Play This Thing

Party of One BB Series

sebastian sohn — Tue, 15 May 2012 12:08:25 -0400

The Party of One series is a third party supplement for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Beginner Box (Beginner's Box). All three gamebooks are mini solo adventures designed to teach the basic Pathfinder RPG system, introducing players new to paper RPGs. Since the Beginner's Box only includes a six-page, 23 section, solo adventure, the Party of One series fill the need of a full Pathfinder RPG tutorial.

The Party of One series comprises of:

BB1: Kalgor Bloodhammer and the Ghouls through the Breach –- The undead break into the dwarven halls. It's up to you and your warhammer to repel the intruders and find the cause of the breach.
BB2: Elgar Fletch and the Dark Army –- You must be stealthy, cunning, and sometimes forceful as you travel secretly to warn the capital of an incoming invasion. Can you save your love and the capital?
BB3: Alosar Emanli and the Creatures from the Fallen Star –- A falling star brings strange creatures into the forest. This is no game but a true rite of passage as a young druid.

All three are short, having around 75 sections plus detailed character sheets if one wants to continue the characters into a custom Pathfinder campaign. Being around 10 pages, there is little room to work on the background and you start in the middle of the action. Matthew J. Hanson, the designer of all three gamebooks, is well versed in gamebook system design as well as writing. The Party of One series has systems for time, inventory, and point-to-point movement, a similar innovative system used in the Night of the Nazgul.

Since describing the story further gives spoilers, I want to highlight some innovative design features. In BB1 you can travel freely between a location (point) to another (point) to investigate the breach--a point-to-point movement system commonly used in board wargames. In BB2 you are given interesting options in dealing with a miniboss: stealth, negotiation, or combat. Finally both previous gambooks are based on warrior classes; in BB3 you play a spellcaster.

In short, the Party of One BB gamebooks are packed with good design and tense narrative, and provide paper RPG sessions with zero prep time. If I had to choose between the three gamebooks, BB1 has the best game system and an interesting plot twist. However, at $2.99 per book and around 20 minutes of play time, I recommend all three. The three gamebooks are available as PDFs from the Kobold Quarterly Store and RPGNow/DriveThruRPG.

Bunni: how we first met

costik — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:04:00 -0400

Bunni, like Triple Town, is a Dan Cook design (in this case with Andre Spierings), but the gameplay is quite different, though the graphics are equally cute.

It is, at its core, an aufbaustrategiespiel, that genre of builder game more popular in Europe than the US, and typified by the Anno series -- but, of course, vastly stripped down and simplified for a casual game audience.

You are a sort of bunny-king; at game start, you're given a bunny house, a forest, and a lumbermill, and instructed to place them, then put your bunny in the lumbermill. It starts to produce wood. Then you receive your first store, which allows the purchase of additional houses, lumbermills, stone hills, and quarries; wood and stone are, obviously, the main resources of the game. You must also plant flowers to feed your bunnies.

When you have enough resources, you can purchase access to the next island in the archipelago, expanding the area you may exploit; and also may purchase the next store, which provides improved resources and extraction mechanisms, along with the ability to create foxes, who move a bit faster and are therefore more efficient workers than bunnies.

And so on, up the ladder, unlocking new stores. There is a bit of a narrative element; you meet a girl bunny early on, and the endgame involves wooing her; and a variety of bunny ghosts advise you as well.

It is not as strategically deep a game as Triple Town, but it is enjoyable, and seems well-tuned to for a casual audience.

Late-game items often require gems to purchase; occasionally, you can gain gems by shaking apple trees, but it seems fairly obvious that eventually this will become a free-to-play game, with gem purchase the point of monetization. At present, it's entirely free, however.

Crusader Kings II

costik — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:55:43 -0400

Paradox often releases games in a fairly raw state, basically at a beta level, depending on input from their community of fans to rapidly iterate and polish the game post-release, with multiple patches. Crusader Kings II is, however, quite polished and playable out of the box (though there have been several patches since its release) -- doubtless, the fact that it's a sequel helps (although it didn't help Victoria 2, which was a bit of a mess when first published).

As with most of Paradox's games, Crusader Kings is a grand strategy game spanning a long stretch of history -- from 1066 through the 15th century. The game engine is based on Europa Universalis, but the gameplay is quite different, because the concerns of Medieval rulers were quite different from those of Early Modern ones.

While warfare is certainly important in the game, as with Paradox's other titles, you cannot simply embark on world conquest; if you do, you will mightily piss off the rest of Europe, and likely find yourself at war with powerful enemies, excommunicated by the pope, and with your own vassals in revolt. Instead, you spend a fair bit of time intriguing to obtain claims to demesnes you don't control at present, as it's very hard to hold one without a claim; intriguing to gain the favor of your liege in the hope that he will grant you new titles; and so on.

Additionally, the number of demesnes you may control directly is limited by your rank in the nobility; beyond a certain point, you must grant titles in your realm to vassals, and then work to keep on good terms with them so they'll support you in the event of war -- and won't rebel, of course.

There are a huge number of characters across Europe, each with their own stats and characteristics; your own court holds several, and your advisors are drawn from members of your court. A strong advisor can have a big positive impact on your realm.

The critical thing for long-term success, however, is dynastic management. Marriage alliances are often essential for military success, and can, with luck, open up claims on other titles; but more than this, the stats and characteristics of your heirs are partly dependent on those of their parents. And the monarch's stats and characteristics are critical; if you have a cruel, heretical kin-slayer as monarch, with low values in essential stats, you may find your realm disintegrating as vassals revolt and nearby powers invade. Consequently, you want to find a mate with good stats and characteristics; ensuring "good bloodstock" among your line is among your most important considerations.

This is, in fact, one area in which Crusader Kings II is a great improvement on the earlier title; in the original Crusader Kings, when looking for a mate, you had to click on one demesne after another, browsing the available marriageable women there, and trying to find one with excellent stats. It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, and quite dull; the result was that you often settled for mediocrity, which made game success that much more of a struggle.

Of course, a fan of the game built a little tool to scan data for all characters in the game and rank marriageable women by whatever criteria you chose; this solved the problem of tedium, but made the game almost too easy. Crusader Kings II provides an appropriate middle ground; you can call up a window listing a bunch of potential mates, giving you a reasonable selection, but not access to everyone in Christendom. This strikes me as the right point of balance.

As with other Paradox titles, Crusader Kings is quite complex, and has a steep learning curve; it is not for those who eschew manuals entirely. But it is an amazingly rich, detailed, and evocative game that strategy gamers willing to tolerate complexity will doubtless adore.

Set

sebastian sohn — Tue, 01 May 2012 01:08:11 -0400

Set is a match-three puzzle cardgame. Set was inspired by the designer's day job as a population geneticist. Marsha Jean Falco was keeping track of traits in the population of German Shepherds, sort of a simple database on index cards. Since many of the traits were the same, she created symbols for traits. One day as she explained her card system to a veterinarian...inspiration came to her. A few years later, we have Set.

Game play is simple; you lay out twelve cards in a 4x3 grid. Each card has the following features:

Color: red, green, or purple
Symbol: ovals, squiggles, or diamonds
Quantity: one, two, or three symbols
Shading: solid, open, or striped

As soon as you see a Set of three cards that have all same (match) or all different (mismatch) in each feature, you yell out "Set!" and take that set of cards. Next, three new cards are drawn to replace the open slots in the 3x4 grid. Repeat this process until all cards have been collected. The player with the most cards is the winner. For unknown reasons, younger players tend to beat older players, and girls tend to beat boys in Set.

Set has won numerous awards, especially educational game awards, and thus has excellent distribution in the US as well as Europe. Furthermore, multiple digital implementations exist but the best solo implementation is the New York Times Crosswords & Games daily Set Puzzle. As for multiplayer, the best is the publisher's own iPad app, Set Pro HD.

A Valley Without Wind

costik — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 14:29:54 -0400

Like Spelunky, A Valley Without Wind is a procedurally-generated platformer, meaning levels are algorithmically generated and no two plays will ever be the same. But Valley is more than a platformer; it has elements of crafting, character advancement with a huge number of paths, and an adventure game-like narrative arc.

Once you complete the tutorial, you start in a town surrounded by many available wilderness squares; you select one, and transition to a sidescrolling level, with monsters to fight and with some elements, like trees and rocks, that you can destroy for resources. But within most wildernesses are buildings and dungeons, each a series of levels in their own right, in which you can find resources that provide you with powerups, or that can be used to craft better spells, or to create "guardian powers."

In many buildings, you're given the opportunity to perform a special mission, which can provide more resources, and do such things as increasing the population of your town.

The core grind of the game is leaving town, solving platforming navigation problems and fighting enemies, collecting resources, and bringing them back to town to improve your own spells and other capabilities. Eventually, you can build things in the town that open up other possibilities.

After you have completed five missions, however, the world becomes "tier 2," meaning that monsters are now more powerful -- but of course, by then, you also have access to more powerful spells and capabilities.

As in a Rogue-like, you are likely to die frequently (unless you crank the difficulty down very low), but "dying" is a fairly minor inconvenience; a new "glyphmaster" appears to carry on the game, and your resources and spells are retained. The only real loss is of some character stats, like improved health and mana.

Once you hit tier 5, it is time to take on the climax of the saga, defeating the big evil whatchamacallit -- a common trope, of course.

One nice touch: the difficulty can be tuned on two dimensions -- platforming, and combat. So if, say, you suck at platformers but aren't phased by the combat system (like, ahem, me), you can customize the game to your liking.

On the whole, it's an amazing, genre-blending, noticeably polished game that is quite likely to suck up hours of your time.

Reddit "Ask me Anything"

costik — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 20:06:08 -0400

Update: Was here, is over.

This Saturday, starting at about noon PST, I've agreed to do an "ask me anything" on Reddit. I'll post an URL here later when it starts.

You can -ask- me anything, although I don't promise to actually answer, say, questions about my sex life. Or, for that matter, to talk about any of the (unfortunately) myriad things that are covered by the many NDAs I've signed over the years. That still leaves a great deal, to be sure.

Also, to be clear, I totally do not speak for my employer, which in descending corporate hierarchy, are currently Disney, the Disney Interactive Media Group, and Playdom, Inc.

However, I'm happy to discuss:

....Roleplaying games, including my role in Paranoia, Toon, and the (original) Star Wars RPG.
....Boardgames, including The Creature that Ate Sheboygan and Pax Britannica.
....My role as an online and mobile game pioneer.
....My two failed startups (Unplugged Games and Manifesto Games)
....My reputation as the sort of angry middle aged man of the game industry (Scratchware Manifesto, Death to the Games Industry [Long Live Games], GDC Maverick Award, etc.)
....My independent game scholarship (I Have No Words and I Must Design, Games, Storytelling, and Breaking the String, etc.)
....How to cook gourmet meals for a family on a budget and in an hour or less.
....Why you should get on your fucking bike.
....How to tell the difference between a quality Oriental carpet and a cheap Belgian knock-off.
....And just about anything else that arises.

The Republia Times

costik — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:09:24 -0400

The Republia Times is a cute, graphically crude and snarkily cynical game about press censorship.

You are the editor of the eponymous newspaper; the war is over and the rebellion has been crushed. The authorities are holding your wife and children to ensure your compliance.

The game tracks only two stats; loyalty to the regime, and readership. Each "day," you are presented with several news items, and must choose which to run in the paper, and how much prominence to give them. Your wife and children will suffer if you do not increase loyalty to the regime.

It's a simple scheme, and this bald description will perhaps make it seem banal; but there is a twist, which it were a spoiler to discuss, and the result grimly entertaining.

Ubongo

sebastian sohn — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 10:14:45 -0400

Ubongo is a competitive puzzler, a blend of Blokus and 'Take It Easy!'. Each player draws a unique random mini board with set of puzzles. A caller rolls a six-sided die to determine, via an index, which puzzle the players must solve individually, under a one minute sand timer. The games rewards players who solve the puzzle faster by giving them priority choice on victory point gems.

The puzzles are like tangrams in which the player fits three or four pieces from a twelve identical polyomino pieces into an outlined shape. There are thirty-six double sided boards with six puzzles on each side, totaling 432 different puzzles.

Korner Entertainment "ported" the boardgame to Win, Wii, DS, PSP, PS3, and iOS. It is the same game with addition of a solo campaign mode where you solve puzzles versus various villains for gems.

Abobo's Big Adventure

costik — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:19:27 -0400

Abobo's Big Adventure is a crackpot homage to the NES, featuring Abobo, a boss from Double Dragon. It's a pretty vast game, for all its 8-bitness, given that it's Flash freeware.

Over the course of many levels, Abobo deals with a huge number of enemies -- seemingly every damn character that ever appeared in a NES game, though I'm sure that's not the case. The controls are NES-simple -- arrows to move, attacks with A and S -- but the gameplay changes drastically from level to level. At first, you think it's basically a Streetfighter-style game -- but the next level is more like an underwater Mario level.

The variety, in fact, is quite astonishing, both within the level with different enemies behaving differently, and between levels, where gameplay changes more fundamentally.

Adobo's Big Adventure is both a satire of and homage to the NES era -- something in which it is far from unique, of course, but this is a particularly well-executed example.

Flying Sheeps

costik — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:56:49 -0400

Flying Sheeps is a pleasant little game with somewhat awkward controls. You control a hot air balloon; scattered in the skies above you are sheep attached to helium balloons, along with explosive mines, and the occasional flying wolf or biplane. Your goal is to avoid the enemies, intercept the sheep, and guide them back to earth, alighting in an enclosed pasture.

Your controls are to turn on and off the flame of your balloon; when on, your height increases, with increasing velocity over time; when off, your vertical velocity slows, and eventually you start to fall, again with increased velocity. Hovering is possible, by tapping the control. In addition, you can move left and right, but your craft has considerable momentum, so it's very hard to position yourself precisely.

It is far from a deep game, and although new elements are added over time, the levels do become tedious after a while; but it's a cute little timewaster.