Knightmare Tower (Ouya/iOS/Android)

The first thing that I played on my Ouya was Knightmare Tower. I had already played Burrito Bison on my iphone and found it funny and challenging and hard to put down. I played the free version for a few hours and already had upgraded my knight and rocket as far as they could go - then I decided I was having lots of fun and bought it. Thank you Juicy Beast.

The first couple blast-offs are short lived, but slowly you accumulate enough gold to make some serious upgades to your knight, which leads to longer flight time, which leads to more money which leads to more upgrades...(and repeat). Oh and there are a bunch of Princesses to save, not just one. Each Princess that you save will give you a chance to get an item during a run, nice little bonus. There are also potions that you can upgrade with gold and challenges that you can skip with gold (thanks for that by the way, that made the game much more enjoyable - no sarcasm). It still feels a lot like a mobile port, which I am sure it is, although the iOS version came out later and a two player mode would have really made it a substantial game, but nothing beats being completely in the zone and just smashing and slashing enemies in half or popping bubbles filled with gold and hearts - it just feels very "classic" somehow.

I love colourful games right now. The simplicity of the concept really sucks you in, the art-style is typical of Juicy Beast : great. I also really enjoy reliving that feeling that my first Nintendo games gave me, I don't really understand how to explain that, maybe it's an obsessive drive of sorts, but this game seemed to give me that feeling. It could almost be a Mario game, he would just be jumping on flying Goombas & Koopas and he would make that funny spread eagle death jump when he hits the lava....yeah it would totally work. I'm loving Knightmare Tower.

ps. I have read that it's perfect on the iPhone. If you've got it let me know.

Three Good Ludum Dare 27 Games

Ludum Dare is a 48-hour game making competition. This year, the theme is '10 seconds.' I decided to poke around today and see what I could find. These aren't by any means "the best" out there, I just picked a few and tried them out, and these are three that stood out to me tonight.

Breakfast of Champignons. 
Great title, made by Ravenous Games - who are now known as the 'dudes that made League of Evil,' I really liked the original League of Evil and I liked Infestor - both have great pixel graphics. They also published and ported Burrito Bison - which I played alot, from Juicy Beast - the guys behind Knightmare Tower! Anyways, enough background, in this game you have 10 seconds to serve up a good breakfast for your eager and impatient customers. Instead of resource management, its time management and you will have to do your best to get as much on the plate, properly cooked and all at the same time (so the plate is warm, as shown by the bar at the bottom). It's a nice little mechanic and would actually fit really nicely on the iphone. I think it would be really fun to see it a little more polished called "Gordon Ramsey's Breakfast of Champignons" - with a nice pixely version of Ramsey at the beginning that barks at you à la Chuck Yeagers Air Combat (if you don't know what I'm talking about, do yourself a favour and youtube that.)
You can play it here.

Deadly Sunrise

This little platformer by jayhC, puts you in control of a little vampire who loses HP in the form of blood droplets as you run through the map (he can only survive out there for '10 seconds').  Only in the shade can you recuperate, but you don't have long because sunrise is coming and no shade can save you from that. Plus you have to avoid obstacles and a lot of silver spikes. It's pretty hard, especially with the keyboard controls but I like the concept, with a little bit of work and polish this could be a really nice game.

You can play it here.

ShuffleLand

This playful digital version of shuffleboard is surprisingly satisfying. Here the theme of '10 seconds' has been used in the amount of time you have to plan your move. Although the learning curve is a little steep and you don't progress as quickly as many of us are accustomed to in our physics puzzlers nowadays, this one you could easily see being translated perfectly to touch controls on the ipad. Do you hear me rincewind_cz : This would be good on the ipad! Find a good publisher!

You can play it here. 

Other Ludum Dare games, and there are many, you can find here.

Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

(First written back in March)
As a Halo fan since the very beginning I was puzzled that I didn't pick up Halo 4 (at least to rent) as soon as it came out, maybe I was too distracted by the million of indie games out there, maybe I was growing out of shooters, maybe I......wait....maybe this game just sucks.

I rented it for the weekend, and I didn't finish the campaign, found the story rather bland -  the music wasn't really good, the build-up to the return of Master Chief wasn't epic and I found myself constantly curling up my nose at the graphics. I even stopped playing once to check online if there was some 4GB+ texture pack, like with Battlefield 3, that I needed to install before playing and found out later a friend of mine had done the same because there were some really hideous textures.

After the weekend I promptly brought the game back and haven't thought of going back since. I guess Halo: Reach really was the end of Halo for me. Which is sad, but also nice to have some closure. If I return to the Halo universe, and I am sure that I will, it will be in Reach - which is a far superior game to Halo 4.

Tinman Can (iOS)

I guess what attracted me to this was the cute graphics and simple racing idea - but it has that terrible level-chooser that I hate. As you play you try to land jumps perfectly and master your energy by collection 'hovatrons' to be the first to the finish line. Spend 'hovatrons' to pimp out your unicycle-robot with bling and vanity items. In single-player you are always first, because you're playing against the clock....it's a lonely experience. In multiplayer you....erm, don't play at all because I couldn't find anyone playing.....so, cute backgrounds, but deleted.

Ouya : First Impressions

Ever since I first announced that I had finally received my OUYA friends have been asking me what it's like. So here we go. 

First of all, I think that explaining my expectations will help to understand my opinion of the console. OUYA was meant as a low cost alternative to the big consoles,  as a console for gamers by gamers, a place for indie games, a return to multiplayer-livingroom gaming, a device you can experiment with, open up and develop for. Paying into this idea (for me) was a protest against the big consoles, in my case the Xbox 360 and trying to wake them up to the fact that gamers have money that they will spend elsewhere if they aren't respected and cared for. (I'll rant about Xbox and their Xbox Live service another day) I just mention all this because I have read comments about the OUYA and it is constantly compared to the Xbox or PS3 - and I think that they misunderstood the concept of the OUYA and had unfair expectations.

The console itself is a small box no bigger than a coffee mug. A coffee mug! There is no external power source and sitting idle it doesn't make a sound, when the fan is on it's a quiet whir. The biggest complaint gamers had as the OUYA was being rolled out was the controller and perhaps there are some bits that I think are a bit flimsy; the triggers jiggle, the d-pad is a little sharp, the U-button got stuck on me twice - BUT when I hold my 70€-Halo Reach limited edition Xbox 360 controller with a chatpad and rechargable battery pack in my hands, yeah it feels great, but it costs 70% of the whole OUYA console. Oh, and I can use my fancy Xbox controller on my OUYA by the way (you can too, it's just got to have a cable).

Booting up the OUYA for the first time I was a little miffed when it asked me for credit card information straight away. I would have liked to be given the option of Paypal or something similar because in Europe not everyone has an actual credit card. Sofware-wise it's got a very clean interface, but I don't understand why I can't organize my game library into categories (such as 'purchased' and 'unpurchased' - not a word, whatever) - and that there is no overview of a download queue, you can't see how much a game costs until you click "buy" - of course there is a confirmation, but still. There's also no child-lock to make sure your kids to go buying up the whole store - but I am sure these things will be changed in the future as it progresses.

Although they guys and gals at OUYA announced that they had more games at the release of the console than any console previously, you have to expect that most of those games aren't going to be great. This comes hand in hand with the publishing freedoms that OUYA has allowed. Think for a moment of the indie games on XBL (after all these years) and we can agree that 89% is crap and I believe publishing is more restrictive and development is definitely more difficult - than on the OUYA. So you have to expect more of the same, at least at the beginning. The games (and apps) will come, as development comes - remember the developers have only had the consoles in their hands for about 8 months.

Games are free to try on the OUYA. Developers make their own restrictions as to what this means: either you can play a certain amount of time per day, or you have a demo-like, or you play to a certain level and then must pay to continue. Remember that we are talking about Android games that cost around $2.99. Developers or journalists complaining that games can't or aren't making money on the OUYA are also being unfair, the console isn't even on shelves in alot of places, definitely not here in Germany, and word just hasn't gotten out yet. I think the users that bought the console are reluctant to buy games so far because they want to see where the OUYA is going first, but I also think that once some original quality games get to the OUYA you will see an increase in sales. Some of the games on the OUYA I haven't bought because I have already played them on PC or on iOS and I see no reason buying them again.

OUYA as a company has some growing pains, but they are doing some things right. They gave their early backers $13.37 to spend on games, to hopefully smooth over any hard feelings about late consoles people might have had. I commend them for this, it was probably adds up to about $800.000 they just gave to people. Sure this means they are giving money to gamers to buy games from their store, but they are getting the ball rolling and I think it's smart. They've also started a "Free the Games Fund" to match funding for games that agree to OUYA exclusivity for a time.

All in all I am satisfied with the console (although I should say I am still waiting for my second controller) - I think they delivered what they said they would and if nothing else comes out of this console other than Sony and Microsoft changing their stances when it comes to indie games on their next-gen consoles then I think that it was already worth it.

My first MAME cabinet (Part 1)

I grew up in a time when video game arcades were still around, but were starting to fall in to decline.  By the late nineties the internet was a relatively common thing to everyone and on-line gaming was starting to make important strides such as battle.net.  In contrast, an arcade took physical space to rent, required constant maintenance on the machines, required hiring employees to monitor the physical space and had the disadvantage of biased politicians and law makers working to have them shut down.

I can't remember the day where my favourite arcade actually closed, but I know it would have been sometime around 2000.  The 'Tour D'Orleans' arcade was on the second floor of the Place D'Orleans mall, but would have been shut down in order to expand the 'Bay Home Store' which opened in September of 2000.

As a kid I always thought it would the coolest thing in the world to have my own arcade cabinet. Even just one cabinet would be amazing considering how rare and expensive arcade games were. Twenty years later and I'm finally realizing my dream.

Being an adult finally pays off.

This is an old Sega/Gremlin cabinet (I think), either a Frogger or something similar, which I picked up off of Kijiji.

As you can see, there have been some modifications to the original cabinet as someone has drilled two push buttons in to the front panel, and that 'Cobra Command' marquee doesn't seem to be legit. Actually, despite the awesome 80's woody-whack, I don't think the front panel is original at all as it is plywood whereas everything else seems to be MDF.  Oddly enough, the coin mechanism appears to have been in there for a long time judging by the sticker.

Perhaps the front panel was replaced in '83 due to damage.  Or maybe this is just a coin mech from an entirely different cabinet which was thrown in recently.  Who knows!

6367 x .25 = 1591.75 which is not a lot of money considering this thing is 30 years old

The cabinet came missing just about everything.  There is no PCB, no monitor, no side art, no control panel and no power supply.  The laminate on one side has a big chip and a seam, and the front panel has a large crack which seems to be limited only to the laminate panel.  I don't even know how that can happen. Regardless, given how common these cabinets are, and given the condition of the existing parts, I don't feel bad about converting it in to a MAME cabinet.

I'm not putting a ton of research in to where the cabinet came from as really there probably isn't much info to be gathered.  If anyone can confirm the original type of cabinet or game, or maybe provide some insight or where the cabinet could have come from, please comment!

This is after a I cleaned a bunch of black paint off of the serial plate.  '1742' is stamped in but that's about all that is legible apart from 'Serial No'

It's really hard to see but it looks like someone wrote 'Wizard' in magic marker on the back of this reinforcing plate.  I don't remember ever hearing of a 'Wizard' arcade in Ottawa, so maybe this referred to the Coin Op?

Irrespective of where the cabinet came from, it's going to be getting some TLC.  My plan is to use my existing desktop computer for the guts, a 23" LCD monitor, and a 2.1 THX stereo system.  I`ll use HyperSpin as a front end, and I`ll custom build the control panel.

My next post should focus on taking the cabinet apart for cleaning.  Hopefully I`ll find some hidden treasures to show off, but at this point I kind of doubt that I`ll find anything good.

Neptune's Pride 2 : Triton (Browser)

I have started my first Neptune's Pride 2 game today, with 7 other people - all friends of a friend. After hearing about the game on the weekend we really wanted to give it a go immediately. Production happens once every 24 hours, orders are carried out every "tick" or pulse - sending your fleets between planets takes hours - leaving lots of time for diplomacy (the true core of the game) - gather resources, make ships, send fleets, invest in research, conquer: sounds simple right? The game will apparently take around 4 weeks to complete - investing a little time every day to plan and stack your orders - then wait as they get resolved. Even combat is automatic - I will be chronicling the progression of the game on my other blog : AltecApollyon's World.

What attracts me about this game is it's play style, which fits right into the life of a busy adult (or a father) - I can make my moves in the morning, during my lunch break over my mobile and then check up on it again after the kids are in bed. Like a board game night with friends, stretched over weeks - if that sounds like fun to you check it out, you can play for free, in your browser, on your tablet or phone (since it's all HTML 5).

Check Neptune's Pride 2 Triton out here.