Stuff Tagged With "Games"

So while things are progressing a bit slow at the moment I see the light at the end of the tunnel and I hope I'll get back on managing the site and developing some games in the near future! I've massed some creativity and feel really inspired to work on Project L again!

In the mean while I'm writing something about casual games and more specifically the genre hidden object games. This genre is the absolutely most popular casual genre at the moment. The latest being the hidden object game; Big City Adventure: New York City

To be honest I though that this would just be a fad in the casual games market, but as it seems the top casual games are mostly hidden object games! While the gameplay in the game are dead simple, basically click on a certain set of objects on a cluttered scene (with some variations on this) production values of the games are top-notch. The theme of the games also seem to lean towards the mystery/horror genre many of them having quite gruesome stories in them. A bit like an Agatha Christie novel.

As it seems this is a winning combo in the casual games market; keep the gameplay dead simple, add top quality graphics, music, user interface and a mystery story. Just check this list of the best hidden object games out.

So have you played a hidden object game at all? Why not? What did you think?

Another two weeks have past and another release of Hero is out! Iteration 11 is one of the bigger releases yet.

Go play it now!

Some of the changes are:

• You no longer walk above the clouds on map
• Day and night cycle affects light on map
• You can rest and be attacked during rest
• Combat should be a little smother and player movement should not be interrupted
• Quest log, where you can check out your active and finished quests
• You can speak to some enemies during fight to stop fighting
• Broken item feedback
• Level up feedback
• Encumbered feedback
• Ambient Occlusion provides nicer shadows (when using advanced shader)
• More options in settings, cheaper shaders and camera options
• NPC´s react when you attack their friends
• You can be ambushed when walking on map
• If two areas connect on map you can walk directly from one to the other from an area

And a big thanks to all who tested i10! Your feedback has been valuable and keeps me focused!

Daniel - Hero programmer

As some of you might have heard, I have continued working on "Hero" after a small break of two years.

With the new project I got quite different goals than before, this will be a more classical and old school role playing game.

A demo release is now available on hUb featuring completely new graphics!

As an experiment I decided to start a fun casual games portal. For this I'm using premade content only. I'm wondering if this market is not already too packed with sites like this and how much work it will be getting this new site out there. Also it's kind of an experiment with google SEO techniques

It's really easy to get started; got a domain I liked, registered with BigFishGames. Downloaded their game system in php and a few hours of fixing and configuring the site is online.

If you are interested in helping me, please spread the word in anyway you can

I'll be keeping you guys posted on the progress.

It's a grand day for Swedish indie developer Oxeye Game Studio their strategy game Harvest: Massive Encounter is available on Steam.

Getting a game on steam is a huge thing, especially for an indie game developer and as far as i know this is the first Swedish indie to be featured on steam! Now we can only hope that the guys over at valve will turn their eyes towards other Swedish indies *hint* *hint*

Kudos for all the hard work, blood sweat and tears! You guys rock!

P.S. You should of course get the full version directly from Oxeye and not from steam if you want to give the most back to the developers.

In a city where information is heavily monitored, agile couriers called Runners transport sensitive data away from prying eyes. In this seemingly utopian paradise, a crime has been committed and now you are being hunted. You are a Runner called Faith - and this innovative first-person action-adventure is your story.

This is not exactly a review, but rather a ramble. I'm about to give thumbs up for this game anyway As a Swede I'm of course not shy of bashing our gaming industry , if you can call some 1000(?) people an industry. Swedish gaming industry is quite bleh, pumping out over engineered, technically advanced but alas no fun games (contrary to Swedish indies, with Nifflas and Cactus as examples).

The crown jewel of Sweden's game development industry have been DICE for the last eon or so... I first encountered DICE in their wonderful pinball games that I played like a madman. However, slowly but surely, the soul disappeared from their games and as many other Swedish made games they tasted of dust and mud. I've always been a candy man myself

That's until Mirror's Edge! I've only briefly tried the XBox360 demo version, but hooraaah, finally a GAME from DICE! I think it's great that they have been able to break free from the Battlefield franchise and make something that actually stands out both in terms of game play, and art direction.

The game has got some critique for being too linear, and I think they could have made the ingame graphics even more stylized. But hell, finally something that resembles a game!

Thumbs up for this one DICE!

P.S.
If/When I play the PC version I'll get back with a real review

For some reason I've been downloading and buying a lot of pc games from steam the last few weekends. They just have the greatest weekend deals on games I've been dying to play and downloading from steam is just so frickin' sweet! Though I do thing that steam is a bit bloated as an application...

This weekend I got the Rockstar Collection (deal is valid until monday...) including these games: Grand Theft Auto 3, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Manhunt, Max Payne, Max Payne 2, Midnight Club 2, Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2, Wild Metal. My first game downloads are San Andreas, Max Payne II and Midnight Club 2 (I actually know nothing about this game )

I remember playing GTA 3 quite a lot back in the days so I'm looking forward to both Vice City and San Andreas. The price was $43 (including vat)!!!

Last week I got the ID Super Pack including these games: Quake III Arena, Wolfenstein 3D, Ultimate DOOM, Final DOOM, DOOM II, QUAKE, QUAKE II, QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning, QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero, QUAKE III: Team Arena, HeXen, HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel, Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders, Spear of Destiny, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, QUAKE Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity, QUAKE Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, DOOM 3, HeXen II, DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil, Master Levels for Doom II and Commander Keen.

That's a lot of good games! I was especially longing for Quake, Quake III and Doom III. I never really got into Quake II... but I'll probably give it another try! I also wanted to try out the Commander Keen series, mostly to look back at the first ID Games. For all this I paid $43 (including vat).

Some other recent game downloads from steam are DeusEx (I completely missed this classic game) and hacker game Uplink and Darwinia by indie game developer Introversion Software.

One might wonder a bit how steam can sell games so cheap... good for consumers I guess and the games with deals on them are often not the newest releases so the original developers/publishers probably have already got their fair share. Harder to know about the indie games on steam though... But I guess they have massive volumes of sales and digital download sure p0wns retail.

I guess I have pc game downloads to last me a liftime now, especially in the pace I'm playing But I did finish HL2 ep2 just the other day, just took me about a year!

I'll try to get some more time playing games, autumn is coming so the lawn should at least stop growing soon.