrying about ending up facing the wrong way. You can also manually hop in and out of this mode in case the auto-lock doesn't catch what you want to focus on, or if you need to switch opponents. It works really, really well, and in almost all cases I found that the game handled switching from gunplay to swordplay and back again gracefully.

Most importantly, an hour in, that solid control scheme powers a really fun, intuitive, genuinely new experience. Strolling into a group of bad guys and switching quickly between using your blade to block sword strikes (and bullets, in a completely unrealistic and awesome design choice), shooting foes at range, and slicing / stabbing enemies up close, feels both fluid and powerful. The Wii Motion Plus does a great job of detecting both the angle and strength of your strikes, and the versatility of the moves based around that seems pretty impressive, especially when I look at the list of moves I have yet to unlock. From the beginning, the game makes you feel like a competent fighter, and the "Samurai Western" aesthetic they went with - for me, anyhow - just feels right. The plot is generic and the characterization cliche, but that hasn't taken away at all from the fun I'm having with the gameplay so far.

Bottom line: Based on my first hour or so with it, Red Steel 2 justifies its existence not only as a Wii title (you couldn't do this game the same way on the PC or on the other consoles, at least not until the Playstation Move shows up) but as a shooter that uses both the IR pointer and motion control well, something very few FPS games have managed to do. The Wii Motion Plus integration seems excellent, and again adds features to the game that would simply be missing without its inclusion. I'm genuinely excited to get back in and play the part of a sword-swinging gunslinger badass some more, and I really don't want to see this game's prospects harmed by the memories of its lackluster predecessor. Red Steel 2 is a whole new thing, and you should check it out if you can.

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 manual.

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.