Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Skrillex Quest is a Fantastic Browser Game

http://www.skrillexquest.com/

Skrillex Quest is a gamevertisement featuring his latest single Summit. The game is styled after Zelda, Binding of Issac and Sword and Sworcery. Oh right and did I mention its totally awesome? I beat it a 15 minute sitting so its not too long. The premise is you are Player 1 and The Glitches are destroying your world. Its not entirely clear what you need to do but as you do stuff, you just kind of advance. One hint, try to collect as many Dead Princess Keys as you can.

The image is of my final score after my first play through. I imagine now that I know what to expect and what to do it would be easier a second time.

Getting out into the Big Blue Room

http://debian.mcmillan.net.nz/misc/niantic_cross.jpg

Ingress is an Alternate Reality Game. I first came across this when someone on G+ commented that they "had just gone for a 20 minute walk to hack some Ingress portals before bed", which sounded intriguing so I signed up for the trial.

A couple of days later I checked my inbox and I'd got lucky! I visited the Google Play store to download the game, but couldn't find it. It seems the game is "not available in your country". Go figure. So I googled around and managed to find the APK and install it anyway, and it turns out that I live in the one city in my country with a reasonable number of 'portals' that can be 'hacked' and I was on my way.

The objective of Ingress appears... Read All Ingress is an Alternate Reality Game. I first came across this when someone on G+ commented that they "had just gone for a 20 minute walk to hack some Ingress portals before bed", which sounded intriguing so I signed up for the trial.

A couple of days later I checked my inbox and I'd got lucky! I visited the Google Play store to download the game, but couldn't find it. It seems the game is "not available in your country". Go figure. So I googled around and managed to find the APK and install it anyway, and it turns out that I live in the one city in my country with a reasonable number of 'portals' that can be 'hacked' and I was on my way.

The objective of Ingress appears to be capture these 'portals' which are sources of 'exotic matter' and to place 'resonators' on them to power them up so they can be linked to other powered up portals. When three portals are linked to surround an area that area delivers a number of 'Mind Units' to the faction you are playing for - either the "Enlightened" or the "Resistance". As you level up you gain the ability to use higher level resonators, which increase the range of your portal links and you fairly quickly realise that the real power is in portals at the edges of the cities.

As a starting out player you can feel fairly powerless, but once you get going it is possible to build power fairly quickly, especially as you capture areas, which i the action providing the most 'AP' towards levelling up.

The game is still in closed beta at the moment and the full details have yet to unfold, but so far it's been fun. Having the portals located primarily on public artworks is a great idea and I've enjoyed finding a few new sculptures and murals I wasn't previously aware of.

At this stage it is not clear to me how the game will evolve over time. Will it run for a period and some faction be declared winner before starting it all over again? Will more rules and story become apparent and this just work up into one epic battle? From the way the hype is being managed it looks as though this will all become clear around the end of the month.

Meanwhile I better head off to defend my portals...

Interview with Ryan C. Gordon about Linux Gaming

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/22/Ryan-Gordon-SELF-2009.png

Recently I asked Ryan C. Gordon some questions about his work in porting games, the current state of gaming in Linux, and where he sees it in the future. For those of you who aren't familiar with his work, Ryan has been involved in porting many games and other software to Linux and Mac OSX. Most recently he has been working with the folks at Humble Bundle to ensure their games are cross-platform.

Without further ado...

Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions for us. Let's start with a very broad one-- how do you see the state of Linux gaming today?
It's making progress. We're turning out to have a pretty big year, with Unity3D coming to the platform, and Valve... Read All

Point and Click Masterpiece

http://d1vr6n66ssr06c.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/the-walking-dead-video-game-screenshot-1024x574.jpg

The Walking Dead, by Telltale games, is a point and click adventure game based on the comics by Robert Kirkman. The series on AMC is also based on the same comics as the game. The game follows a character named Lee Everett through the zombie apocalypse. You go through the game making extremely tough decisions for Lee that will later effect how others view you and even who lives or dies.

I picked this game up during the autumn sale on steam wanting to give it a try. This game completely blew me away, I'm so glad I bought it. My first playthrough took about 11 hours which I spaced out over about 3 days. The game's story is very well written and there are plenty of... Read All

Dat Firehose: SimCity, Minecraft & Game Genie.

I have lots of little bits of gaming info that don't make sense in a larger post. Every week I will release them in a General Discussion post called "Dat Firehose." I will keep all the updates to two or less sentences and a link.

SimCity's creative director Ocean Quigley puts in his two cents about the new UI in the upcoming SimCity 2012:

http://www.joystiq.com/2012/11/27/simcity-creative-director-shows-off-more-of-games-interface/

FigurePrints is a company that takes your digital things in Minecraft, World of Warcraft and XBox Live and prints them out for you to own.

http://www.figureprints.com/minecraft/Default.aspx

Castle Into Darkness is a new Indie game that recently... Read All

Nintendo Zappers "Shopped" in Movies

Nintendo Zappers Photoshopped into movies has been making the rounds on the intar-tubes and I felt it was worth sharing. Something seems awesome about seeing the Terminator holding out the classic orange plastic light gun.

http://www.behance.net/gallery/Zappers/5951853

Let's Play: Super Star Wars

For today's Retro Tuesday radness I am sharing with your my latest Let's Play: Super Star Wars. I make it through four levels bulls-eying Wamprats and slaughtering Jawas. No, I didn't play as the Empire I was the farm boy from Tatooine.

I took a swing at this lets play once before but was seriously clobbered in the Sand Crawler level to the point that it wasn't fun to watch. So I played it up a bit and came at it fresh with this much more interesting video. Ultimately my rustiness took hold and stopped the video inside the Sand Crawler.

I put Super Star Wars pretty high on my list for really good Star Wars games next to Tie Fighter, Yoda Stories and... not much else. I... Read All

Travis Admin wrote on 11/28/2012 at 04:07am

There are a ton of awesome Star Wars games. The Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series is a masterpiece. The Battlefront games are incredible, and yeah the KotOR games are supposed to be awesome. The Force Unleashed games were good mindless fun, but not much in the way of substance.

Overall I think I prefer Star Wars games to the movies themselves.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/28/2012 at 04:47pm

I don't know, I love the films myself I don't think any game I have played is better than the films yet.

I still need to play a battlefront game.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/28/2012 at 08:49pm

I loved 4-6, the prequel trilogy is a bit iffy. After playing Dark Forces/Jedi Knight, Kyle Katarn became my favorite Jedi, and I really hope he shows up in the new movies.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/28/2012 at 09:56pm

I agree the originals are the best of the lot by a lightsabers margin. I saw you nabbed the Star Wars pack on Steam that has Dark Forces, I think I have a new goal for the Holiday or Summer sale.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/28/2012 at 10:25pm

The reason I got that one, to be quite honest, was that I have almost all of those games in iso and burned CD format. I wanted to go legit.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/28/2012 at 10:27pm

I will say that the original Dark Forces and Jedi Knight are probably a little hard to play these days. The graphics haven't aged well. If you jump in with Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, you'll get Quake 3 level graphics (on the Quake 3 engine, actually).

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/28/2012 at 10:55pm

Quake 3 graphics are fine to me. I can even do Ocarina of Time but that actually does age well due to Nintendo's use of solid colors instead of bad textures.

Travis Admin wrote on 11/28/2012 at 11:14pm

Nintendo are the kings of graphics that age well.

I don't suppose Jedi Knight has aged *that* poorly: http://i2.listal.com/image/826134/600full-star-wars-jedi-knight%3A-dark-forces-ii-screenshot.jpg

Dark Forces is a little worse: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/ce/Dark_Forces_Gameplay.png

It's weird, first you had Dark Forces, then Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight, then Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast, at which point they just dropped Dark Forces altogether. That's not as confusing as what Squaresoft did with the Final Fantasy numbering in the US.

jdodson Admin Post Author wrote on 11/28/2012 at 11:16pm

Yeah. Well, I have been playing the original Doom on PS3 (Doom 3: BFG) and I think the original Doom aged really well. That kind of looks similar to Dark Forces.

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Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight Winners Selected

Four games were selected for the Humble Double Fine Amnesia Fortnight event. Spacebase DF-9, Hack n' Slash, The White Birch, and Autonomous.

The game for the video I featured in this post above is the one I am most interested in, Spacebase DF-9. It seems in a way like Sim Tower in space, something that would be totally awesome. Regardless, all the games look really interesting and I wonder what will come from The White Birch and others.

I hope much rad-sauce comes from this and other companies follow suit. If you have a relationship to your customers why not make them part of your creative cycle?

The White Birch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mGjI80x_eo

Hack n' Slash:
... Read All

Now on My Christmas List: Hyrule Historia

Mark this down as things I just recently found out about that now alter my Christmas list. Hyrule Historia is an upcoming joint venture by Dark Horse Comics and Nintendo that outline the history of Hyrule and seem to tackle its history. Relevant snip from the Amazon product page:

"Dark Horse Books and Nintendo team up to bring you the limited collector's edition of The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia, containing an unparalleled collection of historical information on The Legend of Zelda franchise. This handsome book contains never-before-seen concept art, the full history of Hyrule, the official chronology of the games, and much more! The limited edition of Hyrule... Read All

The Zero Player Game of the Future

Godville is supposedly a Zero Player Game: you are a God(dess) and your Hero(ine) goes around vanquishing monsters, praying and sacrificing in your honour, questing, carousing in taverns, fighting in the arena and spending exorbitant sums of money on training and equipment. Your job is to watch.

Well, you get to do a little more than watch: you can encourage or punish your little minion, and you can even send them voice commands. The effect of your 'encourage' or 'punish' is fairly random, and about 1 in 5 will fail to achieve anything at all. Likewise you need to pick your moment for 'voice commands' or they will be automatically ineffective. If you get the moment... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 11/27/2012 at 01:27am

Per your recommend I have Godville a shot. Its an interesting game where, as you say you do little. Its a great idea and I like being God dolling out orders. Its interesting as you have little impact on your Hero yet he still believes in you and all.

I like the humor and wonder how far my Hero will get if I tend to him every so often? Kind of reminds me of when I had a Tamagotchi.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/27/2012 at 03:30am

This thing reminds me of the classic browser game very much like this one. I can't remember it's name. There were several races you chose from. Then each day you could only do a few little things. It was mostly about growing your army passively. You bought weapons and armor. Each thing added to and overall attack power and defense power. Was one of the best browser games ever. Comment if you remember this little game name. I will check out this one on my phone.

AdamPFarnsworth wrote on 11/27/2012 at 06:46am

I'm also trying this out in your recommendation. My hero, Paste Eater, is about 6 hours old, and kind of an idiot, but interesting. I will let him live longer and see what happens.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 11/27/2012 at 08:56am

I enjoy the games humor. "Fell off a cliff. Gravity is a hard habit to shake off" something like that. Just made me laugh. The names of the items and the enemies are just all jokes.

Karora Post Author wrote on 11/28/2012 at 08:12am

@Jacob_Richardson was the game you're trying to remember called "Kingdom of Loathing"? My kids got really into that one a few years back and the humour was so close that I'm pretty sure it must have been the same people.

@jdodson If you actively participate you'll move things along about twice as fast. A temple in 12 months seems reasonable - after 6 months I'm at 53%.

Jacob_Richardson wrote on 12/02/2012 at 02:47am

Sorry been busy Karora. My second comment was about the game you posted. I was trying it out. The game i mentioned in my first post had no dialogue. Except to tell you how much troops you lost and how much attack and defense you have. It was the original of many many spinoffs of similar playstyle. It was like human, orcs, and dwarves or something like that.

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