Posts Tagged ‘game’

Rocks – Can you smell what the rocks are cookin’?

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

June02 Obviously rocks can’t cook, I mean, they have absolutely no utensils.  You could cook some rocks though.  Well it wouldn’t make for a tasty meal, but you could toast them with laser fire!  You know.  Beep…… Boop…… Beep……. Boop……. Jing-jing-jing. Beep… Boop… Beep… Boop… Jing-jing. Do-de-do-de-do-de-do-de-do.  Beep. Boop. Beep. Boop. Jing-jing-jing. Pash!  Next ship.  Okay so the beeps and boops is the music or background ambient sound, the jing-jing is the sound of the laser fire, the do-de-do is that little flying saucer that comes out for extra bonus points, and the “Pash” is the sound of your ultimate demise.  Okay so it’s hard to faithfully reproduce the sounds of Asteroids in text, but I did the best I could, did I not?  Asteroids one of the founding fathers of games.  Well I guess it’s not a person, so it wouldn’t be a founding father exactly.  Part of the bedrock of games.  Or something.  Rocks by Ooeyug.  Is generally an Asteroids clone.  Of course shooting rocks isn’t the only thing you can do in it.

What I think of it:  It’s great, the graphics, and sounds (and the few musical snippets) are frosting.  It also has a few things inspired by games like Geometry Wars.  It’s fun, but with a warning.  It is EXTREMELY challenging.  My butt got handed to me quite early.

So read on, all you rock blasting fanatics!

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Evacuation by jsb

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

MiniReview7SS Well this was a no brainer.  The ADVANCING WALL OF DOOM in jsb’s Evacuation for the Ludum Dare 48 hour competition number 14 was just that.  It is a wall of doom that just keeps bouncing.  All the villagers are idiots, until you come show them the way.  Move your guy around with WASD keys, and round them up by going toward them.  A little exclamation mark appears above their heads and they follow you.  If they get too close to the wall a frowny happens, and when that happens you better round them up quick or they become pancakes.  Little tiny pancakes.  Once you get them near a bunker they turn to smiley faces (above their heads) and they automatically go into the bunker.  I only played the game briefly, and there were 300 people to rescue, but you could only let 10 die before the game was over.  So I don’t know if there was more than that one level, if you could call it a level.  Oh yeah if you get a powerup you can hit ‘E’ to use it.  Spacebar is supposed to show you where your little guy is.  This game is so simple even a 5-year-old could play it.  And yet not easy to master.  Got to hand it to the author for making it so simple to play.  A good pick-up and play game.  The graphics are neat.  It’s overhead view so there was no need to make everything so detailed.  It was almost impressionistic but still pleasant to look at.  There was only sound a crushing down of the wall coming down every so often, and a few beeps when, well i don’t know, not sure if it was guys going into bunkers or just being aware that I was there showing the way.  In any case, give it a shot.  Click the name after the actual umm name, of the game, to get it.

Name: Evacuation

Developer: jsb

G.W.A.T. (Gratuitously Weird Automated Toys) – bot vs bots?

Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

May26 What’s the world’s fascination with bots?  Do we see a future where most machines will take over tasks we find mundane, boring, or dangerous.  Or Tiny droids that will enter our bodies and repair us or augment us?  Virtual pets or companions where the real thing is just not practical or safe?  All these things and more.  I think we’re mostly in convenience.  So what are the main sources of bot love?  Firstly Star Wars, with those loveable droids C-3PO and R2-D2.  Ever since the late 70’s they’ve been ingrained into our consciousness.  Movies, cartoons, toys, even cereal has had these two little guys.  We can hardly think of a world without them.  Secondly, the Japanese.  Their love of technology has spearheaded efforts to make robots, walk, talk, and even think, and inspired the world’s culture.  Granted things like Transformers was a Japanese and American co-creation, there’s no doubt about the influence the Japanese had on them.  In fact it was a Japanese toy line that some guys from Hasbro bought, and based a whole franchise around.  Okay with that spirit I present my next review for a game called G.W.A.T. which stands for a Game Without A Name.

What I think of it:  GWAT needs a lot more work done on it before it can be thought to be fun. Edit:  After playing it a little bit more I started getting the hang of it.  It’s not really a bad game, but there are some things that could be improved.  More after the break.

The Break.

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