Heard The Word

Battles of Norghan

DrJ — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 17:32:49 -0500

Game Info

Game: Battles of Norghan
Game Genre: Management/Fantasy Combat
Developer: Mitorah Games
System Requirements: Pentium III 500 Mhz+, 128K RAM, Windows 98+, Direct X 9.0+, Direct 3D graphics card with 8 MB RAM
Price: $24.99

Article Body:

Magical Mystery Tournament
Review of Battles of Norghan
By Dr. J.

The marriage of a sports management-style game with tactical combat seems like a natural. To be sure, it is more difficult to accomplish than a pure management simulation, but for those of us who are control freaks, it’s extremely satisfying to actually command our ranged units (wizards, mystery archmages, and archers) on when to let their missiles of destruction fly and to order our heavy-duty (knights, black knights, giants, and minotaurs) into melee after the magical and medieval artillery have softened their targets.

Battles of Norghan (BON) offers the features I like most about Colisseum from Stormcloud Creations. Players have the chance to assemble rosters from a pool of freelance fighters and must balance the salary and equipment demands with some measure of profitability. In many ways, BON is like Arcadia that Stormcloud Creations is currently developing. In this case, players recruit fighters into a clan, manage training and equipment, and recruit temporary fighters to meet needs during upcoming engagements. Although BON does not have the quest mechanism built into Arcadia, its training and equipping systems are significantly more robust. Plus, a new clan is instantly placed into the lowest of eight divisions so that it does not have to compete with the toughest clan in the game from the beginning.

PUMP ‘EM UP: In the Training Camp, players can improve each unit individually by selecting the regime on the left side or train all fighters equally by choosing the program on the right side.

This latter feature is significant for the price/performance ratio given in the ratings. After a couple of false starts, it took me one season to become the runner-up for the Small Clans’ Cup (usually fought out between the 6th-8th divisions) and one more season to become the winner of the Small Clans’ Cup. Then, my clan (known as Cannonfodder in my own self-deprecating, anachronistic attempt at humor) was placed in the Seventh Division to begin its quest against tougher competition and try to win enough gold to recruit a bigger clan and, eventually, become competitive for the Cup of Glory, the game’s ultimate stake. It actually took close to 30 hours to win the first cup and between 10 and 12 hours to win the second. Yet, I still hadn’t closed in on the ultimate goal. Plus, with the challenges becoming greater as one’s clan moves up, the game doesn’t seem to get old—at least, to this hoary, old grognard.

The Armory (Positive Aspects)

Combat is handled similar to miniatures combat. Each unit is allotted speed points (action points as per some rules) with which to accomplish its desired actions. Speed points depend on basic character attributes as well as armor worn. They determine the distance each fighter can cover, the type of attack that can be made, and, if a magic wielder, whether a spell can be cast or not (most spells being full round actions). The tactical nature of the combat reminds me a lot of playing Dungeons & Dragons on the table-top except that initiative (a separate die roll in the tabletop game) is strictly handled in an “I go-You go” format where players move one character at a time until all players are moved.

SHOOTING THE BULL: With adequate ranged weapons and magic spells, one can usually reduce an opponent’s “big gun” (even if he’s a minotaur or giant) before he reaches your “front line.”

The combat algorithms consider such factors as reach (how long the weapon is) and range in determining possible targets, attack styles, and damage. In fact, it appears that the variety of weapons and damage ranges associated with those weapons are considerably more diverse than even those found in the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

In combat, you are always shown the percentage chance of hitting as you attempt your attacks. This not only keeps you aware of how sound or unsound your tactics are, but also lets you see that the different types of armor and terrain (grass, lush grass, desert, and dirt) have an impact on your ranged attacks.

Best of all, all combat choices can be made quickly by right-clicking the character, choosing an action from the pop-up menu, and clicking on the target. It could only be more efficient if hot keys were assigned to the actions as well as the spells.

A CLICK IN TIME: Right-clicking each character opens a menu of options (with the familiar grayed-out commands for impossible actions) and clicking on the “Cast a Spell” command opens a similar menu of spells.

Magic is point-based. Each unit capable of casting spells is given a pool of mana from which to cast. Successful casting of a spell reduces the caster’s mana pool by the full cost associated with the spell (e.g. two points for casting a Magical Punching spell, five points for casting Magic Missile, and six points for casting Firebolt or Icebolt). Failure to cast a spell will also drain mana from the individual character’s reserve, but the cost is random and never as high as the cost of a successful casting of the spell. Spells are purchased between battles and once they are learned, the only cost is the expenditure of mana.

What’s best to like about the magic is that it has a nice variety and no one type of magic user is capable of utilizing all types. It takes druids to lure animals into the battle and priests to perform the more significant acts of healing (though several character classes can perform minor healing). An Icebolt spell both does damage and slows an opponent. A Firebolt spell usually does more damage, but doesn’t slow the oncoming target. Some spells, naturally, enhance the strength, toughness, and accuracy of your own units. Others negate the positives or breach the armor of your enemies. Frankly, the spell mix is extremely well considered and adds to both the tactical playing experience and the overarching recruiting aspect to the game.

Another aspect that keeps one coming back to the game is the fact that, while the goal is to capture the Cup of Glory (the overall championship) on a regular basis, there are individual rewards for killing the most rivals, having the best kills per combat average, developing the best equipment, having the best toughness rating among the clans. It seems like every time you turn around in this game, there is a reward to be sought and something interesting to do.

Finally, even though the graphics for the tactical combat aren’t much better than those found in such games as Medieval or the original Age of Wonders, each attack does have a payoff animation (animated arrows, bolts, fireballs, etc.).

The Trenches (Negative Aspects)

Ironically, those animated payoffs that I just complimented are part of one of my frustrations about the game. As it currently exists, the player orders a character to fire a ranged attack (crossbow, longbow, firebolt, icebolt, etc.). Then, the program immediately calculates the adjustments from the base percentage chance to hit (range, armor, obstructions) and prints the result of this calculation in a text box on the screen. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate having this kind of information on-screen. I would just prefer that it not pop up before the animation depicting the missile begins. This is an incredibly minor issue to me, though, but I mention it in hopes it will altered in future designs or expansions.

ANTI-CLIMAX: The animated spell effects appear after the results are printed on-screen.

Another thing that detracts from the tactical game is that the artificial opponents invariably close on your party as rapidly as they can. To be sure, a few druids, priests, wizards, and mysteryarchs do hang back wisely while they send giants, minotaurs, and well-armored fighters as their vanguard, but that vanguard is always coming at your fighters. As a result, BON plays much better for those of us who play “defense” than for those who like to be on the offensive. I found that, unless severely outnumbered by units with massive amounts of hit points, the strategy of hanging back and letting “them” come to you is most effective.

As for drawbacks from the strategic game, there are only two that grab my attention. First, there doesn’t seem to be a mechanism to allow you to view your contracts at a glance. For example, did you hire that wizard for five battles or two? Did you actually recruit that black knight as a member of the clan (lifetime) or only for a year’s worth of competition? Since an optimal mix requires a judicious balance and you only get a portion of the equipment prices back (and none of the magical spell prices back) when the mercenary leaves your service, that can be pretty important information.

The second drawback to the strategic game has to do with the auction at the mercenary camp. Since one of the most vital parts of the game is recruiting mercenaries to fight for your clan, you can well imagine that a problem here can really destroy a potentially good game. Frankly, you won’t have many problems if you take the advice of the tutorial and left-click and/or right-click several times to “Skip Bidding” (left-clicks skip one round; right-clicks skip ten rounds) before you click to “End Bidding.” In this way, you can be relatively sure that no one has outbid you on a given mercenary.

But, there have been occasions when I thought I had the high bid and discovered upon return to the main screen that my mercenary (or mercenaries) had not accompanied me. This can be particularly devastating if you are on a tight budget and found yourself trying to beef up a weak team for one of the single-elimination Cup tournaments. I had to restart more than one game because of this problem.

The Tavern (How to Cheat (Warning: Spoiler))

Technically, you would be up a tree when this happens (or the occasional glitches I experienced where the program set up a battle without my whole team present), but there is a workaround. It isn’t pretty, but the truth is that the program doesn’t save the status of your team until after a battle is complete. So, if you click to return to the Main Menu and quit Battles of Norghan completely, you can come back to the game, load your game, and renegotiate your mercenary contracts. Naturally, this also means that when an important Cup battle isn’t going your way, you can always cheat and do this to avoid a disqualifying defeat.

The Command Tent (Tactics)

In more than one Cup battle where I was facing opponents from higher divisions, I discovered that I was undermanned and outgunned. In such cases, I would recruit strong units like minotaurs and orcs on a one-battle contract and, once the battle was loaded, immediately send them off on a flanking movement. I would leave my spellcasters, longest-ranged archers, and a couple of strong guards behind to cover the casters. This usually meant that the strongest fighters from the opposing team would chase the flanking attack.

This allowed me to accomplish two things. First, I could use long-range attacks against the best-armored of my opponents without having them close on my spellcasters because they were being drawn away by cannonfodder worthy of my team name. Second, the tactic tended to split the opposition into two forces. Third, if my spell casters needed to pass enough turns to rebuild their mana supply, they had time to retreat as the opposition regrouped.

The Treasure Vault (Conclusions)

Battles of Norghan is the kind of game for which I’ve been looking for a long time. It has just the right mix of strategic planning and tactical challenge framed by a reason to keep playing season after season. I’m still trying to figure out if Grey Dog Sports’ Total College Basketball or Battles of Norghan is the most addictive game I’ve played this year. It’ll probably take a couple more seasons of both to make the decision.

If you’re looking for state of the art graphics, sound, and animation, stay away. If you’re looking for a perfect use of terrain to reduce speed and create obstructions/hazards, you should probably look elsewhere. But, if you’re looking for hours and hours of satisfying play that leaves you clicking for just one more battle, Battles of Norghan is the one for you—a near-perfect hybrid.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 9 (on scale of 10)

Interface: 8 (Needs More Hot Keys)
Documentation: 7 (Word File)
Replayability: 10 (Lures You Back)
Graphics: 6 (Fairly Retro)
Price/Performance: 9 (More than 60-hours of play)
Reviewer’s Bias: 10 (Game I’ve Dreamed Of)

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Battles of Norghan

Gumboy Crazy Adventures: Have a Ball!

DrJ — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 13:23:01 -0500

Game Info

Game: Gumboy Crazy Adventures
Developer: Cinemax
Genre: Arcadia / Puzzle
System Requirements: Windows 2000/XP (SP2), 1GHz+ CPU (1.5 GHz Recommended), 256MB of RAM, 3D video card w/32MB Supporting OpenGL (128MB Recommended).
Price: $19.99

Article Body:

Bizarre Worlds and Strange Situations
By Chuck Miller

It’s hard to evaluate Gumboy Crazy Adventures without comparison to games such as LocoRoco, Gish, Wik, and even Eets, as the similarities are apparent. Nonetheless, it stands on its own as a unique title, a refreshingly challenging yet quirky side-scroller set in a fanciful, fairy-tale world. Crazy Adventures indeed!

DWARFED PERCEPTION: The world of Gumboy offers a fairy-tale style experience.

Follow the Bouncing Ball

Gumboy lacks a story element. It has no quests to perform, no worlds to save, and no overarching goals except to move from one level to the next. In fact, it’s pretty much an old-school side-scroller in modern-day garb. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. Its straightforward gameplay is an invigorating change of pace from the elaborate, overly-complex titles that too many developers are churning out these days. Gumboy is simple…and, to this reviewer, that’s good.

So, what’s Gumboy Crazy Adventures all about? Well, physics mostly. Gumboy is a rubber ball that rolls, bounces, and ricochets around his environment performing relatively simple tasks. Not necessarily simple to perform, but clear-cut in their goal. For example, one task might be successfully moving an object from Point A to Point B intact. But, there’s more to it than that. Gumboy must deal with forces like gravity, inertia, traction, adhesion and more.

The Shape of Things to Come

Fortunately, the game’s globular protagonist can change shapes and properties. Power-ups placed strategically throughout each level alter Gumboy’s appearance and abilities. Morphs allow him to change shape and composition into a sphere, cube, or star filled with rubber, air, or water. Each, in turn, affects Gumboy’s ability to reach certain locations of the landscape he’s on, and the manner in which he traverses it. Rubber is great for rolling, but won’t allow Gumboy to float through the air or dive under water. Air allows him to reach extreme heights, but is easily punctured by sharp objects and won’t submerse. Water, on the other hand, is great for floating or diving, but, like air, bursts easily.

In addition to Morphs, other power-ups include Magnetizers, providing a sort of “repulsion field” for pushing things; Hiccup Seeds, enabling Gumboy to jump; Glue Bags, to provide stickiness for rolling up walls and traversing overhead landscape features without falling; and Stoppers, which immediately halt Gumboy in his tracks. Checkpoints, Teleports and Regenerators are self explanatory in their purpose, while items like Diamonds, Luciferoids, and Crystals simply increase the overall point score. Yes, points, which brings up the matter of objectives.

BEST SCORE OR BEST TIME: Gumboy keeps track of the best score and best time for each level.

A Means of Conveyance

Basically, two objectives come into play in completing a level and opening the portal to the next: tasks and points. Some stages require attaining a set minimum score before advancing. Meanwhile, task-based levels are of the "fetch" variety. They include things like propelling star dust, escorting dew drops and conveying beans to their appointed destinations. All this fetching is accomplished by nabbing the Magnetizer (more appropriately, it’s a reverse-polarity magnetizer). Once magnetized, “repelling waves” emanate from Gumboy so that he can push objects across the landscape, propelling them from one point to another and, occasionally, forcing them through some very tight spaces or gently nudging them into hard to reach spots. It’s all part of the puzzle-solving equation.

What specific kind of puzzles will you find in the game? Well, here’s an example. In one level, Gumboy has to collect some special Forest Energy and use it to activate a series of Teleports, one at a time. To trigger the final one, he must locate a Glue Bag so that he can fall onto it from above. Then, he needs to find a Magnetizer so he can push several beans from one part of the level to another, via the Teleports, to their final destination. Of course, the kind of puzzle varies depending on the theme specific to the game world Gumboy is currently inhabiting.

Worlds of Possibilities

Gumboy’s worlds include: the Magic Forest, Bean World, Summer Meadow, the Underground and the Caves. The Magic Forest requires Gumboy to assist dwarves in locating the star dust needed to open Magic Gates. In Bean World, Mr. Bean (no, not that Mr. Bean—Rowan Atkinson makes no guest appearance) has lost, well…his beans. Naturally, Gumboy must find and return them. Roska, the fairy, requires assistance in collecting dew drops when Gumboy visits Summer Meadow. Meanwhile, the dark Underground calls for light to illuminate the way and the Caves charge Gumboy with bringing magic crystals to the dwarves that live within. Each has unique puzzle solutions and an intriguing thematic appearance.

These worlds are, simply put, a graphical feast. Surreal in appearance, the landscapes are beautifully rendered, with foreground and background elements that add depth and perspective. Dynamic lights and shadows play across their features and special particle effects abound. From the Magic Forest to the Caves, each is gorgeously crafted with award-winning visuals.

While not quite as impressive as its graphics, the game’s audio accompaniment is still extremely good. Music makes a sporadic appearance, but most levels are augmented by highly-effective and ethereal ambient sounds rather than a fully-scored soundtrack. There’s the occasional “verbal” communication, too. Though a lot of the game’s auditory cues are not so much intelligible as guttural, frequent "Ooohs and Ahhs" and "Ohhhs and Wheees" and a few "Uh uhs" are made by Gumboy and the creatures that inhabit his world. It all adds a great touch of humor.

THE NAME’S "BEAN": One of the game’s many tasks is helping Mr. Bean reclaim his missing beans.

Controlling Factors

As for controls, Gumboy is designed for keyboard use, employing just the up, left, and right arrow keys, and the control key (though, they can be reconfigured). Though this simplistic arrangement is manageable in most instances, it occasionally becomes entirely too complex to try to control Gumboy effectively from the keyboard. Fortunately, gamepads are also supported, providing a much better alternative.

Yet, even with a gamepad, some levels are extremely frustrating. In such cases, knowing what to do is not the problem. Unfortunately, accomplishing the obvious task can be nerve-wrenchingly difficult. For instance, coaxing beans where they need to go becomes arduous to the point of tedium as they bounce around like their Mexican counterparts under a hot lamp—usually in the wrong direction. The same holds true with dew drops. While simple to direct, they burst all too easily.

THAT THING YOU DEW: Roska wants dew drops, but getting them to her intact is often an arduous task.

It’s a Ball!

Nonetheless, Gumboy has a lot to offer. Its 40 whimsical levels provide ample entertainment and are worth replaying at least once. According to the developer’s rather choppy and ambiguous English, “New adventures and other levels and completely new worlds are awaiting Gumboy.” This is not an indication, as some assume, that downloadable levels are available or will be forthcoming. That’s a misconception. According to Cinemax, it means that they’re preparing a sequel. So, what you get…is what you get.

In the end, Gumboy Crazy Adventures is a highly-creative and eminently-enjoyable game, though often as frustrating as it is fun. It’s also a gender- and age-neutral title that will appeal to the entire family. Though, the youngest gamers may need a hand with some of the logic necessary to solve its more difficult puzzles. Regardless, Gumboy is a ball from start to finish.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 9 (exceeded most expectations)

Graphics/Animation: 10 (flawless, standout graphics and great animation)
Music/Sound Effects: 9 (simplistic audio ambiance and amusing sound effects)
Game Play 7: (addictive play, some levels are overly frustrating, gamepad recommended)
Replayability: 7 (good replay value)
Price/Performance: 9 (one of the best indie games of 2006 and a deal at $20)

Reviewer’s Bias: 8 (high expectations based on first impression)

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Gumboy

Dark Reasons to Like Dark Legions

DrJ — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:23:38 -0500

Game Info

Game: The Dark Legions
Developer: Mascot Entertainment
System Requirements: Windows 98/ME/2000/XP 300Mhz CPU 256MB memory video card, GeForce2 or above DirectX8.0 Soundcard 300MB free disk space

Article Body:

By Dr. J.

The legions under Theodoric’s command were striking a major blow, deep within enemy territory. As the guard tower disintegrated into a dust heap, the catapults began to creak toward the evil one’s keep. Suddenly, Theodoric sensed something wrong. He had left a stout garrison behind to guard his own keep and he could have sworn that no major force could have managed to sneak by him. Yet, as assuredly as he believed the current battle was his, something was wrong back “home.”

BLOOD DIFFUSION: The artificial opponent in Dark Legions is sneaky enough that, while the good guys made a foray into enemy territory, slaves built a barracks “behind the lines” on the site of this bloody melee.

The “something wrong” described in this after-battle report from Theodoric’s perspective was that a couple of slaves (deemed too unimportant to attack as they slipped through Theodoric’s heroic troops) managed to get past the main thrust of the attack and build a barracks behind the attack. By the time yours truly (Theodoric’s supposed alter ego) realized what was happening, that barracks behind my forces was churning out advanced troops that were decimating the large garrison I had left behind. I don’t ever remember experiencing anything like this. I remember finding structures I wasn’t expecting in Starcraft, but I don’t remember the AI overtly building “behind my lines.” Truth be told, Dark Legions became ever so much more interesting when I realized how diabolical my artificial opponent could be.

In all fairness, my preference is not toward so-called “real-time” strategy games. I consider them ill-named since they are certainly “compressed-time” strategy games where frenzied hordes come at you faster than “real-time” and I will be up-front that I tend to focus on one portion of the battle or scenario and forget to keep building and reinforcing while I’m pursuing my tactical objective.

So, I haven’t played a lot of them, but I made exceptions for Age of Empires (liked the color and animation), MechCommander (let’s face it, I love the BattleTech universe), Metal Fatigue (excellent play-balance), Homeworld (I was lousy at it, but found it fascinating), Starcraft (loved the single-player campaign),and (in my humble opinion) the best-designed of all of them Warlords: BattleCry (great variety in scenario design and objectives). I would be embarrassed to let anyone reading this watch my futile efforts at playing any of the games just cited, but I admired them as games and still try my hand from time to time.

Now, I have to add Dark Legions to this list of games I love to hate, but must admire. At first, I didn’t think it was very distinctive. The graphics don’t seem as crisp as those in AoE or WBC. The play balance and pacing doesn’t seem as outstanding as in MF or MC. Yet, once I started to get past the initial misunderstandings with the interface (caused by not playing through the tutorial properly) and technology tree, I began to notice the facets of this jewel begin to sparkle.

Since I’ve already confessed to being a rather limited RTS player, please forgive me if you’ve seen these supposedly new wrinkles before. But, I hadn’t seen the trick of sending slaves behind the lines to build new installations in other games that I’ve played. Once I realized this could happen, I was hooked. I was hooked, but I need to make one more disclosure before we continue. I make it a policy to finish games and be able to win before I review them. I simply can’t win at Dark Legions. At first, when playing individual battles, I thought the game was poorly balanced (Oh, sure. Blame the design team!). Then, when I began to play through the campaign (although I’ve only successfully made it through about half of the campaign with many restarts), I realized that the game is extremely well-balanced and I’m the one who is unbalanced.

Ride the Mild Serfs (Basic Gameplay)

That being revealed, Dark Legions has very typical one-on-one scenarios that require you to start from a keep, surrounded by three resource types (wood, stone, and gold). It contains a technology tree of sorts but it is, at least originally, disjointed in that various rungs of the ladder are found in different buildings. For example, the Keep is where you train slaves (I prefer the more euphemistic “serfs” but the game uses “slaves” for your basic peasant class.) and assign them the function of logging, quarrying, mining, or building. The Keep is also where the basic technological advances take place. You must research DIY (Do-It-Yourself) before you can build the Blacksmith or Barracks or move into Drafting (allows construction of the Alchemy [laboratory] and speeds building by 15%). At the same time as you are offered DIY, you’ll also be offered the discovery of the hatchet (to increase your percentage of logs harvested) or the backpack (to speed up your harvesting of all resources). Since wood is used to develop and pay for almost every advance in the game, it is tempting to research the hatchet (followed by the saw) ASAP. But the artificial opponent is very aggressive and without DIY, you can’t build your Barracks and start training archers and infantry (later, crossbowmen and light cavalry).

TECH ROOTS: The roots of the technology tree can be found in this early decision point. The player has already researched “Do-It-Yourself” but will need the extra wood associated with the hatchet and extra carrying capacity of the backpack before building the Alchemy

Since the purpose of the Blacksmith is to enhance the capabilities of your military units, you won’t want to build the Blacksmith until after you have some military units. Plus, it’s never safe to become complacent in this game. The artificial opponent can and will attack early in most games (the exception being some of the early scenarios in the campaign game where the opponent is constrained to wait for you). The Blacksmith allows the following advances:

Bolted Bow (provides +1 range for archers)
Iron-Ball (provides +1 attack bonus for cavalry units)
Iron-Blade (provides +1 attack bonus for infantry units)
Leather Armor (provides +5% defensive bonus in ranged attacks)
Sighting (provides +1 attack bonus for archers and crossbowmen)
Wooden Shield (provides 5% defensive bonus in melee attacks).

Now, as in any good strategy game, you will now find yourself torn between the desire to increase resource production and harvesting via the mine camp and barrow discoveries, the need to increase military units for the “national” defense, and the desire to advance up the technology tree by discovering Drafting and building the Alchemy [laboratory]. The Alchemy laboratory allows the discovery of Ballistics, Curved Shot, Engineering, and Pyrotechnics. The two former discoveries allow for 100% accuracy by archers/crossbowmen versus moving targets and the ability to shoot over intervening obstacles. The two latter discoveries branch even further.

Engineering allows for building these advanced buildings:

Castle (needed for building catapults, in particular)
Dock (needed for building transports and war galleys)
Monastery (needed for training priests)
Traps (creates obstacles versus invaders).

Pyrotechnics allows

Flaming Arrows (+2 for crossbowmen)
Heated Shot (+?
Priest Attacks (adds offensive capacity to clerical healing).

Of course, all of this sounds straightforward, but if you’re the kind of player who likes to husband your resources until you’ve created a massive expeditionary force to assault your opponent, you may not welcome the fairly regular incursions from the artificial opponent. The AOs simply aren’t going to let you build up without a fight. Plus, here’s something I’m not used to, the slaves from the AI will come over and start poaching your resources if you don’t constantly watch your border for them. In one of my first games, I was blithely building up my army when I realized that my stone inventory was being depleted. I looked over and realized that the slave who was busily engaged in mining it wasn’t my slave at all. He was wearing the red breeches of my artificial opponent.

Behind the Lines (Strengths and Weaknesses)

This resource raiding experience also describes a unique tactic I experienced in Dark Legions that I don’t recall encountering in other games (although Warlords: BattleCry does a great job of targeting resource producing centers). The artificial opponent will sometimes build masses of slaves and send them on an apparent suicide mission to raid your gold mines or rock quarries. These come like human waves and, unless you have a strong stomach for slaughtering tons of peasants, it can be surprisingly devastating. Frankly, it is surprises like this and the building of a barracks as a beachhead behind enemy lines that makes Dark Legions such a challenging game to play.

Also, though I didn’t think the animation of the individual units was as impressive as the detail that went into the military appearance and cultural flavor in Age of Empires and Empire Earth, it is very clear that the bulk of the artistic effort went into the environments to be settled and fought over. The islands look different from the mountains and the weather associated with them looks different, as well. The rain effect is haunting and the snowfall really adds something to the look and feel of some scenarios.

GALLEY MATES: The coastal terrain of this scenario where war galleys escort transport ships looks very different from the snowy mountain terrain of others and the rainy forest of still others.

SNOW WHITE: It's cold out here for a serf!

PRAYING MANTIC: The monk standing by the monastery can not only heal, but attack via fire when the Pyrotechnics advance is complete.

Further, though I earlier suggested that the game seemed too hard, I was pleasantly surprised to try the campaign and find that even I could maneuver through the early scenarios. The campaign is well-designed in that it has you gather troops and resources (as well as the standard “build everything from scratch”) in an early scenario. The campaign also has a solid balance between forcing you to attack and to defend. For example, in one early scenario, you have to locate catapults to destroy the enemy’s docks. But, you’ll inevitably be attacked on the way to recruit those siege engines. It’s a nice balance of avoidance, confrontation, and recruitment—sort of your own guerrilla warfare.

From “recruiting” units, you’ll have to move on to building them. Since you’ll need siege engines to be successful, one early scenario grants you the chance to find an abandoned castle where you can construct catapults. This is important because it takes a long time to build up to where you can construct a castle (prerequisite to building catapults). Again, you must play “cat and mouse” in this scenario because the enemy will have a war galley or two, even though you don’t.

Yet, although the campaign offers a nice variety of play/strategy while scaling upward very nicely, Dark Legions has the ability to underscore the deficiencies of players like me. You can’t bleed the AOs strength by guerrilla tactics because it tends to be more efficient at training slaves and units than most of us can be. It usually took a combination of judicious defense combined with one huge offensive thrust for me to win.

The most frustrating aspect of the campaign game was the behavior of Theodoric. Yes, your on-screen hero is every bit the champion you’d expect. In fact, he is such a champion that no matter what you order to him to attack or where you order him to move, he will jump in and attack the enemy—even when wounded and outnumbered. Therein, of course, is the rub. In the campaign game, you must keep Theodoric alive in order to win, but the brave little guy does everything in his power to get killed.

The game could also learn a few things from the established RTS stars out there. Most RTS games have a means for you to rotate the buildings so you can make sure their entrances are not blocked. In Dark Legions, I didn’t find that mechanism (It may be there, but it’s not obvious and it wasn’t in the first couple of tutorials that I played “after the fact” to see what I might have missed.) and, since the path-finding routine doesn’t work well in narrow places, I could have used that feature. Many times, even when you think you’ve left a nice lane or alley between the buildings, units (whether cavalry, heroes, or slaves) will get stuck in-between them. They also get stuck between buildings and trees, but a bit of logging will eventually free the captives.

Reviewer’s Overall Snapshot 7

Graphics 7 (liked seasons and environments)
Sound 6 (sound effects only)
AI 9 (most ruthless artificial opponents, yet)
Campaign Design 8 (nice variety and progression)
Replayability 5 (except for campaign, not enough variety)

Reviewer’s Bias 2 (seldom desire to play this style)

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The Dark Legions

Hollywood Mogul 3: Award Winning Performance

DrJ — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:07:50 -0500

Game Info

Game: Hollywood Mogul 3
Developer: Hollywood Mogul Company
System Requirements: Windows 98/2000/ME/XP 200Mhz Pentium or compatible 64MB RAM (128MB suggested) 16-bit color at 1024x768 resolution 150MB free disk space

Article Body:

Hollywood Mogul 3
"Screenplay" by Dr. J.

In real-life, I listed with a Hollywood agent when I was college. I didn’t expect movie work. I was hoping for voiceover and radio work. That work never happened for me, but I was in the agent’s office long enough to hear him take other calls and use about five of the top 10 Hollywood clichés. Long after grad school, I met a disappointed screenwriter named Carey DeVuono. Carey had gotten closer to the Hollywood life than I had and he gave me a lot of insights about the “management by committee” styles that forced mediocrity on so many of the films we see today. Carey wreaked revenge on the Hollywood establishment by exposing some of the flaws and some of the process in a little Visual Basic game called Hollywood Mogul.

AWARD WINNER: Using a fan-created database, you can insert photos of actual stars in the game.

I was fortunate enough to be able to assign myself the review when I was working at the once legendary Computer Gaming World magazine. I loved the mix of customizable activities, decision points, and cute displays on the screen. I didn’t care that the graphics were crude, the screens were text-heavy, and that the program was sometimes slow. It was, in those days, our kind of game—more steak, less sizzle.

Of course, we’ve seen the bulk of computer/video games move toward the sizzle side of the continuum. But thanks to a few independent visionaries, we still see a few products that are chewy, juicy, tasty, satisfying steaks. For strategy gamers who like a simulated slice of real life (and I suppose I have to use that term loosely when I speak of the “business” of Hollyweird) and the ability to control lots of details like the control freaks some of us are, Hollywood Mogul 3 is such a steak. This sequel to that old Visual Basic game has a tremendous amount more to offer than that earlier game.

Development (Getting Started)

Hollywood Mogul 3 (hereafter HM3) is considerably friendlier than its progenitor. The original game forced you to start with a lot less money and you didn’t have the sense of competing with other studios for scripts, intellectual properties to be adapted, talent, and awards. Even in its default mode (not the most competitive way to play it), HM3 is more of a game than the original.

As with its ancestor, though, HM3 is highly dependent on successful stories to build from. In the granddaddy, you merely had an abstract “story committee” give you general impressions of how strong the stories were. In HM3, you can see how strong a story is in terms of: Intelligence, Plot Twists, Dialogue, Story Pace, and Genre Elements. You don’t have to guess where to fix it. If anything is below three stars, I highly advise that you go for a rewrite, right from the beginning.

Also, as you would expect, HM3 offers more sources for finding those stories than its ancestor. The original had a few choices: Original Screenplay, Novel Adaptation, Stage Adaptation, etc. It also, like HM3, allowed you to type in your own original concepts for a movie. In summary, HM3 lets you choose from: Comic Books, Custom Ideas, Domestic Film Remakes, Foreign Film Remakes, Games, Graphic Novels, Magazine Articles, Non-Fiction Books, Novels, Original Screenplays, Short Stories, Songs, Stage Plays, or TV Shows.

Tip: Although it is tremendous fun to adapt movies from other genres, remember that you can’t start pre-production until you have a script. Since scripts take time to write and occasionally have to be rewritten, you’ll need to buy at least one original screenplay during your first month in order to have a release by November or December. Since SFX (special effects) also delay release by expanding post-production, make sure your first release doesn’t require any SFX. If you don’t jump right into production, the rival studios will garner all of the awards at the close of the first year (very frustrating—I can tell you by personal experience).

DEAD CARPET: You don’t get a lengthy Oscar telecast in HM3, but the “Mogies” are important awards for measuring your studio’s success.

Budget (Next Steps)

Once you have a script, you’ll need to finalize the budget. Are you upgrading the production values (from a pull-down selection of multiples)? Are you shooting in Digital, Digital Black & White, Standard, or Standard Black & White? Will you be shooting on location or on sound stages? What quality staff, crew, and technical levels are you hiring at? The options on the Production Page even let you single out pyrotechnic effects versus make-up effects versus robotics. You can cheap out on the CGI or pay the highest possible price. And, of course, every decision costs you money “below the line.”

Now, you can greenlight the production and move to hiring the all-important producer, director, and cast. The quick and dirty way to do this is to click the Auto-Cast button. Of course, this will often give you star appeal, but it also gives you less control of the budget and of the focus. Casting can be incredibly satisfying. Each actor/actress is rated from one to five stars on the basis of their perceived presence or ability in action, comedy, drama, humility, sex appeal, screen presence, work ethic, composure, and ability to take direction.

You will need to be selective in those you audition because you have a maximum of 60 possible auditions per film and 15 possible auditions per role. It’s usually best to expend more auditions on the lead, love, villain, and major roles, but you’ll want to keep some in reserve for the minor roles, as well.

Tip: Each role is rated for its talent focus, one of the action, comedy, or drama foci or a combination of the two. I like to audition those with five stars (sometimes four stars) in the specific focus. Where possible, I try to match the persona listed with either the Sex Appeal, Humility or Screen Presence rating. Also, where possible, I only go with four star or five star auditions. It’s tremendously successful in garnering awards and nominations—not as successful in terms of big box office numbers.

In the game, as purchased, you only get rosters of abstracted directors, producers, and talent. The good news is that the game is so customizable that you can easily replace the folder of talent silhouettes with friends, family, and actual stars. In fact, there are plenty of databases available on the web that use pictures, names, and historical information for various real-life directors and stars so that you can actually cast your favorite stars in a movie of your choice.

Of course, you aren’t finished when you get the audition numbers you want. The actor or actress may have given you a five star performance, but that doesn’t do you any good if the performer isn’t interested, is seeking other projects, or you can’t get his/her agent to sign on the dotted line. If you haven’t played one of the Hollywood Mogul games before, negotiating with agents will appall you. The amount of waste built into the ego wars about trailers (especially their decorating budgets) and personal perks will astound you.

Naturally, the easiest way to acquire the talent you want is to accept the agent’s offer. That’s also the easiest way to create an in-game inflation that you don’t want. It takes a little longer to try to find an acceptable sweet spot in between the agent’s demand and your willingness to pay, but it will help you in more than one film deal if you do so. Of course, when you’re dealing with the top-rated talent, it’s often best just to give in.

PER DIEM, BABY!: When trying to tie down the right talent, you’ll need to consider hair stylists, trailers, and percentage points, among other details.

Marketing (Waiting for Release)

Once you’ve cast the movie and started the production process, the only thing you can really do in those long months of production and post-production is plan for the release. You can enhance your release experience by selling off foreign rights, creating ancillary products (DVD, soundtrack disc, toys, etc.), and prepare your own distinctive look and sound for the premier screenings.

When I played the first Hollywood Mogul, I complained to Carey that VHS sales were not included in the financials. That shows how long ago I first played the game. In HM3, DVD sales are not only included, but you can create a CD soundtrack to fit the styles you’d like to hear in the movie and budget the types of features you’d like to include in the film’s DVD (director’s commentary, deleted scenes, making of, SFX features, etc.). You can’t always decide when to make the ancillary products (action figures, apparel, computers/video games, fast-food tie-ins, and novelizations), but the types of properties you choose and the production values/budgets/star appeal you give them will determine who is “coming to you” in that line.

I also told Carey that I wished each “film” could have a distinctive title screen and soundtrack with it. Once I experienced the initial joy in seeing my custom studio name appear on screen and my own credit as executive producer, the release experience was very tame. In HM3, you can choose your own sound files (according to styles as provided in the program or creating your own custom files). The provided files are very good. I loved the machine-gun effect in the gangster soundtrack and the lovely orchestration of the historical soundtrack. There is something for everyone, even if you don’t create your own files.

FANTASY PREMIERE

WAR MOVIE

HISTORICAL PREMIERE: Whether using the user-created database with real actors or the default database with fictional actors, I like to create custom backgrounds for the movie titles as they show on the premiere screen.

Even if you opt for the traditional black screen with reversed-out lettering, you can still choose from a variety of fonts to display on the screen. Of course, it only gets better if you put a picture behind the title screen. All you need is a .jpg that measures 560 pixels x 315 pixels placed in the PicCreditsBG folder. I like to do this, just for variety, downloading .jpgs from the web, scanning images from comics, graphic novels, and magazines, or merely using cropped photographs from my own files.

BOX OFFICE (Moment of Truth)

As the credits roll to a close on your premiere experience, a world map appears on the screen to inform you of the gross box office in each country. If you break into the Top 10, you immediately get a headline in Daily Flix (the on-screen send-up of Daily Variety, the Bible of show business for both coasts). Of course, depending on your cost structure, even breaking into the Top 10 may not mean you have a profitable movie, so you have to examine the on-screen financials after this presentation to see what’s happened.

In the default game, you only have to have enough cash flow to keep afloat. You won’t be fired like a real studio head unless you really mess up. Not only is there plenty of money to begin with, but the studio has a big credit line to borrow against. To be sure, it’s no fun to create flop after flop, but this mode is forgiving enough that you’re sure to have some fun with HM3, even if you never play in the most competitive mode.

WORLDWIDE GROSS

BOFFO BOX OFFICE: As in every business, you have to consider the revenue against the cost of goods.

And the Winner Is…(Conclusions)

…you! That is, if you purchase Hollywood Mogul 3. I played more than 30 hours with HM3 without getting tired of trying to make quality movies without losing money. When I downloaded the user-created databases, allowing me to use the names of real talent, I played more than 60 additional hours and still resent the fact that I can’t spend even more time with the game. Even then, I lost a big gamble by doing a horror film in Digital Black and White and lost several “bets” by going against the grain of “safe” genres. It took me over 20 hours to figure out how to lead all voters in contenders for the Mogie awards (and I shared that tip with you earlier in this review). Now, I’m trying to learn how to market and release my films more effectively.

Hollywood Mogul 3 proves that, as with Godfather 2, sequels can be better than the creative breakthroughs that spawn them. HM3 is precisely such a rare sequel.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 9 (a sequel that’s better than the original)

Graphics/Animation: 4 (the only animation is when the credits roll)
Music: 9 (marvelous library of files for premieres)
Game Play: 8 (default mode may be too easy for some, but there’s more)
Replayability: 9 (lots to tinker with, plenty to customize)
Price/Performance: 9 (outstanding at $29.99)

Reviewer’s Bias: 10 (liked the original, love the sequel)

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Hollywood Mogul 3

Focus On: Adventure Games

costik — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 17:43:33 -0500

Adventure games, as a category, have done reasonably well for us--partly, of course, because there are few high-budget, major release adventure games any more (although Dreamfall, which we sell as an affiliate, is one such). So adventure game fans pretty much need to look around online to find good titles.

From an independent developer's standpoint, adventure games are a good place to go, since there aren't a lot of huge-budget titles to compete against--and because there are tools, like Adventure Game Studio that make it feasible to develop something pretty decent without a huge amount of effort. Of course, AGS games run the gamut from ones with graphics that approach major studio quality (like Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine) to ones with far more retro graphics (like The Shivah).

One a unit basis, The Shivah is our best-seller to date, in fact; it helps to have a subject as unique as a murder-solving Rabbi, of course, as that's the kind of thing that it's far easier to get press for than something more mundane (and indeed, The Shivah has been mentioned by Reuters, CNN online, Wired, PC Gamer--and The Jerusalem Post). The price helps too (it's only $5)--and even though the graphics are quite retro, they feel appropriate to the game.

Dave Gilbert, Shivah's designer, recently released The Blackwell Legacy, which is a personal favorite; it's got better graphics and takes a little longer to complete than The Shivah, but has the same excellent voice acting, and a stronger dollop of humor. We don't expect it to sell as well, since the subject--a medium with a ghost sidekick out of a Damon Runyon story who helps ghosts come to peace with their deaths and "move on" to the next world--doesn't have the same easy promotional hook. Which is too bad, as this is an excellent game, the kind of thing that any fan of the Monkey Island series or Grim Fandango will enjoy (though it's much shorter than those games).

If you'd like a longer game that's also reminiscent of the best of the LucasArts adventures, Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine is the place to turn; indeed, the eponymous protagonist, a dweeby 40-something guy, is strongly reminiscent of Leisure Suit Larry, and a bit of Guybrush Threepwood. Good writing and voice acting, clever puzzles, from a development team that first came to the adventure gaming community's notice with excellent remakes (with updated graphics) of Kings Quest I and II--people who love adventure games beyond reason, in other words. What more could you ask?

A little older, but still games we like are the Delaware St. John series--The Curse of Midnight Manor and The Town With No Name. If Al Emmo and Dave Gilbert's games are remniscent of LucasArts adventures, the DSJ games are perhaps reminiscent of Myst--the game played on a series of nicely executed still images in a first-person view. At least, if Myst featured a paranormal investigator looking into eerie goings-on. Both games are from Big Time Games, the vehicle for Bryan Wiegele's designs--as is Inherent Evil, an older title for which a sequel is in progress.

The Witch's Yarn is an oddball title that takes an unusual tack; it's not so much about puzzle-solving, but about telling a story--and depending on your choices, the story can vary quite a lot from playing to playing. It was a 2006 IGF finalist, but it's also hard for us to figure out quite how to reach the right audience for this game--given its nature and subject (the story of a witch running a wool store), that's probably not old-school adventure gamers, but a broader audience interested in interactive stories with female protagonists. (There's a Mac version, too--we'd like to have more Mac adventures, and we understand that doing Mac [and Linux] versions with AGS isn't that hard.... Hint, hint...)

Kishi Kawaii/Cute Knight is equally oddball--and with strong appeal to women, too--and has done surprising well for us, perhaps because of a cult following in the anime community. As much an RPG as an adventure game, you play an 18-year old girl in a fantasy world who must find a life path before she turns 21. There are 50 potential endings, in fact. Graphics are anime-cute, but quite limited; it's mostly played in text, and it's surprisingly engaging for a game that hardcore gamers would probably think is primitive in its approach.

Altogether, we're quite proud of our adventure game catalog, and it's an area we plan to focus on in future. And indeed, if you know of good-quality independent adventures we may have overlooked--do let us know.

Focus On: Shmups

costik — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 17:00:40 -0500

One of the things we've discovered--not entirely to our surprise--is that almost nobody Googles "shmup"--which is too bad, since we have a bunch, some quite nice. Perhaps we'd be better off if we called them "games like Geometry Wars"--which is only partially correct, of course, but the surprise success of Geometry Wars on Xbox Live has revived interest in the genre, to a degree.

The one that's done the best for us is Jets'N'Guns, primarily because of what Jonathan Blow called its "Team America f*** Yeah!" attitude, bombastic heavy metal score, and finely-tuned "R-type"-ish gameplay. Patrick Dugan calls it "the riff ripping explosionary wargasm shmup fans have been waiting for!"--nice phrasing we're too shy and retiring to adopt as our own hype (ahem), but we're glad someone else put forth.

A personal favorite is Bullet Candy, a Minteresque game that produces amazingly pretty visuals during play--something you hardly notice because you're on the edge of your seat trying not to die throughout. We also like that it's a one-man effort, and the developer--Charley Knight--clearly knows and adores his subject material.

If a Galaga-style game is more your cup of rocket fuel, then Warblade may be what you're looking for--Bytten describes it as "Galaga brought into the twenty-first century. The basic game has been polished and redesigned until it shines like a golden nugget sparkling in a river bed."

Another Galaga-esque title, this one with an excellent techno score, is Xenoblast, from French developer Parallax Factory.

Then again, if something more like Defender appeals, it's hard to do better than Alien Abduction, which is tremendously challenging and was awarded 9 out of 10 points by Game Tunnel.

Starscape isn't a pure shmup; it actually has a story, and a game of resource management and tech development layered onto the fast, frenetic space combat that shmup fans expect. As a result, it's actually a much deeper game, something you'll feel like you want to finish--a rather different feel from the shorter-term gameplay of most shmups.

Which brings us naturally to Flatspace II, which, like Starscape layers an entirely different game onto shmup-like combat--in Flatspace's case, an Elite-style game in which you can play as trader, mercenary, bounty hunter, assassin, police officer, or scavenger, buying new stuff for your ship and growing in power over time.

As a genre, shmups haven't done as well for us as many others--our audience seems to gravitate more to graphic adventures, RPGs, and turn-based strategy--but we're proud of our shmup catalog, and look forward to introducing other cool shmups in future.

Strategic Command -- European Theater

DrJ — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 16:21:08 -0500

Game Info

Game: Strategic Command -- European Theater
Genre: Historical Wargame Developer: Fury Software
Designer: Hubert Cater
System Requirements: Pentium+ 166MHz+ Processor, 32MB Ram, SVGA Video Card (1024x768 w/ 16-Bit color), Windows compatible sound card, 50 Mb Hard Disk Footprint
Price: $9.99

Article Body:

Changing History in Strategic Command: European Theater
By Dr. J

During the Second World War, British intelligence believed that, once the Germans defeated the Polish Army, the Nazi forces would easily outnumber the combined Franco-British units on the Western Front. Estimates indicated that the German strength on the Western Front was currently circa 60 divisions to the combined 88 divisions in France (72 French divisions of regular army, 4 British divisions of land units, and 12 divisions of fortress garrisons). The combined force was not quite enough to warrant a direct assault across the by-now refortified Rhineland, but the story was to become worse with the surrender of Poland. With up to 40 divisions transferred from the Eastern Front, this would enable Germany to actually outnumber the Allies by 12 divisions. This combined with the Luftwaffe’s superiority in planes (circa 2,000 compared to 950 for the French and British alliance), had to seem ominous. [Figures gleaned from Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, p. 480.]

POLISH REMOVER: Hitler’s gamble on partitioning Poland with the Soviets in exchange for enough time to build up materiel for his war machine proved to be the right decision. The Axis player needs Poland’s supply capacity to win in Strategic Command, as well.

As a result, it seems like the Allies should have taken the risk of an offensive while the Germans were still engaged in Poland. The odds weren’t good, but they were better than they would be later in the war. Strategic Command: European Theater gives gamers the opportunity to experiment with some of these long-odds decisions. In fact, the overall impression that this reviewer received from playing far too many hours (an all-nighter here and there in desperately trying to win from both sides at various points in the war) was that aggression will usually be rewarded. In short, the game plays like a board game on the computer. That’s good news for some of us; bad news for others.

In fact, the game plays like an easier version of the Avalon Hill classic Third Reich in that you never feel like you have enough units and you never truly feel in control. Unlike the board game, the computer game handles the bookkeeping for you (though nomenclature has changed from the classic BRPs (Basic Resource Points) that served as the medium of exchange in the board game (and later, computer game) to MPPs (Military Production Points).

The game is not as complex as the SPI classic, War in Europe (currently being transformed into its second version as a computer game by Decision Games). Strategic Command: European Theater doesn’t allow for overrun attacks and exploitation movement (continuing forward after combat), for example. As a result, you can sometimes have static lines that make you believe you’re playing a WWI game instead of a WWII game. This design decision makes the game play faster, but it certainly takes the sharpness out of the German schwerpunkt (strikepoint attack emphasizing breakthrough and exploitation).

Further, the computer model for the present game doesn’t really indicate the effectiveness of combined arms (using different troop types) or even troop strengths. Though this may simply be perception, it appears that a 6 Corps strength is just as good as a 6 Army strength and a 10 Tank strength is just as likely to be able to root a garrison out of a city as a 10 Army strength is able to accomplish the same task. Again, it is possible that the model makes distinctions in strength and type, but the on-screen presentation doesn’t offer any clues. In fact, jet aircraft seem about the same effectiveness as prop-driven planes when equal numbers go against each other. It merely seems as though an additional unit is added to the maximum combat strength number when the upgrades come into effect.

To be sure, however, it is hard to believe that a program that goes to all of the trouble of keeping track of supply condition, combat experience (as indicated by the medals colored in when you choose a given unit), entrenchment (as part of the defensive rating), and “readiness” (equivalent to effectiveness or, conversely, “brittleness”) would ignore basic combat quality. Without cracking the code, however, all a review can report is one’s perception and mine was that combat type and quality made little difference.

The good news is that use of air support, rocket artillery, and naval support does reflect the use of combined arms. Since the three types of ranged support reduce both the entrenchment factor for the defending unit and the combat total, one gets the satisfaction of softening up the enemy before flinging one’s units upon enemy lines.

Man is a Political Animal (Strengths)

By far the most fascinating aspect of the game is the capacity for setting randomness with regard to the political events in the game. When Italy on the Axis side or the Soviet Union on the side of the Allies decides to enter the game makes a huge difference in terms of deployment requirements on various fronts and the subsequent expenditures of MPPs necessary to keep a line secure on a given front. In one game where I was commanding the Allies, it was almost two years (in simulated time) before the USSR entered the campaign after the Italians were already invading France from the South. This was a huge boon for the Axis. On another occasion, Italy came very late to the Axis cause (reflecting Mussolini’s actual reticence to bite off more than he could chew).

The use of the “War Map” screen is also a welcome design feature since it enables one to examine the loyalties, military resources, and status of a country in one quick glance, as well as to declare war at will. In perusing this map to consider the status of neutral countries, we were reminded of Britain’s lost opportunity in Norway and Sweden when they were overly concerned about respecting the neutrality of the respective countries and gave key ports in Scandinavia to Hitler by default. If you respect neutrality in this game, you’re going to be in trouble, strategically.

WAR SCAN: The war map lets you know immediately how you stand with regard to hostile, friendly, and neutral nations.

Another neat wrinkle, though it is really more of an interesting feature than major tactical or strategic event, is the use of partisans. When the Axis controls either Yugoslavia or the USSR, there is a percentage chance that partisan units (which can be operated by the Allies on the Allied player turn) will appear. These units, like their historical counterparts, are not very powerful, but they force the occupation forces to garrison supply depots or resource cities in order to keep the value.

On the typical, but still very welcome, design side, Strategic Command: European Theater offers a fog of war option where one doesn’t know troop locations or strength until said enemy units are engaged; an option for increasing/decreasing the ability of the AI opponent, and a terrific recap page at the end of the game that breaks down losses, conquests, and time in terms of points allotted for victory.

WYSINWYG: Prior to engagement with enemy units or adjacency to hostile forces, one only sees a line instead of a combat strength on given counters. This fog of war changes the complexity of the game.

Another strength of the game is its capacity for allowing one to jump into WWII at several different points, initially starting at historical conditions. Named for German operations, the “fall” in each title is equivalent to our English, “case.” The game contains:

Fall Weiss (September 3, 1939) – Hitler’s Blitzkrieg vs. Poland (traditional start);
Fall Gelb (May 10, 1940) – Opening the Western Front (neo-Schlieffen Plan);
Barbarossa (June 22, 1941) – THE Huge Offensive on the Eastern Front;
Fall Blau (June 28, 1942) – Opening of the Stalingrad Offensive (from the Volga);
Zitadelle (July 5, 1943) – Germany finds Herself Bogged Down in Kursk; and
Overlord (June 6, 1944) – Usually Known as D-Day, the Allies Invade France.

As you would expect, the starting points increase in difficulty for the Axis and decrease in difficulty for the Allied forces as one moves from early in the war to late (moving down the list). Frankly, in a strategic level game like Strategic Command: European Theater, there is a tendency for some of the scenarios to blend together. For example, Fall Blau and Zitadelle look remarkably similar, except for the fact that the Soviet Union has significantly more units in reserve in the latter than it has in the former.
After-Action Report (Conclusions)

Winning at Strategic Command: European Theater requires a wide-angle approach. In general, it is useful to follow the guidelines listed below.

1. Watch the integrity of your front lines. As in any hex-based combat game, you want to limit the number of hex-sides from which you can be attacked. If you always keep your units contiguous on their respective fronts, your opponent can only get a maximum of three (and usually, only two) close combat actions along with whatever ranged attacks can be assembled. Since air units must first engage for air superiority (more later) and then, take damage from ground-based artillery before attacking, you can expect that there won’t be a lot of successful air attacks each turn. Further, rocket units (the only artillery units that act discretely from the regular army and tank units) are notoriously unreliable in terms of accuracy and naval support units can only fire at coastal hexes, those units will not be used as often as the brute force attacks by regular army, corps, and tank units.

HOLE IN THE WALL: The artificial opponent has a tendency to open up its defensive lines and give you an opportunity to surround and isolate enemy units for more efficient elimination.

2. Although the game rewards aggression, be sure not to overrun your supply lines. The game depicts the supply chain via your country’s dominant color (the terrain changes color as your “zones of control” advance. However, units can easily use up their allotted materiel (ending up in Supply: 0 status). If you allow this to happen, you will very rarely effect successful offensive actions (however limited) and can only defend with limited effectiveness.

3. Remember that your Military Production Points are dependent upon supply depots, resource cities, and ports. So, plan your offensives to take these first and your defensive stance to protect these as long as possible. The artificial opponent isn’t very smart, but it does circle around and find unprotected resource hexes whenever you leave them wide open (Exception: The artificial opponent doesn’t cross the ocean to invade the US or Canada.).

4. Remember that reinforcing units is cheaper than purchasing entirely new units. Plus, if you don’t have to rebuild too much of a percentage of said unit, you will only lose a portion of their combat experience value (whereas a new unit has no compensating value).

5. It is important to keep your air fleets close to full capacity because air superiority is important both on defense and offense. Sometimes, having air units in reserve as potential counter-air will discourage an opponent (though not the artificial opponent) from using air in an offensive.

6. Rocket artillery commands are useful alternatives to air support in that there is no provision for counter-artillery fire. So, each time you use these units, they are gaining combat experience (hence, potential accuracy) with no risk (as long as they are behind your front lines) of being reduced. Initially, you won’t feel like you’re getting what you paid for, but as the experience mounts, they are invaluable for softening up positions.

From this reviewer’s bunker, Strategic Command: European Theater offers a high price-performance ratio in terms of value and enough interesting facets to keep you playing that “just one more move” that we turn-based strategy fanatics look for. While hardcore wargamers may lament the facets of War in Europe and Third Reich that are not present in the game, the game is sufficient to offer hours of challenge and, unlike previous versions of the two aforementioned board games, an ever-ready, versatile, and challenging artificial opponent.

Reviewer’s Snapshot: 6 (on scale of 10)

Historicity 8 (solid job of simulating situations)
Graphics 3 (not even board game state-of-art)
Artificial Opponent 6 (few surprises here)
Replayability: 7 (nice scenario selection)
Price/Performance 9 (terrific value)

Reviewer’s Bias: 7 (concerned about graphics)

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Strategic Command: European Theatre

Playing with Fire Without Being Burned

pdugan — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:09:18 -0500

Game Info
Game: Play with Fire
Developer: International Hobo Ltd
System Requirements: Minimum: Windows XP 1.5GHz processor 512MB RAM nVidia 5900, 128MB VRAM or ATi Radeon 9600 DirectX 9.0c or later Preferred: GFX nVidia 7300LE

Article Body:
Building PwF Fields Like A Master
One of Play With Fire's Level Designers Explains How to Use the Level Editor and Make Your Own

by Patrick Dugan

Table Of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Field Design Styles
3. Customizing Objects and Shaders
4. Emergent Destruction

Introduction

So, you've played with some fire. You might even have scored some gold medals and beaten all the Hell fields. Congratulations! You're the sort of skillful pyromaniac your parents feared you'd become. But there's a big difference between annihilating pre-made structures and building new ones laden with clever puzzles, timing traps, or whimsical unraveling. The latter requires the use of Play With Fire’s level editor, but using the editor is easier than you might think. In fact, it’s as easy as looking in the Bin directory of your Play With Fire install, sparking up the level editor program, importing a library, and dropping objects like flammable Lego bricks onto your custom level. Getting started is painless, but building your masterwork takes something unusual, a love of creation combined with an appetite for destruction.

FIERY SERPENT: Burning everything in order can leave you without a block to jump from, as in the "SnakeParadox" level.

Field Design Styles

There are many ways to craft any given item, and a game level is no different. Personally, I tend to build small esoteric fields like “Snufalufagus” or “WillWright,” or big ambitious monstrosities like “ABetterMousetrap.” Maurizio, another major contributor, started labeling his fields with women's names, and tended to make compact, quirky contraption-heavy levels, like odd doilies sold by a Haitian witch doctor in a mosquito-infested bazaar. Chris, the lead designer and producer, worked asymmetric paths and elegant concept stages, like an architect reveling in the demolition of his projects. Ian, a.k.a. RodeoClown, played with different representational themes: an amp stolen from Spinal Tapp, a WWI aerial battle, Mario-style platforms and Indiana Jones excursions.

I've heard fiction editors describe voice as the defining quality that separates undergraduate potheads from undergrad potheads with a future in creative writing. Voice is an undeniable sense that you are the distinct author of a piece of work. Though we don’t usually hear much about “voice” with regard to game design, it is something the designer should experiment with and strive to convey. I think the simplicity of Play With Fire's mechanics allows a designer's voice to shine through. Your goal in messing with the level editor can vary, but whether you're trying to impress your friends, make the levels you want to play, or build a portfolio to land that level designer job you've always dreamed of, you should aspire to design with voice, rather than merely vomiting objects in random formations. Of course, vomiting random objects might be your thing. It worked for me when I made Alea, so why not?

Here are some design styles that might bring out your personal voice.

Destructible Playground

This one is simple enough, you throw out a few trees, houses, cars, or completely abstract objects. Then, you let the player go to town. The exit is usually in plain sight or hidden in an elementary way. As a result, the depth comes from maximizing the spatial paths of the playground to get a high combo value. Examples of representational playgrounds include “Town,” “Grail,” and “Rhiannon,” while the wacky ones include “Snufalufagus,” “WillWright,” and “HarmfulWhenSwallowed.”

Trail Blazing

In exploration-based play, the engine is hidden (or distant) and requires the player to burn through the environment in order to locate it. We didn't really implement this in depth because it is simply so time consuming to build such a level. A close example is “Amazed,” where the level is a maze-like playground and you have to explore the environment to reach it, but the difficulty involved is very low. “Amazed” took me approximately five hours or so to build and it isn't really that big. This sort of field is only recommended as a project for the hardcore architect.

Revelation By Flame

Appearance is a self-explanatory field that best illustrates the “Revelation”-type level. You set up a system of fuses, typically next to the starting point, so that the fire sprawls out in an interesting or beautiful pattern. In turn, the fire changes the physical set-up to reveal the exit. Combo scores are usually hard not to max out, so this sort of field is really a one-shot pony better left for introducing the game to people.

Light Show

A more mature version of the “Revelation” level, this type of level requires one to proactively light a large structure, often to spectacular effect where all the blocks in the level burn at once. Good examples are “SayItWithLetters” or “CorporateVandalism.”

Puzzle Design Styles

Burn That Mother Down

In this puzzle style, the exit is propped in a way that the fireball can't reach it, no matter how high it gets. Thus, the structure supporting it must be totally razed. “HighAltar” is a fairly basic example.

Burn Yourself Up

This puzzle-style is a "vertical maze" where the player must find different materials to get hotter, enabling him/her to to gain access to higher and higher regions of the field. “MyConfidentStructure” is a good example.

Right Light Location

A set of flammable materials is in reach of the fireball, but only a specific section is the "correct" place to start the fire, since the fire's spread won't be hot enough to start a chain reaction except from that location. A good example is “MoltenThrone,” where the exit is propped on top of a large metal structure with coals and wood stuck into its side, as well as an ivy growth of leaf blocks crawling along its side. Only by igniting the leaf at the right place can one turn the whole thing into an oozing volcano.

Order Of Inflammations

In this style, different sets of blocks are flammable, but must be ignited in the correct order in order to reach the exit. An example is one of the earliest puzzle levels in the core game, “ThanksForTheSupport,” which has the exit propped in a cage of stone on top of four weirdly shaped leaf pillars. Three of the pillars, if burned initially, will cause the blocks supporting the cage of stone to burn, trapping the exit within. It’s fairly easy to make a very forgiving field of this sort, but extremely difficult to make one that is demanding.

ARCH SUPPORTS: In “ThanksForTheSupport,” you have to burn down the support arches, but only have a moment to reach the exit before it is completely blocked.

As such, not many of this sort were made for the original release. A much trickier example is “OutOfTheBox,” where the player must find their way out of a box (hmmm) without igniting the leaf pillars that support the top. The player must ignite materials in the box in order to escape. The trick is that some of these ignitable materials may lead to the main support being destroyed and trapping the player inside. Fortunately, there are a few ways the player can escape in time.

Too Hot To Trot

This puzzle type features a field where its possible to achieve a certain level of heat, but doing so makes completing the field impossible, or at least more difficult. “AbridgeTooShort” is the prime example of this type. The solution I had in mind while building it involved melting the bridge at orange hot level. Then, I would burn the trunk of the nearby tree; and then, I would use a branch propped up by the melted plastic as a jumping point. In this way, one could just barely reach the exit. It turned out to have three other solutions, because game design is unpredictable like that, so if you could design a puzzle field where heat is a detriment, you must be very smart.

Types of Challenge

Beat The Heat

This classic challenge field involves a mechanism where the player’s progress ignites fires which, if given enough time, would thwart the player’s progress. It sounds like a paradox but its really simple, the player ends up racing against the flame. “Race, Bridges, ElTrain, Ico,” and a bunch of other levels fall into this category.

Platform Parching

The player must ascend laterally, but in doing so the platform itself becomes hot enough to ignite the materials serving as the building blocks for allowing said ascent. Basically, this is the lateral analogue to the “Beat The Heat” type field, but with the important distinction that time isn't always a factor. “RaceToTheTop” exemplifies when time is a factor, while “Platformer” is an example where time isn't important, just the player's maneuvering.

Hot Jump Marathon

"Hot jumping" is what we called an emergent phenomena which was at first going to be nixed, but which we ended up keeping because it makes the game more forgiving and a bit more interesting. Basically, you can jump again just as you land on a block but before it burns, resulting in a "hot jump". The “Kinjutsu” and “SupaKinjutsuBonzai!” fields are based entirely off of this mechanic, requiring the player to bound up through pillars of melting plastic and metal, like some kind of lava ninja, in order to reach the exit. This style is much worth mixing in with other styles and forms.

Customizing Objects And Shaders

The process of actually building levels is pretty simple, but not totally simple. There are two editors, an object editor and a level editor. The object editor creates and edits .fof files, which stands for "fireball object file". The level editor takes at least one .fof and lets you create and edit .fsf files, which stands for "fireball something files". Software development doesn't always keep consistent or end up making a lot of sense.

Both editors have two aspects, a tray you can use to load/create object libraries and scroll through the objects you either create (in the object editor) or place (in the level editor); and a blank space. In the blank space is a checkerboard denoting the ground plane and a red cubic cursor you can move with the arrow keys. A,S,W, and D move the cursor in the cardinal directions, F and G move the cursor up and down. Space places a block or object where the cursor is located. If you create an object in the object editor that is displaced from the center of the checkerboard, that displacement will occur in placing that object in the level editor relative to the position of the cursor. If you build a simple pillar, but it’s three squares to the left of the center of the object editor's checkerboard, it will always drop three squares to the left of the cursor in the level editor.

Making objects with more than 25 blocks will cause slow-downs on most computers. Placing objects over each other will cause slow-down as well.

Wow, it feels good to get past the technical part and into wonderland.

You can get wacky abstract with your custom objects. They can laugh in the face of gravity and give the finger to structural architecture. All you have to do is place one anchor block at the bottom-most square level, and rest that block on another object in the level editor. Then, you can design any crazy floating zing-zang you want. Floating blocks make for really interesting Fun levels, complex Puzzle levels, and vertically, uh, challenging Challenge levels.

You can also edit the textures and shaders of specific blocks in specific object files. Nine sliders are yours to twiddle with, allowing you to mess with the color of a block (ever want purple leaf blocks? orange coal?) as well as two others that adjust brightness and reflectivity (I considered making a level called "APlaceInTheSun" with extremely bright and reflective Magic blocks, but I figured it'd be too excruciating to enjoy). You can also import your own textures, which is what made the “Gaza” and “Cheops” levels so interesting with their hieroglyphic laced interiors.

Emergent Destruction

In the medium of game design, content is ultimately judged not by its novelty, its appeal, or even its pacing, but by its durability. In Play With Fire, the best levels are the ones you can come back to after playing them through a dozen times and still push yourself to get a higher combo score.

The only way to maximize the combinatorial depth of your levels is to play the hell out of them and look for subtle changes, a pillar here, a fuse line there, that would increase the potential combos people might mix up. It’s emergent play, essentially emergent destruction, but nurturing your rough draft design into a really raze-able playground requires attention to detail and persistent play testing. For instance, in the haphazard mess of an action portrait that I call “Alea” (the level where all kinds of different objects just fall out of the sky) I realized after about a dozen plays that a fuse of metal would increase the potential combo score by at least a hundred, and greatly constrain the timing needed to achieve that score. The result is one of the hardest levels in the game to get a gold medal on, and there was no formula to achieve that. Other tweaks might include setting up structures made out of metal and plastic, which fall when they burn, to allow the player to set fires remotely. Building content is a craft, perfecting that content is an art.

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