I've been doing a lot of playing lately, of things all over the spectrum and often not in good range of an online writing tool. Nevertheless, I'd like to capture some or all of those activities. So!
Played in the last week ...
Played in the last week ...
Played in the last week:
- Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery: EP - This iPad game
has been hotly anticipated for several years now, and I've got to say
... it does live up to the hype. At least the hype I found. Ars Technica has a nice review
that says most of what I'd have to say about it. It appeals to me as a
"lonely game", a genre that I really enjoy. I haven't seen that term
thrown around much, so it might be worth an entry here sometime, but the
gist is that "lonely game"s often start with a lone character in a
largely empty but beautiful or eerie world, trying to figure out what's
going on. Exploration, discovery, puzzling are the mechanics;
atmosphere and mystery are the aesthetics. S:S&S:EP is all that on a
LucasArts-style point-and-click UI on the iPad.
- Agricola - If you're in any board game circles, or go to PAX, or ever visit BoardGameGeek,
you might be sick of hearing about this game. I'm really enjoying it,
so you could soon get sick of hearing about it here. It's a
well-balanced game, which is remarkable considering the 34,000 elements
that a regular game keeps moving. It plays smoothly with two players or
with five, if you're willing to give it the recommended 30 min/player
(and then some). My wife and I tied twice this week, a remarkable
achievement.
- Tiny Wings - This iPhone game
makes me smile, and I think that's part of the point. You guide a
little round bird, who has the titular Tiny Wings, which don't let him
fly very well. Fortunately, his world is composed of round sine-wave
hills, so he can zoom down one slope and ski-jump off the upslope.
There's one button - you touch the screen, and the bird dives so that he
can zoom. Then up the next slope, you let go, and he does his best to
fly in a parabolic arc. Do it just right and you get the most
satisfying feeling as you time the jumps and the poor little bird gets
to pretend to fly until nightfall. The design of this game is so
elegant, so simple, and the art style perfectly suited to it, that it's
hard to think of a cleaner, more perfectly realized game. I'm pleased
as well that the central experience that the game works to create in the
player is a combination of focus, hope, and joy.
- Marple
- This is a fairly simple logic puzzle for the iPhone/iPad, with play
that feels a lot like sudoku. Like many such puzzles, it's just a
matter of time before you figure it out, and a lot of the play is just a
matter of quickly and adroitly processing the clues. What has gotten
me in this one is that each game takes 2-5 minutes, generally, and I
enjoy the turning point as I've figured out enough of the puzzle that
the rest begins to fall into place.
- D&D 3.5e - On Friday I ran, for the first time in several years, an adventure in Dungeons and Dragons.
The game isn't new to me, though I was a bit rusty after several years
away; but it was new to three of the five players, who'd never played a
tabletop RPG at all. It was wild to start from "So I'm going to
describe what's going on, and you will each play a character and tell me
what you do." The group picked it up quickly, and we had fun. I was a
little frustrated, as the story was only just getting going when we ran
out of time, but we hit all my instructional goals: the group gathering,
a social encounter, a social conflict encounter, a tactical combat
encounter, and a chance to wander around collecting information. One
thing that hit me was all of the seemingly ancillary experiences that
came so quickly and forcefully back when I got behind the DM's screen
again. The nervousness and sense of underpreparation. The joy of
getting into character with a player, doing the same. Watching players
slowly figure out a puzzle I'd put before them. Seeing throw-away
comments come back as role-playing hooks for other players. It made me
really want to run a regular group again. However, it also surprised me
with a fresh look at 3.5e D&D ... my goodness, but that's a lot of
setup for characters for new players. And even for experienced players,
so many fiddly numbers, all the time, and so many situations and
exemptions and rules.
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