Parachute Ninja

This game'splot revolves around a family that was destroyed by fire started by an enemy and the protagonist remains as the only survivor as he goes through several levels that reveals the story. He then goes in search of his only relative, Master Yo. The truth is then revealed to him that his father was the keeper of a special scroll that holds the secret to a special kind o power. He has to become a ninja to stop his enemies evil plans and seek revenge.

In the game the character appears more like a bouncy ball dressed in a ninja outfit.

What makes the game fun is its controls which simulates the flinging of the ninja just like a catapult or slingshot. Tilting the Iphone/Ipod left and right will affect his direction.

Interesting elements adds on to the physics of the game such as fans which which make the ninja fly upwards or sideways depending on its direction. There are also bouncy trampolines, parachutes, etc. Fireflies are meant to be collected to increase scores. Failing to land on a safe space for e.g. falling into the water, hitting spikes and enemies will make you lose points.

Although the controls are simple, it gets challenging when the parachute ability is activated as the tilt accelerometer is very sensitive and you'd tend to fly further than expected.

Overall the graphics are cute and the game that is fun and easy to play.

Game review time.... This week I shall review a no-brainer game! I got so hooked on to it and ended up playing for half an hour or so.

So what is this game about??

The name of the game is Stoblobs

The objective of the game is to clear the board by matching 2 pieces of the same puzzle.

The further it is away from each other, the more points you receive for each pairing.

It is a very simple game yet compelling.

You are also awarded more points based on the speed at which you complete clearing the board.

Why is this game compelling?
1) Simple, straightforward graphics:Not too complicating and we can easily relate to the aesthetics.Not gaudy at all with the simple symbolic images.Also, the colours used in this game are pleasant on the eyes, something I can learn from and inculcate in the current game design project
2) Sound design:If you switch on the music for the game, it is a bit whimsical and interestingly cute.Not girly kinda cute but it gives off a bit of an 'adventure' spin to it.Get what I mean??
3) Simple rules:Like we learned in game design class, sometimes the simplest rules make the simplest games last longest.In this game, the objective is simple, the rules are simple and the game is just easy to play. 4) Replay factor: I don't know about you guys... but I keep replaying it!?

Flaws?
Okay for this game, sometimes it's hard to click on 2 pieces of puzzle to match them.Sometimes when I click on 2 similar pieces of puzzle, they automatically deselect themselves.Maybe it's a bug? I don't know!

Is this game fun?
I find it fun!

Okay try it here if you want!

Where We Remain

Website: http://twofoldsecret.com/our-games/where-we-remain/
Developer: TwoFold Secret
Platform: Flash

FlxAdventure

Play: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/523684
Discussion thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9684.0
Developer: SeiferTim
Platform: Flash

Where We Remain and FlxAdventure are both role-playing games with a top-down perspective. The controls are similar: the arrow keys move your character (although FlxAdventure uses the same controls for more than movement). The graphics use similarly chunky 8-bit aesthetics. What's most interesting is how both games reveal the game mechanics to the player.

In Where We Remain, you play an enigmatic man trapped on an island. When you start the game, a line of text informs you to move with arrow keys. A letter elaborates your situation: a girl (your love?) is also on the island, in a cave somewhere, and you have to find her. There is danger on the island and "caves mean safety".

There's not much to know about the game beyond the cryptic letter but that is perhaps the crux of the game, the mystery that surrounds the whole premise of it. What are those blue flowers? Who is this girl you have to rescue? Who are you, for that matter? What are these purple tornadoes hunting you down? What is the island? Thankfully, it's not an alternative reality in Lost, although those purple tornado monsters do look suspiciously like the smoke monster... but I digress. Lost works the same way; it is compelling to watch because it entices the audience with mysteries. Where We Remain is mysterious not only in its story but its game mechanics. Movement is the basic play and you could complete the game without needing to know the other mechanics. As you spend more time in the game, you might discover how the monsters move or what the blue flowers do, and then you could revise your play strategy.

I'm going to explain one of the mysteries (spoiler alert!) in the game -- the purple flowers. These flowers are found throughout the entire map. A delightful sound plays when you collect them. A counter on the top left indicates the number you have collected. The point of collecting them is unclear at first but when you finally find the girl, she remarked that they make a nice gift but more flowers would be nice. Her lack of gratitude aside, the flowers actually do more than apease the girl. When you enter a cave, hitting one of the shadows take away a number of your flowers, and if you  don't have any, you'll be expelled from the cave. A harmful side-effect from carrying flowers is that they attract those tornado monsters. The more you have, the better they are at detecting you from a distance.

Where We Remain succeeds at creating an atmosphere of fear. When a tornado monster is near, the sky dims, the earth starts to shake, and a strange sound (like radio static) plays. When the monster has you in its sight, it sounds a menacing mechanical growl and the screen quakes violently. The sound of the monster has an uncanny "living" quality to it which reminds me of the disturbing clicking sound from the ghost in the horror film Ju-on. Much of the island and the game is unknown to create a kind of anxiety in the player. Playing the game is a constant dance between learning more about the story through the cryptic letters littered all over the landscape, and escaping and hiding from the swirling island monsters.

In FlxAdventure, you play a generic hero crawling through dungeons, slaying monsters and looting treasure. It could be seen as the RPG genre stripped down to its core elements: battles with enemies, character growth, exploration, and a story. The battle system is simplified to four actions -- attack, defend, a more powerful attack that is prone to missing (like a gamble), and run -- mapped to the same arrow keys used for movement. It uses a turn-based system common of many RPGs.

The choice of style for the graphics is apt; the 8-bit aesthetics go with the minimalistic nature of the game. The game is tile-based which means everything on the map is placed on a square grid system. The interesting thing about the map is the fog which covers the unexplored areas. Therefore, there exists an element of surprise when you uncover new areas of the map and it's fun enough to make you want to explore the entire map. The game environment is beautifully designed with a lot of details such as tiny shrubbery, beds, bookshelves, etc. The game was actually made for the Assemblee competition at TIGSource. The first half of the competition are for artists and sound designers to create game art and music whereas in the second half, game designers create games with resources from the first part of the competition. Where We Remain uses the 8-bit style too but the game art felt more emotive and in a way, more effective than FlxAdventure's. Colors are picked carefully to express different moods, case in point, the mysterious purple flowers. Very little sounds are used (there is no background music) and when they are, it is also to create a kind of atmosphere, such as the impending danger of the tornado monsters.

Both games narrate their story in a similar fashion. FlxAdventure, which has hardly any story to it, uses the environment to narrate. Where We Remain has many letters scattered across the map. Some clue on the origins of the monsters, and some tell of the love between two unknown people. The narrative is optional in both games, and played a little loose in its form. The other form of narrative is similar to film and literature, where the audience is passive; they have no say in how the story turns out. A lot of games utilize a mix of both methods -- gameplay is interrupted with cut scenes, cinematic movies or lines of exposition to tell the story, and then there are multiple endings or different dialogue to give the sense of a two-way narrative. Games like Bioshock and Doom III attempts to solve the problem of overwhelming the player with story by introducing audio logs. These optional pieces of narrative fit within the context of the game and allow the player to learn more of the story (like why that demon spawn you just killed has two legs and a tentacle).

The problem with the traditional way of narrative is that firstly, it is rigid. Games are about interaction so shouldn't the player be able to affect the story as well? Secondly, film and literature are mediums that have mastered the narrative so why make a game to tell a story when a movie would tell it better? The problem with a flexible narrative (that merges more with the gameplay) is that there are numerous actions the player could take even within the rules of the game and it would be impossible (or at least very challenging) for the game designer to create every scenario.

Regardless, Where We Remain handles the trade-off between play and narrative rather well. Even without reading the letters, the player could get a sense of the story and the art and sound lend to the psychological atmosphere as well. FlxAdventure lacks in many areas but the simplified battle system and the map fog are very interesting mechanics that could be explored further.

The problem of merging narrative and gameplay is described in this article: Gamasutra - The Uneasy Merging of Narrative and Gameplay


--Benjamin

Developer: Eugene Karataev, Artem Popov and Johnny-K 

Link: http://www.playedonline.com/game/597857/splitter.html

Splitter is yet another physics-based online flash game. This time you take control of a blade and with it, you are able to slice up objects in the game.

This game consists of 25 short levels in which the objectives are identical throughout. You have to send the ball character from its starting point to the end point, denoted by a red circle. Levels are littered with obstacles that will block the ball from its path at the beginning of the level. They consist of wooden blocks, metallic blocks and bricks. With the blade, you are able to slice wooden blocks so that they can either be broken up or act as a ramp for the ball to roll on. Metallic blocks while unbreakable can be knocked off balance with enough force while bricks are totally static in the game.  There are also objects which are constrained to a fixed point by rope joints and can be released by slicing the rope. The scoring system is based on a timer, with the score reducing as time goes by. Additional score can be obtained through the collection of stars in the levels.

As you are able to slice objects any way you want and at the same the game relies on a physics system to function, most of the levels in the game can be completed in multiple ways. While this seems to make the replay value higher, I ended up not going back and replay all the levels again. This is mainly due to the game's uninteresting level design. After playing 10 levels, it gets really boring for me and I have to force myself to complete the rest of the 15 levels so that I am able to access the overall gameplay of the game.

The physics system in this game works remarkably well and is extremely responsive.

Graphics are very simple and works for the game. I am able discern between the different materials very easily as the objects in the game are painted clearly with the specific texture of the material. That said, the simple graphics also made the game a little boring to look at as every level looks very similar to each other. The background of each level is also of the same shades of colours making every level in the game look repetitive. Music is a looping track which works well with the game and the sounds are functional though nothing worth taking note for.

Splitter while not quite the best physics game I’ve tried is still a decent game with well implemented game mechanics. With better level design, the game has the potential to be very good. The game already has a sequel and is probably loaded with better levels.

Rating: 6/10

Weiwen

This is a classic game launched in 1994 that ran in DOS yet it is a very memorable game for me even though I played it when I was about 7yrs old. It is a real time strategy game whereby you control bugs wearing military outfit to gain territory and food pieces and eradicate enemy insects controlled by a 2nd player or computer AI.

The view is isometric and occurs in household locations such as kitchen counters whereby there will be food pieces lying around. You win the game by getting insects on the food pieces long enough whereby they will then plant flags to mark their territory. Upon succeeding, you will then proceed to the next campaign at a new location. Enemies are attacked by throwing bombs and different insects in the army such as ants, beetles, spiders or cockroaches will have varying strengths and abilities such as defense.

And interesting fact is that the game covers is a spoof of "Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima".

I think that the game is conceptually very interesting and humorous at the same time which makes it a great classic game back in the days.

Sushi Cat

http://www.kongregate.com/games/ArmorGames/sushi-cat

A pachinko-like game, albeit a cuter one. Players control a cat, who has to eat sushi that is placed in increasingly difficult to reach places blocked by barriers.

Gameplay is simple: players use the mouse to control where he wants to drop the fat cat. Once he drops the cat, the entire game is in total control of where the cat lands. The cat will, under gravity, fall toward 5 different openings (each having differing bonus points), and eats up sushi whenever he gets to them. The objective is not of points, rather, the player has to try to reach the target number of sushi that the cat must eat.

Art style is interesting. It employs a cutesy manga-ish style. There are intermissions in the game, playing a short animation showing the adventures of sushi cat. I'm not sure what this is for as it doesn't really affect the gameplay, and there really isn't much of a storyline to this game. I guess it just allows for the player to take a short break. What I do not like about the art style, however, is the way the cat is being depicted. He bounces around like a water balloon rather than a cat. Whenever he hits an obstacle, the entire body contracts and expands, depending on where the collision took place. To me, it looks like the cat is full of fats and water rather than sushi. What I really like about the animation is how the player gets to see a visual progress of how much more sushi he needs to eat. On the left hand side, there is a view of the inside of the stomach of the sushi cat. As you eat more sushi, you will see them dropping down his stomach. The level is completed when the sushi has filled the entire stomach. I like it because most games display a numerical value, rather than a graphical one.

Music is whacky, it employs a japanese/chinese influenced soundtrack. When the player goes into the game, the music style changes. Some stages have a flangy guitar soundtrack, others have a more upbeat hiphop type of sound. I fail to see the link between the soundtrack and the theme of the levels, so I guess the music would work interchangeably among the levels.

This game really really reminds me of Peggle or Peggle Nights by PopCap games, which I will review next week, to show the similarity and differences between these two games. But overall, I had a fun time playing this.

Rating: 7.5/10

Battle City!!! Battle City (known as Tank in some regions) is a multi-directional shooter video game for the Nintendo Family Computer produced and published in 1985 by Namco. The game was later released for the Game Boy and was included in the Japanese version of Star Fox: Assault. It is a port of the arcade game Tank Battalion with additional features (including two player simultaneous play, and an edit feature, both explained later). There was also a rendition for Nintendo's Vs. System arcade cabinets.

What is it about?
The player, controlling a tank, must destroy enemy tanks in each level, which enter the playfield from the top of the screen. The enemy tanks attempt to destroy the player's base (represented on the map as a bird, eagle or Phoenix), as well as the human tank itself. A level is completed when the player destroys all 20 enemy tanks, but the game ends if the player's base is destroyed or the player loses all available lives.

GamePlay
Battle City contains 35 different stages that are 13 units wide by 13 units high. Each map contains different types of terrain and obstacles. Examples include brick walls that can be destroyed by having either the player's tank or an enemy tank shoot at them, steel walls that can be destroyed by the player if he has collected three or more power-up stars, bushes that hide tanks under them, ice fields that make it difficult to control tank and pools of water which cannot be crossed by tanks. There are four progressively harder types of enemy tanks.

The game becomes more challenging in later levels, as enemy tanks may act as decoys to lure players away from their base so that another tank can destroy it. In addition, flashing tanks could be destroyed for power-ups. There are several types of power-ups: tank symbol gives an extra life, star improves player's tank (having one star make shots faster, having two stars allow two simultaneous shots, having three stars allow the player to destroy steel), bomb destroys all visible enemy tanks, clock freezes all enemy tanks for a period of time, shovel adds steel walls around the base for a period of time and shield makes player's tank invulnerable to attack for a period of time.

Why I simply love it?
Those kinda games whereby you are defending your brethren or company in pursuit of extinguishing your counterparts. It makes it all exciting where you can evolve into bigger, heavier tanks with firepower that will scare many. The levels gets more challenging as we progress and it calls for some serious gaming and firepower. Playing with a friend is most encouraged as you will hand in hand conquer lands that you first deemed unconquerable. Kind of building up the camaraderie as well you know. Overall rating 8.5/10. Classic game.