many years late to the party

Okay, so this has been out for a long time but I was searching for relaxing games and discovered 'Auditorium', a strange little flash thing where you direct rays of light into targets in order to make pretty piano music. It is, indeed, soothing, while still being enough of a puzzle to satisfy my 'game' needs.

I took a screenshot but it's so pointless without the motion and the sound, you really should just go and look at the flash demo instead.

now that's what I call casual

Mochi Stacker - It takes about three seconds to play. But those three seconds are oddly entertaining. Casual in a nutshell.

(Trying semagic now as scribefire worked to post with but broke my version of firefox in other ways. Google, We Could Have Avoided All This if you weren't being such total jerks!)

job simulators being used for hiring?

Well, I always did complain that some of the 'time management' games were about as much fun as having a real job. Maybe now you can get paid for them?

(Article on hiring via simulation)

starlaxis - in quest of an audience

Here's something I found by accident, a game which I suspect is struggling in the market due to being released in totally the wrong place.



Starlaxis is a modern little space game. It has animeish characters (with blinking eyes and moving mouths!), shiny metal panels, nice looking 3d spaceships, big explosions, it recognises my widescreen monitor, and at least for me it runs smoothly.

It's also a casual game, with a (at least to start with) fairly simple matching mechanic to drive it. So simple, in fact, that many people don't understand it at first because it involves 3D.

See, there's a grid and cubes fall into it. If you line up three cubes with matching symbols, they disappear. Simple, right? Wrong. If you do that, you'll be stuck in the tutorial for hours, making zero progress, and thinking that this is the stupidest game ever imagined. What you actually have to do is right-click to rotate the cubes. Not to change their shapes, this isn't tetris, but to change which symbol is showing. Because that's the ONLY way to get them to display the symbols you need to make progress. The tutorial sort of forgets to actually tell you that.



So what you really need to do is flip cubes around to assemble command sequences so that you can move your spaceship around on the grid. Matching exists only to get junk cubes out of the way.

The problem is, we have here a casualish game with a new mechanic that's extremely poorly explained, a space theme, and a male protagonist, being released solely on casual portals. Without fanfare. Hidden between other releases. And probably with higher technical requirements than many casual gamers have on their computers, based on the bug reports.

Also, BFG listed it as a match-3 game, which as I've said it very much isn't, rather than an arcade/shooter game. So even the tiny few fans of such games that visit their site can't find it.

I'm pretty sure it sank without a trace.

But if it were brought to the hands of the right audience, it's a perfectly shiny-looking game! It just desperately needs to be sold somewhere else!

Magical Drop

There's a franchise I haven't thought about in ages! Apparently they're making a new one. And if someone told GZ about it, it will hopefully be in English?

(If there was an iphone version, I guess some people have seen this game far more recnetly than I have...)

don't overlook the cute

There's a nice little review for Legend of Fae at Gamezebo.

when is a facebook game just a game

I still don't really mess around with these facebook things, but this description of Dungeon Overlord sounds vaguely playable.

well, they have to produce the zombies from somewhere

Apparently the new Bejeweled game contains some slightly creepy elements.

Sure, it's all optional, and I would never turn it on even if I were playing the game which is unlikely because Bejeweled is a bit dull for me...

Making Mr Right

An amusing review touching on some of the pitfalls of poorly applying theme to gameplay - that is, trying to make a game about romance within the constraints of time-management and match-3.

Yes, I'm applying that tag to a game that's primarily sexist against men this time. (Although really, as in most cases, any sort of sexism is damaging to everyone. Claiming that men are stupid children that women need to 'fix up' like damaged toys doesn't say good things about women either.)

self reminder

Signs of an interesting point-and-click adventure game I should look at later.

casual days

as seen on the rampant coyote:

Okay, the site is like TOTALLY slammed right now with people right now, but until 10:10 PM Tonight Pacific time, Bejeweled 2 is FREE at popcap.com to celebrate the 10th birthday of Bejeweled!

Cookie Domination?

Apparently, it's Risk. But with gangs of schoolgirls. O-kay.

giving zynga neutrals

Apparently they're shutting down one of their facebook games with all of, like, three days warning.

And while some Street Racing fans are upset over the studio's apparent indifference, even more are complaining about losing the virtual cars and modifications they've purchased in the game with real cash.

... While my snarky side thinks it was insane for anyone to spend real money on a facebook game, ESPECIALLY one by a company KNOWN to be a bit on the slimy side, my less-evil side points out that everyone should have the right to not get ripped off, even people who spend their money on things I think are silly.

On the bright side, after the initial announcement (and probably some screaming) Zynga is offering credits to anyone who spent money on the game in the past 90 days, so not so bad.

Still and again - you don't own these games, they can be taken away from you at any time, DON'T GET INVESTED IN THEM.

Edit: Since the comment mentions that would also apply to all MMORPGs, I should say that I KNOW THAT. :)

still going

54/60 100%

Real networks folds development?

Stormy waters out there in the industry.

(Well, it's stormy waters for many industries lately, isn't it?)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29096/RealNetworks_Layoffs_Shutter_Game_Development_Division.php

drowning in crap; the casual market in 2010

Or at least that's how I phrase it. The Gamezebo article title is slightly more polite.

Some interesting comments about the mess that the price war has caused.

rhythm heaven

Have just cleared the sixth remix, which gets me far enough for a credits sequence but notes there's plenty left to unlock.

I admit, I like portable games that I can pick up and play for a few minutes and put away again. :)

cute fairy boys

Nice to see that they've made room for boys in the cute and sparkly world of Disney Fairies...

we don't hate girls! we just wish they'd go away.

Look, I have zero interest in playing "My Baby", not unless I can raise My Baby to be a fearless warrior that conquers space/kingdom/neighborhood, or send it out to fend for itself in a world of cruelly amusing puzzles and dangers, or something like that.

It is still the height of rudeness to claim that people who play games I don't personally like are not real gamers.

The games are meant to appeal to girls ages 6 to 11, allowing "gamers" to start with a newborn in My Baby Boy and My Baby Girl, then transitioning them to "experience the joys of parenthood through to the toddler years in My Baby First Steps"

a lack of content

You may have noticed me not saying much about casual games lately. This is partly because I'm busy, and partly because I dropped my BigFishGames membership owing to changes in their affiliate practices - basically I was buying stuff from them because I was making much more than that selling their games every month. They cut that program, so I stopped paying them.

It's still true that I'm busy, though. I own at least two VNs and two DS RPGs that I haven't even touched yet. Possibly more. I forget.