Weekend Download
The intro paragraph to this edition of Weekend Download was delayed in an unfortunate airport scheduling conflict. Lacking the teams of writers normally required to complete this task, we have instead substituted the introduction with a single character, printed here: @. We hope you enjoy it.
Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire (Windows, 85MB, free) - Old school adventuring at its old-schooliest! A remake of the classic game with updated visuals that go well beyond the original EGA fare. Point and click your way through the fictional land of Shapeir as you help fight magical elementals attacking the city. The gameplay takes an unusual twist with a restricted time frame of 30 (in-game) days. The entire narrative takes place during this time, and many puzzles and quests cannot be solved until a certain day arrives.
Archaist (Mac/Windows, 9.26MB, free) - A remake of David Lubar's 1984 game Pastfinder, Archaist is a vertically scrolling shoot'em up with strategy elements mixed in liberally. Use the [AD] keys to move left and right, the [W] key to jump/speed up, and [space] to fire. As with any old-school game, you'll need to put in a little practice before you can get much done.
Solar Wolf (Mac/Win/Linux, ~4MB, free) - An action/arcade game created with the Pygame game development library and based on the game Solar Fox. Fly your ship around the center of the screen collecting cubes and power-ups and avoiding asteroids and enemy fire. Think re-tooled Pac-Man in space and you have a vague idea of what to expect.
Guru Logic Champ remake (Windows, >1MB, free) - A PC remake by Ian Price of one of my favorite puzzle games of all time, Guru Logic Champ. This work-in-progress demo features 80 levels, no music or sound effects, but is still fully playable and fully engrossing. Rotate the grid and fire blocks from the cannon to fill spaces on the screen.
How do you rotate the grid in that Guru game?
OK, for anyone interested, X key rotates CCW, Y key rotates CW.
There is no reference to that in the game - as far as i can see - so you better know that. Took me some time to figure out.
John, maybe you could edit it into your revision.
In Guru Logic Champ, the controls aren't very clear. So here they are:
SPACE BAR to start. Use the PAGE UP and PAGE DOWN buttons to scroll the puzzles menu. Choose a puzzle using the ARROW KEYS, SPACE to start. Once in the puzzle, use the Z and X key to rotate. Pressing UP throws a block, pressing DOWN sucks it back, LEFT and RIGHT to go left and right, respectively.
Guru Logic Champ looks exactly like the original Game Boy Advance game. And I do mean exactly, ripped graphics and levels and everything. So why not just download the original game and play that on an emulator? Sure, it's probably technically illegal to do so, but if so, then this remake is just as illegal. Why settle for an incomplete carbon-copy when you can get the real thing?
Plus, there's no mention of the original game on the site for the remake. At the very least, that looks like severe plagiarism to me.
Wooo!! Hi-five for this weekend download post being 50% Mac-compatible!! Love it... usually I just drool with envy at the available titles since I don't have Windows (and don't care quite enough to run boot camp or whatever) but this week I feel distinctly not left out. Wonder if more developers are including Mac in general or if it's just been a fluke in statistics, but I feel like lately there has more often than not been at least one Mac-friendly offering included.
Keep it up!!
A note for macbook users in bootcamp for Guru, you can only change level sets by holding 'fn' and using the up/down arrow keys, due to lack of a pageup/pagedown.
Great game, along with the remake that Popcap did of it a few years back.
There's a list of the keyboard controls for Guru Logic Champ in its readme file. Good game. - John
Hey, so I'm trying to download the Quest for Glory... and I keep getting this error message when I click on the download button:
"Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2) in /home/agd1/public_html/countdl.php on line 69
Can't connect to database"
anyone else having problems???
Ok. Never mind. Must have been a glitch.
:D
I never really cared for Sierra adventures. I mean, I always loved point-and-clickers, I played all those LucasArts oldies to death, but Sierra adventures were all... meh. I could never get into the story, there was always dozens of ways you could irreversibly screw things up, they always offered too many redundant options to choose from without ever giving any decent pay-off for actually trying them out and, well, I never really cared for that pasted-on points system.
As for all those Sierra "quest games", I kinda preferred King's Quest (especially the 7th installment, the one shunned by all the "true" fans) and the Space Quest series. Quest for Glory was always ridicilously fiddly and contrived, like it couldn't decide whether it wants to be an RPG or an adventure, ending up being neither, really.
That said, I DID try out this remake of Quest for Glory, and it DOES hit the nostalgic bone somewhat. Heh, I even gave up on the same spot as many years ago! Which, I'm sad to say, is not very far from the beginning...
I'm somewhat stuck on Guru logic champ puzzle 74. Can anyone confirm that it is solve-able?
I'm also stuck on GLC74. If any genius has solved it, could they provide a clue please? TIA.
Update