Sorry about this!

There will be no post today, and there may be no Friday post either. I've become sick again, and frankly, I feel like s&#%. I've been in no mood for playing games, and I've been making very little progress on AMAZE. I will post the next development post when Zone 1 is complete, and link the new demo then. It might have to be next week if I don't start feeling better soon. If I do, I only have to make 8 more levels, and a few assets.
We'll see how it goes.....

Games I Play #12: Maldita Castilla

Once again, Locomalito has ported one of his games over to Linux. This calls for the usual post, although i'm a bit late this time around. Personally, I consider Maldita Castilla to be one of his best games, so I'm happy to see it find its' way on to Linux after all of the time I spent playing it on Windows.

-Overview-

Like Locomalito's other games, Maldita Castilla is a game designed with old-school aesthetics and values in mind. In this case, much inspiration seems to have come from platformers like Ghosts 'n Goblins. You play as Don Ramiro, a knight on a quest to stop the evil plaguing the land of Tolomera.

-The Good-

This game is really well polished. The music not only uses proper soundchip emulation in order to sound as authentic as possible, but it sounds great as well. The gameplay feels like it came straight out of an arcade, with the stiff-but-predictable control that you'd expect from a number of games of that era. The graphics are vibrant and seem to adhere to palette restrictions, for a complete old school look. The game itself is a blast to play, and mastering a level feels great. At this point, I can blitz through the first two levels like some kind of medieval ninja! The game loosens some of its' restrictions when it comes to death. You get 4 continues after running out of lives, and you can sell your soul for infinite continues if you wish. You won't get a very good ending then, but at least you can keep going even if you get stuck. The game also has a ton of cool hidden things that you can easily miss the first time around, adding to the replay value. The end even provides you with a handy checklist of what you did/didn't miss.

-The Bad-

In keeping with the tradition, Maldita Castilla is blisteringly difficult. I enjoy the challenge, but there are a few areas that feel incredibly unfair until you've passed them a few times. Losing any powerups you had when you die can make this problem even worse. While you can still certainly prevail with the basic starting weapon, it still can make an already frustrating bit even worse. Additionally, there is no options screen that I know of, just a handful of keys hidden in a readme. The game would also benefit from some kind of extra mode, be it local multiplayer, or a boss rush, or something of that sort. It's not much of a complaint, but it'd be nice to see.

-Final Thoughts-

In the end, the both the best and worst thing about Maldita Castilla is that it provides a very authentic feeling arcade experience. It's a wonderful throwback to old times, but its' difficulty is brutal and merciless. It's wonderful fun though, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys platformers, especially those harkening back to a simpler, tougher time. The only people that I'd specifically discourage from playing this would be easily frustrated gamers. If you rage easily, then this game is probably not for you. As for everyone else: give it a shot! After all, it's free.

You can download the game for free here.

Games I Play #11: Starbound

Really, it had to be this one. I've been anticipating Starbound for so long, and it came out so recently that I could think of no better game to return with than it. Technically, the game's still in a highly incomplete state. Despite that, the game has tons of content already so I feel pretty safe giving my impressions of it so far.

-Overview-

Starbound is a game in the exploration/mining/construction genre that Minecraft seems to have spawned. Like Terraria before, it plays in a 2d plane  and is much more combat-heavy than Minecraft. What separates Starbound from just being an effective clone of Terraria is mostly gained from its' setting. Terraria throws around a bit of everything: sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary, and just plain weird. To compare, Starbound is distinctly science fiction. In fact, Starbound(as the name might imply) is all about space! You can travel to alien planets, find resources and settlements, and slowly work your way up from low-tech stuff like pickaxes and swords to high-tech things like blasters, space suits and 3d printers. The game is also separated into technological 'tiers' which are unlocked by beating bosses.

-The Good-

The game has tons of variety. You can fly to a nigh-infinite number of planets, each with their own randomly-generated alien inhabitants. You'll find all kinds of settlements and structures built by the game's sentient races, and even planets with similar biomes and characteristics can look extremely different. For instance, when I landed on a grassy planet, I did not exactly expect a village of robots in the middle of a field of giant tentacles. Along with this, you can find all kinds of randomly-generated weapons off of enemies or in abandoned chests. Breaking and placing blocks feels quite a bit nicer than most games of this sort, because you can work with more than just 1 at a time. You can also place any block in the background, which makes things much simpler than having both foreground and background blocks.

-The Bad-

Later on, almost all craftable items cost pixels, the game's currency. It feels like you never have enough to make the items that you want, even when you have plenty of materials available. The easiest way to get pixels is to fight monsters, but it can take quite a long while later on to get what you need. Another problem is that because there are so many different types of stone and dirt, not to mention the many varied decorative objects, your inventory fills up at an alarming rate. Another small annoyance is that you can die very easily. When you die, you only lose a small percentage of your pixels, but it just makes collecting them a bigger pain. Finally, you always warp onto a planet's surface in the same location. This means that building your house on a planet ANYWHERE ELSE is a massive pain in the butt(Also, building a giant hole in the ground where you spawned will cause you to warp into a death pit whenever you return to the planet).

-Final Thoughts-

Overall, the game's really fun, even in its' unfinished state. It cost me 15 dollars, and since the game was released two weeks ago I've put 28 hours into it. Even then, I'm still not done with the available content. For the 15 dollars I spent on it, this game has been worth every penny and then some. Personally, I highly recommend Starbound, especially to people who played and enjoyed Terraria.

You can buy the game here.

Games I Play #10: Anodyne

I have very mixed feelings about Anodyne. It's been quite fun to play, but it's been equally frustrating in many parts. It plays a little like the original Legend of Zelda, from back in the days of the NES. Most of the gameplay is fun, but it's also littered with annoying segments, particularly in the form of jumping puzzles.

-The Good-

The environments are quite pretty, and diverse as well. I didn't think to take more screenshots while playing, unfortunately. Anyways, each area has a very nice and distinct feeling to it, and it often felt to me like they each had a story of their own to tell. The music adds well to the feel of the game. It tends to be fairly mellow, and never really takes over anything in particular. One big thing that I have to mention is that the game has a mostly-open world. Having played up to the final boss, I can definitely say that for most of the game you can choose the order in which you complete things. The game also has quite a bit of exploration, and there are plenty of screens that exist solely to show you something pretty. 

-The Bad-

Oh boy, where to begin... Starting off, it's one of the buggier indie games I've played. I've run into a number of little oddities. Once, I got teleported through a wall into a boss room(which saved me some time, but still...). Another time, my body appeared to be perpetually stuck in the air while my hitbox(and weapon) remained firmly planted on the ground. These bugs, and a number of other things make me wonder if perhaps the programmer was a bit inexperienced when they made this. For instance, the final upgrade that you receive allows you to swap tiles, but only seems to work in one screen in the entire game to swap a few blocks around. This, coupled with a few areas blocked off by pushable-looking objects makes me wonder if perhaps there was a pushing mechanic that was scrapped, either because of time constraints or programming issues. Another letdown was the jumping. When you get the ability to jump, it feels like many possibilities have opened. However, you can only jump over things, not on top of them. All of the tiny little ledges in the game are still completely insurmountable. You also can't attack while jumping(another missed opportunity), but you stop in place like you did! The hit detection when it comes to jumping feels pretty terrible. Oftentimes I'd fall into a pit when it felt like I'd made the jump. The eventual addition if speed boosting tiles just makes this problem worse, especially once they expect you to hit them at weird angles. When you get hit, instead of being knocked away from the source you seem to be knocked in the opposite direction that you're facing. This can make even simple obstacles a huge pain to deal with. Finally, most bosses can be defeated rather easily by just sticking to them and mashing the attack button. It feels like such a cheap tactic should've been noticed and removed, because it completely takes the skill out of the fight. It's not a big deal, but it's still a bit sad to see all of those interesting attack patterns go to waste thanks to a simple cheese tactic.

-Final Thoughts-

The game's not really as bad as I might've made it out to be. It was a big pain in the rear at times, but it also gave me hours of fun. I didn't quite manage to beat the final boss in time, but the fact that I played almost all the way through while making this certainly stands in its' favor. Lastly I feel like I should point out that the game is pretty much a giant fetch quest. To be fair, so were Ultima 1 and Bastion to some extent, and it's also a part of the general genre. Still, collection does end up being the main focus of the game, so just be aware of that. If you really enjoy these sorts of old-school, top-down, hack-and.....beat with a broom games, then you should probably check this out. Otherwise, you may want to wait for a sale or bundle to grab it.

You can buy the game here.

Games I Play #9: Ultima I: The First Age of Darkness

I've played a number of games, both old and new, but this may be the oldest. Originally released in 1981, Ultima I was the first in what would be a 9-part series of computer RPGs. I own the first seven, and have been planning to play through them in order. Since I recently got Ultima I running via dosbox on Elementary, I decided to make it this week's game.

-The Good-

Astoundingly, there's quite a bit of
sci-fi in this game.

It's quite fun! I wasn't sure what to expect when playing a game from 1981, but the gameplay's not bad at all, if a bit simplistic. The general flow of the game is like this:
1. Find a castle, and get a quest from a king.
2. Go to a nearby town to stock up.
3. Either go find the landmark specified, or kill some specified monster deep in one of the game's many dungeons.
4. Return, pay the king for healing, get your reward, and depart.

Doing this, you get the items needed to use the time machine to return to the past and defeat the evil wizard Mondain. There's more to it than that, but that's the general idea. But what was that about a time machine? In reality, this game is an interesting blend of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. While most of the game is fantasy, with wizards and orcs and such, there are also aliens and spaceships. Heck, there's even a flying car you can buy! Back to gameplay, the game actually features a fairly large open world to explore, packed with castles, towns, dungeons, and mysterious landmarks. The dungeons themselves are not too large, but there are many and their layouts are unique.

-The Bad-

Speaking of the dungeons, you will get lost in them without making detailed notes of their layout. They feature many twists and blind corridors. When an enemy attacks you in one, you also have no idea which direction it's attacking from. You may get hit several extra times just trying to find them. Stat-wise, health is the only noticeable part of character growth. In fact, oftentimes I level up without even noticing at all!

There's something very silly
about that skeleton.

Unfortunately, Ultima I's graphics have not aged well, especially in dungeons. I realize that the limitations of the time required these more archaic graphics, but some of them look really awful. This shouldn't influence whether you play the game or not, but just be aware of this.

-Final Thoughts-

You should be aware that in its' age Ultima I is a very different RPG experience than what you're probably used to. With that in mind, this game can be a ton of fun with a pencil and a stack of graph paper. I recommend that you find a site with some general controls and explanations of how the game works before playing for the most enjoyable experience.
You can buy the first three Ultima games together here.

Games I Play #8: Beat Hazard

Well, I seem to have completely forgotten about this post somewhere along the way. Sorry about that!

Beat Hazard is a trippy arena shooter with mechanics based on your music library. As a song that you've selected progresses, the game's speed and your ship's power scale to the intensity of the music. Waves of enemies and bosses fly in from all angles, and bright, colored flashes dot the arena. It's certainly something to behold. As a quick note: In case you hadn't guessed, do not play this if you're prone to seizures! Still here? Great.

-The Good-

The song here is actually the Doomsday Darren Goes
Fishing boss theme. Short, but gave good visuals.

There's a lot to praise in this game. To start, the visuals are totally crazy. Some people may find the bright flashes of light and color annoying, but I love them. 

The perks that you can buy (mostly)reduce the difficulty significantly, so I feel like there's plenty of challenge for players if they want it. On top of this, the ability to turn just about any music file into a level is neat and will leave most players with more than enough content to work through. 

-The Bad-

Due to all of the action onscreen, sometimes the enemies will sneak up on you. Unfortunately, since colliding with an enemy kills you, sometimes you'll suddenly die with no warning. If you play cautiously, it shouldn't be too much of an issue but it can still be a real pain.
Boss fights are usually ok, but sometimes if they last too long enemies will start spawning before you're done. One final gripe is that navigating the song menu to find songs feels a bit annoying. Thankfully, it gives you the option to use your OS's default file dialog to find them.

-Final Thoughts-

Overall, this is a pretty good game. The crazy graphics and fast-paced gameplay make for great experience. Unfortunately, the small annoyances really detract from an otherwise great game for me. Still, if you like twin stick shooters you should definitely give this a try.

You can buy the game here.

Games I Play #7: Endless Forms Most Beautiful

Note: I'm making a point of reviewing Locomalito's stuff whenever it gets a Linux release. I feel that this guy deserves as much coverage as possible.

Endless Forms Most Beautiful is a game that I meant to write about a few weeks back, but didn't. The main reason for this is that I really wanted to try out the multiplayer gameplay first. It's another game made by Locomalito, though I believe it was actually a remake of someone else's game. I don't really feel like doing research at the moment on whom that might be, though. A member of a long-dead genre(remember all of those 'Collect X trinkets before monsters kill you' arcade games?), a game like this is pretty unique in our era even amongst other old-school titles.

The Good:
Man, I really have a soft spot for this games chipper chiptunes. There's something about how they sound that like. Making them transition to a more frantic version when time is running out is a nice touch, and makes me panic quite a bit. Using only the arrow keys, it also has a very simple and responsive control scheme. As usual for Locomalito, the game also features a nice air of authenticity. The best feature in my opinion, though, are the tiny creatures that you collect. Each and every one of them is randomly generated, and the game tells you silly little tidbits about them before each level. It's a really fun touch.

The Bad:
Apparently there's only 15 levels. I'd call it short if not for the soul-crushingly steep difficulty curve. Sure, the first few levels are nothing. After that, though, each and every level starts to feel like a desperate struggle for survival. I like games that challenge me like this, but I'll bet that many people would be turned away by it. Your mileage may vary. Co-op mode was pretty annoying when playing with a large skill imbalance. My friend would quickly die when I had full lives because I had several weeks on him, and then he'd have to sit things out until it was over for me. If I could somehow toss a life or two at him, or even if lives were shared, I really wouldn't have minded. As it was, I was sad to see them sit around and watch for minutes at a time, when I'd called them over to play with me.

You can download the game for free here.

Games I Play #6: Bastion

Anyone curious why I keep writing about games that have(mostly) been out for a while? Part of this is that I've been slowly growing my Steam library for a couple of years, but I also just don't usually buy games right when they come out. It's not even much of a conscious decision, it just sorta happens. Anyway, on to the game of the week: Bastion (No pictures this time because I was lazy and distracted today). So, Bastion is a 2d isometric hack&slash-type game that rests firmly in the 'action adventure' supergenre(It's really a bit too big to call a genre at this point). The core gameplay revolves around fighting your way through fantastic monsters and such using an ever-growing variety of weapons. The story is pretty interesting, but the most interesting part is how this story is relayed to you. I'll just put that in.....

The Good:
The game's got a narrator. Not the occasional monologue, a real narrator. As things occur, both in gameplay and story, He comments on it, or sometimes straight-up tells you it. So often, the rule of story is "Show, don't tell." This game beats that rule by both showing and telling, and it does a great job of it! When you talk to an NPC, no dialogue occurs. The narrator just comments or summarizes, giving you a clear idea of what they said. It might seem awkward, but it feels quite natural. This is especially true when you do something rather gamey, like breaking all of the destructible objects in some area, and he actually comments on it and finds some reason why you might have done that in-character! This is some crazy stuff that no other game that I've ever heard of has done. It helps that he never seems to repeat himself. On top of it all, that narrator has the best voice ever. I wish he'd come over to my dorm and read me a bedtime story every night. That would be so great. As for gameplay, it's pretty fun. There's a decent selection of enemies that I've seen so far, and more show up often enough that they never really feel stale. The game also offers tons of character customization, at least mechanically, but it serves it up over time. There's at least enough that it feels like you could make many very different yet still viable builds, something that can often be tricky to balance. Towards the end of the options, you even get the ability buff your enemies for extra challenge and bonuses.

The Bad:
There's not much ground. This might not sound too bad, but in a game with a dodge roll and fall damage... it felt to me like I had to be overly cautious. Ranged weapons are pretty much essential, but aiming felt horrible at first. I couldn't tell if I was aiming at head level, or the ground. It seems like a small difference, but it will screw you up quite a bit. Fortunately, I eventually realized that holding down the guard button makes me lock on to an enemy. Unfortunately, that makes you turn automatically, so locking onto the wrong enemy can prove disastrous to your health. The fact that you can't revisit old areas just to experience them again is a big downer, too. Such are story-centric games, I suppose.

In the end, the narrator alone makes this game fabulous. The fact that everything else is well executed too is just icing on the cake. I'm willing to call this one of gaming's few unique experiences.

You can buy the game here.

Games I Play #5: Aquaria

When I play games for these posts, there are many things that factor into how I treat the game in the end. Of all of these traits, good and bad, the simplest test that I've found for separating the best games from the others is to play them and see if they delay my writing for several hours. Such is the case with this weeks game, Aquaria. This post is being written at 10:00 pm, right before I go to bed(I'm a very early riser). I think that sort of delay speaks tomes.

The Good:

This is going to be a long section.

To start with, the visuals are gorgeous. The game sports a wonderfully detailed 2d visual with just the right amount of graphical flair to create some truly gorgeous landscapes. The world, the creatures-hell, even the freaking save points look good!(No, really, I think many of the save points look quite pretty and have just enough differences to be noticeable) You might think that my reaction is just because I'm a sucker for 2d, which I totally am, but I encourage you to see for yourself just how detailed and beautiful the game can be. At least from the visuals, this game's a work of art. To complement this, the game allows for tons of exploration. The game often opens the world to you in massive chunks, and there are huge and varied environments everywhere, filled with a wide variety of creatures. They range all the way from the boringly mundane to the utterly fantastical, and they all share the same attention to detail that the rest of the game does. The variety doesn't end there, either. From what I've played of Aquaria, the different powers that you slowly obtain all feel quite unique. Not only do they change your appearance, but they all feel solid enough to base your strategy around, and useful enough to have their own special time and place.

The Bad:
While the game does give you tons of room to explore, it generally stops you just short. Overall, it makes it feel just about impossible to sequence break at all. In such an exploration and discovery-heavy game, this makes me rather sad. I suppose it's the sort of problem that most of these 'metroidvania' type games face. To make their upgrades feel necessary, and give the player such a feeling of growth, they arbitrarily force you down a linear path to the end. Of course, this is all unimportant if you can't even play the game decently, and I was surprised at how resource-heavy it seemed considering its age. The steam page recommends at least 256mb of RAM, but my older desktop at home with all of its' 4gb got some rather noticeable framerate issues here and there. Most modern computers should have no problem with it, but some older ones may run into similar problems. The game also spikes a bit in difficulty fairly early on, and might make a few early sections pretty frustrating.


Overall, if you enjoy a good, unique, and gorgeous adventure with plenty of action and lore, look no further. This game provides all of that in great quantities, and the experience feels very polished overall. Also, like most indie games, the price is quite affordable at $9.99.
You can buy the game here.

Status Update: Ludum Dare and more

A few quick things I had on my mind:

• After much consideration, I'm not going to compete in this upcoming Ludum Dare. My engine may be in a semi-working state, but it's nowhere near ready to be put to the test like this. Fear not, though. Fall will bring with it a couple more game jams, and I'll be far more ready by then. In the meantime, I'm gonna stop working directly on AMAZE for a little bit, just so that I can smooth out a few kinks and issues with the engine. It's better to take a while doing things well than to do those same things twice(or more).
• Elementary OS Luna was released recently! It's probably the prettiest Linux distro I've ever used, and I've been proudly running it since January. If you're looking for a cool OS, look no further.
• As you can see, I've miraculously made a Games I Play post today. Hopefully, this is the start of a new golden era of blog posts. I think I'll be changing how I write them next week, though. The piece by piece review works alright, but I keep running into the same 'Well, I need to write about this part but it's not really awesome or terrible.' sort of thing again and again. I'm going to try doing more of a pro/con thing next time, and hope it works better.

Games I Play #4: World of Goo

"World of Goo is a multiple award winning physics based puzzle / construction game made entirely by two guys. Drag and drop living, squirming, talking, globs of goo to build structures, bridges, cannonballs, zeppelins, and giant tongues. The millions of Goo Balls that live in the beautiful World of Goo are curious to explore - but they don't know that they are in a game, or that they are extremely delicious."

To be perfectly honest, I don't think I can think of a better description for this crazy game. 

Graphics

Nowadays, many indie games either try to aim for 3d, make retro graphics(generally via pixel art), or both. This does seem to be slowly changing, but it's still refreshing to see a game like this one that makes some nice, fresh, 2d graphics without resorting to pixel art(Not that I hate pixel art or anything, in fact it's what I generally go with). The little goo balls all look quite adorable, and their different varieties are all quite graphically distinctive. Overall, the game has the striking and unique aesthetic that can be seen in other games by the devs.

Sound

The music in this game is a real treat. The songs are incredibly diverse, and fit their respective levels perfectly. There are slow, methodical sounding songs for the real headscratchers and racing, frantic tunes for the few fast paced levels. The best part is that you don't have to take my word for it: It's freely available.

Gameplay

The games controls and objectives are pretty simple: drag goo blobs together to form springy structures and reach the pipe, letting the remaining blobs escape. Because of how elastic these blobs tend to be,  things can get pretty tricky. Bridges will bend, towers will topple, and the cute little blobs will crash into spike-laden walls and die. Thankfully, the game often provides you with a few free undos, letting you keep trying without losing your progress. The developers were also kind enough to allow you to skip any level whenever you want, preventing you from ever getting stuck. The game also scatters signs throughout the levels. These provide bits of flavor text mixed with little hints, and help remind you of the story behind all of these puzzles.
One thing that puzzle games have to be careful about is keeping their levels fresh. After all, it can be boring just to solve puzzle after puzzle without any new depth or mechanics ever being introduced. Thankfully, World of Goo certainly doesn't suffer from that problem. As soon as you get the hang of things, it tosses in something new, usually in the form of a new blob with new properties. The only trouble is that sometimes it feels like a bit too much is being thrown at you at once.
Another nice thing to see is that while each level needs a certain number of goo balls, the game rewards you for beating that. Every extra goo ball that you collect is added to a level where you can build to your hearts content. They combine this with a sort of leaderboard system by placing a cloud at the top of whatever structure you build. As you build up, you can see just how high other people from around the world have gone. 

Final Thoughts

I recommend this game to pretty much everyone. It's oodles of fun. In the end, I think it's the skip button that really makes the experience for me. If I ever get frustrated, it's nice to know that I can just push a button to make that go away. Anyway, it's only ten bucks and it's available on quite a number of platforms. Even if puzzle games aren't your thing, I urge you to at least look it up on Youtube or something. It's pretty unique.

You can buy the game here.

Games I Play #3: Gaurodan

Gaurodan

"Long forgotten is the legend of Gaurodan, the bird of thunder, and his fight with Guayota, the fire beast. But now mankind has discovered the egg of Guayota within Mount Teide, and it is only a matter of time until Gaurodan returns from the sky to fight the beast and punish us for awakening his ancient enemy."

So, this game is the coolest fucking thing ever. I just played it yesterday, and decided that this was much more worthy of this weeks post than what I'd been playing before. So, without further ado, here it is!

Games I Play #2: VVVVVV

VVVVVV

"...you cannot jump - instead, you reverse your own gravity at the press of a button."

I really like this game. In fact, I'd beaten it once already before deciding to play through again for this post. It's very short, lasting only a handful of hours, but it packs quite a bit of challenge.

Games I Play #1: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

One week ago, I wrote that I was going to start playing my way through my Steam library, writing my impressions of one game each week. These first few weeks, I'll probably be playing around with the format, then I'll try to stick with whatever I find works best.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The last remaining memories fade away into darkness. Your mind is a mess and only a feeling of being hunted remains. You must escape.

I think I received this game from one of the Humble Indie Bundles. I hadn't really played it before, but I'd heard nothing but praise from the people that had played it. It was, apparently, an excellent horror game. Now, before I give my opinion on the matter, I should warn you that this is the only horror game I've ever played, and that I generally don't play too many 1st-person games(apart from Minecraft). With that said, I honestly didn't enjoy the game too much. The gameplay wasn't too compelling, as you might expect from a game that was designed solely for the atmosphere. This would not have been a problem, but I honestly didn't find the experience to be very frightening.