No Time To Play

How different can you make a roguelike and still keep it recognizable as such? The turn-based nature of the game was once deemed essential, but then Diablo happened and nowadays, realtime roguelikes are reasonably common. Permadeath is considered just as important, yet the first roguelike I played extensively didn’t feature it. Graphics, once considered un-rogue-like, are increasingly common for the genre. But otherwise most such games are much like each other… right?

Three very unusual titles have been brought to my attention recently, two by a friend (thanks, Jason!) and the other by IndieGames.com.

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Logo from Wikipedia

Good Old Games (GOG.com) has released the first and second trilogies of the Ultima series.  This is significant because for many people, Ultima was their first delve into computer RPG’s.  Not only that, but the Ultimas for better or worse have shaped all the RPGs that have followed it.

Some things that are staples today in what is considered an “expansive world” (like the ability to cook, or NPC schedules) started or at least became popular in the Ultima games.  And Richard “Lord British” Garriott, creator of Ultima, is a model for many developers who would like to strike it big in the world of game development starting from nothing but lines of code and a PC.

So, whatever your opinion of Ultima, it has a lot of historical significance.  And so I bought the two trilogies on GOG.com and started playing through them.  This article is going through the ones I have played, comparing my recollections of the games with my actual playthroughs and noting things that are interesting in each title.

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The Bastion Narrator Looks Like the KFC Guy

So I’ve been playing Bastion lately (By Super Giant Games and available on Steam), and this is interesting for a couple of reasons.  The biggest reason is that it’s an “Action RPG” and that’s a genre I don’t play anymore, and yet I’m playing this game.

What’s so bad about Action RPGs?  Well, I find its kind of a tired genre.  I’m talking about games like Diablo or Torchlight; real time games where your primary action is clicking at hoards of monsters.  This is distinct from Roguelikes which, generally speaking, are turn based and more “tactical” in a lot of ways.  Action RPGs are sort of repetitive stress disorder games, where you pick the best weapon or spell and “spam” it until everything is dead. (continue reading…)

Back when I first tried making a roguelike, Javascript wasn’t anyone’s first choice of language for a game. In all honesty, that was in the dark ages before Firefox. Nowadays, the various browsers sport much more functionality (and compatibility), so it’s no surprise that more JS roguelikes are being developed. As I’m trying to make one again, I figured it would be a good idea to see what’s out there. Two titles in particular have given me food for thought.

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Is it ironic that a MMORPG designed to piggyback on social networking services reached me via someone in my real-life social network? Such is the case with Echo Bazaar, a browser-based title still in beta as of 13 February 2011 (two years after it apparently won an award from Escapist Magazine, hmm).

How about the fact that she has a Facebook account and I have a Twitter account, so initially we couldn’t interact at all in the game? Because, you see, Echo Bazaar is entirely dependent on these two services for authenticating players. That’s good on the one hand, as you don’t need to remember yet another set of credentials, and bad on the other, as many people stay as far away as they can from either.

But I’ll return to that later. For now, let’s see about little things such as story and gameplay.

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At first sight, there is little to say about Canabalt: a little Flash game with greyscale pixel art for graphics, an odd aspect ratio and just one key for interaction! (It does have a catchy soundtrack, though.) But play a few times, and you’ll begin to notice all kinds of nice details that make it incredibly attractive.

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I normally consider myself a fan of strategy games, as most of my all-time favorites belong to this genre. But my latest game happens to be a shooter, and the next will be one as well. Trouble is, I’m not really familiar with the genre. I’ve played R-Type, Chronos and Star Force back in the day, and that’s about it, unless Galaxian counts. So, what’s a developer supposed to do? Why, don the player hat and blast some aliens for a change!

To achieve this noble goal, I turned to the vast selection of games in the Fedora Linux repositories. After filtering out any title with 3D graphics, as well as a racing game filed under shooters for some reason (I think it’s the kind where cars have cannons), I stopped at three titles that seemed the most promising. Here’s how it went.

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I’ve been playing a couple of MMORPGs lately. Now, that’s not usually my thing, but sometimes one needs to try something out of the daily routine. And since we’re talking free-to-play, it was only going to cost me time. What I find interesting is that both games appeal to me considerably, despite being not just very different, but polar opposites in some regards. So I decided to try and review both side by side, and see if that turns out any useful insights.

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