Android Games – Alchemy

I recently got my first smartphone, the HTC Wildfire.. I wanted a new phone mainly for the camera and ability to record amusing videos of my friends, and this has a 5 megapixel camera with flash.  It also has the Android Market, which is full of apps and games.. 😉

This morning’s find was Alchemy.
When I saw the name, I assumed it was a clone of PopCap Games’ Alchemy and downloaded it without a second glance.. but I found it to be a rather more interesting game.

You start off with four elements, which you combine by simply dragging and dropping on top of each other.. this makes new elements, though not necessarily what you’d expect, and not necessarily what you’d call an ‘element’.  Combining water and fire produces alcohol, while water and air produces steam..

There are 370 elements to discover.. up to now I’ve found 31.  Most of the elements you produce can be used to create other elements in turn, though some, such as the “Molotov cocktail” are terminal elements, and are of no further use.

I’m not sure if this is a game that I’ll finish any time soon, as some of the elements are more likely to be discovered by randomly combining items rather than logically thinking it through.  However, it’s easy to pick up for a few minutes here and there 🙂

Fighting Terraria’s Bosses

Right now, I’m not sure whether or not I prefer this to Minecraft.  Minecraft has more potential for building amazing structures.. but sometimes it feels a bit too easy to end up wandering around without much direction.  So far Terraria seems more purposeful, with the ability to level up your character and loot or craft better gear, and with the various bosses to fight.

On our multiplayer server, we’ve already taken on the Eye of Cthulu, and next up was the Eater of Worlds, a huge worm-like creature.
Once the three of us were online, the Eater of Worlds was summoned, and we headed to our arena of wooden platforms..

This boss tunnels in and out of the ground, and using the platform means you can see him coming.. of course he still hits hard, and coming in contact with any part of his body seemed to cause damage.  You can split him into multiple worms if you damage sections of his body enough.. though then you end up with multiple bosses at the same time.

Unfortunately, I found that his head was rarely within reach, especially after dropping from the platform to avoid contact, and we did end up with a few worms by the end of the fight.

The final boss is Skeletron, found outside the main dungeon of the world.

He first appears as an Old Man, and will transform into Skeletron if you speak to him at night.  We approached during the day, and I was tempted to go into the dungeon to have a look around first, but was warned off.. entering the dungeon without first summoning and defeating the boss will result in him appearing and one-shotting the intruder.

We created a small room with a bed up on top of the dungeon, so we could set our spawn point close by.  This turned out to be a good idea, as there were a few accidental uses of the Magic Mirror during the fight.. it also meant that if any of us died, it wouldn’t leave the other two alone for long.

With all our powerful weapons, we killed him of course.. sadly this boss can only be defeated once per map.

In addition to bosses, we have also started to encounter Goblin Invasions on the server.  To enable these invasions, at least one Shadow Orb must be broken.. after that it’s a random chance each dawn while at least one player with 200 health is present on the server.

The arrival of the Goblin Army means a lot of fighting, and with some of the better weapons it’s a lot of fun, though the Sorcerers are still annoying as they teleport around.  This adds another facet at the stage when you’ve discovered much of what there is in the map, and I think this really helps to maintain interest in the game.

HOARD

A friend bought us all HOARD this weekend, as a 4-pack on Steam.  Yay! 🙂

HOARD is a mix of action and strategy, developed by indie team Big Sandwich Games, where each player takes on the role of a dragon in a table-top style medieval kingdom with farms, towns, princesses and knights..

Every dragon needs treasure, and this is obtained through burning down farms or towns, intercepting wagons full of tithes, and capturing and ransoming princesses.

The game has a co-op mode, which allows friends to work together to gather as much treasure as possible in one shared hoard, but you can also play competitively.. this can mean racing them to the treasure, or actively trying to get in their way or kill them!  Killing another dragon forces them to drop their treasure and flee straight back to their hoard, where they are unable to move while they regenerate health.. a great opportunity to steal the dropped treasure 😉

At the beginning of each game, your dragon only has weak abilities, but as you gather more treasure you are able to spend points and upgrade your dragon’s speed, fire-breathing capability, carrying capacity and damage resistance.  I prefer to improve the speed of my dragon, as well as fire-breathing, but I think this could change depending on the map and game mode.

Upgrades cost more at each level, so you need to gather more and more gold to keep upgrading.  The kingdom also improves over time, with towns becoming larger and producing archers, who will fire on you.  If you do enough damage to a town you can scare them enough that they ‘belong’ to you, and send you tithes.. a nice way of gathering money automatically 🙂

During a competitive game, you will need to keep an eye on ‘your’ towns, as other dragons will want to take them over.. either by damaging the town enough to turn its loyalty to them, or by destroying the town centre and resetting the town’s loyalty.  Giants also appear in the kingdom.. they will attack towns they come across unless suitably distracted.. say with some fiery breath.. 😉

There are also small towers around the map, which spawn knights.  The knights will attack you if you pass by, and if you capture a princess, all the knights in the vicinity will come to try and rescue her!  I found the knights were best avoided until you had levelled up a little, as they are rather strong and can kill you easily if you stray too close.  As the kingdom grows, the towers become keeps, with more knights being spawned.. increasing the danger but also the reward, as the ransom value goes up with the level of the keep!

Another danger comes from the mage towers, which fire bolts at nearby dragons: destroying one of these reveals a large gem which is worth a lot of gold, but slows the dragon and makes you vulnerable to attack while carrying it.  I found the upgraded towers harder to destroy, as one mistake in avoiding the bolts means death.. and as the bolts can travel a long way, I sometimes got killed by a bolt set off by another dragon!

On all the maps, there are a variety of power-ups, which appear at regular intervals.  These can give you stronger firebreath, icy breath, or allow you to shoot fireballs.. another increases your speed, while the last is maybe a little evil, allowing a player to steal from another dragon’s hoard.. aside from the obvious exchange of gold, this has the added advantage of resetting the victim’s score multiplier!

As well as the Treasure game modes, there is “Princess Rush”, where you need to capture the most princesses to win, and a survival mode, which I’ve not tried yet.

Terraria Take Two

I decided to restart my single-player game as being too close to the Corruption meant I wasn’t going to get much time actually building, exploring, and making the awesome weapons I’d seen in multiplayer.  With only Slimes and Zombies, and the occasional Demon Eye pestering me, building my first room was rather easy 🙂

This time, my Guide waited patiently on the hill, rather than running off into danger!

As in Minecraft, I soon went underground looking for resources.
I find myself getting mentally stuck on this kind of thing at times, feeling like I need to collect resources before I can get on with the rest of the game.. I think this could get a little obsessive..

I’m finding very few resources so far.. but I have been able to collect enough wood and stone to extend my house, and I’ve finally had a Merchant move in!

Terraria is also turning out to be rather a hit.. showing that indie developers can be very successful with the right idea at the right time.  The game has been out for nine days and has sold 200,000 copies and has been at the top of the Steam sales charts.. a very good place to be! 🙂

Terraria

A new game appeared in my friends’ group over the weekend – Terraria.  As I have a silly number of unplayed games in my collection, I was going to give it a miss.. but they kept talking about it with such obvious enthusiasm that I started to feel a bit left out..

Terraria is a 2D scrolling adventure game which has a few similarities to Minecraft.. you start in a randomly generated world, with trees and other resources to gather.  Once you have collected enough goodies, you can craft items: weapons, building materials and decorative items.

There are monsters, ranging from coloured slime with little health, right up to some fairly tough bosses, which you can summon when you’re ready to take them on.  Unlike in Minecraft, the appearance of monsters is not limited to the night-time.. so while you could build a shelter and hide, it’s far better to get out there and fight!

As you find better resources and loot, you can craft stronger weapons and armour.. you can also level your character up with items which increase your total health and add a mana pool.. and you will need to do this if you’re going to take on the bosses! 🙂

Another dissimilarity to Minecraft comes in the form of the NPCs you can attract, should you build shelter for them to live in, and met a few requirements.  The merchant has a range of items for sale, the nurse can heal you, the Arms Dealer sells guns, and the Guide.. well..

The Guide got me into trouble.

I started out in the world knowing very little about the game, as I wanted to experience and learn as I went along.. and seeing the Guide, I expected I’d have to follow him along a little way before getting into the game properly.

However, he led me off the grass and onto a manky grey surface with spiky weeds.. Corruption, which I’m told is not normally this close to spawn.  The spiky weeds hurt, so I decided to leave the Guide to his wandering and go back to the grass.. but before I got back I met my first monster, the Eater of Souls!

I found I could take one point of health from him with my pickaxe, but before he was dead another appeared.. this was too much to handle on top of the damage from the weeds in the Corruption, and I managed to die within one minute of spawning! So much for an easy game at lunch 😉

After respawning I tried to explore to the left, but met Slimes, as well as a rather high mountain.. then night came, bringing zombies, so I went to dig down and instead met some kind of worm.. more death!

Eventually I went after the Guide, hacking away the spiky parts of Corruption so I could walk there.. I found him trapped in water above his head, still alive apparently, and as soon as I’d made a path he headed back up the hill.  I cut a path down into one of the caves, and trapped him there!

I was surprised how quickly the corruption spread across the dirt tiles.. I came to take screenshots at the end of play, and found it had grown like this.. 😮

Terraria also has a multiplayer mode, and after a friend set up a server I joined them.  Multiplayer allows co-op and PvP, which you can toggle on individually.. you can also form teams which adds a little indicator to show which direction and how far away your friends are.

Both friends had played for a while already, and as characters keep all their equipment and resources when they enter a world, they already had some decent gear.  As I was now on my home PC, and the game has no Steam cloud support, I had to start from scratch, but I didn’t mind as I’d barely collected or looted anything yet.

I was given a better pickaxe, as well as some bombs and some other random items.. I went exploring for resources while one friend built a large tower and filled it with rooms.. this meant the NPCs started to arrive, though till I’ve earnt more money I can’t buy from them. 😉

He also went and summoned the Eye of Cthulu.. I got killed trying to take a look at him the first time, but after being given hearts and levelling up somewhat, I was able to take part in the second fight! 🙂

We fought him from a platform, so there was plenty of room to avoid him as he swung past.  As well as attacking you by himself, he fires little eyes at you.. the magic boomerang came in handy for those, killing them before they got too close 🙂

The Eye’s second phase was a little creepier, as the pupil and iris were replaced by a mouth full of sharp teeth..

It wasn’t too much longer before we killed him though.. the flaming arrows, magic boomerang and Undoer’s spiky ball of win made sure of that! 🙂

Crazy Typing Game

Some friends linked me to a typing shooter game by PhobosLab this morning, and seeing a few comments about it being a good test of typing ability, it sparked off my competitive streak..

It’s a very simple game.. small ships appear at the top of the screen with an associated word, and head towards your ship at the bottom.  As you progress further through the waves, larger ships appear, which fire additional ships at intervals.  Later on, even larger ships appear, which fire a spray of letters if you don’t get rid of them quickly.

I got to level 42 before being defeated.. 🙂

Sunwell Plateau

Late last night, I joined a group making a visit to Sunwell Plateau.. the hardest raid in the Burning Crusade expansion, containing the Sunwell.  We only ended up with six players including Vorlak and myself, as it seems there aren’t that many people wanting to go and chase down older content like us 🙂

I had the WoWWiki guide up on my second screen so I could at least glance over the tactics as we went through.. reading about things is not the same as experiencing them though, so I had to be on my toes to start with.  After the first few trash mobs, the other healer asked if I could heal the group by myself so he could DPS instead.. I was happy to try, though a little worried in case things went wrong and I took the blame.

The first boss, Kalecgos, proved a problem thanks to a tricky mechanic with two fights going in simultaneously, one in the regular world against the dragon himself, and the other in a shadowy world through a portal, where you must stop Sathrovarr the Corruptor from killing Kalec, the dragon’s half-elf form.

Those of us who had gone through the portal were unsuccessful in killing off Sathrovarr, meaning we were then unable to win the fight.  Fortunately we were able to solve this by leaving and re-entering the instance.  Our second attempt was much better, as all but the tank entered the spectral realm and killed Sathrovarr, then came back out to deal with Kalecgos.
So far so good though.. the group was nice enough and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing 🙂

The next bosses were found in The Dead Scar: a path made of blight leading through Quel’Thalas.. this is where the Undead attacked in the Warcraft III storyline 🙂

Brutallus, the pit-lord, kept applying his Burn ability to me, so I had to stay away from the other players to avoid passing it on to them, but fortunately it wasn’t doing a lot of damage.

Felmyst, the third boss, is resurrected from the corpse of blue dragon Madrigosa as it is tainted by the blood of Brutallus.. so she appeared as soon as we were finished with Brutallus.  This fight was a little more trouble as Felmyst’s abilities included various poisonous AOE effects.. gas, fumes, vapour..
I’d been given a heads-up to avoid these, but got caught out right at the end and was Mind-Controlled.. and the group had no choice but to attack me.  Fortunately the dragon was killed first 😉

After resurrecting our two dead players, we went back indoors, heading towards the Witch’s Sanctum and the Eredar Twins.

These two bosses work as a pair, with them both fighting in the first phase, and then after killing one Twin, the other continuing with some of the first Twin’s abilities.  Looking over the tactics, I was a little worried by Dark Touched as 20 stacks of this on a player means healing effects reduced by 100%.  I hoped this wouldn’t apply to Vorlak, as he was the tank.. but in the end it didn’t even register as a problem during the fight 🙂

M’uru was the next boss, a Naaru which I thought looked corrupted as the others I’ve seen were all bright and shining.. and didn’t want to kill us!

The group were going fairly quickly at this point and I didn’t get to check the tactics, but it just seemed to be a case of killing him quickly.. once M’uru is dead he transforms into Entropius, a void god, which again required burning down quickly.  No problem for this group!

Then there we were.. at the final boss, Kil’jaeden!

Kil’jaeden is being summoned through the Sunwell, where energy is being drained from the imprisoned Anveena.  Bit of lore here: Anveena looks like a human girl, but is actually the manifestation of the energy within the Sunwell; she sacrifices herself to weaken Kil’jaeden, which means the Sunwell’s destruction.

Tactics-wise.. the first part of the fight involves pulling the three Hands of the Deceiver away from the Sunwell.. thanks to us being overpowered and the group moving so very quickly, these were virtually dead before I’d got near the fight..

Part way through the fight, Vorlak used an orb at the side of the room to turn into a blue dragon!  This gave him some useful abilities including Breath: Revitalize, which gave me mana.. always useful.. and Shield of the Blue, providing a shield which reduces incoming damage by 95%..

As Anveena sacrifices herself, she applies a buff to Kil’jaeden meaning he takes increased Holy Damage.. yay for my use of Holy Fire letting me get extra damage in!  Once defeated he disappears back through the Sunwell..

There was more lore here too, with a conversation between Lady Liadrin and Prophet Valen about the victory, and how the heart of M’uru had been recovered, and is now a source of light energy in place of the Sunwell.   I really need to read the books so I have more of the story.. 🙂

Healing the group for this was much easier than I expected, and I was really glad I’d come along despite worrying about not knowing the tactics.  Vorlak and I both got the Sunwell Plateau achievement, and Vorlak also got Outland Raider.. I’m missing this one still!

Once the loot was distributed, the others left and we wandered around a little.  I also tried out the dragon orb 🙂

Revenge on Ertan

After last weekend’s horrible experience with randoms in Vortex Pinnacle, I was quite pleased to give the Grand Vizier Ertan another kicking tonight..

Having gone through this dungeon again, I feel that it’s a bit backwards.. the first trash packs and this boss seem so much harder, with more of the group taking damage at once.  As disc I’m not great at AoE healing, so I guess I’m always going to find this part of the dungeon the hardest.. however, I’m not going to let it stop me 😉

I hate Ertan!

After having not run any dungeons for a while, I joined a friend for a Random Heroic.  We ended up with Vortex Pinnacle, somewhere I’d not been since much earlier in the year on normal, never mind Heroic.

Things were a bit scrappy on the way up to the first boss, and then it really went to hell, with a wipe on the now-hated Grand Vizier Ertan.  One player left, and we ran back in to find another appeared to be AFK, so after a little while we kicked him, and got two more.

We didn’t do any better this time, with lots of abuse from the two randoms directed at me after everyone started taking lots of damage, and one guy, standing outside the tornadoes, died.  The boss went down, but that wasn’t enough and the randoms kicked me from the group.

I ran though the dungeon again on normal later with friends, just to look at Ertan, and last night I went through the whole dungeon with another friend and randoms, again on normal, however, it’s not really changed anything.

I now don’t want to consider going near Heroics unless I know the dungeon really well.. and that’s where my second problem comes in.  Who to go in with?  My friends have seen it all before and want to do Heroics, which leaves me having to ask for normals, or go and do normals with randoms.. a prospect which makes me feel anxious 🙁

I originally took a trial out to have a look at the game and play with friends.. and the friends had been the reason I’ve stayed, while meeting potentially abusive randoms and feeling anxious in case things go wrong are things that makes me not want to play.

The Lashtail Hatchling

I found another rather interesting quest chain while earning reputation with the Darkspear Trolls over in Stranglethorn..

Over in Grom’Gol Base Camp, I picked up a quest to go and kill of some raptor eggs.  I was just smashing the last egg when the Lashtail Hatchling appeared!  This added a quest to check with Far Seer Mok’thardin back at camp.. he said I should feed him Murloc meat..

After this, I headed back to camp but got no new quest.. so I thought he was a temporary pet, maybe lasting until I logged off.

That was, until I was sent to deal with some food thieves in the Bal’lal ruins, and my little friend found me a skull!  This set off a chain of tasks when the skull went back to camp, and into a cauldron for a bit of troll magics.. he turned out to be the skull of a troll lord, who wanted me to help him return to life.  Did I suspect that this might be an evil skull?  Not at this point..

Following the collection of some artifacts, the body of the troll lord’s enemy, and some mojo, the Bloodlord Mandokir appeared..

He turned out to be evil, and he demanded my Lashtail Hatchling! 🙁

His departing comments mentioned Zul’Gurub.. so I didn’t think this would be the last of the story.. then in Bambala, I got a quest leading to a Mind Vision where I saw through the inside of Zul’Gurub through the hatchling’s eyes..

More quests followed: fetching Braddock’s Big Brain for a Mind Control quest, and an attempt to rescue the Hatchling, where I attempted to flee Zul’Gurub!

My first attempt ended in capture by net, and I was sent back to the beginning, where I realised I was able to talk to the raptor at the start.  This turned out to be a fantastic little mini-game, with adult raptors teaching me different abilities such as chewing through nets, lighting fires to distract the soldiers, and dropping skulls in their paths to trip them!

Just at the exit, I was caught by a lurking Shade of the Hexxer, ending the Mind Control session.. looks like I need to go into Zul’Gurub and rescue the Hatchling for myself!