Games to Learn to Code With!

Two rather interesting games have come up this week.. else { Heart.break() }, which will allow players to access and alter the game code itself, and Code Hero, which teaches you how to code, using Javascript in Unity 3d, and gives you a gun to shoot bits of code which then execute on the target!

else { Heart.break() } is still in development, with potentially another year to go.  When finished, this will be an adventure game within the world of computers and code, where you can change reality using the programming skills you learn from characters within the game.

The website says that players will be assumed to have no prior knowledge of programming.. however, I suspect those who will be attracted to the game will already be interested in coding to start with.  I do wonder how far you can change the programming though, without just breaking the game.

Code Hero also starts out with no expectations of coding knowledge from players.  The game gives you a code gun to copy and fire pieces of Javascript, which execute when they hit a target.. for instance, moving a platform down by shooting code to change its y- position.  The idea is that by using different pieces of code, players will start to learn what that codes does.. but I suspect the same will apply as for else { Heart.break() }; the people it attracts will already be interested in programming.

The beta game was shown at Minecon in 2011, and is available to those preordering the game, as well as those pledging on the game’s Kickstarter.  Sadly, it looks as though the Kickstarter won’t go through as there haven’t been enough pledges, and time is nearly up.

Gameblog and Activision Update

Last week, Gameblog.fr reported on details of Black Ops, after the game’s product page was posted live on Amazon France.  They were soon contacted by Activision’s PR, who pressured them to remove the story; when they refused, they say that Activision blacklisted them.

Gameblog editor, Grégory Szriftgiser has given an interview to Kotaku, with more details of how things happened.

Activision have responded to Kotaku, saying that “Activision doesn’t blacklist journalists.  We believe this was a misunderstanding and are working towards a resolution.”

Some misunderstanding..

Castle Story Iconography

This week, the Sauropod team’s development blog for Castle Story includes a look at some icons, mouse cursors and HUD designs.. they haven’t said what they’re all for, but the purposes can be guessed at.  I like the clean look of these, though.

Sounds like the game engine is coming along nicely too, with more interactive objects being developed.. doors to let Bricktrons in, but keep monsters out.. I really do love the sound of this game.

The treat for the week is a Bricktron speedpaint!  I love to see how people draw their creations :)

Be Mine Impressions – Part 1

The Be Mine Indie Game Bundle launched earlier this week.. planned for Valentine’s Day, originally.  The bundle is pay what you want, with a minimum price of $1, and 20% of the money goes to Child’s Play..

Games in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, a vehicular combat shoot ‘em up from Octane Games, a puzzle-platform adventure called Sideway New York, by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, Xotic, an arcade-style first person shooter by WXP Games, Beep, a physics-based platformer by Big Fat Alien, and The Ball, an action-puzzle game by Teotl Studios, and as a bonus for achieving the first goal of $3,000, the three DLC packs for Xotic, and point and click adventure game Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, by White Birds Productions.  The next goal is set at $100,000, with soundtracks for The Ball and Beep, and new EPs.. and a third mystery bonus has been listed, but with no goal value as yet.

Here’s the first part of our impressions of the games in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York and Xotic.. Part 2 containing Beep, The Ball and Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals will hopefully follow soon.

I played a chunk of Wasteland Angel last night.. this a mostly top-down vehicular shooter which takes place in the aftermath of nuclear war.  I say mostly top-down; most of the levels are top-down, but the story is delivered via cutscenes, and the bonus levels are in first-person mode.

You play as Angel, a tough-talking girl who travels around defending small settlements of survivors from waves of bad guys who want to enslave them and/or use them as target practise.  The first towns you visit have two levels, one in daytime and one at night, where you must defend the town against slavers.

The smaller vehicles will attack you, while buses and trucks head for the town and start capturing the civilians.  These enemies were fairly easy to blow up, and many dropped different power-ups or secondary weapons such as land mines and napalm, which you can drop behind you for enemies to hopefully run through.  There were a few extra missions during these: collect some items from around the map, escort a civilian vehicle.. and my favourite, manning the Crane of Destruction, a high-firepowered turret :)

Following these was the boss level, with several waves of smaller vehicles appearing before the much larger, more powerful boss..
These were harder to kill even with the special weapons, as they had flamethrowers and a spiked roller at the front, and coming in contact with them seemed to send me flying but do them no damage.

This tank had a slight inclination to get stuck on scenery.  Oops.

After killing the boss, you get to play a bonus level.. in first-person mode!  The graphics weren’t great, and the field-of-view was a little limited, but I really loved being so much closer to the action.  A friend mentioned this mode made him feel motion sick though, so maybe it’s just as well it’s only a quick level’s worth..

The gameplay reminded me a little of Renegade Ops, but I found the driving controls a bit less comfortable.. the car seemed harder to steer exactly where I wanted it.  Turning was controlled by the left analogue stick, but this was relative to the car rather than the screen.  Maybe I was spoiled by Renegade Ops on this front.. but pointing the stick in the direction I want to go just feels easier.  I got stuck on the scenery a few times, and had to rely on the AI crashing into me to get free.. I also ended a few waves blind-firing off-screen at enemies who were either stuck or driving in circles out there.

The game is fun, and I do plan to finish the story, but I don’t think I’d be going back to it afterwards.  I prefer Renegade Ops, with its more intuitive driving and fun multiplayer with friends.. Wasteland Angel is singleplayer only, though with highscores to chase.

Sideway New York, a puzzle-platform adventure by Playbrains and Fuel Entertainment, was the next game on the list..

You play as graffiti artist Nox, who sprays over the wrong tag and gets sucked into an alternate universe controlled by the Dark Artist, Spray.  Your goal is to defeat him, escape, and rescue your friend!  Having been transformed into a graffiti figure, you are confined to the wall.. but when you come to the edge of one wall, you wrap round onto the next!

Getting across the landscape means jumping between boxes, windows and the tops of doors, and so long as the way isn’t blocked, moving on to the next wall or even the roof.  Reaching the roof results in the same wrap-around effect, with the camera moving up to stay with you.  Gravity is applied as if you were on a wall, with the ‘bottom’ being the side you accessed the roof from.  There are collectible cans and tags littered everywhere, including secret tags and unlockable powers, with some only accessible by leaving the roof and re-entering to change the gravity!

There are painted enemies on the levels too; starting with easy to punch slimes, but you soon meet flying or spitting slimes which require a sliding tackle or flying kick.  You start off being able to take two hits before you die, and when this happens you are sent back to the checkpoint with all enemies restored too.  As you play you discover upgrades: increases to your health pool, the ability to turn certain tags into solid platforms or objects to damage enemies with, so this initial weakness really isn’t a problem.

I loved the colourful art style and the changing point of view as I moved around the levels.  The music is by Mr. Lif.. this is not the sort of music I listen to, but I thought it fit the game pretty well even if it did start to get a bit repetitive.

The game has local co-op, too.. with a second player able to drop in simply by pressing the Jump button for the second controller or keyboard.

The view will expand to show both players on-screen to a point, but the camera stayed with Player 1 when moving onto or off a roof, with Player 2 sometimes then being teleported back to Player 1′s location.. a little frustrating, maybe.  None of the puzzles need more than one player, so co-op is just a bit of fun.

I already owned the third game in the bundle; WXP Games‘ Xotic, having been lucky enough to win a copy in January! :)

Xotic is an arcade-style shooter set on a planet ravaged by an ancient, mad entity called the Orb, with strange plant life and aliens.  Destroying the Scab plants weakens the Orb’s control over the planet, and allows new life to grow.

Killing these is fun.. the Scabs detonate and set each other off, and you can set up a nice chain reaction with them :D

I found the mouse to be horribly sluggish to start.. I normally have to adjust the sensitivity a good chunk in Source games, for instance, but on this I had to bring it right up to 90.  Reading around, many people had problems with sensitivity when the game was launched, and this led to the developers adding higher mouse sensitivity, as well as adding FOV settings :)

The goal in Xotic is simply to get the highest score you can, by collecting gems and powerups, and shooting enemies, alien plants, crystals and even seeking out hidden areas and bits of Orb brain.  The lure of collecting all the things can mean you end up scouring the level for every last destructible item, which is at odds with the fast-paced nature of the rest of the game.

The game has a Campaign Mode, which you need to play to unlock the other modes, on a per-map basis.  The other three modes are Scab Attack, Essense Attack and Brain Attack, which are timed modes, marked on the destruction of Scabs, Essense and Brains.

The tradeoff for the bright colourful environment is that the enemies are a bit hard to see: turrets look rather like Scabs, for instance.   Some enemies seem to lurk right at the back of the level, and you have to go and find them.. the level exit doesn’t appear till you’ve killed all of them.

Upgrades were another issue.. while you earn points to upgrade your weapons or character, some of the options were locked and it wasn’t clear why through looking at the upgrade screen.  The options actually unlock after successfully completing a level.

There are three DLCs planned for the game, the first of which, The Pipe Works, has been released.  This adds three new levels, with towers of metal, and ancient aqueducts beneath the planet’s surface.  The DLC packs were unlocked on the Be Mine bundle, but when I last looked (the site is down again at present) there were only Mac codes available: the developers haven’t yet released codes for the PC version.

That leaves Beep, The Ball, and Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals.. which I’ll get round to in Part 2!

Be Mine At Last

I finally got hold of the Be Mine Indie Game Bundle!

This bundle launched earlier this week, but remained inaccessible to many people after the Groupee servers proved incapable of staying up.

There were originally five games listed in the bundle: Wasteland Angel, Sideway New York, Xotic, Beep and The Ball.  However, after achieving the first goal of $3,000, the three DLC packs for Xotic, and point and click adventure game Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals, by White Birds Productions, were added to the bundle.  The next goal is set at $100,000, with soundtracks for The Ball and Beep, and new EPs, and a third mystery bundle has been listed, but with no goal value as yet.

I’ve been playing Wasteland Angel this evening, and plan to get a quick summary of all the games up soon..

Black Ops 2 and Politics

A listing for “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ was apparently included on Amazon France this week.. not the first time they’ve leaked information early, according to VG247.  This leak was spotted by GameBlog.fr, who duly took a screenshot and reported it on their site, along with the name of the developer for this title: Treyarch.

It wasn’t long before Activision contacted GameBlog.fr, demanding that they remove the news item.  When they refused, Activision blacklisted the site.

Trying to hush the information up once the press have seen and reported on it, and even had it cached by Google, seems ridiculous.

The information is already out there.  Forcing press to remove items like this does nothing to hush up the story: if anything it draws even more attention to it!  What’s more, this makes the publisher look like a heavy-handed bully.

Amazon France made the mistake: if anything, Activision should be speaking to them about sticking to release dates, rather than attacking the news sites who report the news as they see it.

As for the release of information: Joystiq reports that a Treyarch-contracted artist, Hugo Beyer, has listed “Black Ops 2″ amongst his current projects.

The best thing Activision can do now is come out with a report of their own.. and I think they should also apologise to GameBlog.fr.

Prequel: Making a Cat Cry

I spotted a link to Prequel earlier today.. the words “Oblivion” and “Skyrim” grabbed my attention, so I thought I’d take a quick look.. and well, it’s surprisingly good :)

Prequel is an MS Paint-style interactive adventure about a pitiful Khajiit girl called Katia who arrives in Cyrodiil hoping to start a new life.  She doesn’t have any money, or tradeskills, or any luck at all..

Her adventure has taken on some of the suggestions made by those reading it.. some are cruel, some are kind..and others are just hilarious.

I love the cartoon pictures, and I’ve already come across a few special links.. video, and a tiny segment of gameplay, as an Imp trying to kill our hapless heroine.

I’ve seen the like before, in forums, and I’ve toyed with the idea of trying one myself (it’d be good drawing practise!) but this is the first time I’ve really wanted to follow the story and see how it all ends!

Mass Effect 3 Demo Impressions

We got hold of an early access demo key to BioWare‘s Mass Effect 3, so instead of getting on with one of the many games I’m part-way through, I fired up the 360 to play.

I’ve not played the previous games in the series, although friends have; so I’ve heard plenty about the various companions in the games.. either for their fighting abilities or lack of, or for the romance options which I think are optional.  In fact, that was almost all I knew about the series, along with knowing about the dialogue choices that affect the storyline, and the ability to carry your character over from one game to the next.

I was surprised to see that players are given the option to choose the mode of the game: Action, Roleplaying or Story mode.

Action Mode means adjustable combat difficulty, and replaces dialogue options with cutscenes, whilst Story Mode enables character customisation and dialogue options during conversation.  Roleplaying mode allows you to customise your character, choose dialogue options and still adjust combat difficulty: this is how the previous games worked, and sounded like a good balance to me.

The next choice was what class to be.. which came down to the mix of combat, tech or biotics I wanted to use.  They all sounded interesting.. stealth, powerful close combat attacks, the ability to deploy combat drones.. but I picked Adept as the ability to fire micro singularities at my enemies sounded pretty awesome :)

After that, there were a few other choices for background, reputation and potential psychological issues.. whether you’re an orphan who manages to survive disasters while all around you die, or whether you’re an army kid prepared to risk yourself for your team mates and so on.. I suspect these choices come into play during the story, or influence your available dialogue options.

The first part of the demo sees Shepard being brought to the Defense Committee, who are worried as they have been receiving distress signals, and lost touch with colonies and so on.  Shepard says it’s the Reapers, but the Committee are still unsure, until the Reapers actually arrive on the scene..

The Reapers destroy the building we’re in, killing the Committee, and when we get outside it’s obvious they’re destroying the rest of the city too.

Impressive, massive machines.. :)

I followed the Admiral out of the ruined buildings and across rooftops, heading for a landing zone and pickup from the Normandy.

I’m not convinced by the constant aiming.. Shepard only lowered the gun when sprinting, so there was a point where I was running along aiming my empty gun at nothing in particular!  The controls felt great with just one odd bit: running with the A button, then melee with B.. I think that would make running and hitting a bit awkward.. but maybe melee combat only really comes up in closer quarters.  Playing as an Adept, I would probably be using the Singularity and then shooting the enemies trapped in it, and avoiding melee.

The dialogue options were fairly simple: at different points in the conversation, a few options appeared on a little circle at the bottom.  You just pick the one you want, and Shepard says something with the same general meaning.. I think this has little effect on events in the demo, but it’s nice to feel involved.. and in the full game this should mean different reactions and endings depending on what you picked.

The second part of the demo is a mission to collect a female Krogan from a Solarian base.. there’s a bit of drama to start with because the Solarians don’t like Rex, the male Krogan on your team.  Going to get the female, though, requires fighting through Cerberus forces on the way up through the building.

This action was good fun, moving from one area to the next, flanking enemies, hitting them with singularities and using cover.  Cover has been improved from the previous games: you are able to move around the side of some objects while using them for cover, though the game has been designed so that you can’t just pop your head out and kill all the enemies without moving.

Just before we finally got to the female Krogan, a huge mech was dropped into the building..

He had shields and armour to get through, and though I used cover, it didn’t protect me complete from the rockets fired by him, or the grenades thrown by the Agents who appeared to back him up.  One tough, but very satisfying fight.. I ended up moving around the whole map to get some distance and avoid the rockets, as well as dealing with the Agents.

I’m now looking forward to this game.. we’re probably going to get it on the 360 to share, rather than buying a copy each on Origin (yes, it does require Origin on PC).

Mass Effect 3 is due to be published by EA on the 6th March in the US, and the 9th March in the UK and Europe.

Lucid

I wanted to make a quick meantion of Yeaboing‘s Lucid.. the developer has temporarily made the game available on a pay what you want, if you want, scheme, for PC or Mac, over on their website.  Otherwise, it’s available on Steam.

Lucid is a match-all puzzle game, where you clear areas of coloured blocks by drawing a line through them with your mouse.  The painted blocks then disappear, with remaining blocks filling in the gaps and more dropping in from the top.

The game is really easy to pick up, and clearing large areas feels quite satisfying.. but there is a trick..

You can only clear an area if your line passes through every block in that area.  I thought I was being smart and setting myself up for a huge bonus, but instead trapped a large pile of blocks here!

Despite blocking myself in a bit, I was still able to clear other blocks, fill up the meter, and pass the level.

Lucid is a nice, casual game.. easy to play, lovely to look at, and rather relaxing.  The music is rather soothing too.. that’s also available to download in OGG format for the time being, on Yeaboing’s page here.

Some Love for The Valentine’s Bundle!

I just picked up the Indie Royale’s The Valentine’s Bundle, which came with five games and bonus DLC!  The first three games, Zeno Clash, Hoard and Lume, along with the bonus DLC for Hoard, all came with Steam keys :)

Zeno Clash, by Ace Team, is an action-fighting game in a strange fantasy world.. the visuals are colourful and varied.. but also a bit disturbing, with repugnant, deformed half-bird half-human creatures in a variety of bizarre, revealing outfits.

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the game at first, with the initial cutscene of babies, mannequins and cooking pots, and then the tutorial where player-character Ghat is taught the basics of combat by the growly-voiced Metamoq.  The game seemed a bit weird, and I wasn’t sure whether I would get to grips with the melee combat enough to enjoy it.  I don’t normally play fighting games, and I found the timing of strikes and dodging a little hard to get right.  Fighting felt brilliantly violent, though, with a satisfying thud when I landed a blow :)

The story sees Ghat and flee the initial town after killing his “mother-father”, with the assistance of a friend who then faces exile with him.  There are flashbacks to previous fights with members of the crazy Corwid, and other combat lessons with Metamoq mixed in withthe journey.  More advanced fighting moves were introduced in these later tutorials, but it still seemed easiest to just punch the enemies over and over, and hope not to be surrounded.. many of the fights featured multiple enemies where it became harder to dodge blows.  I’ll be trying the gamepad when I next launch the game to see if I find it any easier that way.. I do want to see where this story goes :)

I already owned Hoard, by Big Sandwich Games Inc., but hadn’t picked up the DLC: Dynamite Roll! and Flame-Broiled SANDwich.  I wrote about Hoard when I got it back in May, and the game itself hasn’t been changed aside from the addition of the DLC here..

New buildings means more variety, and an extra heal from within the Bell Tower is nice if you’ve taken damage while trying to intimidate a town, but the bomb wagon is possibly the most noticeable addition from the Dynamite Roll! DLC, adding a wagon full of fireworks instead of the usual tithe wagon.  These wagons still carry gold, but if you don’t back away after setting it on fire, it will take off a large chunk of your health.

You can use the explosion to damage enemies too :)

The Flame-Broiled SANDwich DLC is a new tileset, with a new look for all buildings, units and terrain, and even the dragons have more feathery scales.  Tilesets can be swapped in the game options, under graphics.  Available tilesets are: normal, snow, desert and random, and there’s also an option to set the game to night-time, for a completely different look to the map :)

Lume is a point and click puzzle adventure, with beautiful paper and cardboard scenery.. the game was nominated for the IGF’s Excellence in Visual Art award.  When I first glanced over the contents of the Valentine’s Bundle, it was Lume, by StateofPlay, that really got my interest.

The story follows Lumi, who has gone to visit her grandfather.. but he’s left to find out why there’s no power in the nearby village.  In the meantime, he left lots of little puzzles for Lumi to figure out, with the goal of restoring power to the house.

The first few puzzles were fairly easy.. finding a broken solar panel and re-wiring it, for instance, was a matter of clicking the squares to rotate them and get all the lines to join up.  I quite liked this one :)

When it came to the later puzzles though, I found one in particular a little frustrating.  There is no hint system in the game, which meant looking for a walkthrough.. something I’m not keen on, as I often end up seeing the whole solution when I only wanted a quick pointer.  After dealing with that puzzle, I went on and completed Lume fairly quickly.. in part because it is a short game, but also because completing each puzzle led straight to the next and the next.

Lume is actually the first part of a larger story, with the next part currently in development.. progress can be followed on StateOfPlay’s blog!

Completing Lume left me with MagicalTimeBean‘s retro RPG defense games, Soulcaster and Soulcaster II.  Soulcaster was previously released on Xbox LIVE, followed by Soulcaster II: this is the PC premiere for both titles.

Soulcaster is the tale of a wizard who manages to awaken the undead in his travels.. fortunately, he also discovers the statues of three heroes, and gains the ability to summon them in order to assist him.  The heroes are: Shaedu, the archer, Aeox, the warrior, and Bloodfire, the alchemist.  You can summon an image of the heroes by pressing Q, W or E, for Shaedu, Aeox or Bloodfire, with as many summons as you have Summoning Orbs.. you can also summon three of the same hero if you wish.

Each have different strengths and weaknesses; for instance, the archer can do a lot of damage, but needs a clear line of fire, while the warrior has little range but can take lots of damage.  Positioning the summoned heroes matters; Aeox can be used to block the path while Bloodfire stays safe behind him and throws bombs to destroy attackers.

Enemies spawn as you progress through a level, sometimes coming from behind you, which can mean repositioning your heroes to face the oncoming attackers.  To reposition the heroes, you first need to recall them by pressing R; however, this recalls them in the order they were summoned, rather than allowing you to select just the one you want to move.  A shame, as otherwise the controls were great.

If one of your summoned heroes dies, you can re-summon him after a short delay.  Bloodfire explodes on death though, which causes damage to all around him including you.. after being backed up in one dungeon I managed to get myself killed this way!

There’s also a merchant on some of the levels, where you can spend all the gold you find laying around in the dungeon.  He supplies health potions and scrolls, and upgrades for the heroes’ gear, as well as the rather expensive Summoning Orbs.  You have room for up to five Orbs, which would allow you to have up to five summoned heroes in play at once.

This game surprised me.. I hadn’t expected it to be this good, and hadn’t expected to want to carry on playing as long as I did.

As a quick look at the bundle wouldn’t be complete without it, I also took a very quick look at Soulcaster II.. and found it very similar to the previous game.  I quickly found that I wanted to carry on playing, but ended up cutting it short because I really want to finish the first game before getting too far in!

For a quick look then.. just the first few levels.. this seemed to be more of the same gameplay, with the three heroes from the previous game along for the journey, and undead attackers springing up to try and ambush us.  The description of the game on the dev’s site promises new puzzle elements and a new upgrade system, so I shall look forward to those!  These two games really reminded me of my old Spectrum days :D

The Valentine’s Bundle is available for a few more days yet.. go and get it, and show your love for the indie devs ;)