Friday Free Game: Viking Defense Friday, January 09, 2009

As my reader(s?) may know, I'm a sucker for a tower defense games. Viking Defense is one of the best I've ever played. It's flavorful with a thoughtfully-designed difficulty curve that I still haven't conquered after a solid week of playing it.

Like other defense games, the interesting decisions here are where to place what kinds of towers, but I love the idea of the escalating series of challenges to unlock more powerful ways of defending your waterway from drakkars and giant whales.

This is going to be the last Friday Free Game for a while... why not visit Jay is Games for all your casual gaming needs? And play S3QUENC3R on Kongregate and rate it for its elegant-yet-challenging gameplay and not whether the intro screen was implemented correctly. To be honest, I lost the source code to the game in a hard drive crash (RAID is now my friend) and can't fix it. It'll have to remain imperfect, like so many other games (and people).

Friday Free Game: Shift Friday, February 15, 2008

Ever hear of the Three Hundred? Webcomic writer Sean Howard is attempting to come up with three hundred game ideas in three hundred days. It's ambitious even if you realize that an "idea" is rather ambiguous. For example, some of his ideas are derivations of one another. But he has produced a large amount of content, complete with screenshots and thorough explanations. I actually stumbled upon his link some time back, but didn't blog about it, so I don't know when. Turns out the guy has gotten all kinds of press – Kotaku, Boing Boing (proof they will cover anything), other obscure game design blogs other than mine, and rightfully so – he's written some cool stuff. Well, one of the things he wrote about (in fact, his mechanic #1) is this idea of a platformer that takes place in two worlds simultaneously on the same screen. The negative space for the one one becomes the positive space for the other. Cool idea, right?

Well, sometime later, Nitrome produces a game called Yin Yang, a negative-space platformer. Jay Bibby gave it a write-up this past September. I played it back then (based on Jay's recommendation) while on the lookout for new candidates for the Friday Free Game. But while the concept is neat, I didn't particularly love the execution. Like many Nitrome games, I feel like it's lacking some of that special sauce that makes a game feel like a well-tuned machine. Maybe they need more playtesting. Anyway, rumors fly about whose idea it was. Nitrome, of course, claims it's purely original.

Well, proof that a great idea seeks out great execution, behold a negative-space platformer done right: a game called Shift, by Armor Games. Here, the concept works flawlessly. It's a small-scale adventure, self-referentially riffing on Portal, complete with distracting messages on the screen (sometimes written upside-down). The controls are über-intutive to anyone who's heard of Mario – run, jump and shift, don't touch the spikes, get keys to change the board. It's fun, it's well-paced, it's got an excellent tutorial, the soundtrack is good, and it's got the sauce. Play. Play now.

Friday Free Game: Chat Noir Friday, November 02, 2007

Have you ever heard that expression about herding cats? Game designer Taro Ito (who also brought us Dice Wars, FFG 08/18/06) seems to have taken the idea to heart. Chat Noir is a game about corralling a black cat by surrounding it with darkened dots.

I first read about the game on Jay is Games (the wellspring from which all casual games flow) a few weeks ago and only got the chance to play it this past weekend. Ever since, I have been sort of obsessed with this devilishly clever little game. It sounds so easy: click the spots to darken them and make them impassable to the cat. Keep doing this until you successfully given the cat nowhere to go or the cat escapes, scampering off the edge of the board. Your first few games may be a bit frustrating, and I'm pretty sure that there are some starting configurations that are unbeatable, but once you get the hang of the game, when you find that flow, the game becomes a thing of impressive tactical beauty.

Chat Noir is everything that a Friday Free Game should be. It has a short play time, super-simple mechanics and engaging gameplay that keeps you coming back for more. One bit of advice: you'll have more success trying to build barricades further away from the cat, so stick closer to the edges. Also, if you find you're chasing the cat around the board, you've probably already lost. Give it a try and tell me that you didn't give a little "w00t!" when you beat it the first time.

Friday Free Game: The Tall Stump Friday, October 26, 2007

Regular readers of The Red Bull Diary will recall that I'm a big fan of jayisgames for being a general distributor of Flash game goodness (for example, a fine little game called S3QUENC3R was once mentioned on the site). Jay has just wrapped up his Fourth Casual Gameplay Design Competition, and announced that the winner is a truly excellent puzzle-platformer called The Tall Stump. And it is this game that I would like to spotlight as the latest Friday Free Game, because it's so damn well-done.

I described it as a puzzle-platformer, but what does that mean? It's a game that appeals to the curiosity of the user, and it will suck you right in if you're the "Explorer" type of player. The Bartle Explorer Play Type describes a player whose primary motivation is in discovering as much as they can about a virtual world. Did you love classic Super Mario Brothers? Tomb Raider? Then you're likely an Explorer-type, and you're bound to love Stump.

Much like many classic games, the story here is simple: the bad guy in black turned your girlfriend into a square and ran off, and you must give chase. Really, this is just the proverbial kick in the pants to start you off. Use left and right cursor keys to move; up to jump; down to pick up items or cycle through your inventory; use the space bar to use your currently selected item. You explore the world, traveling from screen to screen, picking up items that you find along the way and solving puzzles to further your progress.

The game succeeds on a number of levels, most importantly because it's got lots and lots of charm. The music is atmospheric and not distracting, the cartoony graphics are simple yet stylish, and the gameplay is challenging without becoming frustrating. Much of the gameplay centers around using a bazooka-looking device that shoots bouncing balls. Use the ball gun to activate levers that open doors and introduce new elements that will help you move from one screen to the next. While you make your way through the game, you will also find several different kinds of hats, from the newspaper hat right at the beginning to a ninja suit later on. It's easy to see why Jay Bibby and his audience loved The Tall Stump; I think you will, too.

Friday Free Game: Ramps Friday, September 28, 2007

The Friday Free Game routine isn't as regular as I had hoped it to be; it's hard work finding games. I have decided that I want to keep providing Friday Free Games, but I know I probably won't be able to do it weekly. I am trying to devise a better schedule for blogging overall, and because I think it's better for people reading your blog to know when there's going to be new material, I will be having that discussion out loud in the Red Bull Diary.

jayisgames (who picked up S3QUENC3R, so you know he has good taste), recommended a great little Flash game called Ramps about two weeks ago, and it's a well-made and thoughtfully designed little time-wasting game that kept me going for about forty minutes and I made it through 23 levels.

The central mechanic is arranging of – you guessed it – ramps in order to guide a ball that is dropped out of a chute at the top of the screen to its destination at the bottom. The first wave of levels has your rolling and bouncing with ever-smaller ramps. But then there's the robotic lava-dwelling pirhanas.

I bet you didn't expect robotic lava-dwelling pirhanas, did you?

Play Ramps. It's fun.

Doll Face Friday, May 18, 2007

Via Jay is Games' link dump.... here is a wonderful piece of 3D animation called Doll Face; a statement about the tyranny of the manufactured image and the price of buying in.

This and the Giant Girl Doll (thanks for the tip, Markus!) are the best videos I've ever seen on YouTube.

Jay is Games Link Dumped Me Friday, May 04, 2007

As in put me in his "Link Dump Friday" post. Not that he dumped me. I don't know Mr. Jay, and I'm sure whatever his reasons would have been for him ending our hypothetical relationship would have been mutual, and we would have stayed the best of friends. That is, if dump meant dump and not dump. Erm.

So I checked the stats on S3QUENC3R and couldn't believe my eyes: after averaging around 20 uniques a day since the release, I got over 550 unique visitors today!

And not a single comment, Digg, or posted score.

*sigh*

Well, I would call this experiment in generating traffic for a simple game a success, though I do find it interesting that there wasn't a single user in the hundereds that visited who would do any of the aforementioned second steps.

Theories?