Gratuitous Space Battles

http://positech.co.uk/gratuitousspacebattles/

You can pre-order this baby now and get a downloadable beta version to play with, until the release version becomes available. Its a bit of a scenario based spaceship designer and tweaker, that then pits your fleet loadout against an enemy and you can watch it in glorious 2d. Its more polished graphically than AI War (at the moment), but its limited to smaller skirmishes and gives you a more fleet based customiser than any resource collection or planetary conquest game. I'm not entirely sure it will match the replayability nor the AI quality of AI War, but it does seem to give you a ship building scenario based tweaker to play with. Worthwhile supporting if you're a space strategy fan methinks.

I've bought it, but I've not given it much time to be honest. Its definitely a game that needs some reading around the types of weapons and what not, because the first mission cannot be done with the default ship loadouts. I haven't quite fathomed out what I want, and what I don't want in my fleet yet. I've played the first scenario about 5 times now, with different types of ships, and all have failed abysmally. You have no idea what the enemy/alien ships are made up of, so its more of a case of learning what works, with trial and error, and sifting through the info on offer.

Theres no direct control of the fleet once you start a battle, you sit back and watch, but there are quite complex orders that can be given, setting target priority percentages, and range max and mins. So its all about the setup. Then its watch and re-assess your setup.

Its interesting, but I think it needs some time to set aside and digest all the information and setup options, before you're going to get any reward/payback from it. The battles are very nice to watch, nice missile/beam effects kicking off, ships on fire, fighter squadrons swirling in for an attack, shields pulsing etc. The trick is deciphering the battles progress into changes you need to make to the setup to be more successful next time.

Worth a punt if you are into space battles and tweaking spaceship loadouts. Like Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, without the storyline, or the 3d. Big space fleets in epic combat. It contrasts nicely with the 4X/RTS style of AI War, you're getting two different mechanisms to play around the space battle arena.

The Myth of Hero Legends

If anyone has played and enjoyed Bimboosoft's Battle of Tiles on the PC, there is now a game on the iPhone/iPod that plays quite similar to it.

It's called The Myth of Hero Legends and its about a party of heroes, who you position and then slide along, and fight oncoming enemies. The party has mages, healers, fighters and archers/spear throwers, and you manage their physical positioning and their abilities fire off as they commence an attack. You earn experience and gold as you progress through the waves, and you can purchase/bribe enemy types to join your band to help against the onslaught. It has a chinese flavour to it, and the party arrangement isn't as tight as BOT, but its fluidity and smaller scale suits the iPhone better I think.

You tap your adventurer icon to select them or deselect them from the party, then to advance you swipe the screen in a given direction and the selected units move forward in that direction. As you do, the enemy move towards you. So you basically set up a movement and protection formation and advance, and see how the combat turns out. Its essentially turn based. If you healer is near a unit that takes damage he will heal it. If your ranged troops spot an enemy in their range they will fire. Similar you use the fighter as a shield for your weaker support troops. You tap and hold over the units or the enemy to see their stats. Although I don't think there is any equipment management or whatever, but your troops do level up as they do damage to the enemy. So it behooves you to keep all your troops rotated through a position where they can attack or kick off their specials, because thats how they level up I think. You can purchase incoming enemy and add them to your party if you can get them back fast enough. So you can take on their abilities and level them up.

Its right up my street, I can see me putting some time into it, because I was utterly charmed by BoT, and this is a smaller more manageable scale. With nicer graphics. I think its about £1.79 on iTunes at the moment.

Worth the effort if you like turn based party RPG-lite strategy.

Elements

Elements is a web based fantasy card battler. It has a rather simpler more casual mechanic than Magic the Gathering, but it is obviously inspired by that game.



It relies on a constructed deck to maximise your advantages on the card draws, and the synergy between certain card combinations. Rather than "mana" you have elemental Pillar cards that deliver a constant flow of currency to summon other cards, whether they be offensive creatures, or support cards such as spells, shields or weapons.

Each player has a guarenteed energy slot for their Elemental school (of which there are 12). The player also has an offensive weapon slot, for bonus attacks and a defensive slot for a shield or reflector of some sort. In addition to this, your permanent cards, such as pillars and artifacts or effects cards stack up at the back. Your creature cards are laid up front, where they exert an attack at the end of each turn.

Like in Magic the Gathering, certain Creatures have special abilities which can be activated before you initiate the attack by ending the turn. Some spell cards attack or destroy creature cards, some target the permanent support cards, or even the players life points themselves.

Theres no blocking as such, but each creature has an offensive value, and a hit point value that can be whittled down by offensive spells, until the creature dies.

A win in the game can reward you with gold coins (which you can use to buy more cards), rank points (to demonstrate how good you are, conversely losing a game can forfeit some of those points) and loot attempts (by spinning a slot machine wheel) to gain you some random free cards.

There is a deck builder and a bazaar where you can purchase extra cards, although I've not investigated the player trading mechanism at this time.

The game can be played against the AI at different levels, or you can take it online against other players (which costs gold coins to form a challenge), if they are of a similar skill rank.

The game presents itself well, and delivers a very easy to pick up casual card battler. It also has a quest based system, whereby you complete certain tasks, and you gain rewards. These quests start off as quite easy, such as buying a card, or selling a card, and become harder as the rewards become better, such as gaining a certain rank score.

Since the game is free to play, I can thoroughly recommend the game to anyone interested in a quick blast of collectible card gaming with the ability to change your elemental nature, customise your deck, play against other friends, level up your rank and link your Elements account into Facebook.

Its simple and elegant enough for everyone to play, yet has some complexity to keep card battling gamers amused for a while.

For more information check out the Elements Wiki.

Exclusive Interview with Chris Park about AI War

I thought I'd pose a few questions to Indie Developer Chris Park regarding his recently released co-operative 2d space RTS AI War: Fleet Command.

UKGamer: What was your original inspiration to make AI War a co-operative game against an asymmetrical AI, rather than pursue a more traditional single player campaign with player versus player multiplayer providing much of the challenge?

Chris Park: Well, to be perfectly honest, my motivations were quite selfish. The short answer is that its simply the sort of game I want to play. The full story is that, since around 1998 or so, my dad, my uncle, and myself have had a weekly RTS session together -- and in recent years, one of my uncle's colleagues has also become a regular. At any rate, we started out with the original Age of Empires (I had already exhausted Warcraft I and II for myself), and then moved on through the AoE series, the Empire Earth series, Empires Dawn of the Modern World, Rise of Nations and its offshoots, Supreme Commander, and also a few outside the genre like CivIV and Neverwinter Nights, both of which were much more shortlived.

For me, that was the most fun I had in RTS gaming, was playing with that group, co-operatively against the AI in skirmishes in those games. There were a lot of other RTS games that I played and enjoyed, such as Star Wars: Empire at War and a few entries from the Total War series, but they didn't support the sort of multiplayer I was interested in and so they got a lot less play.

The problem, even with the other games that we did play, was ultimately the AI. In the earlier entries such as AoE, AoE2, and Empire Earth, we were all less skilled and so we got a lot more use out of those games. In later games such as AoE3 and Supreme Commander, we reached the point of competence much more quickly -- once you're competent at most RTS games, the AI doesn't hold a candle unless it really outnumbers you, which isn't possible when you are trying to play 4 humans against the AI players.

When we were winding down on Supreme Commander, in the middle of 2008, I was looking around at the other possible candidates to become our next RTS mainstay, and I was really frustrated by the fact that nothing matched exactly what I wanted. I had been programming and designing games as a hobby off and on for years, but it never occurred to me to attempt an RTS until then. When it came time to decide on modes of play -- campaigns, skirmish etc -- I chose to focus only on the modes of play that I actually personally play, since those are the modes that I have enough experience with to do a good job with the design. Any scripted campaign I was likely to create, or pvp offering I might try to put out there, is likely to be sub-par for the genre simply because I don't really play those modes enough to know what's already been done, what works, what's been found to be annoying in the past, etc.


UKGamer: Where did you derive the idea of having an escalating AI Progress mechanism (incorporating AI aggressiveness and attack consequences) into the game?

Chris Park: This basically arose out of my desire to have the game be able to support long seiges. The most fun I ever had with an RTS prior to AI War was some 12-hour marathon player-vs-AI skirmishes in Empire Earth. Playing on team islands map types, their AI didn't know how to effectively use transports and so they would get this huge mass of guys on their territory, while they were completely unable to attack us except with nuclear bombers and the like. This made for a very interesting situation as we tried to take the smaller islands, get a foothold on the bigger islands, and ultimately win. We did win, eventually, but it took many hours.

I wanted to have the game design of AI War support that sort of extended seige (with all the feelings of satisfaction that come after winning that), and I think you can see that throughout the design of the game. The AI Progress gives the game a bit of the feel of a turn-based game, even though it is entirely realtime, and I think that not only allows for the seiges (it's original purpose), but also allows for a lot more strategic thinking. The turn-based level of strategy that the AI Progress provides was also a really motivating factor for its inclusion -- I was really impressed by the level of strategy in CivIV (and quite addicted to it in single player), but multiplayer with my group usually devolved into a lot of waiting around for the next turn if we weren't all attacking at once. So I basically tried to duplicate that level of strategy in a realtime context where there isn't any waiting.


UKGamer: What do you think is the biggest selling point or hook of AI War, that would act as the magnetic pull for RTS and strategy gamers?
Chris Park: For me, it's right in the name: the AI. If you're playing solo or cooperatively, you either need great AI or really well-designed scripted campaigns. So far we've seen a lot of the latter in the genre, but almost never in a cooperative context (very recent games like Red Alert 3 and Dawn of War II being the exceptions to that general rule). A lot of people have been really excited by the high unit counts, too, even though at this stage I am so used to them that I hardly remember it's a unique point any longer (that's always a side effect of spending so much time with any one product, and I've heard of it happening to a lot of other software developers).

But mainly, I guess, it all boils down to the fact that the game is actually fun, and a bit different from your standard fare while still feeling reasonably familiar in its overall control scheme. With any RTS game that I've really enjoyed, it simply "felt right," and I'm really happy that AI War is finding a growing pool of players for which that holds true here.


UKGamer: How did you come up with the variety of AI types that are currently in the game?

Chris Park: Some of them, like the turtle and the raider, are simply genre standbys. Others, like the Attritioner or the Special Forces Captain, are really built around highlighting a specific game mechanic or new ship type. Generally I wanted each AI type to feel different enough so that players could recognize over time which one they were playing against without being told. That, and I wanted to maximize the number of possible scenarios people might see; the effect of adding more AI types is multiplicative in that regard.


UKGamer: What's the most outlandish idea for a new Ship design you've ever had, whether it be your own idea or a member of the Arcen Games community?

Chris Park: Hmm, that's a tough one. A lot of the designs that made it into the game are pretty esoteric by RTS standards. Electric shuttles, slow-moving ships that emit giant bolts of lightning that lightly damage all nearby ships jump immediately to mind. So do vampires, which steal health from the enemy ships they attack. The ship that most people have commented on as being outlandish is the Astro Train, however. That ship is held only by enemies, and is completely indestructible (an odd choice for a wargame), but it's not primarily a combat ship. Mainly it just causes disruptions-over time in your defenses, most notably your turret emplacements and minefields, but it can also cause problems for your scouts.

The players have a variety of ways to deal with the Astro Trains, most notably some counter-turrets that protect against the train attacks, and the ability to destroy the train stations, thus causing trains to re-route. These sorts of decisions are not something you really see in most RTS games, where the usual response to a troublesome enemy is just to kill it. When that is no longer an option, and you have to employ some other methods, you get some very interesting and unique gameplay scenarios. There are a variety of other ships that fall under that category in the game, but Astro Trains are the most commonly seen.

UKGamer: Are there any plans for truly massive starships with their own communities of support ships, fighters, bombers and transports?

Chris Park: Yes, very much so! Players have asked for some ships specifically along these lines, and I already had some plans for this, too. The main limitation that caused these not to be in the original version of the game was art. All of the art from the game was either from free sources (mostly Daniel Cook's work), or stuff that I cobbled together myself. I'm a competent artist, but not a great one, and large ships like that are beyond me. Now that the game is out and is actually selling, I'm interviewing artists to contract for some general graphics upgrades, as well as new ships that I simply couldn't do before because of a lack of art. Most of the really massive new ships will probably be in expansions, but there will be a couple in free DLC.


UKGamer: Any chance of seeing colonization of planets, planet resource management and planet defense, come into the game or future incarnations?

Chris Park: My original design for this game actually had planned for a planet-level view (with ground/air/sea combat) in addition to the space-based level. However, through further testing and design, I eventually decided that was simply out of scope and would not only take too much work to develop and test (and largely be redundant with the existing space combat), but I was also worried that would just be too much for players to manage. I've always liked that idea, though, so perhaps in a later expansion a limited form of that sort of thing might make a resurgence. I doubt that will be in the first expansion, though, since its focus is on bringing even more scope and variety to the space-based aspects of the game.


UKGamer: We have seen that you are committed to providing regular free downloadable content (DLC), often incorporating many ideas from the Arcen Games community. Do you think you'll be able to sustain such a regular stream of new content for very long, and how are you deciding which new features to bundle in DLC and which ones to hold back for future expansions to the game?

Chris Park: I think I'll be able to maintain a fairly regular stream of free DLC for as long as there is player interest in the game. Some of the interface additions and other gameplay shifts can be quite time consuming to implement, but usually the additions to the AI logic or the additions of new ships are actually quick and easy by comparison (when I have the needed artwork for them). This game was designed to be modular and easily extensible (from within -- not by outside modders). I still play this game every week with my RTS/alpha group, and we've been basically looking for a game that we could stop and really sink our teeth into for longer than just a year or so (our average time with most other RTS titles). So far we've been playing it for around 8 months, and no one is really getting tired of it yet, so that's a good sign. I'll keep adding to it just for us, at the very least.

However, that said, I think that the nature of the free DLC is going to shift over time. So far there have been a lot of features requested that basically made the game more playable for people coming from other specific RTS titles with conventions different from those I'm used to, or for people with different play styles or preferences in general. A lot of those really come down to polish and usability. I feel like the product we delivered at launch was quite polished and extremely usable, but at the same time it has made some pretty amazing leaps forward since that time. Take that as you will, I guess. Having a dedicated fanbase giving constant, detailed, quality feedback is a real asset for any game. One reviewer called an earlier version of the interface "almost completely fantastic," so hopefully we're getting closer to "completely fantastic" with the free DLC.

Those sort of changes presumably won't keep coming in forever, though -- already I've seen a noticable drop in those sort of "I could play this a lot better if only" requests. A lot of the requests now are more "nice to have" features, or game-expanding features. The latter is where I see the focus ultimately staying in the long term, and as I've said that sort of thing is comparably quicker for me to implement. My original plan with the game was to do weekly DLC for a month after release, and then switch to monthly, but the weekly DLC has been so valuable and such a hit that it's two months since release and I'm still doing weekly releases with no immediate plans to cut back (vacation/holiday weeks excepted). A year from now, I expect the weekly (or possibly bi-weekly) free DLC releases will have quite short release notes compared to now, with just a key new ship or feature or two added in.

As far as how I decide what to hold back for expansions instead of free DLC, that's fairly straightforward: if it affects usability, the interface, playability, or AI quality, it's free DLC. If it's a large new game mechanic or ship that is going to take a lot of my time to implement, then that's most likely for an expansion. Those sorts of features need a longer testing cycle than one week, anyway. Most of the content for the free DLC releases is focused on augmenting the existing game, or offering minor extensions and new options to it, rather than huge game-changing new content. But, that said, sometimes just making significant improvements or shifts to the AI logic, as has happened a few times in the past, can make a huge shift in the game even just from the free DLC.


UKGamer: AI War is currently available on Stardock's Impulse digital distribution client, are you looking to pursue some of the other digital distributors (such as Steam, Gamersgate, Metaboli, Direct2Drive etc)?

Chris Park: Yes, definitely. We're one of the more popular games on Impulse at the moment, and I couldn't be happier with the folks at Stardock, but to really make it long-term Arcen Games needs to have more distribution partners. It's never good to have all your eggs in one basket, no matter how awesome that one basket is -- I've learned that the hard way in past business ventures (unrelated to gaming). We're currently under review at five other distribution channels, but these things just take time. One of the great things about Stardock is how responsive and quick they are, but our experience with them was even quicker than average simply because a staff member saw our inquiry, tried the demo and loved it, and accelerated the entire submission process. So the combination of those two factors has put us out on Impulse far before most of the other platforms even responded to our initial inquiry emails.

I'm very hopeful about getting the game on the other platforms, and given our success at Impulse hopefully that is something of a no-brainer for them. But it's always a challenge for indie titles from little-known developers, so we'll see. A large part of Arcen's future rests on whether AI War really finds a self-sustaining audience or not, and getting the word out through print/web publications, as well as every distribution channel that will take us, is the only way for the entirety of that audience to find the game. There are a few distribution channels out there that have rather unfair terms or royalty rates, and we're avoiding those, but anyone who is on the level is someone we are interested in partnering with.

UKGamer: Can you ever see any future iteration of AI War supporting a 3d graphics engine and perhaps incorporating the 3rd dimension of space into the gameplay somehow?

Chris Park: Actually, probably not. The game wasn't built in 2D as a poor-man's substitute for 3D. I played Homeworld back in the day, but for a lot of reasons just never connected with it. Obviously there are millions of players who did, but it just wasn't my style. When it comes to 3D space games I am more a fan of action-oriented games like the Rogue Squadron or Descent: Freespace games. But, more than that, pretty much every Arcen Games title is going to be in 2D, at least for the forseeable future. Part of me would really like to make a 3D first-person shooter game at some point, but in general I feel like there are more quality 3D games than 2D games coming out these days, and I want to help fill in the gap with quality 2D. I'm a sucker for good pixel art, and I'd really like to develop the sort of games that might have been common in a parallel universe where consumer-level 3D never became common. There are lots of other companies out there that are better than me at making 3D games, and in general I prefer to just play their offerings while making my own games to fill the 2D void.


UKGamer: Have you writing aspirations to include a backstory and AI War Lore in either expansions or future versions of the game?

Chris Park: For me, RTS games aren't too much about the story. I enjoyed the story very much in Warcraft II and its expansions, but I can't think of another RTS title where the story mattered much to me. This is a funny thing for a guy who has written several novels to say -- I still hope to be a published novelist some day, even though my main focus is going to remain software development. But, plain and simple, I just don't feel like every game is made better by having a story. Chess doesn't have a story. Neither does the skirish mode of any other RTS game, which is what I mostly play. I have aspirations to do some very story-centric RPG games in the future, but I don't want to try to graft that sort of thing into an RTS context. I like the fact that players have the freedom to imagine all sorts of scenarios with AI War. They can picture themselves in any of their favorite sci-fi settings, then, instead of any lesser knock-off I could conjure up (there's not a lot of room for quality storytelling in this sort of genre without scripted campaigns).

UKGamer: Do you plan to support the modding of AI War? If so, what areas would you open up to the community? Graphics? Ship behaviour? Star system build and details? etc.

Chris Park: I go back and forth on this. If I ever abandon development on the game, I might just open-source the whole project. Sometime down the line, ten years or so later if sales have slackened off, I'd probably do that anyway. In the meantime, right now I'm basically keeping it closed because I want to act as a gatekeeper for quality and balance. Right now, I'm the content aggregator that takes all of the community ideas, implements them in a consistent and quality way, and makes them available to everybody. Too often with other RTS titles you see the community fragment around a series of mods, often many of which just contain a unit or two that are not cross-compatible with one another.

The way I'm doing it, the overall quality of the game never drops, the community doesn't fragment, and instead of having a lot of little optional offshoots that the majority of players of the game will never see anyway, the player suggestions go right into the core experience that everyone sees. I think that's a win for everyone, but it's only possible while I remain engaged and active with the project. If ever there comes a time where I am not able to fulfill that role, then I'll do something to make sure that someone else can come along and take up the responsibility (or several someones).


UKGamer: As a new indie game developer what do you think you can do to maximise your chances to make the gaming press (both print and web) sit up and take notice of AI War?

Chris Park: With this, I am still learning. I submit a lot of press releases, offer a lot of review opportunities, but of course the majority of those go unanswered because gaming professionals have enough to do with their jobs without looking at a complex game they've never heard of. So mostly it's a matter of getting through the first few tiers of filters first, as far as I can tell -- get as many reviews from smaller sources as possible, get as large and healthy a player community as possible, get on as many of the reputable distribution channels as possible, and then keep sending out those press releases and review offers every so often.

Over the past two months, I've seen a marked improvement in response since we've been on Impulse, and then since we've been doing so well on Impulse and in the few reviews that the game has received. Sites that once didn't respond at all now run the occasional little news blurb about a press release, and occasionally an opportunity just comes out of nowhere like the recent podcast with techZing. Right now it's summer, and so everything is slower even than it otherwise would be, so that doesn't help, but overall things are trending in the right direction.

What major action can I take to really maximize the game's chances of success? I don't think there is any one thing. I don't have any special connections, or inside tracks, or easy paths, or marketing budget. The only thing I know to do is to keep pressing onward with every possibility, to never turn down an opportunity no matter how humble it appears (any publicity can lead to surprising other opportunities, I've learned), to keep writing (hopefully) interesting articles that people see fit to link to, and to keep improving the game through free DLC and player suggestions. Good word of mouth has been invaluable so far. Beyond that, it's just a matter of whether people like the game and therefore choose to give it some coverage. I wish there were a silver bullet, but so far I have not seen one.


UKGamer: Have you learned any lessons so far, whether good or bad, that would help other Indie developers hit warp speed a little faster?

Chris Park: In many respects I don't have enough accumulated data to really give a solid answer to that -- two months isn't a long time for an indie game. Also, I'm really coming to believe that every indie game is going to take a hugely different trajectory. Writing interesting articles works for me because I'm also a writer and there's a lot of unique tech and design elements in play here. On another game, without those talking points, such an approach would be worse than futile. It also really depends on who picks up your game for distribution, where you are able to squeak out some coverage, and where/how big your player base is.

Contests are helpful, obviously -- we entered the PAX 10 but sadly did not win a spot. We'll see how IGF and similar go later on. Having great production values is also clearly important -- I think our slightly-underwhelming art has been a sticking point for some players, but there was nothing I could do about that when all the money was coming out of my pocket. I am not independently wealthy, and taking out a loan for something so speculative as a cooperative 2D RTS seems the height of foolishness. So now that AI War is selling well enough, I'm looking at bringing on an artist to spruce up the visuals and hopefully make the game accessible to a larger crowd. Music in the game is already terriffic thanks to my lucking out in meeting Pablo at just the right time in our respective careers, and I think that has helped win some people over and show that we are serious about the game, not just hobbyists. Professionalism really does count.

Having excellent tutorials and also putting a lot of effort into usability in general has also been a large part of our success, I think. The more complex the game, the more players need to be eased into things. They also need to feel like they are really able to play the game without constantly stumbling or fighting the interface, which can be a challenge in a genre with many varied (often conflicting) expectations. Flexibility in the interface thus becomes key, as does listening to player feedback.

So, thinking about it, I guess that's the number one tip I could give other upcoming indie developers: listen to your players. I really mean it. Don't just nod along and then do your own thing, and for God's sake don't get angry at them for deigning to give you advice. Often their advice is really solid, and even when it's not there's often an underlying need that they are expressing that you should take note of. Big AAA developers have the advantage of giant QA teams, but we indies have the advantage of flexibility. Make the best game you possibly can before release, make sure you have zero open issues on your list when you go gold with any product, but then don't expect there to not be any issues or requests after release. Plan on supporting and expanding your product through at least a honeymoon period with your playerbase, and take their needs seriously. If you treat this as a "take it or leave it" situation, a good number of them will just opt to leave it.


UKGamer: What does the future hold for Arcen Games and Chris Park in terms of games development?

Chris Park: Well, money permitting, I intend to keep doing this for a long, long time. I've been doing game programming and design to some degree as a hobby since I was around nine years old, and it's what I'd like to do with my life if the fates allow it. I'd like to hire a small team of full-time staff with a composer, an artist or two, and another game designer or two. Possibly one more programmer, also. Beyond that, I think we'd be getting too bloated for the sort of lean, highly-creative company I want to run.

I see us making a lot more 2D games, with ever-increasing production values, across a lot of different genres. I really want to make some action platformers, but I also have some very large and involved quasi-Japanese-style RPGs planned. It's always been a personal dream of mine to make a game that could stand in the ranks of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VI, or the other greats of that time period. Those are my two favorite games ever right there, incidentally. Those sorts of titles will require a lot of up-front capital, however, so sales of prior games will have to reach a certain threshhold before I can be comfortable taking on such an ambitious project like that.

When it comes to RTS, I think that AI War is probably going to be it for Arcen Games for the next five years or so, if not longer. I plan to keep on adding to the game with free DLC and expansions for as long as there is interest, but I'm not sure I ever see myself making an AI War 2. To go back to the drawing board and lose all the existing content seems foolish to me with a game like this. Instead, in a few years I expect to basically have so much content out there that it is like three or four games all rolled into one, with a solid and ever-refined interface and engine underlying all of them.

I'm all about iterative development and constant improvement, rather than single releases that you just drop out into the wild and then forget. That approach works very well with business software, and there are a few other games (mostly free or indie) that take this approach, but it will be very interesting to see how my particular brand of iterative development fares with the gaming community. Indications thus far are excellent, but I'm also quite conscious of the fact that I'm standing near the start of a very long road. Good thing I love what I do, or I'd never be able to do it.


A very big thanks for answering our questions Chris, and we here at UKGamer wish you all the best for the evolution of AI War and the success of Arcen Games in the future.

techZing Podcast

There is a rather splendid interview with the developer of AI War: Fleet Command, namely Chris Park, over at techZing episode 10. Chris goes on to explain his development methods and digs deep into the infrastructure behind his AI concept for the game. Worth a listen.

Its also a strange podcast in that the techZing guys seem to talk really, really fast, so either they are slightly speeding up the audio playback for effect or those guys should lay off the coffee! Their chat was amazingly fast paced, and whilst it means you get a lot said in a shorter time, it doesn't give us "slowbies" a chance to ponder on the stuff being said as its being said..

Also check out Chris' AI articles on his blogsite

Designing Games in a Vacuum #1
Designing Games in a Vacuum #2

Designing Emergent AI #1 - Intro
Designing Emergent AI #2 - Queries and Code
Designing Emergent AI #3 - Limitations
Designing Emergent AI #4 - Asymetrical Goals

The Case for Co-op Games

These articles exemplify Chris' close relationship with his gaming community as well as his transparency about the techniques he employs, and not only is it a great insight into the development process, but its also reassuring for fans of the game that he will listen and possibly implement functionality suggested by his playing followers.

New Evochron Legends Build Out Today!

New build of Evochron Legends out today
http://starwraith3dgames.home.att.net/evochronlegends/about.htm



Version 1.108 is ready for download. This update adds the following:

- New warp tunnel textures for jump drives and gates.
- New 3rd person view added, current target perspective.
- Autopilot now automatically controls jump drive for long range/deep space travel.
- Custom city object system now supports separate custom textures (rather than being linked to ships).
- Stations without names will now display their ID number rather than no data when hangar fees are paid.
- Higher frequency of mission participation from Alliance military spacecraft in war zones.
- Separate custom cities can now also be included for each planet in the game.
- Issue with an error message while changing music setting in-game fixed.
- Fix for the mouse-over display showing the wrong planet economy type.
- Multiple cargo object entities (container sets) per sector now supported.
- HUD highlight brackets added for cargo containers not being scanned.
- Version value and check routine added to universe data file system.
- Engine exhaust effect updated for a more centralized appearance.
- Fuel burn rate better calibrated (overall lower burn rate).
- Fix for custom planet textures not loading correctly.
- Planet positions in several systems updated.


The new target 3rd person view offers the same camera controls as the player view mode does, including zoom in/out and panning up/down/left/right. Simply press the default V key three times to access the new view mode. You can also change targets while in this mode.

To update your profile for station ID listing (if you are renting a hangar from a station without a name), simply clear the hangar, exit back to your ship, then restock it and save.

Trine

Trine is out on Steam
http://trine-thegame.com/site/



Hells bells its a bloody good looking puzzle platformer with saucy RPG leanings. Well worth the effort. I believe its coming to XBLA and PSN but sometime in the future.

Each character really does have clear and usuable powers, with the bow toting ranger girl being the best for getting around the play area with her agility and her grappling line (bionic commando style). The physics solutions to some of the puzzling and experience collection is something to behold, and with the clockwork crate conjuring wizard who can levitate and pull world items theres a lot of jiggling and fiddling you can do to the environment setup. Lastly you have the rather rotund beefy shield and steel toting warrior, who has the pleasure of laying waste to the attackable enemies, or smashing his way through boarded up entrances, or blocking incoming missile attacks. Switching between each of them is a dream, hotkeyed to 1,2 and 3. And you can do it mid-air if you're feeling twitchy skillful. If death for one of them ensues you can resurrect at half health at the next checkpoint orb, similar to Little Big Planets mechanism.

Utterly beautiful to look at, and really a physics based pleasure to play, plus you can level up various skills as your characters gain experience.. I'll be buying this at least on a console just to see how it translates, because the grappling can be a bit tricky with mouse and keyboard controls, takes a bit of mastering..

Mass Effect Galaxy

Firstly I have to openly admit that I love Mass Effect and I love the Mass Effect Universe, so this "review" might not be as objective as it should. As the game loaded on my new iPod Touch, I could hear the familiar tones of the original Mass Effect game play in the background, very comforting indeed.


This game is an abstraction of some of the elements that make Mass Effect such a compelling Universe to play in. It takes some of the storytelling, along with some of the dialogue and binds them together with sequences minimally animated in a comic book style along with tactical action based combat in small "single screen" arenas.

Taking each part of the blend in turn:

Story: There seems to be a definite storyline rolling along here, although much of the backstory is assumed (from the original game). New characters are thrown at you, with little reference to any existing ones, but they all have a familiar feel to them - Krogans are krogans, Asari are seductive etc. The arc here is meant to be part of the overall transition from the original Mass Effect game to the sequel Mass Effect 2, although it has yet to mesh into anything presented in the second bridging novel "Ascension".

Dialogue: The dialogue in the game is presented to you as alternatives represented by icons, thumbs up, thumbs down, question or exclamation marks. You drag these iconic options up and down, reading the accompanying text and settling on one to submit as your speech. You have to scroll through all options if you want to know exactly what you are saying, but since they're clustered into broad agree, disagree, or lets do it, you can just use the icons as a guide, but you'll be missing alot of the flavour of the conversational dialogue that way. If you're into Mass Effect at all, you'll know this is one of the pleasures of the game. If there is a chunk of dialogue coming from the NPC you're chatting to, theres often a pause, an elipsis and the need to press the continue icon. This would be fine, if the NPC dialogue remained in the same text box, however, you'll have read half of it, and then it will scroll up a box to present the continue option.. something which can annoy you if you're a bit eager to read the text presented, rather than wait for the scroll and continue to land. I'm not certain whether these dialogue options affect what happens in the game, most of it seems to be geared towards progressing you to the next section regardless, however there was one ocassion where instead of diving into combat I managed to convince the old pirate to surrender and have an easy retirement rather than take the "death or glory" option.


Comic Book Sequences: Some of the comic book sequences are really well animated conveying atmosphere and action without many frames being spent. The art is stylised, but fits the Mass Effect Universe perfectly. Some of the detail on the characters really shows through, and snipping it all up, it would make an excellent comic book on its own. I did notice one or two sections that were used again, some of the fight scenes, and the Mass Relay sequence for instance, but overall its enjoyable to see this stuff come to life in another media style.

Combat Action: Combat is presented as fixed packets of top down action, fighting in an arena with obstacles, destroyable items (crates), explosive items (power units), and several weapon toting enemies, often with differing strength. Each screen sized battleground is laid out with specific set paths and bottlenecks, with cover and removable cover. The object being to clear the area of enemies, and then advance through a doorway. There can be power ups (shields and health mainly) littered around the map at key places, or the enemies can drop power ups when they fall. You navigate your character through the area, using the iPod's Accelerometer, so tilting the device gently in a direction will cause your character to begin moving in that direction, tilting it more will make him run. Even though this sounds awkward it works remarkably well, since your fellow will auto fire at any enemy targetted, it becomes a game of movement, cover and line of sight angles.


You have three additional abilities at your disposal, a Biotic Hold, a Grenade launcher, and a Tech Shield sabotager, along with this you can pause the action at any time, to take stock, reset your current target and apply one of the specials. Depending upon the movements and reactions of the enemy in the level, you may have to switch targets to prioritise the kill, this is done by simply tapping on the enemy you want. You can also tap and target on crates and explodable power units, providing you with a useful ability to carve a different path through or to lure enemies into an area like a trap and detonate the environment for maximum damage. Your targetting reticule shows up thicker when you have a much tougher enemy, so you can prioritise your targets and eliminate the weaker ones first. Whilst dispatching the enemy, its always wise to have an escape route, or cover point handy as well as know where the shield and health power ups are.. the early combat levels are quite easy, but later on you will rely on environmental placements of cover, explosives and power ups to make it through. Whilst not providing exactly the same combat experience, this delivers an action based tactical burst requiring some thought to attain success. The Tech and Biotic powers are severely limited to one of each, and their use seemed more circumstantial, whereas I was always spamming the grenade whenever I could. The characters cautious fluid movement along with the gun effects do make it feel like a Mass Effect game despite its top down appearance. Since all combat takes place in a screen sized area, its often fast and furious, but bite size enough to make you want a bit more. Some encounters are a chain of a number of these "rooms", whereas one or two were just a single room.

The storyline does lead you off into the galaxy, and there is a 2d flat galaxy map you traverse in the order you want, but its little more than a number of locations, that you select, and then press the travel button. A part of the game that does feel lacking somewhat, is the absence of any RPG tweaking or party play. You do meet others whilst out on a mission, and you have your sidekick holographically jump in for some dialogue now and then, but you are all alone on the battlefield.

For a short mobile game, giving you bursts of Mass Effect mythos it doesn't do a bad job. For me, its definitely worth the couple of quid, simply to glimpse some more of the Mass Effect Universe.

Upgrade Complete

I've been recently impressed by a rather nifty little shooter from Armor Games named UPGRADE COMPLETE, which has a total of about half an hours play in it. However, the concept behind the game involves the usual upgrade mechanism, but applied to everything in the game. The game loader, titles, menus, progress bars, backgrounds, graphics, all novelty additions but the upgrade process is also key to progressing in the game itself.



Your ship starts out quite humble with a coin collector and two gun turrets. The ship moves left and right, but can angle as it does so, to provide you with an arc of fire. The enemy descends from above and you have to terminate them upon which they relinquish the valuable coin cargo. Collecting this with the center of your ship adds funds useful for upgrades! Completing the wave successfully gives you a bonus to the funds collected. Back to the shop you can then add more equipment spatially (within a defined rectangle around the ship). Equipment includes magnets to attract the coin to your collector, engines to boost ship speed and agility, turrets, lighting arc generators and missile launchers - all of which can be upgraded using coinage to a maximum of level 5. You have a limit on the number of items you can attach to your shipspace, and therefore a lot of the "strategy" involves working out a balance between firepower and coverage, as well as how fast you want the ship to move and whether you want to maximise your coin collecting abilities.

Placing your firing mechanisms across a wide area as possible is good to sweep the enemies up, but having some forward to soften them up, and some below your main ship, to catch stragglers that get by you is also important. A major part of the enjoyment of this casual blast em up is building your ship, and boosting the parts in a particular order to get you past the next wave, collect as money as you can and begin the re-design process as you add more or better equipment to the mix. The ability to go back to the main menu, and upgrade the system graphics and music options really does stack novelty onto enjoyement. When you have finally pushed on through to wave 20/20, there is still one or two things you can tweak up, to open up acheivements and end screens.

9/10 for providing a novel and entertaining bitesize of retro, yet original gaming. I wonder where you go with this sort of idea in a much more complex iteration of the game.

You'll have to spend $2000 to upgrade me to provide a better review, possibly a 10/10.

P.S. Although the 4 levels of graphics are entertaining, the people I've discussed this with have all agreed that graphics option 2 is the best - and once you upgrade theres no going back... although there is an upgradeable option to start from scratch.. thankfully.

Genre Hopping

Inspired by the "Genre Aversions" discussion over at Gamers with Jobs, I posed the following question to the UKGamer crew...

Can we all dig deep and come up with 3 games (from the past or present) that encouraged us out of our comfort zone and to hop into a genre we wouldn't normally play in? Sort of, the game that inspired you to try something else, whether it be a totally new genre defining game, or whether its just a game that sucked you in and broke your normal game genre favourites. Sort of name the games, with genre, and then what was it about the game that pushed you into the genre hop.

Since then, I've been thinking long and hard about the genre hopping question I posed, and I must say with a memory like mine its difficult to come up with historically accurate examples of this.. however a few of them immediately stand out in my gaming history..

Tekken - FIGHTING

Which sort of hit me with a double whammy, because it was the game that not only introduced me to fighting games as a genre, but it was also the game that pushed me over the edge and into the money leeching caverns of console gaming. A friend and I had planned a weekend of renting an original Playstation console from Blockbuster, along with the game Tekken. We used my membership card and hefty deposit and began a costly adventure in console gaming. Needless to say, after that weekend, I purchased my first PSX console, and spent the rest of my life funding a life of gaming. I also joined the ukgamer mailing list, or psx-list as it was then. It was 1995.


NBA Live '96 - SPORTS

This PSX game was responsible for my mid-nineties obsession with basketball. And ultimately it lead me into other sports (mainly American ones), where previously I had not tread. As an early teen I was a computer nerd (Vic-20, Commodore 64 were my life), I was always so far away from sports of any kind, that they just didn't exist to me. 1996 and NBA Live '96 changed all that, in the game I found a competitive spirit I'd not seen before, I'd found a game that required team play, but from my own gamepad, personalities I could begin to collect and learn, cool moves and dunks. Suddenly I had stepped into a world of fandom and love for The Game. I began watching basketball, getting US shows on VHS tapes from a mail order company (because I couldn't source any TV with Toronto Raptors games over here). I began going to UK Basketball matches, and watching local basketball matches, as well as creating websites for local teams and generally soaking up all things bball. It broke the ice for me on the sports genre, and I began to eat it all up, with my NFL addicition floating to the surface much later. It even opened up my eyes to football, something I'd never have dreamed of watching, playing as a game..

Colin McRae - RACING

The original rally game on the PSX, was the only driving game I'd taken to, because of the muddy slide physics. Most other driving games left me cold. And although I did hop onto the driving genre for a bit, with Metropolitan Street Racer on the Dreamcast, and Gran Turismo on the PS2, I still only have limited success with driving games, and I tend to gravitate more to ones where you can engage in combat as well (such as the Twisted Metal games).

Sled Storm - PHYSICS RACING

With my foray into the racing genre, I become indirectly involved with other physics based racing genre's such as sledding - with Sled Storm being one of my favourites, the handling and feel of the Sled, and the amazing music that accompanied the game (Econoline Crush, Rob Zombie), I was hooked and was propelled into the world of snowboarding like Cool Boarders, hoverbiking like Jet Moto and speed boat racing like Rapid Racer.

Since I'm a gamer who has a PC gaming pedigree of strategy, roleplaying and action based shooters (FPS and third person) the above genre hops were really out of character and ultimately all console bourne.

Damn those consoles.

AI War: Fleet Command

AI War is a game that almost passed me by. A 2d space based RTS that sailed past stealthily cloaked and headed for the nearest warp gate 'outta here'. Luckily my Impulse client explore page slyly winked a small ad for the game and like a distress beacon it caught my passing attention.


The game presents itself in 2d, all craft and structures are flat sprites. The backgrounds are rendered 3d planets and starscapes, but are purely for flavour - they do not affect the flow of the game. The scope and scale of the game however is big, you have large planetary systems as your main conflicted play area, interconnected via warp gates into a web weaving and winding itself into a chaotic galactic tapestry. The game setup allows you to randomly seed the generated Universe and select the number of planetary systems available. The connections between systems are "spun" in a chaotic fashion, and they can lead to isolated systems, ideal for defense, or well linked "junction" systems giving you many paths to travel and explore. Zoom is your friend, and as you plan your movements and offensives you will rarely notice the 2d sprites, because your broad strokes of battle will usually be made on the max zoomed iconic representations anyway. The sheer number of units that can be deployed is astounding, 10,000+ is not uncommon. The game was inspired by the similar large scale conflict and zoomed out operational approach that Supreme Commander adopted.

What is not obvious upon your first play with the tutorial levels is the nature of the more strategic scale of operations you will play out. It is your goal to scout and explore a path through the systems to locate specific advantageous enemy structures and either destroy them or capture them. This almost surgical precision applied to your offense is your greatest strength, because if you advance aggressively through the Universe conquering all you meet, you will quickly meet your demise, because with each takeover the AI's aggression turns up a notch. With every conquest, you're essentially stoking the AI into a frenzy and into more advanced tactics to employ against you. A more carefully planned and well considered approach is needed to balance the AI aggression as you make your way forward. Destroying its data centers deny the AI valuable computational resources and thus reduces the AI's aggression level. Capturing Advanced Research facilities will open up to you some of the more specially developed equipment that the AI can use against you, equalising the odds when it comes to tech vs tech conflicts. Another key tactic to employ is to secure your travel lanes, by blockading warp gates and holding the AI enemy at bay whilst you planet hop your way around the most economic and efficient path.

So, in essence, you are:

1. scouting and pathfinding
2. exploring and searching out key targets
3. plugging and unplugging warp gates
4. capturing planet systems to install resource gathering equipment
5. eeking out scientific knowledge from new planetary systems
6. managing your manufacturing and fleet content so that when you find the AI core base you can annihilate it!

The unique draw of this game is that you're plunged into a randomly seeded Universe, where the AI can be scaled in difficulty and tweaked with various play styles into very different opponents. As the name suggests the AI plays a very important role in the games appeal, and as such it can be tailored to your needs, and pacing. The developer has provided a very detailed explanation of the unique features of the AI, from its swarm intelligence to its completely emergent sub-commander logic, and a layer of fuzzy logic applied over it, so that its not always predictable and precise. Another feature is that the game supports up to 8 players working cooperatively against the AI, so gather your disparate fleets to survive, live long and prosper (the AI also scales depending upon the number of players involved in the conflict). Sadly, the game doesn't support player versus player combat, with the main focus of the game pitting the strategic and tactical capabilities of the human player against this finely crafted AI.



There are a large variety of hardware on offer and many of the techs will open up new tactical possibilities, with free downloadable content being available in the form of new community requested features and ships. Some examples of the equipment you can utilise (in addition to the usual range of fighters, bombers and starships) are: defense turrets, mines and mine repairers, tractor beam turrets, laser turrets, long range sniper turrets, missile turrets, force field shields, de-cloaking devices, detectors of incoming ships through warp gates, to name a few, and I've really only scratched the surface in terms of the unit specialisations. I am assured that as you play the game, increasing AI difficulty levels and AI play styles, you will find new uses for existing equipment and you will discover new equipment and new tactical ways to deploy them.

I would recommend watching the video guides presented by the developer to get a feel for how to get started with the game, and to see an explanation of the "bigger picture" strategic game.

Since you specify the parameters of the Universe you play in, there are a lot of replay opportunities and the degrees of AI difficulty and play style will also further add to that, so you're getting a lot of indie-fuelled strategic play for your $20. But you are also encouraged to become part of the AI War community, and participate in its future evolution and development. With DLC already being rolled out regularly, and a planned expansion in the works, you too could be a part of its emergence.

Whilst playing the game, I'm reminded of other games, Supreme Commander, Sins of a Solar Empire, Stars!, but also see glimpses of Battlestar Galactica's desperate plight of jumping through a Universe full of Cylons and having to "box clever" to stem the tide of the AI toasters and jump your way through secured corridors of space, picking up what little resources you can... but then I do have a vivid imagination for those sort of things.

JUMP!

Conquest: Medieval Realms

I've only played through the first and second scenario in the first campaign. Its not a bad game if you like boardgame territory grabbing. The key to winning seems to be divide and conquer.. all about cutting the enemies supply of money by slicing territories in half and reducing their income so they can't support the army raised. If the territory does become financially compromised, then you simply lose your men, and the surrendered flag shows up in their hex. This can lead to devastating defeats, if you're not protective enough of your territory.



Units face off against each other based on level, and there are no exceptions to the rules a level 2 unit beats a level 1, a level 3 unit beats a level 2. So you have to make sure you have the coinage to purchase the appropriate levelled unit. In order to gain cavalry and ranged units, you have to spend some money on converting forest land to archery ranges, and building stables. You start with pikemen. You can buy a higher level unit straight off if you have the gold, or you can buy lower levelled units and upgrade existing ones with them. Their zone of control regardless of unit, is a single depth ring of six hexes around your units current position. Although you can attack by moving onto a lower levelled unit's hex. Your movement will be restricted if there are higher level units exerting zones of control in front of you, or defensive buildings such as forts and castles.

Presentation is very boardgame, and the miniatures are well realised. The UI is very minimal and functional, obviously done on a budget, with the art assets mainly being tied up with the miniatures. There are some historical facts included in the campaign, which is a nice touch to add some credibility to the very abstracted boardgame presentation. The second scenario in the War of the Roses campaign, is actually at Sandal Castle in Wakefield, England (a place where I lived and played as a teenager) and I was quite disappointed to see that the castle grounds are depicted as a mere large hexagonal set of walls. Not quite a historically accurate abstraction of the place I used to climb over all those years ago.. but you know, it was exciting to finally see a wargame depiction of the siege at Sandal Castle.



There are a one or two niggly issues I have with the game, first the miniatures don't drag and drop as you'd want, as you pick it up with a left click on the mouse, the unit drops to well below the mouse cursor, and you place the unit by putting the mouse cursor over the destination hex, and sadly NOT by placing the miniature down over the hex. This single very nitpicky interface quirk, really did drop me out of the illusion that its a boardgame with lovely metal miniatures. Secondly, there doesn't seem to be any feedback when the AI executes its turn, all its moves are resolved in an instance, and your carefully laid plans and defences just disappear or shift about without much in the way of understanding at what the enemy has done. You can often read what might be coming next from the AI's current position and indeed, you strategy is probably geared towards this, but it would be that much more rewarding if there was an option to play out the enemy's actions, or at least have some sort of summary of what happened on a piece by piece basis. The tutorial option on the menus mentioned tutorial scenario's, but from what I can see, the tutorial consists of three pages of information with diagrams to explain the game.

The game does support network play, and even comes with editors for custom skirmishes or scenarios or even custom campaigns, so I'd wager there is a lot of replayability, especially if a modding community gets off the ground. I cannot really comment on the effectiveness of the network play, since I've only really dabbled in the single player game.

Overall, for the money, its worth a go if you enjoy the more abstracted gameplay of a territory grabbing boardgame. Whether the AI can stand up to the more seasoned wargamer, I'm not sure, but with the ability to play against human opponents it could become quite a "chess like" battle of wits.

Advanced Tactics: WW2

It has to be said all this WeeWar stuff has got me into a right lather about strategic war games, but WeeWar is a bit light, for those quick lunchtime sessions, so I've been looking into other similar games with much more depth.

I was recommended Advanced Tactics: WW2 (which is more of a war game engine with a comprehensive scenario editor), and it has totally enchanted me.



The level of depth to the play is quite refreshing for someone who plays a lot of lightweight strategy and is always frightened off by the proper 'grognards' stuff. The supply mechanism alone is worth its weight in gold, because now you have to factor in logistics as a major part of the battle. Chains of supply, and troop movements are all necessary. It comes across more like a Steel Panthers with added depth. The interface is a bit quirky, but it does the job, and the photo stuff is a nice touch. Plus it even supports bonus cards and research trees for unit upgrades. Anyway, I could spout on all day about this feature and that complexity, its no easy ride to begin with, because the tutorial scenario is very brief and the manual is more of an interface and rules list than any sort of instructional guide.. however, there is a decent community on Matrixgames forums, and looking over their AAR's (After Action Report) has opened the game up a bit more for me, after my tentative steps into getting my ass handed to me by the basic training scenario.

If you have some time, and you are interested in complex fulfilling wargames then give this AAR a read, it has pictures and turn by turn based explanations. Its by a person who has just begun exploring the AT game, so it also presents the beginners view on things, and some of the old vets chip in here and there to help out.

This really spices up the tiles and hexes for me, and gives a blow by blow account of what he encounters and how he reacts to the games AI.

There is a scenario building community here, complete with a Scenario bank full of downloads for extra games to spend hours mulling over..

Its been a while since a PC strategy game has caught me by the nollocks and worked me up into a frothy latte. Worth the entrance fee, and I'm ashamed I've put this game in the same mail as 'WeeWar'.

Evochron Legends

Evochron Legends (EL) is a space combat, mining and trading simulation set in the Evochron Universe. Since it is a simulation, it will take you time to come to terms with the mechanics of basic space flight, navigation, mining and trading - but the investment of effort early on will pay out later. The demo of the game is time limited, but the tutorials for the game don't count against this. So it is encouraged that you play through the tutorials one by one, taking in the information presented. Although they can be daunting at first, with the 'wall of text' presented to you, that text is accompanied with spoken word, which helped me ease into the cockpit. I can see that without the tutorials, just diving in may leave you lost and abandoned. I can also see why people try to skip over the tutorials, their enthusiasm and impatience egging them on to get flying and fighting, but since the finesse of combat and all other matters are derived from your basic skills as a pilot in a void using Newtonian physics, I'll stress it again, these tutorials and the information they impart is the key to opening the wonders of the Pandora's box that is EL. Once you "get it", you'll uncover the depths that the game offers.

The Evochron Universe is a seamless experience, once you are in the cockpit, there are no zones or loading screens to bother you. You have a fulcrum warp drive which you can use to jump through space, and there are connected jump gates between systems, but it is equally possible to use your fulcrums to get to any system if you are a good navigator. Another plus is the ability to Planet fall and switch to normal flight avionics, and drop through the atmosphere and land on planet based stations. You can even land gently on the planets surface and go strip mining by focussing your mining laser downwards. The Universe is distributed about systems and they all have their points of interest and anomalies, as well as a main storied mission that you can choose to follow throughout the game. At space stations, you can enter the shipyards, or trade in precious goods, or re-fuel and re-arm, or take on local missions, such as cargo drop offs, ship protection, enemy ship destruction, races, solar panel cleaning, and asteroid clearance. You can even read the local news, and market changes, as well as get a feel for your standings with the various system wide factions, whether that be with the military, or the rebels. Your reputation amongst system factions influences equipment and costs, and how various other craft will react to you. To gain very good reputation with one faction, you may need to actively lower reputation with another by hunting and destroying their ships.

The game is an evolution of the StarWraith series of games, dating back many years, particularly Legends is a sequel to the Evochron Renegades (ER) game, with updated graphics, and many features requested by the previous games players. In fact one of the key selling points of this game is that you're not just buying into the dry downloaded software, you're actually supporting the StarWraith community, you're enabling the developer to continue evolution of the series. Uniquely, we have a dedicated person as the games sole developer, Vice, who takes a very active part in his community. He is willing to listen, to evaluate and to modify the game based on ideas and suggestions presented by his player base. A sort of symbiosis exists whereby the developer nurtures his players through his game, with hints, tips and advice, and they feedback, enthuse and cultivate his community and popularity by word of mouth.

The game is a simulation and as such, you are encouraged to master inertial flight, and the use of the IDS (Inertial Dampening System) which ultimately controls where you're going and how fast, and how much fuel you will expend. Firing your afterburner with IDS off, and zero thrust, will hurtle your craft in a particular direction at maximum velocity, cutting the burners will maintain that velocity without expending any fuel. Meanwhile you can spin on your axis and take in the sights, or gun down incoming missiles, or perform those 'flip on a sixpence' Viper turns you see in the likes of Battlestar Galactica. Switching on the IDS, engages a whole array of thrusters and compensators to maintain your position and direction set by your steering and your main engines. Learning to take advantage of inertial flight and its manoeuvring possibilities, especially in combat, is the key to being a good pilot in EL. Combat can be very hectic and you'll spend a while getting used to missile interception or avoidance (with countermeasures) as well as utilising beam weapons to drain your enemies shields, and particle cannons to blast holes in their hulls. I'll warn you now, the game can be quite brutal and unforgiving in terms of there are so many ways to die, my advice would be quick save often and learn from your mistakes.

Graphically speaking Evochron Legends isn't at the front of the pack, however, what it lacks in bloated textures, it makes up for in disk space conservation (the is a 45Mb download, with a 130Mb footprint) and artistic beauty. Some of the scenes available in the game are simply breathtaking.



In customising your spacecraft, EL surpasses most other space combat sims in the flexibility of your ships overall appearance, with many of the upgrade able parts (engines, wings, cargo holds, fuel tanks, shields) having distinctive looks, but also in that you can change the positioning of the parts, and their scale in all dimensions by using the custom slider bars. So you can build a truly unique vessel, symmetrical or not, with components you place and size up. Your craft's hull for instance has a specific form, but what you do with the components attached to it, is completely up to you. All of this, and the spaceships look like space travelling craft, some space combat simulations struggle at delivering believable vessels, but EL manages to give you flexibility and integrity. The game's visuals are also scalable so that you should be able to get the game running on quite a low specification machine and still enjoy it.

Both the multiplayer and the single player experience are interchangeable, meaning you can load a pilot profile and play offline, save it and then take the same pilot profile onto one of the player hosted dedicated servers. The servers can host 32 players online at any one time, and the software and configuration files are available for download, so you can run your own private Universe if you want to. Knowing that you can log onto a server, and continue your gameplay, only be able to chat to other pilots, or have them join you in some co-operative missions, or even go head to head against them in Player versus Player (PvP) combat, is extremely exciting. The StarWraith Community forum is a considerate, mature, friendly and very helpful place to converse about the game, and to organise meets and match ups online. So you're never far away from someone who wants to impart knowledge about the game, or who is willing to give you a coaching session online. In fact there are a number of clans there that have grown together through the development of the StarWraith games and who like to take part in organised leagues. Theres even a Capture the Flag style setup in one of the systems for players to experience more than just your normal deathmatch style PvP game. The main difference between the multiplayer and single player game, is that the multiplayer game doesn't affect your faction reputation.

As much as possible the developer has built the game to be mod-able. You can change a lot of the HUD and interface, textures and ship models, you can customise all manner of gamepad controllers and joysticks, and you can even set the game up for TrackIR's 3d head control mechanism for managing you in cockpit viewpoint.

The game has a few rough edges, it is a labour of love, and it has a number of idiosyncrasies ("close up" low textures, quirks in the interface etc), however, if you are willing to be a part of the StarWraith community, your suggestions can help forge the future for this game. Imagine being a part of the process of something so inspiring and so exciting... that is what EL opens up to you. For example, since launch last week, and ultimately down to many suggestions on the forums, the game has gone through 4 or 5 patch iterations, including function changes to the Nav console itself, and more multiplayer information linking and optimising. This is community based 'hands on' gaming at its best.

Overall, you just can't find a more compact and elegantly evolved space combat simulation game. If Elite had a cool big brother this would be it.



Some points to note:

1. affordable and very re-playable
2. large explorable universe with factions
3. freeform open gameplay, exploring, trading, building and customising, racing, fighting, mining, transporting, protecting
4. the space flight physics (inertial flight actually helps you reduce the cost of fuel)
5. planet fall, and switch to gravity based flight model
6. the ability to customise your ship uniquely, by adding, placing and scaling parts
7. the ability to play as a twitch pilot doing missions, and combat and mining (asteroid and planet surface) and trading, fuel scooping from stars and nebula
8. the small download (45Mb) and install footprint (130Mb)
9. single player profile can be used interchangeably on a multiplayer server and play co-operatively or competitively with up to 32 other players
10. run a dedicated server of your own
11. part of the StarWraith community

This is Patapolis!

Having not played anything worth while on my PSP for well over a year, I was inspired by Tom Chick's adulation of Patapon 2 to pick up a copy. Luckily it was marked at £19.99 in GAME, however, they were having a sale on PSP games and it come in at a rather remarkable price of £9.99.

I was intrigued by the way it was claimed that the game married a 2d side scrolling Real Time Strategy game with a rhythmn action game. Before playing the game, I couldn't imagine how it worked. After an hour or so in the game, I can honestly say that "they've only gone and done it Rodney!". The Marriage is a success, so far!



As a person who chokes back a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye, when any rousing beat is played to marching armies.... having the ability to play "war drums" to command your small eyeball troops really does fuel your growing excitement in the game.

As you match the drum patterns with the 4/4 timer, pata-pata-pata-pon, your troops begin to gingerly move forward checking for danger ahead, pata-pata-pata-pon, they start to pick up the pace, until your third combo, pata-pata-pata-pon, has them blustering forward with gusto and momentum, singing proud and jubilant. You spy an advancing enemy coming in from the right of the screen. Its time to pound the drums of war! PON-PON-PATA-PON! Your troops taking up arms with grimaces on their eyeball faces they begin their attack, PON-PON-PATA-PON!, thrusting spear and sword, tossing javelin and axe, PON-PON-PATA-PON! again your drumbeat combo has them in a kill frenzy. The music and chanting, drumming and caterwauling from your troops, some of them leaping into the air with bloodlust is an envigorating sight to behold, I must confess.

The more you advance in the game, the more troops you can specialise, and tweak your army's content and formation. Recruiting new troops in, collecting resources as your march and hack and slash your way through each level. Pounding down walls, and raising towers and barracks with flame and poision, accompanied by the backbeat of your triumphant hammering on the Patapon drums. If you have an ounce of interest in conflict and rhythm, then you'll love this game. Tinkering with your troops, and mixing in your battlefield commands using tempo and timing, is a reward in itself. If you miss a beat, or drop the momentum, your troops will sigh and calm, and sluggishly lose their morale. So timing is everything. And I can almost guarentee that the beat of war will have you tapping your feet, nodding your head, and on some occasions have you positively dancing with elation.

The level of intensity the game presents to you, requires a lot of focus, but for brief sessions at a time, so you can safely participate in the game in bursts of pure enjoyment. Its not quite the battle of Thermophylae, but its marching to the beat of the Patapolis phalanx..

Memorable Game Music

The first in-game music that I remember totally gripped me, and more or less turned me into a PC Gamer who decided game music had enough credibility to be listened to out of game was the soundtrack to Anarchy Online. It wasn't just ambient space music, it actually had recognisable melody and quite pacey sections too.



Other more traditional fantasy based games and console titles that have haunting or memorable music that I still play nowadays are:

Diablo 2 (PC)
Dragons Blood (Dreamcast)
Divine Divinity (PC)
Neverwinter Nights 2 (PC)
Phantasy Star Online (Dreamcast)
Primal (PS2)
Sled Storm (PSX)
Zone of the Enders (PS2)
XGRA (XBox)
Flow (PS3)
Snakeball (PS3)
Two Worlds (PC)
The Witcher (PC)
Mass Effect (360,PC)

Basically a lot of game music tends to be background ambient or orchestral, but very few actually affect you in an emotional way, in a way that you become familiar and attached to the music and the excitement tied up with playing the game.

Oh, and I remember being enchanted and disturbed at the same time by the music out of the PC title "The 7th Guest" many moons ago, and I often think I hear snippets of other music that sound like it. Spooky.

Allies vs Axis - AKA Plants vs Zombies

Whilst playing through Popcap's Plants vs Zombies, I can't help but think about how many "serious" gamers might be turned off by the overtly low res cartoon graphics (that admittedly do lend the game its "charm" and artistic style).


Imagine if you will a more dark and gritty implementation, still with stylised art, but less colourful, loony and throwaway. Perhaps take the art style of a game such as Disciples for instance, or for the wargamer sub in Allies vs Axis (with Sunflowers being supply trucks, and peashooters Artillery guns, and walnuts entrenched soldier fortifications) and then the game may cross more boundaries and not be taken as a cutesy casual game.

As it is, I like the game very much, I think the game has a lot of depth, yet it presents its depth as frivolity. Which works on one level. But, I feel, boiling down the mechanic and tweaking it for a real time (but abstracted) conflict in more "mature" settings would elevate it in the global strategy community.

It seems as an all round gamer (with a job, family and responsiblities), who delves into casual abstractions (sometimes distractions) as much as console stalwarts and nitpicking niche strategy titles, I yearn for more credible casual titles, condensed "quicker play" games that have great game mechanics, but don't need the rainbow of the fat brushed primary palette nor the cutesy cartoon art style to appeal to the so called "casual space".

I guess ultimately what I want is a more abstracted almost boardgame mechanic that is often applied to casual games, but with the mature artistic flair and appeal of full blown titles, rather than the "fisher price" glitz and glam of a traditional Reflexive/Popcap title.

I suppose I should make it clear that I am virtually in love with the game Plants Vs Zombies, and would urge people to snap it up and gorge themselves on it now. I even find the viral marketing they did beforehand charming to some extent, and I "get" the jokes they present during the game. I just think it would make me more happy if the game was presented more credibly rather than as a bit of a joke. Stacked up against Stalin Vs the Martians, PvZ blows them out of the water, with tangleweed.