In case you missed it, a few days ago I posted a rather mysterious entry with little more than some Lorem Ipsum text and a hidden cipher. Clicking on the icon took you to a page on which a few scrabble tiles lay. By solving the anagram puzzle you were rewarded with a new holiday stylesheet (I've made it so everyone has it now) and then presented with Purgatorium, a brand new game from Exmortis author, Ben Leffler, that was created especially for Casual Gameplay.
Purgatorium is a short and creepy point-and-click escape-the-room game with some rather horrific graphic visuals nestled inside. If you have played either of Ben's other horror-genre interactive narratives, Exmortis and Exmortis 2, then you may already know what to expect. In addition to the visual stimuli (from which you're sure to get a jump or two) there is a bit of a narrative that unfolds as well. The game is not very difficult so you shouldn't have any trouble getting through this one on your own. Click.
My sincere thanks and appreciation go out to Benny for coming through in such short notice so that we all might enjoy something new from him this Halloween. Cheers! =)
By the way, rumor has it there's an Exmortis 3 on the horizon coming in 2007. ;)
Purgatorium walkthrough now available!
"Why's everybody gotta leave piles of skulls lying around? It's depressing." - Beethro Budkin
Deadly Rooms of Death: Journey to Rooted Hold is a downloadable game (for Windows, Mac, or Linux*) and very much a puzzle game, but unlike any other you may have played before. It is actually the sequel to the critically acclaimed DROD: King Dugan's Dungeon, and both were created by Caravel Games.
Deadly Rooms of Death is a turn-based puzzle game; one turn being the amount of time it takes Beethro, the central character, to move one square or to swing his sword by 45 degrees. Hitting an enemy causes them to vanish in a shower of blood and debris. Each time you move all enemies on the screen also move. The game starts off easily with the only enemies being roaches. They will move directly towards Beethro (if able) thereby causing them to line up for a smiting! However, things gradually get more difficult as more enemies are introduced, from roach queens, which run away and birth new roaches every 30 turns, to the Slayer, a powerful opponent equal in ability to Beethro.
K-Mart Haunted House is a short isometric flash adventure game just begging to be played around Halloween time. Trapped inside a haunted house you must hunt for keys to unlock doors that lead outside. Along the way you'll find several other items you can trade to monsters in exchange for passage through locked gates. The fun part is you get to choose from eighteen different playable characters, each with a unique Halloween costume. The corporate tie-ins are unobtrusive and simply give you the option of going to K-Mart's website to buy costumes featured in the game.
The game's music and visuals are actually quite nice, but the controls take some time getting used to. You use the arrow keys to move but your character only walks diagonally, forcing you to remember that pressing down moves you down-right, left moves you down-left, etc. You'll have to avoid a few enemies while you search for items, such as crazy black cats and the occasional hand popping out of the floor. But, after all, this is a haunted house.
K-Mart Haunted House is a surprisingly fun game that does a great job putting you in the Halloween mood. Click.
A quick little mini-review for another Halloween-themed game, I just now dug up the link fresh from its moldy grave at Monsterland.se.
Crunchtime is a short and sweet, simple little Shockwave 3D zombie shooter. It's not a long game by any means; there are only 3 levels to the entire "experience." But it is an engaging one that will keep you occupied over a quick break for donuts and cider.
Use the arrow keys for movement while using the mouse to aim and shoot your staple gun. Conserve your shots and make them count, as it will take four shots per zombie and there are limited ammo packs available (staplers). Health power-ups are also few and far between, so keep some distance between you and those creeps.
Crunchtime is one from the vaults and more than a couple of years old. The game is not easy at first, but once you get the hang of it then it's a breeze. The prerendered graphics are gorgeous and help to make this tiny little Shockwave antique a classic. And while the gameplay experience won't likely win any awards, it does indeed fit within the spirit of the holiday with its dripping wet bloody zombies. Click.
Troglodite is a simple action game that's just perfect for this time of year. The Flash game was originally created by Paul Wright and posted to the FlashKit forums, then modified by Oliver Klinkenberg whom added the graphics and levels present in this version of the game.
Use the arrow keys to control the troglodite through each level of the cave. Avoid the ghosts while collecting gems to open the door to the next level.
Straight forward and simple gameplay with nice appealing graphics and sound. A lovely Halloween treat. Click.
Halloween Hangman is, well, a Halloween-themed game of hangman! This free flash game is about as simple as they come. And thanks to a smart-mouthed skeleton and some wacky music, it just happens to be a nice diversion for some pre-Halloween entertainment. Presented by Dimension's Edge.
In case you're new to hangman, here's the general idea. A series of blanks line the top of the screen representing a word or phrase. By clicking on the alphabet tiles you can guess letters and fill in the blanks. Select a letter that isn't in the phrase and part of the skeleton appears on the screen dangling from a rope. You also get a snide comment from the cheeky bag of bones. Make too many bad guesses and the skeleton falls, which is apparently the part he hates most.
Your score is tallied across games, so if you do really well you get to enter your initials for the global high score board. Lose once and you have to start over. So, you know, don't lose. It's a short, simple and cute Halloween-themed game that even the kids will get a kick out of. Click.
Originally created for the Macintosh (System 7) back in 1996, Bill the Demon is an action adventure platformer with a very nice old-school flair to it. This version was recreated in Flash by the author, James Burton, following Apple's decision to stop supporting older applications.
In the game you play as Bill, a lowly demon with a voracious appetite for human souls. To prove himself worthy to his peers, Bill sets out on a mission to the Ninth Circle of Hell to fetch the devil's autograph.
Use the keyboard for control: [left] and [right] arrows, [up] to jump. Press [space] to scream. A scream is important as it will allow you to eat a human soul (if close enough), and it will also break down some walls and stun some monsters temporarily. Alternatively, you may use the [A] and [D] keys for left and right, [W] to jump, and [shift] to scream. Suit yourself.
As you move about each circle, Bill's hunger will increase. Eat souls wisely as they will help you move deeper into hell. If Bill gets too hungry, you will lose a life and have to start back from the last checkpoint you reached. Lose all your lives and you'll have to restart the game from the beginning. Luckily, once you complete each circle you will be given a passcode with which to load the game from there.
Analysis: Bill the Demon is a great game that is a lot of fun. It certainly brings back memories of the old 8-bit scrolling platformers. The levels have been designed well and they present a challenge that will keep you entertained for hours. There really isn't much to dislike about the game other than the being set back from time to time when dying or running out of lives. Still, for anyone with even a remote interest in old-school platformers, or in demon-themed games to get into the Halloween spirit, you could do much worse than this charming little game. Click.
Cheers to Bob and Mango for suggesting Bill. =)
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Good news for point-and-click fans and for those that missed it the first go-round, all four episodes to CDX are once again online and available to play, even if you live outside the UK! (Thank you, BBC!) Be sure not to miss this fantastic adventure that includes full-motion video of live actors, selectable dialog, and top-notch production values. [review]
Cheers to F_raze for the alert! =)
Update: Apparently my note here alerted someone at the BBC that a technical glitch was allowing access to the game from people outside the UK and they have since plugged the hole. Problem is, the plugging they did is now preventing some people inside the UK from playing. Way to go, Beeb.
However, the kind and generous Preloaded folks have just made the game available to play for non-UK residents. check out the CDX review page for the link.
Four Second Firestorm is a collection of frantic micro-games hot on the on the heels of Four Second Fury and Four Second Frenzy. Using either the keyboard or mouse, you have just a few moments to play one of the over 175 mini-games thrown in your face. Follow the incredibly brief instructions and try to win each game. It's a fast-paced collection of micro-games suitable for anyone who wants to feel like they're on a caffeine buzz without all that coffee.
Four Second Firestorm is the result of fifty six individual programmers working over the course of seven weeks. There's a nice variety of games available, from knocking ketchup out of bottles to insulting n00bs, sharpening pencils and much, much more. There's certainly no shortage of creativity. Some games are much more difficult to figure out than others, but even if you're stuck you'll only be that way for about three more seconds.
This game is a beast to load, weighing in at just over 14MB. Fortunately for you the mini-game action begins right here with a little carrot trying to avoid falling bowling balls. Four Second Firestorm brings more great Wario Ware-style action to your browser, so be sure to give it at least four seconds of your time. After it loads, of course. Play.
Check out the entire Four Second series of games.
Cheers to Heather, Mike, Art, and Angelblade for suggesting this one!
Pixel Blaster is a simple and stylish flash-based shooter by Tom Thornton of ThorGaming. Waves of stark white ships appear in the circular playing field and attack your vessel. With a remarkably useful charge shot and two-handed controls, you must fend off dozens of enemies before plunging into an intense boss battle. The game is vaguely reminiscent of GridWars but places a stronger emphasis on physics and old fashioned ship blasting rather than overwhelming you with dozens of enemies at once.
The game's structure is very basic but sets the pace for the game quite well. Enemies come at you in waves, each one containing a set of ships that must be defeated in order to move on. Once you dispatch them you'll battle the boss, a large vessel with several layers of shielding. Afterwards you move onto more sets of enemies, but this time they're stronger, faster and more difficult to defeat.
To control your ship use the arrow keys (or WASD) to move and the mouse to aim and fire your weapon. It takes some time to get accustomed to the dual control style, but once you do it becomes second nature. A more powerful charge shot is available if you hold the left mouse button for a few seconds. Unleash it and continue to fire your weapon for a series of power shots that will destroy almost anything in their path. It's especially useful (and dramatic) during boss battles.
Pixel Blaster has a lot of little extras that make the game extraordinarily entertaining. For starters, an online high score board keeps track of the top 100 players in each difficulty level, giving you a shot at the limelight. Physics also play a subtle but important role in the game, causing your ship to drift every time you move and forcing you to adjust for shifting weapons fire. My personal favorite feature is the shaking screen whenever something explodes. It makes the game feel a bit more intense.
Pixel Blaster is a simple shooter that's a winner for its clean style, superb implementation and well-paced gameplay. It's a tough game to stop playing once you start, so consider yourself warned. Play Pixel Blaster.
Pod Panic is a gorgeous little arcade Flash shooter that is simple to play and terribly addictive. It was created by Al O'Shea of Fatking.co.uk.
Grab the mouse with one hand and put your fingers of the other on the arrow keys, or alternatively on the WASD keys. Click the mouse to fire.
Each level presents you with an increasing number of pods, round bumper-like objects that tend to gravitate towards your ship, and a string-creature that is rather hypnotizing to watch. String creatures require hits perpendicular to its line segments, so you will have to keep moving to clear each level. You will also need to protect your orbiting shield ring, or it's eternal darkness for you.
Fortunately, you have an Intergalactic Hyperspace Pulse weapon available to you by pressing the [space] bar. But it requires recharging after use. There are also a few power-ups that can help you along the way: orange shield boosts, orange [P] firing rate increasers, hyperspace pulse boosters.
And while there isn't much more than that to this cute little game, the gameplay kept me going at it for a long while. Did I mention it's terribly addictive? Great old-school arcade fun in a tight little package. Click.
Cheers to Dann for the link! =)
Update: Macs now supported! =D
Sandbox games, level editors, and user-generated content seem to be all the rage these days, and for good reason: people love to be expressive and creative, and the games that allow this creative side to emerge often generate a great deal of buzz. Reference: Line Rider, DofI's Sand games, Professor Fizzwizzle, and Rob Allen's Super Serif Bros., to name just a few. Even Will Wright's Spore has generated an amazing groundswell of buzz due in part to its creature editors and its leveraging of user-generated content; and the game isn't even out yet.
Enter Rubicon, the latest brain-child from Kevan Davis, the creator of the previously mentioned Urban Dead DHTML zombie game as well as many other works (talk about creative!). Unlike Urban Dead, however, Rubicon is a machine-building puzzle game, level editor, and sandbox toy written in Processing, and it therefore requires that Java be installed on your computer to play.
Basic gameplay consists of moving crates to one or more targets for each level. Each crate must come to rest on its corresponding target for a green light to appear. Use the component materials provided to construct any machine that will succeed at the task. The tiny icons in the lower left corner of the game window represent the various structures and mechanisms that you may use.
Once you have built your machine, press Play to see the results. If it doesn't work, press Stop to make changes before pressing Play again. Rinse. Repeat until success. Click.
After completing the twelve pre-built puzzles, try your hand at creating your own levels. You can visit the Rubicon Forum for sharing your levels, or post them here in the comments to share them with other JIG visitors. To share your level with others, click Save to get your 7-letter filename, and then use the filename it gives you in a URL formatted like this:
http://kevan.org/rubicon/game.php?level=filename
Rubicon is a wonder toy filled with creative potential that is limited only by your imagination. And if you're curious about the sandbox creations that are possible with Rubicon, feast on this stunning machine: http://kevan.org/rubicon/game.php?level=sizahob, a "3-digit serial incrementer" designed by Alex Fink. Or try this one by SMK.
Cheers to Craig for the heads-up about this amazing new game, and to Asterick for finding the examples to show. =)
Cheers to Michal for having just sent this one in:
"Adobe made available a beta version of FP9 for Linux systems a few days ago. It works pretty well with most of the flash games reviewed at your site (which often did not work with the highest version available for Linux - 7). I don't know how many of your visitors are using Linux OS but even if it is 1 out of 100 it could be nice to give them that info."
And here's the link:
http://blogs.adobe.com/penguin.swf/2006/10/beta_is_live.html
I am certain there are several people here that will welcome that news. Cheers! =)
It isn't often that I come across an addictive browser-based Flash game with which you can play against a friend over the Web. I was pleasantly surprised to find the latest game from Gamesheep is just that kind of game. Crystal Clear is a simple casual game with gameplay similar to the classic game of Lines, and yet with some subtle differences that turn the classic into a compelling two-player battle.
The objective is to fill up your opponent's board before your own board fills up. You do this by moving tiles to create groups of five (5) or more of the same color.
Each turn you get to move a single tile. By taking your turn, three (3) tiles are automatically sent to your opponent unless you execute a combo, which can send a lot more. The larger the combo, the more tiles you give to your opponent.
Two special tiles add spice to the mix and add depth to the gameplay: a broken tile will explode when used in a combo, and thus taking out the tiles around it regardless of color; and a heart-shaped tile when moved will change the color of all tiles around it to the same color, but it will not execute the combo.
Appealing graphics and addictive gameplay, Crystal Clear is great multiplayer fun. Click.
World War II: Pacific Heroes is a 3D action/arcade shooting game for Windows, developed by Oberon Media. Rather than focusing on actual events or realistic settings, World War II: Pacific Heroes drops you in a plane with simple controls and unlimited ammo and lets you play the role of war hero. Across twenty missions you'll pilot a few different types of planes as well as man a heavy turret. It's an arcade game distilled down to its most basic elements, tossing many conventional limitations out the window to let you focus on the action.
Your first mission is an attempt to rescue stranded Marines inside enemy territory. As always, you fly it solo and must take on foes with nothing more than missiles and an on-board machine gun. Arrows point you to the bad guys and aiming is a simple matter of moving the target over an enemy and firing. Things will get a little hectic when opposing planes fly in close and you chase each other exchanging fire, but what's a little gaming without competition? Simply cut back on the speed throttle and make a sharp turn. They'll never know what hit 'em.
Realism takes a firm backseat to pure entertainment in World War II: Pacific Heroes, so don't walk into this game expecting to become a history expert. Conventions such as unlimited ammo and a remarkably resilient aircraft weigh the odds heavily in your favor. It's also easier to hit planes when they're farther away, allowing you to wipe out several enemies before they get a chance to start pummeling you.
Where World War II: Pacific Heroes really excels are the visuals and game controls. The graphics are very well done, striking a balance between realistic scenery and arcade-style backdrops. You won't be shooting coconuts off palm trees, but you will feel immersed enough to get into the game. The entire screen tilts as you bank your craft around tight corners. You'll lean your head sideways on more than one occasion. Controlling the plane is handled with the mouse, as are firing missiles and the machine gun. The learning curve is practically non-existent, so by the time you've installed the game you're ready to roll.
For all its arcadey goodness, World War II: Pacific Heroes does have a few shortcomings. First of all, it's a rather brief game. The 20 missions you're presented with are standard fare and offer little surprises. While this helps to keep things simple and action-packed, a twist or turn here or there would have been great. The difficulty level is also quite low, so you'll breeze through most missions without a scratch.
Analysis: I've never been a fan of war-themed games, but World War II: Pacific Heroes grabbed me with its no-frills gameplay and nice looking graphics. The fact that it's set during World War II is immaterial, it could just as easily have taken place on Mars in 2142 or as a gun-toting fly trying to take out other insects. It's a straightforward arcade shooting game, and a surprisingly good one at that.
The clear-cut missions were also appealing to me. Just read a short briefing and hop into the game, no strategy planning sessions or multiple objectives to complete at once. Not having to worry about running out of ammo or missiles is also quite nice. Of course this really cuts into the feeling of realism, but to be honest, in the middle of a close-quarters dogfight, I didn't really care. World War II: Pacific Heroes is about winning, not trying to win and failing miserably.
For some straight-up shooting action, World War II: Pacific Heroes is definitely the way to go. It offers enough action to keep you busy for many hours and won't frustrate you with cheap enemy AI or limited resources. Just hop in the plane and start saving the day.
Windows:
Download the demo
Order the full version
Mac OS X:
Not available
Free the Bird is a Flash point-and-click game similar to a room escape game except that the objective is to, of course, free the bird instead. Now if you're at all familiar with Bart Bonte's previous work, Bonte Room and Bonte Room 2, you may be scratching your head wondering why on Earth would anyone want to let that annoying bird out, other than perhaps letting it go free; it has a spine-tingling screech that doesn't take long to dislike very much.
Submitted to our game design competition in August, Free the Bird is a simple puzzle game that offers a satisfying reward if you solve it by yourself. The game features the same pleasing minimalism artistic style that Bart is noted for, and it is of clever design, too. Just enough for a midday break. Click.
Free the Bird walkthrough now available!
TinyGrow is a captivating flash toy created by Shinichiro Sato of box7box.com. The game lets you create a surreal garden scene by finding and dropping different types of seeds. Thick black trees sprout at random from the bottom of the screen, each with a rotating icon in the center. Click the icon to activate one of several events to discover seeds and grow more foliage. For example, if you stop the icon on the leaf, a branch will grow from the tree and leaves will appear. Use the cursor to scatter the leaves and click on the seed pods. They'll drop and grow new, colorful plants.
Part of the fun of TinyGrow is discovering how to use each event to create more plants. You never know what will show up next, where the seeds will sprout, or what shape the plant will take when it grows. Your only input is stopping the random icon and finding the seeds. But no matter what happens, you get a gorgeous screenshot at the end of the game.
While a few more random icon events would have been great, TinyGrow still manages to trap and hold your attention for a surprisingly long time. It's creative, it's a bit artistic, and it's fun to see what sort of strangeness appears at the end. Click the link and see what your garden grows. Play.
Thanks to Chouteau for sending this one in!
Eight Days is the latest point-and-click game to be released by Anode & Cathode, that fabulous French duo that has created some of the finest casual gameplay experiences available on the Web today. 
Eight Days has just been released today, therefore this is not so much a review (since I haven't been given the opportunity to play it yet) as it is an announcement. However, judging from their past successes with The Museum, The Casino, and L’expresso Empoisonné, we are likely in store for another excellent adventure.
Eight Days will also be episodic, running for 8 days with a new episode being released every two days. And they are offering 17 T-shirts to the first players "of each ranking" that finish the game. What that means may be more clearly understood once we are able to actually play the game.
Join us here, either in the comments or the IRC chat room, and help us make it through the game.
You MUST first register at Anode & Cathode to be able to play. And when the time comes... Click.
Warning: 8 days can hurt young people sensibility. I assume that means it's not appropriate for a younger audience. Therefore, I'm tagging this one at PG13 until I can see for myself. You've been warned. =)
Cheers to Stan, and to Edgy Swordbearer for the heads-up about it.
8 Days walkthrough now available!
Empires and Dungeons is a downloadable fantasy/strategy game for Windows created by Niels Bauer Games. It's been receiving a lot of praise for its stripped-down mechanics and surprisingly captivating gameplay. Taking on the role of a medieval emperor, you must gather resources to help build an army, both to attack your rivals and to defend your castle. Along the way you'll venture into deep dungeons, meet mysterious traders, pillage in the name of the empire and much, much more. Empires and Dungeons successfully pulls some of the best aspects from several rather complex genres and distills it into something every gamer can enjoy.
Simple graphics and simple point-and-click gameplay, Empires and Dungeons is reminiscent of the classic days of computer gaming. You begin on the overworld map and explore by clicking adjacent grid squares. Icons will randomly appear on the screen signifying resources you can acquire or other events you can investigate. Your overarching goal is to gather gold and materials to build structures, hire an army, and defeat your rivals. However, each scenario drops a new obstacle in your path to glorious victory, requiring you to complete a few tasks or seek impossible treasures to reach your goal.
Much of your time will be spent crawling through caverns in the combat portion of the game. Randomly generated dungeons appear on the map, giving you the option to enter in search of gold, treasure, and battle. Defeating foes earns you respect in the eyes of your army which ultimately allows you to construct more complex buildings and hire better fighters. The gold you gather here is also important, making dungeon battles a central focus of the game.
Even with all the things to explore and do, Empires and Dungeons suffers from a bit of gameplay redundancy. Fantastic surprises don't happen every few minutes, leaving you to deal with the mundane a bit too often. There's also a lot of text that isn't necessary after you read it once, yet it still pops on screen, hampering the action and forcing you to close the window before continuing.
Although it's designed for the casual gamer in mind, Empires and Dungeons has enough content to satisfy seasoned strategy/RPG gamers. The interface is straightforward, but there's also a thorough tutorial available and help is always a mouse-click away.
Empires and Dungeons does a great job of culling the most riveting and entertaining aspects of fantasy role-playing and strategy games and compiling them into a single title. Give the demo a try and see if it's your cup of tea. If you enjoy it, the full version opens a whole new realm of possibilities, giving you a dozen different scenarios, new items, monsters, even the ability to breed dragons. Moreover, should you decide to purchase the full version, your purchase will help support this site.
Windows:
Download the demo
Order the full version
Mac OS X:
Not available. Use Boot Camp or Parallels.
All my life since I can remember, I've always wanted to compose music sung by a choir of mice. Finally, all of my relentless and agonizing patience has paid off and I can finally get my chance in Sound Factory, a game created by our friend Luke Whittaker, whose other game A Break in the Road was only just recently reviewed here.
In this charming little game, you play the role of a bored tire manufacturing worker named Dink. Dink's tired of his pathetic day to day existence doing the same old thing. In fact, he'd quit his job were it not for his eight starving children and warehouse load of credit card debt. Today though, things are going to turn around for poor Dink as he discovers his inborn talent to make music from old factory machinery.
The game is simple: unlock all of the different sound items by impressing your co-workers with music created from the items you currently have. Don't get too caught up in all of the fun though—you've still got a job to do and a quota to meet. No matter how hard you rock out, you still need to have 100 tires inflated by 5 o'clock. This doesn't seem too hard until you realize that your first and chief instrument, over-inflating tires, destroys your quota meeting product in the process!
To make things even more difficult, your boss isn't going to just let you play around all day (I couldn't believe it either, what kind of sick, twisted world do they live in?!) From time to time he'll come down to make sure absolutely no fun is being had and work is getting completed—so stop all instruments IMMEDIATELY until he leaves! Once he's in his office you can return to getting your funk on behind his back.
What makes this game even better is that not only can you just play the sounds, but you can even compose many of the instruments—which, no joke, includes a choir of mice.
Once you have beaten a level you can take the items you've unlocked and have free reign to come back and compose away without dealing with silly things such as quotas and bosses. Also, just as you could in A Break in the Road, you can save your masterpiece and send it to friends!
Do your part in sticking it to "the man" by creating some smash tunes yourself!
Analysis: This game is just plain good 'ol fun for the whole family (they'd have to play one at a time of course). It is so immersing that you don't really even realize how much fun you're having until you have many instruments playing at once—when the floor is filled with employees gleefully neglecting their job.
The truth is, every time I thought to myself "wow, it'd be cool if I could do this," I'd discover that I could! It's a well polished game that gives you the freedom to create what you want—the kind of open-endedness that keeps people coming back. The animation and audio are crisp and the game is laid out very well.
I'm a big fan of creation in games- we take ownership of we create and in doing so we invest ourselves in the game world. By the time you snap out the game you'll be shocked to learn how much time passed. Hmm... maybe YOU should get back to work!
Bonus: I recently asked Luke, based on his experience with games that experiment with sound, what his take on audio in games was. How important is it? He was quite gentlemanly and responded as such:
"Ah, you've got me onto my favorite subject... how long have you got? Put briefly, I think a lot of audio designers would tell you that, even in full-blown console and PC games, audio has traditionally got the short straw in terms of its support from technology and from developers. It's changing now, with better tools and technology being developed, but at the time A Break in the Road was being developed back on Flash 5, all you could really do with sound was pan it from left to right or change the volume. We had to work out many tricks to get them [the audio tracks] to loop properly. Flash 8 has added many more sound channels, which is always welcome. It's up to developers now to push their ideas with sound, if we're going to see games use it creatively. I see it as a great way of giving the user a sense of being part of a game, and of having a true creative input in the path the game takes. Rather than give the player a choice of, say, four "paths" through a game, why not give them four sounds instead, and they'll each come up with something unique they can call their own. It's still possible to give a game a narrative trajectory so it's not just a musical play pen—for example, you've still got to play your tune to the crowd at the end of A Break in the Road, but along the way you've created your own story.
On another note, perhaps Web games are the best way to experiment with these ideas at present, since it seems like the big console publishers are only just starting to realize the potential of audio in games (Guitar Hero is an example). On the web we're free to try these things without needing a 100 strong development team, and who knows, perhaps the big publishers will cotton on soon." -Luke "Makes Rockin' Games" Whittaker
Well spoken.
Super Bonus: Tip: If you're having a hard time turning off all of the instruments when the boss comes out, don't forget that you can click on their icon at the bottom to toggle them on and off!
Nimian Flyer Legends is a 3D action adventure game by Protopop Games. You play the role of a young dragon named Salamond on a quest to defeat seven legendary beasts. Armed with fire-breath and the ability to pick up many objects, you'll have to use your speed and wits to battle each unique foe. Nimian Flyer Legends has a remarkably full 3D world to explore coupled with a grand soundtrack. It's a surprisingly lengthy game that feels more like an epic journey than a pick-up-and-play flash title.
Nimian Flyer Legends borrows many ideas from the PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus but with a very different flavor. Each boss you fight has a unique pattern and weaknesses. Sometimes all you have to do is maneuver close and use your fire breath to win but this isn't always true. Many battles feature a series of speed rings that you must fly through in order to remain near the enemy. None of the fights are particularly difficult, but they do offer enough variety to keep you craving more. The focus is more on action than strategy, so reflexes play a large part in defeating each foe. Stay on your toes and balance attack, defense and recovery methods in order to prevail.
The pacing of Nimian Flyer Legends is a very important part of the experience. After each battle you'll spend several minutes flying through open terrain. You can use this time to eat bugs that restore health and fire breath, kick back and enjoy the scenery, or just burn everything you see. It offers a break from the big battles and also fleshes out the game, giving the illusion of a huge world to traverse.
Nimian Flyer Legends is a long, satisfying flash adventure that quenches your thirst for fantasy gaming. The dramatic presentation does a great job of drawing you in, and I found myself wanting to keep playing just to see what beautiful scenery would unfold next. Fortunately the game has an auto-save feature, so you can stop at any time and pick up where you left off. Play.
If you like Nimian Flyer Legends, try Nimian Hunter or one of the other Nimian Flyer games on the Protopop website.
I've been playing a lot of games lately trying to find something to sink my teeth into enough to write a review for. And while some games definitely look promising, the time required to play through each one enough to write a decent review is the bottleneck for me right now.
So, here are links to a couple of games I'm currently evaluating; please help me by indicating in the comments which one(s) deserve(s) a review more than the others, and why:
- Glider Web - the latest game from Mark Arenz of Ridiculopathy is 100% oldschool fun, and still in beta. Fly a paper airplane through a house and collect stars. All levels are created and rated by the community. The editor needs some work, however, so be careful or you may lose your work.
- Bill the Demon - A great little platformer with an oldschool flair. You play as Bill the demon, out to earn the respect of your colleagues by descending the Nine Circles of Hell and getting the devil's autograph.
- Onamis 2 - a really great looking point-and-click puzzle game from France. Got stuck early on.
- Cultivation - a unique 'game' about social interaction in a gardening community, which features dynamic graphics that are procedurally generated. This game is for those looking for something a bit different. Downloadable for Mac, PC, and Linux.
- Mafia Returns - DHTML RPG about the mafia. No idea how this one plays, though, as I couldn't get past the complicated registration screen. That, and RPGs are not really my specialty.
- Snake Classic - the latest game from Arseniy of Gamebalance. Control the snake with the mouse. Simple, classic fun.
- Subpoena Power - a well-made political platformer from NoEvil Productions that lampoons the corruption in Congress. The objective is to serve subpoenas to senators and congressmen on Capitol Hill and sort out the good from the bad. While playing I discovered some equally well-made and very amusing animations by NoEvil. Not to be missed if you enjoy political satire.
- Darfur is Dying - A game with a purpose to educate the world about the genocide that is happening in Darfur.
Cheers for your help! =)
Another excellent entry into our first