Planet Geek

Ikariam - Civilization goes Web!

Everyone who has had anything to do with computer gaming has probably heard of Civilization, the genre originated by Sid Meier and so successfully built (some would say exploited by) Microprose. There have been many branches of the Civilization pedigree, and I even reviewed one (FreeCiv) a while back.

Recently I tripped over another incarnation that has taken the Civilization concept into the 'web 2.0' world. Through a combination of Javascript, extremely well done graphics, and some basic gaming smarts, the folks at GameForge have come up with Ikariam, a pretty interesting little game.

The premis in Ikariam is similar to most other Civ-type god-games. You're the administrator of a small town trying to complete against expansionism and economic pressure from towns and nations around you. Your goal? Come out on top! Beat them militarily, socially, economically - however you'd like to go, you need to build faster, expand better, and make more money than your neighbors.

Compared to other games of the genre, Ikariam has a very simplified approach. The enormously complex machinations in something like Civilization 3 are not here, but they do try to make up for it. The economic trading model is quite involved, not only trading and pillaging local towns, but also trading and shipping materials to other players. You're also quite involved in localized production of baseline building resources, as well as luxury goods. The game is fully MMORPG'ed, so you'll see other players live in the game. You can trade with them, talk with them, or attack them, as you will.

GameForge did a lot of work to make the game useable on the web directly. For instance, while things are 'real time', they're not set up for you to spend hours glued to your browser. Building a new building? Will probably take a half an hour. Researching a new skill? Several hours. Sending a cargo ship out to pick up materials? A few hours. It's normal to check into the game every few hours or even once a day to see how things are going, set up your researching, move your citizens around and change production, and then go on with the rest of your life.

The support forums are active and helpful, as is an IRC channel. With multiple 'worlds', if you're planning on banding together into alliances with your buddies, you should make sure you're all on the same server. Alliances can help both in trading and in combat, so if you're planning on a large expansionism campaign, it's a good idea to think ahead and share the same world / server with your buddies.

I'm still getting the hang of the game, having started only 2-3 days ago, but so far, it's quite enjoyable. It hasn't completely sucked me in, though I'll credit the "make your move, come back in a while" tactic at both being frustrating ("I want to play more NOW!"), and making a lot of sense ("I just need to change this, then I'll go back to work!"). Since the webpages are fairly straightforward and render cleanly, it's very easy to just 'pop in' from a browser somewhere, check your town / towns, and then log off again.

So far, it's fun. It's free. And it works in Konqueror. A great combination. I'll stick with it for a while.

It's GROW time again!

Y'all have become complacent. Too much free time! Well, enough of that. Time to get back out there and help the little blob people! This time one of them has gotten sick, and it's up to you to heal 'em!

This is a 'nano' version of Grow, while the author works on a new game. It's got all the trappings of the original grow games - the cutesy music, the little blob people, and the plot twists. Only 6 items to choose from, shouldn't take long to figure out (bout 15 minutes for me)

Click on over to Eyezmaze to check it out!

Darwinia Mini-Review

I haven't been doing much reviewing lately, but I thought I'd point a couple of the folks who keep whining about the lack of Linux games to the fine work at Introversion Software.

I just completed the demo for Darwinia, a sort of 'Populous meets TRON' game.

Darwinia is very much a 'god game' in that you are 'above' the life forms you're interacting with, but, like Populous, you can't directly control them. You can influence them in several ways ("All citizens, you feel an urge to move sort of in that direction!"), but can't give the "you guys, move there and build a building, you guys, there and shoot them" sort of detail that's common in things like Starcraft.

From Introversion's page:

The world of Darwinia is a virtual themepark, running entirely inside a computer network and populated by a sentient evolving life form called the Darwinians. Unfortunately Darwinia has been overrun by a computer virus which has multiplied out of control. Your task is to destroy the Viral Infection and save the Darwinians from extinction.

The plotline does sound somewhat trite, and there's certainly an 80's-esque flair to the entire game. It's modelled very heavily on TRON in imagery and concept (a model that Introversion seems to use a lot), so the rendered playing feels very much like one of those graphics demos you oo'ed and ah'ed at the first time you saw an SGI machine (well I did, anyway). If you make sure you're not being overly critical and immediately jump up with "Gosh, Doom3 blows this away!", you might find yourself enjoying yourself.

First of all, it's a Linux-enabled, full GL, full sound, network enabled, multiplatform game. There's no 'hack' or backsupport or Wine-fiddling here, the game has native Mac, Windows, and Linux builds. Installation was a matter of downloading the demo and running the installation script. On my machine, running Ubuntu, it installed and ran without a hitch, in full screen high resolution, and some phenomenal refresh rate (I noticed -zero- lag in any of either the cut scenes or actual gameplay, when I had several hundred characters moving on the screen).

Introversion has made it 'de rigeur' to have full Linux ports of all their games, and they have several that are top notch. I'll be taking a look at others shortly. But if you're into god-games, and have a Mac, Windows, or Linux PC, and don't mind a new twist on the game with a good story line and comfortable game play, this is a game you should definitely check out.

Rampant Eye Candy

It's about time I did something with some of this horsepower on my desk. So this week I fired up a couple toys just to have some fun.

If you've got any inroads into the Linux geek community, you've probably heard about the two compositing window management systems, Compiz and Beryl. A compositing window manager marries window actions and motions with a fancy rendering engine, in this case OpenGL. The end result is a stunningly animated desktop that bears loose resemblance to some of the effect on OSX (such as the schwoopy windows, and the minimization to greyed icons of open desktop windows), but with the extra 'fun' bits Linux folks are known to toss in.

Last week I enabled the beryl manager on yawl, and played around with it for a while. The first thing that can be said - it's certainly pretty. The smooth animation, wobbly windows, and the oh so awesome 3d cube rotation, with live windows is pure eye candy. Add to that toys like the rain drops on the desktop, or the 'floating' windows that stir the 'water' whenever you move them, and you've flat out gone into gratuitous.

For all the toyness, the window manager actually functions quite well. I found myself comfortable in the environment for several days, using it as my primary window manager, while still using KDE for desktop operations.

So why did I stop? Beryl is close - and I mean very close - to being usable on a day to day basis. What stopped me were a few basic issues:

• The alt-tab 'task switcher' was cumbersome to work with. I found the flickery desktop activity and the lack of "here's where you are, here's where you were, here's how to get there" distracting. I'm sure this could be tuned very easily, but since I alt-tab between apps at a speed that would make a hyperactive-5yr old sweat, this bit of clunk slowed me down enormously.
• Beryl does NOT play well with SDL applications. Since I do in fact game on occasion, I frequently found myself unable to even control-alt-f1 to get to a console to kill my X server, and had to actually ssh in from another machine to kill and restart X. Not good.
• The multidesktop-ness of the Beryl 'cube' wasn't playing well with my desktop manager in KDE. I didn't have the 'multiple desktops' I was used to, I simply had one long desktop that was wrapped around 4 sides of the cube. I could control-alt-left and control-alt-right from one cube face to the other, but I was very used to control-f1 and control-f2 to switch to desktop 1 and 2 respectively. That didn't work with Beryl.

In reality, these were my only beefs with Beryl. With the going merge between Beryl and Compiz, I believe the future looks particularly bright for this sort of system.

I admit it, I'm a sucker for a FPS shooter. I spent far too much time blasting away in Quake3 Arena for my own good, but I'm completely cured now. *twitch* *twitch*

Doom3 is the latest chapter from ID Software in the Quake / Doom FPS world. It actually came out about 3 years ago, but had such high hardware requirements I wasn't really prepared to play it. Now with yawl equipped with a mildly powerful video board, and having some extra CPU cycles, it was time to give it a try

ID Software is also, it should be noted, one of the few software companies that actually supports Linux directly, releasing their games and systems for Linux and Windows at the same time. No delay on ports or the like. I often wonder why other developers don't follow suit - Linux users are some of the most loyal and vocal, and I'm firmly convinced that the deep Linux support ID has always shown is one of the reasons they're still a leader in the gaming world.

Back to Doom3. After downloading all 485 meg of the 'demo', I unpacked it and ran it. It came up perfectly, ran through the intros, but I had a mild sound problem. A quick look at their FAQ for Doom3 pointed out I needed "+set s_alsa_pcm plughw:0" on my command line. Did that, and voila! Success.

This game is dark. And scary. And amazingly detailed. And intense. And scary. Did I mention scary? Oof. I played through the introduction and until things starting getting spooky / nasty, at which point Zach wandered in, so I had to put it off. I'm going to run it again once he's gone to bed. It's a game that should be played in the dark at night. The game is smooth, beautifully detailed, and runs PERFECTLY under Linux. Yay multi platform support.

More eye candy on the way, but for now, I have to do some level exploring...

Teeny wonderful games

I recently got pointed at an ongoing contest on Java Unlimited whereby folks are encouraged to write a game that compiles into less than 4k. The size is calculated based on the JAR file resulting from the build, and must include all graphics, sounds, and logic.

I recommend folks looking for some light entertainment go over and look through the various contest results (hint: sort the entrants by 'DL' (downloads), and look for the ones that have been downloaded the most - that usually indicates a good game).

The one that has me totally hooked is Miners4k (home page here). The feel of the game is similar to Lemmings and definitely has the "I'll keep clicking for the next half hour and watch little guys moving" feel to it.

Other ones I recommend:
Pipe Extreme - Fly the pipe!
Cubis - A simple Cubis implementation
fuzetsu - Hard to explain, just try it.

As always, all these games run via webstart, so will work under windows, mac, and linux.

Enjoy!

Review: Bang! Howdy

A long time ago on a laptop far far away, I chanced across a new game called Puzzle Pirates. It was from a new outfit on the block calling themselves Three Rings. It looked fun, and even better, ran on Mac, Linux, and Windows without problems due to the wonderous portability of Java. I was impressed then, but stopped playing after a year or so and moved on.

Now ThreeRings has done it again with a new game called Bang! Howdy. Lets take a look...

The Engine
From a geek standpoint, Bang! Howdy jumps right out with a few baseline tech points that really are worthy of noting up front.

First and foremost, it's a Java application, which means without recompilation, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. In fact, it's based around the Java Monkey Engine, defined, on that website, as "a high performance scene graph based graphics API". As soon as you start the applicaton, you can see its roots in the GL graphics system. JME is layered on top of the LWJGL application layer, which has proven to be an outstandingly powerful and flexible system for getting GL performance into Java games and applications.

Second, JME, LWJGL, Java, and most of the development tools are all opensource and GPLed in one form or another. This means that your average developer can download all the libraries and tools and build a system just like this if you have the skills and the time. No license fees, proprietary libraries or secret handshakes needed. Just download and code. I admire a company that realizes the opensource community has a strong offering in tools and environments, and it is no longer necessary to kowtow to large corporate interests in proprietary systems.

Sociopolitical commentary aside, Three Rings has put together a slick, clean interface, using full 3d rendering and animation, that runs smoothly on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and I for one am excited to see such an attractive and elegant application running cleanly and smoothly on my desktop Linux machine.

The Game
Oh, right, the game! Almost forgot about that.

Bang! Howdy is at its core a series of realtime tactics games. There are several variants of a basic theme, with scenarios giving environmental challenges. The entire game is set in a 'Western' motif, with plenty of 'pardner'ing and 'yerself'ing tossed in for flavor. At times it gets a little heavy handed, particularly during the tutorials, but it's easy to slip into the 'fun' aspect of the environment. The chat system will even translate your comments into western-talk if you like (a thankfully disableable feature).

Gameplay
The games themselves resemble simple tabletop 'move the pieces' boardgames. You're given between 3 and 5 game pieces, with varying levels of skills, bonuses, and penalties. Your opponent (either a 'bot' or another player) also gets to select from a pool of available resources (both after viewing the playing field), and then the pieces are placed on the 'board'. Each piece is moved simply by clicking on it and selecting where to move it to.

Long time gamers will feel echoes of Starcraft in the environment, though you're not really managing large numbers of pieces, nor are you mining and building. This is a purely tactical game, as opposed to strategy. The crucial element that balances out gameplay are the timers. Once a piece moves, a timer starts (which is visible as a partial circle under the piece). The timer determines how long it is until the piece can move again. Some pieces move faster than others, and some can move a longer distance. While a piece is waiting to move, it can be given 'orders' telling it where to go when its timer allows. For me, this is where I felt myself in Starcraft mode, frequently saying out loud "You go there, and you go there, you shoot him, and then you go over there..." - then sitting back and watching it happen.

At first I was thinking in large unit numbers, frustrated that I only had 3-4 pieces to work with, but the game balances out skills well, and your opponents don't have any more pieces than you do. The scenarios are simplistic in presentation, but even in the tutorials, it took me 4-5 tries for each game type to actually win a round.

The Graphics and Sound
The board view is isometric, though rendered in full 3d (you can change your 'height' of view, as well as viewing angle), but you don't have full control over every angle and view position. There are 3 levels of zoom, and you can only view the board from the four compass points. Despite this, I found the interface pleasant to work with. Keyboard and mouse interaction is very good - the standard ASDW key arrangements moved or slid the board around, while the mouse was used to select and interract with game pieces. Rotation and zoom was also controlled with keys around the ASDW arrangements.

The rendering and environmental views are extremely well done, and not over the top by any stretch. The artwork, as in Puzzle Pirates, is first rate - and Three Rings obviously went to great pains to make sure each scenario, character, dialog, and room adhered to a very specific set of guidelines as to look and feel. I can't imagine the hours spent drawing these views, but they're fantastic.

The pieces and other features in the game area are all rendered similarly, but they're animated as well. When a gunslinger whips out their six shooter and blazes away at another piece (for 4d6 of damage! [I just made that up]), the piece does it with the flare you'd expect for a gunslinger. When your steam cannon fires off a shell, there's a great animation of a steam burst and the cannon jumps up appropriately. All of these details make the game a pleasure to interract with.

I have to make a note about sound. Sound under Linux has always been a challenge with various n sundry false starts over the years. It has always been the thorn in the side of many adopters.

Fortunately, coherence is coming to the environment, as everyone is agreeing that the ALSA project is the way to go when doing multi-source sound (and who isn't nowadays). Unfortunately, many older systems still use OSS, and there are occasionally problems. Initially, I had problems with sound in Bang! Howdy, until I remembered an article I wrote about how to get Firefox working with ALSA, to view Youtube videos. Since Bang! Howdy is launched from Firefox, I figured it was worth a try, and LO! It worked! I now have full sound.

The sound and music in Bang! Howdy is outstanding. With the kaPWING of bullets, the background music, and the moo of cows, it all works smoothly. I frequently listen to music while at my desk, so I was happy to see a configuration screen that let me turn the music down while playing. Nothing like listening to a cannon fire over a Counting Crows song.

Compensation and Advancement
The game, in much the same way Puzzle Pirates did, encourages single and multiplayer interaction. Winning at games gains you 'scrip', (sort of temporary money), which lets you go to the general store or the bank or the ranch and purchase things like new clothing ('Duds'), new henchmen ('Big Shots' or 'Units') or other items. Scrip can be exchanged for Gold Coins (and vice versa) which is the real currency in the game. Gold coins can also be purchased online (which is one of the ways Three Rings makes money on the game - no fault there :). I haven't figured out all the twisty passages of the game economy yet.

Total Game Environment
Three Rings made an interesting choice with the game environment. Unlike the trend in other MMPORGs, you never actually see your character moving around between games. The only time you see them is in an actual match, and then just as a playing piece. There's no "walk your character across town and into the general store" where you see other players moving about. Each 'room' is basically static. Interacting with other players can be done through the 'Saloon', where a normal chat system is in place. The Saloon is divided into 'Rooms' where you can link up with other players to play games. It's quite a different feel, and has echoes of the game environment on Yahoo! Games.

Conclusion
Bang! Howdy seems like a win. Seeing a fully animated GL application running cleanly on a Linux box without jumping through hoops is enough of a reason to endorse the game, but it's also just plain fun to play. The games are enjoyable and challenging, the environment is comfortable and pleasant to work in, and the application has a clean polished feel to it. I've certainly felt the pull of "I need to practice the Land Grab game more so I can get better at it!" - so by that measure, it's definitely a success. But in particular, for those Linux folks continually frustrated about not having decent games for their platforms, go try Bang! Howdy, it's worth it!

Space Worms!

Spaceworms is a nice simple flash game, but fair warning! It will really suck you in.

The idea is you're trying to out-maneuver the spaceworms. Use the arrow keys to move your 'dot'. The worms are faster and more maneuverable than you, but have slightly slower reaction time. Use the edges of the screen to your advantage.

Avoid getting caught for 10 seconds, you go up a level, and get another Worm chasing you.

I got up to 7 worms chasing me, and almost wore out my arrow keys.

Thanks to Screenhead for the link.

A new 'Grow' game!

I haven't had more than a few minutes to look at it, but the wizards at Eyezmaze have a new Grow game up on their site. More details later, but I wanted to drop everyone's productivity as SOON as possible.

Thanks to rollick for the heads up. (Note - this link contains a SOLUTION. Click at your own peril!)

Review: Jake2

This is somewhat of a departure for me. I've been doing some work for my client that involves WebStart, a system that lets you deploy Java applications from a webserver without installing any local tools (aside from Webstart itself, natch). "A perfect avenue for games!"

So digging around, I started looking for games I could run via webstart (which, by the way, runs perfectly under Linux). I found Jake2.

Jake2 is a pure-java implementation of the Quake2 engine, from Id Software. If you have any interest in first person shooters, or haven't been under a rock the last 7 years, you've heard of Quake. I had pulled Jake2 a while ago as a standalone app, and it was 'okay', but a bit bumpy. Since I still had my Q2 maps locally, I was able to just click on the Jake2 Webstart button on Bytonics webpage, say "Here are my maps" and I was off and running.

The game plays perfectly, with a high frame rate on my laptop, and seems to handle many of the issues of running "a full screen app in a window" quite well (the mouse motion does NOT move the 'pointer' off the window, and you suddenly stop moving, easy prey for the nasties lurking about).

I also was able to download a couple third party game maps, and install them into the baseq2 directory, and run around a bit. Only one caused Jake2 to crash out, and that could easily have been because of a bad map. The Id supplied maps were fine.

Next on the list will be to try using the networking code, and playing multiplayer. Moohahah.

Planarity - the game!

This is a hyper-simple game, but is great for a couple hours of killed time. It's called "Planarity" and is available at http://home.cwru.edu/~jnt5/Planarity/. A couple other folks on LJ and elsewhere have posted about it, but the nutshell is you're given an ever increasing number of vertices on a polygon, interconnected randomly. Your job is to move the vertices so none of the connecting lines overlap.

It's not unlike those earth-games human pretzel knot games.

I just finished Level 4, at 3:08 for a time.

Enjoy :)

Review: Tactics Arena

Game: Tactics Arena
Language: Flash
Category: Board / Tactics
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 5 out of 5
Offered by: Tao Games (link)

Back in the good ole' days, a couple bright lights came up with a new computer board game that was a variant of Chess. The game was called Archon and became a huge success not only due to its novelty, but also because of it's excellent gameplay and presentation. Many folks have fond memories of playing this game for hours on end on Apple and Commodore computers.

While stumbling around looking for tonights entertainment, I found Tactics Arena. This is a Flash based game that comes in as one of the most polished and well done games I've seen seen in a while.

The game consists of playing pieces on a board. The pieces can move, attack, and turn, and when and what they can do depends on their piece type and when they last moved. For instance, a Cleric can cast a healing spell on all your pieces, but can't move again for 4 turns after that. Assassins can attack everything within reach of their space, but can't move for 2 turns afterwards. Sorceresses have a nice area-effect fireball that can be delivered at a distance, etc etc.

The gameplay is very well balanced. It becomes immediately apparent that the key to winning is understanding the full capabilities of your pieces, including their strengths and their weaknesses. An assassin does enormous damage at close range, but has very little defense. A knight can do enormous damage, but doesn't move too fast. You get the idea.

There's not a lot of 'plot' or anything. Basically the gameserver environment consists of 'lobbies' where folks can gather together and challenge each other to games. Players are ranked on a points system similar to Chess (a basic player starts out with 750 points). This just a layer to make the whole system more competitive. Don't let it fool you though. The game is a great head to head, "Lets go play Tactics" with a friend game. The in-game chat is great for snarky commentary ('I knew you were going to do that.'), but doesn't get in the way of the game play.

The chat room(s) are about what you'd expect on an online 'head to head' gaming room with a distinct fantasy bent. A lot of 3l337 yammering, but don't let that fool you. Find a set of players, pick up a table, and go play.

If you like playing chess, and like playing fantasy-oriented tactical games, then this is one you should definately take a look at.

Review: Rocket Mania

Game: Rocket Mania
Language: Java
Category: Puzzle / Action
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 5 out of 5
Offered by: Popcap Games (link)

Sometimes there are games you just can't get enough of. Ones that you'll play for hours until every muscle cramps into place, and you find yourself staggering, quasimodo like, to bed at 2am, your hand and body permanently stuck in that crouched mouse-clutching state

With that sort of intro, how can you not be intrigued?

Rocket Mania, from Popcap games, assaulted my sense of relaxation time about a year ago. I had downloaded and actually paid for a version on my PC (under Windows, alas), and since then have moved on to a total Linux desktop experience. While going through some more games to review, I remembered this particular game, and decided to run it up again

The Java version isn't as immersive as the Windows version. Some of the voice tracks are missing, and some animation is changed, but the gameplay and just plain Funness is still there.

The goal of the game is to connect up matches to rockets. The premise is you're a fireworks expert in ancient China, putting on a show for the crowd. The more rockets you launch at a time, the happier the crowd is (Oo! ah!), and they throw you money. The money can be used (if you pick it up) to upgrade your rockets. Better rockets mean more points, and more spectacular shows.

To accomplish this, you use the mouse to select small squares to rotate. The squares are bits of fuse in various patterns. Make a route connecting a match to a rocket, and fwoosh! Off it goes! If you make a path that connects up more than one rocket to a match, they all launch at once, and the crowd gives you kudos (more oohing and ahhing, more money).

Simple, eh? Well, it gets more complicated. Each round you need to launch more and more rockets before daybreak (I suppose the crowd gets jaded, and demands better shows). I've played this game for almost 2 hours straight, getting into the range of needing to launch 35+ rockets per round, and that's quite a challenge. In addition to the time limit, the game starts throwing in 'dead ends' - bits of fuse that are just caps and just end the line. They also include bombs that can wreck your fuse arrangement when you launch. On the plus side, you also start getting little clocks that 'freeze' the time so you can catch up if you fall behind.

This is one of the top notch games available, particularly in Java / Flash form. Try it at least once, and if you like it, keep going, but give it a shot. I'd also recommend having the sound on, just to hear the FWOOSH of the rockets as they go off, and the happy hoots and whistles of the crowd when you get off a flight of 5, 6, 8 rockets a shot.

The long game time, even challenge, and simple approach make this one a lot of fun to play for a long time at a stretch. Check the clock often, and don't start it up on days where you have deadlines looming.

Review: Bookworm

Game: Bookworm
Language: Java
Category: Puzzle / Wordgame
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 4 out of 5
Offered by: Popcap Games (link)

It's been a while since I did some reviews, so lets do some catching up. Lately I've been angling toward wordgames, and I had remembered playing Bookworm before, so I ran it up again

Boy was that a mistake. This game is twice as addicting as I remember it, and I remember it being quite a hook. The double-whammy is it is also available for Palm devices, so using it on my Kyocera palm phone really cemented the addiction. Again.

The basic premise is simply 'finding words in the blocks'. The wrapping story is you're a little bookworm eating up letters before the library burns down. The longer the words, the more points you get. Letters are also scored scrabble-like, so a word like 'xylophone' will score more than a word like 'banana'.

You link up letters by either dragging the mouse across the letters, or by clicking them in sequence. The columns are staggered a half-square, so each letter is touching 6 others. Additionally, by making longer words, you get 'bonus tiles' that can double or quadruple your scores on a word. I've gotten as high as 4800 points on a single word.

The gameplay is methodical and quiet. No blasting away at aliens with this one. The interface is, as expected with Popcap, clean, easy to work with, and does its job well. The Palm version is an exact duplicate of the web version, so you can play on the road.

The long game time, even challenge, and simple approach make this one a lot of fun to play for a long time at a stretch. Check the clock often, and don't start it up on days where you have deadlines looming.

Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy Adventure

Well here's something convenient. Not only is it a cool lead in for the upcoming Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy movie, and not only is it a flash game that runs fine on Linux and Mac machines, but it's nifty keano too!

This is an updated version of the original 1984 Infocom text adventure based around Douglas Adam's excellent 5-book trilogy (though in fact when the game was written, I believe only the first 3 books of the trilogy had been completed).

Normally I'm not particularly thrilled about having to 'flash up' a text game to make it more modern, but in this case it's done quite well, with a pleasant interface that doesn't get in the way of the gameplay, as well as some interesting 'views' reminiscent of the graphics used in the TV series, coupled with the original 'graphic adventure' concept (still images with an interactive story line) that came out of the old text adventure games.

I haven't gotten too far into the game yet, but so far it looks good. Do you remember how to get the babel fish?

Try the game on the BBC's website.

Review: Warzone 3

It's been a while since I found some new games to play, but rummaging around, I've come across Java Gameplay. They've got a series of nice games in the "Nice to kill a half hour" variety. What's nice is they've kept older versions of the games online so you can see the sort of evolution of the games. Older wireframe games give way to texture mapped realistic landscapes, etc. Warzone is a first-person tank game that has gone through this progression.

This game is sort of "Battlezone 2000" - take the old Atari wireframe Battlezone game and take it into the modern age. You have multiple tanks to choose from, missions, complex landscapes, and a turret that can actually turn in a different direction than the tank is facing. The gameplay is good, sound and graphics are quite nice for a Java embedded app, and it runs along nicely on my IBM T40 laptop.

Java Gameplay has several other cute little shoot 'em up games available. I've found myself going back there a few times to just blow things up for a while to unwind from a busy coding day.

Followup: Puzzle Pirates

About a month ago, I posted a review of Puzzle Pirates. I said at the time the game looked interesting and was fun to play. A month later, I thought it might be a good idea to post an update.

I'm still playing. :) And not only am I playing, I'm addicted. This is really the first MMPORG I've gotten into, and while it isn't quite as immersive as, say, Everquest or World of Warcraft, it's still mindbogglingly addictive.

Since I wrote that article, I've teamed up with great crew, and have recently been promoted to an officer (though a junior one. I have a lot of practice ahead of me before I can consider myself a decent officer :)

The puzzles are still fascinating, but with the added bonus that the crew has to work together to make the ship run well (and this is done not only by performing the puzzles well, but also working together during swordfights and trade), it really does suck you in. I've gotten more involved in how the commerce works in the system as well, buying and trading goods, how the individual stores, islands, and the like work.

If you like puzzles, like interracting with other folks, and like gaming where you're working together to reach a common goal, I heartily recommend you take a serious look a look at Puzzle Pirates.

Review: Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates

Update 12/23/04 It appears that the Puzzle Pirates game system is not affiliated with Yahoo! at all. The system is a product of Three Rings Design, Inc.

I've always been a fan of Yahoo! Games. They've kept to the spirit of the net, and most (not all, but most) of their games are still Java based, and therefore run just about anywhere.

I noticed a new project they had put out called Puzzle Pirates, and decided to give it a go. It's sort of a cross between Everquest, Popcap games, and Legos.

First and foremost, let's get one thing out of the way. This is not a 'game' per se. You don't go and 'play a game of puzzle pirates'. This is really a scaled down Mmorpg (Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game). It has many elements of an Mmorpg, such as a character Avatar that can change looks and clothing to match whatever you like, a financial structure that, for such a simple environment, is quite complex, an inventory structure (you can buy or sell goods), and a long, detailed method for advancing your characters skills and abilities.

The Mmorpg portion of the system is just a way to sort of raison d'etre for the games. Yahoo restyled many of the classic puzzle games into a form that would fit with the 'pirate' environment. The games are now a part of the 'world'. A duel between 2 characters is played out in the game, which may be 'swordfighting' (an extension on the concepts used in JT's Blocks and Toki Toki Boom. Think head to head tetris) or various other games.

The games can be wagered upon, and a duel can result in you gaining or losing money. The money can go toward just about anything - by default it goes into your local bank (which charges an outrageous 15% interest! Robbery! :). Generally folks look to getting new clothing first. Your avatar in the game looks like one of those small plastic Lego characters (no doubt on purpose by the game designers. The game, though richly detailed and well thought up, is very careful to keep all elements of it light hearted).

As you play games, you advance your personal skills, and gain you more benefits. The more swordfighting you do, the better your ranking, and you can enter tournaments. These skills also come in handy when you decide to take part in a crew on a ship.

A ship captain can invite you into the crew, where you set sail and do various tasks on the ship to make it a more effective fighting vessel. The tasks are, naturally, puzzles, such as Carpentry (fit the puzzle pieces into wooden holes in the decking), Bilge pumping (the easiest game - very similar to Bejeweled), and gunnery (a difficult game, I never quite mastered it). As you participate as a member of the crew, your captain can direct to what needs to be done. Carpentry repairs the ship and makes it faster and less prone to damage. Sailing makes it faster. Gunnery makes it's cannon fire more effective. Eventually the ships come together and there's some good ole fashioned swashbuckling, which takes place, as you might imagine, in the 'Swordfighting' game. It's your crew against he other ship's crew, and the last one left standing wins.

As a member of the crew, you're also entitled to the spoils! Money in the game is "Pieces of Eight" (or, as in-game parlance has it, 'PoE'), as well as trading goods and cargo. The ship owner can use the cargo in port to buy and sell and make more money. Of course, if you lose your fight, your ship gets plundered, and your profits go down. A successful ship requires good teamwork, leadership, and skills of the crew (on my few fights, crewcounts were between 15 and 35 people - as the swashbuckling fights dropped down to the last 5-8 folks, others who were all watching the fight would cheer on the players in the chat window. A lot of fun).

I've only explored the surface of this part of the game - there's references to entire business, trade, and commerce within the system that I haven't even touched upon. People have their own stores for goods and services (custom made clothing, anyone?), as well as the normal trade of goods between the islands. Besides, what good is a pirate game without commerce to prey upon? :)

The game is very well written, completely in Java. What attracted me was the main page that offers downloads for Windows, Mac, or Linux. The game runs quite well on my litle Linux laptop (PIII-800), but a little more horsepower probably wouldn't hurt it. The folks at Yahoo also put in an automatic update mechanism for downloading new versions (my last invocation automatically updated itself without any interaction on my part)

As someone who has never played MMORPGs before, studiously avoiding what I see as the truly life-sucking nature of them, this was a new experience in meshing gameplaying with socializing and true multi-player over-the-net interaction (not just blasting away at a random Quake character). I was pleased I didn't have to compromise on anything because I was running under Linux. The system just plain worked, and worked well.

And now, I'm off to crew again, to try and get enough PoE to buy myself a new outfit. These lackey rags just won't do 'tall!

Review: Goldstrike

Game: Goldstrike
Language: Flash
Category: Puzzle / Arcade
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 3 out of 5
Offered by: Flash Arcade (link)

Goldstrike is sort of a cross between tetris and Frood. The object is to knock out continguous colored blocks in a wall that is slowly advancing toward you. Your character does this by skillfully flinging a pickaxe at the colored blocks. The more blocks you knock out, the faster the level is over, the more points you score.

This is a very simple game. What makes it so entertaining is the small improvements that just make it fun. The miner character does a little ho-down dance at the beginning and end of the levels, and the sound effects are cute and enjoyable. The game has a natural progression from 'slow and comfortable' up through 'good, now that one there, and those, yes, got that one, okay good!' straight through to 'ahhhh! too fast! nooo! I screwed up again!'. To me that's a mark of a well designed game. If the game gets unplayable too fast, it's no fun. If it takes too long to get into the groove, you won't want to invest the time.

Review: Cubis

Game: Cubis
Language: Java
Category: Puzzle
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 4 out of 5
Offered by: Yahoo Games (link)

Cubis is not a new game. I ran across it a year or two ago while trying to find games for my mom's Mac, noted it was a Java game, and decided to check it out later. Now, while collecting pointers to webgames that will run on Mac or Linux machines, I went back and tried it out again.

The gist of Cubis is sort of a mix of Tetris, Sokoban, and Bejeweled. You are trying to match up colored blocks, par usual, but you do so by sliding them across a playing field. Blocks can bump into other blocks, push them out of the way, break them, or slide under them. Navigation is done via the mouse, with helpful highlighting marks showing where the blocks will slide

This is a beautifully rendered game. Sounds, visuals, and gameplay are very very well done. It has all the bells and whistles you'd expect from a complete game, with pause, tutorials, puzzle levels you can select, and so on. I found myself working through the tutorial again just for a refresher course, and playing more of the initial puzzle levels without succumbing to confusion or frustration. The game is just plain fun!

This is an excellent example of how a game can be written to be multiplatform, emminently playable, and quite enjoyable. Bravo to to Yahoo for publishing, and FreshGames for skill in writing such a well designed game.

Review: Jewel Quest

Language: Java
Category: Puzzle
Tested on: Debian Linux + Firefox
Rating: 2 out of 5
Offered by: Yahoo Games (link)

The world is full of gem-matching games. Since Popcap did their screamingly successful Bejeweled game lo these many years ago, zillions of folks have written similar "make 3 more of these thingies in a row" games.

Jewel Quest is a very simple adaptation of this game. It is well done, pretty, and easy to play, and in gameplay is identical to Bejeweled, except for one small change. To win the game, you need to turn all the squares in the game to gold. The squares change everytime you match up 3 or more jewels and score points.

I admit to being vaguely intrigued by the game because it had this interesting variation, which makes the game strategy more complex. You have to think ahead to find out what combinations will bring the little blinky skulls down to get rid of that last skull.

Alas, this small change to the basic structure of the game is not enough to hold the players attention more than a few minutes, and couple this with the games complete lack of any options whatsoever (you play or you don't. You can't pause, turn off the sound, change the skill level, or anything) makes this a quicky "Cute, but what else ya got?" game.