by ·Comments Off on iPad/iPhone Game: Dream Track Nation

Uncomplicated mechanics and controls seem to be essential in iPhone and iPad games due to the limitations of the interface.  Games that forget they are being played through a touch screen and try to overcomplicate their gameplay with elements that would be happier in a PC or console environment can render themselves unplayable.  With this in mind, when something comes along that has a simple control interface, it is not only a pleasure to play but more importantly, something that you are happy to keep going back to.

Today I’m looking at Dream Track Nation which is one of these titles that is effective in its simplicity.

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With the meteoric rise of Facebook and the stealth invasion of the smart-phone that now has some iteration of its species lurking in every other pocket across the country, there was equally been an explosion in the number casual games aimed at non-gamers to try and grab the attention of this burgeoning neo-gamer demographic.  Games along the lines of Bejeweled or Diner Dash have become hugely popular by being well polished and being incredibly easy to pick up for anyone who hasn’t grown up with a mouse, keyboard or control pad near welded to their hands.

There has been a lot of anger and resentment from traditional gamers towards this kind of development as they see their hobby being invaded by what they might describe as “ordinary people” or at the least, non-gamers, but really it can only do good.  Introducing people to gaming who don’t know that they like it yet is something I personally approve of and something that can only ultimately benefit the industry as a whole, even in light of reports of some shady business practises by certain casual game publishers.

There is however one type of game that aggravates me and I think is an awful introduction to the medium and could do a lot to put off new gamers.  This is the type of game where it artificially delays the gameplay and limits you to a certain number of actions per day.  This means if you have a virtual tower to build in something like iOS title Tiny Tower, then you’re not going to be able to play it when you want to and you will have to wait until the game decides you’re allowed to play.

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by ·Comments Off on Constant Internet Connections for Gaming

A growing trend in gaming is that more and more titles require a constant online connection.  This is even in games that do not actually use the internet for any of their features and pure single player experiences that never require you to team up with other people over the internet.

There is a temptation to rant about how this is frustrating, because it is.  There is a temptation to launch into a tirade about digital rights management, the main reason for a persistent online connection being required and how damaging it is to consumer rights, because it is.  There is a temptation to question just how much extra money it costs to run activation servers to monitor these always-on connections and what happens if the company goes out of business and the server goes down, because this is a genuine concern.

Instead, I’m going to comment on just how far the internet has come to actually enable this scenario to even exist, but that it still comes with a price.

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by ·Comments Off on Monday Morning Fuel: The Humble Indie Bundle 3

This week’s Monday Morning Fuel is a collection of amazing indie games.

The outstanding Humble Indie Bundle, where five indie games are offered for the incredible price of whatever-you-want-to-pay, has returned for its third instalment and now includes the following games:

  • VVVVV
  • Crayon Physics Deluxe
  • Cogs
  • And Yet It Moves
  • Hammerfight
  • Steel Storm
  • Atom Zombie Smasher
  • Free access to Minecraft until August 14th
If you pay more than the average amount (currently around the $5-6 mark) you also get:
  • Braid
  • Machinarium
  • Osmos
  • Revenge of the Titans
  • Cortex Command

This is an outstanding deal and you can decide how much of your donation goes to the developers and how much will go to the EFF or Child’s Play.  The games will run on Mac Windows and Linux systems but the deal is only available for the next day and a half.

Braid, VVVVV and Machinarium are my personal favourites on this list and would warrant a significant donation on their own but all of the titles here are truly inspiring pieces of work from highly talented developers.  The Humble Indie Bundle is good for you, good for hard working artists, good for digital rights advocacy, and good for sick children and can be found by following the link below.

The Humble Indie Bundle 3

by ·Comments Off on Killer Dice: Agricola

Killer Dice is a semi-regular column about board games, card games and pen and paper RPGs.

Agricola is a game about farming.  When I was first told about the game, that fact caused be to roll my eyes and groan in a cynical-before-my-time fashion because whenever I hear a game is about farming, my first response is for my brain to conjure up the image of FarmVille or Harvest Moon or some other farming-based video game that I personally find more tedious than watching vegetables grow.

Playing Agricola was therefore an exercise in humility when it revealed itself to be a spectacularly well designed, well balanced and more than anything enjoyable game to play.

Farming sim video games generally have their approach to farming all wrong by often paining a rosy image of the process.  Farming is not, and never has been, a quaint and idyllic lifestyle.  Farming is back breaking work, stressful and fraught with difficulties even in modern agriculture and has always required an immense amount of forward planning.

Agricola perfectly encapsulates this knife-edge between success and failure in a way that is not immediately obvious.

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