Scribblenauts

It seems to me that some of the most creative games come with a -nauts suffix. Tenseiga advertised this game throughout the office today. And man, I am really thankful to him for that.

The objective of this game is to collect all the starites (basically, just stars) in each level. And you get these by solving some puzzles. But these are no ordinary puzzles. As a scribblenaut you have a notepad capable of bringing to life anything you write in its pages. Need a mischievous goon out of you way, try summoning police. Or a gun, if you dont mind blood on your hands. And if you want to get really nasty, type dinosaur or serial killer.

We ended up doing some crazy experiments today. Just for kicks, tenseiga summoned a time machine. And we could actually use it to go back in time? and we got a different level each time. I wonder how many such 'back in time' levels does the game have. And I wonder where a space ship will take me. (note to self: try this out tomorrow).

Next, we had a series of bouts between Jesus and Satan, Zeus and a Titan and a Ninja and a Samurai. Then we summoned a serial killer who bumped off everyone on that level. And being the nutcase that he is, tenseiga brought together a nuclear bomb and a terrorist in the same room and the expected happened. Next up was a black hole which sucked everything in.

By the end of it my jaw had dropped to the floor. How many things had the developers thought of. Their hard work and dedication is clearly visible. This little game, available on Nintendo DS can clearly put most, of not almost all of the mainstream titles to shame. A must play, even if you are not a gamer.

November 2009: Mois D'or Pour Gamers

If you are wondering what that means, it's french for "Golden Month For Gamers." This month is so special for us unsocial, nocturnal beings that I had to make it sound exotic. :P

If you are a gamer, you'd surely know what I am talking about. If not- there are tons of huge titles coming out this month. Borderlands has been out for a few days, Dragon Age: Origins and PES 2010 were released this morning and Modern Warfare 2, Left for Dead 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 must be getting ready to ship out as I type this post. To make things even better Fifa 10, Torchlight and Risen were released just a few days back. Now that's easily more food than one can chew. But I am not complaining ;)

How many of these have I played so far? Borderlands, Risen and Fifa 10. I was mightily disappointed with Fifa 10 for omitting some content for PC,which made its console versions such a blast. Risen is your average RPG. It is heavy on content, has a slightly disappointing combat system, good quests presented in a bland manner and is definitely not for newcomers. What pissed me off the most was the lack of an dynamic, interactive map. I have quite a tight work schedule and can't spend hours memorising every nook and corner of the game world or trying to figure where to go next. Why can't they just tell me where to go??

One game which has really made a huge impression on me is Borderlands. I had heard some hype before its release but wasn't expecting too much out of it. But everything in the game, right from the toon shaded graphics to treasure hunting and fighting crazy bandits and high level beasts is immense fun. As IGN so aptly put it- "Borderlands is for gamers." I would say this is a perfectly designed "Shoot-em-up RPG". What is that? Ever heard of a "Hack-n-Slash RPG"? The like of Diablo and Dungeon Siege? Well this game is exactly that except in first person, futuristic time zone, different planet and has guns instead of swords and spells. But the core game mechanics i.e. "get quest, kill, loot, kill, kill, loot, kill, loot, complete quest, level up, invest skill points" remain unchanged. And trust me, this is a lot of fun. Do yourself a favour and give this game a shot.

But what pity, Dragon Age: Origins is out today. I believe, and gamespot has confirmed it, that this game is a must buy. I have started making rounds to all video game vendors in the city, and the moment I find it somewhere, Borderlands will be put on the backburner for a while.

Signing off for another round of "kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot, kill, loot."

Div

IGF main competition entries are in

The Main IGF competition deadline is over and there are 306 entries (a "little" less than the 500 I had predicted). This doesn't include the student games yet, that is scheduled to end by the 15/11/09. Have a browse through them and support the games you like! I've had a quick look through the list and found some interesting games; here's the list of those games (in no particular order):

Quanta and the Quanta youtube video.
Algodoo
Amnesia: The dark descent
Red Remover
Auditorium
Ludicrous
Mon & Bot
Rocketbirds : Revolution!
SUPER MEAT BOY!
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! -- A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
AI War: Fleet Command
FATALE
Hazard: The Journey Of Life
Igneous
LIMBO
A New Zero
Proun
Closure
Cogs
Color Symphony
Grafighters
Lylian
No Quarter

I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the student games.

Hilarious article

I was browsing for something related to the discussion i was having with hank and Joe about changes to the game mechanics when (I'm not sure how) i ran into this hilarious article posted on cracked.com. Its not an article as such, but a photoshop contest where contestants were invited to send in photoshopped images related to the topic. This topic was 'If video games were realistic'. The article is here. Hank and myself did!

tenseiga.

Too many games and too little time.

Hopefully this comic strip is self explanatory.



Please comment on how good or bad this blog is.

Another note about piracy

Close on the heels of Hanks note about piracy I'd like to bring your attention to a small initiative by 2D boy, the creators of the most awsome World Of Goo which I highly recomend you buy if you havent. What these fine souls did was, put up their game for sale, and asked the buyer to pick their price without restrictions. The final results have been posted here: They've added a few metrics to even see the breakup of price by country. What has happened here is quite a few people prefered to pay 1 cent for the game and happily downloaded it, a few people paid 3$ for it, which considering the volume of sales works out ok for 2dboy. The problem with this approach is that it generates a lot of 1 cent sales that, you know, will never lead to anything more. Those people might as well have pirated the game.

I have an idea for another payment system for any game i'm involved in. The idea is, when downloading the game you can either pay the (nominal) price for it right then and there... or give us an IOU note for it. You'd have to give your email address and verify it to download it but nothing else, no credit card numbers or anything. Now if you owe us money we'll send you emails every once in a while to please pay for the game you bought from us. I at least was in a situation where i couldnt pay for a game simply because i didnt have any money, yet those were the best gaming years of my life. I did have an email address though, and today since I am earning money I'd gladly put my money on those games that gave me so much enjoyment. How long will we keep sending IOU notes? Effectively forever I guess, its a pretty harmless email every few months. If the money does come in, awsome! If it doesnt, well those people would have pirated the game anyway.

Thoughts?

Pirate disease

Do you download (full) games for free? Then you might be a pirate. This is a contagious disease which spreads fast through the use of the internet and through the air. If you think you are infected or know someone who maybe infected, then go out and buy a few games. Keep doing this until you no longer download games. Please note, if you live in a country like India then there is no cure for you yet. You're local developers are working hard to make craptacular games that will hopefully cure you from the pirate disease.

I really like what Apple has done to save the music industry, no longer do i have to buy a full CD with songs that i don't want. Why is it that the games industry doesn't do the same? I mean, not everyone wants to play the multiplayer mode which has been implemented into the game. Why isn't there an option where one can just buy either the single player or multiplayer versions of the game? That would lower the price of games, right?

In India (or other countries where you get paid peanuts) games still retail at a price equivalent to £40! WHY?! When GTA4 came out for the PC in India it sold for Rs 400, that's around £5. That was a smart move. Unfortunately, people who had already caught the pirate disease still went out and bought a pirate copy for around the same price. If games are priced at a fair price in these countries then eventually more people will buy a real copy.