The Android's an Amateur Developer (Ideas), The Android's Universe in a Jar (Sim)

In which Mister Adequate works for videogames!

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A sentiment I’m sure many other gamers share is the belief that we could do it better. “If only I were in charge” we think “the latest installment of X would not have been so casual and dire!” Well, I’ve been bouncing around a videogame idea in my head for some time now, and I’m thinking that when I finish my current novel – not too far off now – I’m going to switch away from writing and begin learning how I might make this thing. I thought I would throw the idea out there to see if anyone has any ideas they might like to add to it, or general comments! Anything welcome!

My working name for this thing is An Ancient Evil Has Awoken. The twist is that said ancient evil is you – the objective of the game is to use your malevolent powers to wipe out the human race, evolving from newly-awoken small-timer to Eldritch Abomination. My design document at the moment proposes three main avenues of attack; the inducement of natural disasters, the use of psychic abilities to mess with human’s minds, and finally the use of supernatural events like Biblical plagues or creating zombies or things like that.

I envision the game to play as something between a cross of Pandemic and Populous. You would acquire your resource – tentatively called Terror – through things you do, as well as a slow trickle from the natural disasters (As in actual natural ones) and expend it on causing more death and mayhem. The world would be divided into a number of zones, and as the humans begin to grow aware that things are not right, they would develop more effective defenses against you and eventually could find a way to either destroy you, or to save themselves some other way. Of course the idea of a malevolent god out to destroy humanity is going to be a bit scarier than just bad things happening, so you’ve got a major decision to make; are you overt, increasing terror but making humans more able to resist you, or covert, which gives you a much more constrained ‘budget’ but lets you work in relative peace.

It should be possible though to do things in a variety of ways, and the player should fundamentally feel they are in control of how they are destroying the world. Ideally you would be able to cause an obscene amount of global mayhem without ever doing anything overtly recognizable as supernatural or weird. An economic crash here, a war there, and in the end you can just step in to finish off the survivors.

Pretty much a game where you play as this guy, yeah

What say you, fellow malevolent omnicidal lunatics? Any ideas, thoughts, comments?

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

In Which a Strategy Game Tugs at my Heartstrings

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I never thought that a Paradox game, of all things, would touch my heart so much, but, well, it did.

See, in Crusader Kings 2, you play as a dynasty. If your character dies, you become the next character in your line, and so on and so forth. In my current game as the Holy Roman Empire, I started out as the Kaiser, and then became my firstborn son when the Kaiser died. At that point everything went down the tubes over the matter of a few in-game years as my jealous younger brother declared war on me, took most of the empire from me, defeated me soundly, and finally instilled me as a minor Duke of a couple of provinces. Then I died (rather mysteriously, I might add) and suddenly I found myself playing as my next heir– a four-year-old boy.

I was still sort of reeling from this whole development when a lone character approached me– my uncle, then in his late teens. His name was Prince Heinrich the V. He asked for a title and some land, so I gave him some so I wouldn’t have to micromanage all of mine. And at this point he became the one character in the game who was kind to me. He tutored me. He was on my court as my spymaster. I could always count on him for a favor. I imagined that my little boy character looked up to him as a sort of hero figure to latch on to, and even out-of-character I appreciated that this guy was one of the sons of the original Kaiser that I’d started out with and because of that I was attached to him.

Time went on and the boy grew up. Once he hit about 15 years old, I got this event:

Now one thing about Crusader Kings 2 for those of you who don’t play it: Every character gets several “traits”, both physical and personality-wise, and these effect different stats on your character. A gay character gets a hit to their fertility rate and it affects diplomacy a little, but mostly it’s just there for flavor.

And so I clicked the okay button, figuring it was just a random event of sorts, and then, a few in-game days later, I got another event:

So it wasn’t just random. My character had developed feelings for the one person in the game who was kind to him.

Put that last image on the right side of this one and you have basically my exact reaction.

Rather nervously I clicked the button. I wasn’t sure what would happen next in the game or if it would have an effect. As it turned out– it didn’t really. There were no more events about this particular storyline, although– tellingly– Prince Heinrich V remained kind to me.

My character grew up, married a woman (you can only marry the opposite gender in game), and had a couple of kids, some of whom I put into Prince Heinrich’s tutelage. At some point around here I was mysteriously killed and I found myself playing one of my daughters, who grew into an upstanding Duchess in part due to the fact that Prince Heinrich tutored me and whacked all of the negative traits out of me. In the little story in my mind, I could imagine him raising me like his own child as a favor to my dad.

Most of this stuff is long-past in my game, but that little storyline, spawned by a couple of events, has stuck with me. I never thought I’d get this many “feels” out of a Paradox grand strategy game, but I’m glad I was proven wrong.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

Crusader Kings 2: A Paradox Game for People Who Don’t Play Paradox Games

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Games by Paradox Interactive tend to attract a specific sort of person and you either are or aren’t that person. The games involve staring at maps and charts for hours at end and doing a bunch of micromanagement, and let’s face it, that either appeals to you or it doesn’t.

Well, yesterday, after spending about thirty minutes getting Crusader Kings 2 to run on my computer (You know your computer is bad when…) I spent a good several hours with the game, and while it’s probably too early for me to make some sort of definitive statement on the matter, I’m already getting the sense that this is, as I said in the title: A Paradox game for people who otherwise don’t play Paradox games.

Let me explain where I’m coming from here. Let’s take the other Paradox games. Victoria is about micromanaging pie charts, economy and government. Hearts of Iron is about micromanaging military forces and supplies. Europa Universalis goes for a more nuanced “just take over the world” approach and throws you right into this with no real explanation of what’s going on.

Crusader Kings, on the other hand, is about your family. The core mechanic of the game mostly revolves around who’s marrying who and who’s tutoring who and so on. For the average person, this is far more intuitive to pick up on than whether or not you need more supply convoys, or something.

Paradox continues to make the game accessible to newbies with the inclusion of comprehensive “hints” which explain every bit of the UI, a tech tree that mostly runs itself if you want it to, and military at the push of a button.

If you are the Holy Roman Empire, this is what happens when you press that button.

There is, of course, more to do for veterans or people who warm up to the game quickly. It’s a Paradox game, so there’s warfare, and you can also do fun and exciting things like assassinating people or throwing people into dungeons. But none of this stuff is exactly necessary if you’re just warming up to the game, and you can spend hours pouring over your family tree and selecting potential brides for your sons.

The result is that Crusader Kings 2 is a game that does a very good job of easing newbies into the Paradox family and introducing them to typical grand strategy concepts and UI features, while still maintaining a decent amount of complexity for those who want it. It used to be that I’d recommend a newcomer to the genre try Europa Universalis 3 as their first game, but I think I’m going to have to change that recommendation to Crusader Kings 2. This really is a solid, enjoyable game so far, and if any of you guys have been wanting to make the jump to grand strategy for a while but have been iffy on it, well, now is a great time to do it.

The Android's Party Cannon (Holidays and gifts), The Android's Sandbox (Sandbox/Open World)

Roundup time!

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Just a quick post with a few miscellaneous gaming items that you folks may be interested in, because Pike and I are busy being sickening!

But not too quick!

First, Crusader Kings 2 was released today. It is, of course, a Paradox game, with all that entails. But this is certainly the best release candidate I’ve ever seen from them, for any game; it runs smoothly on my machine (Not Pike’s old rig though! Pity her, she needs to upgrade!) and the bugs aren’t breaking the thing in half. It does need some polish but most of that is reasonable stuff like adding more events, traits, and so on.

Second, the new version of Dwarf Fortress was just released today as well! Obviously with a game this complex and such a small coding team (i.e. one guy) this is one that is likely to be pretty buggy while he patches it up, but if you’ve been keeping track of the things he has been adding this, like any DF update, is going to be a glorious thing indeed.

Third, we’re getting pretty close to the next release of Project Zomboid as well! They’ve got a countdown running and it’s down to six or so items left, so there should hopefully be a release within the next couple of weeks. They’re not telling us what these items are though so it could be six huge week-long projects, or six tiny tweaks and we’ll have it tomorrow morning! Who knows?

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Hey jerkface! You have the face of a jerk!

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I’ve just got a hold of Soul Calibur V a couple of days ago and after a little getting used to it I went online. I’m not yet very good at it, but I’ve got enough instinct left from the extraordinary amount of time I put into Soul Blade, SC I, and SC II that I can still kick some of these young whippersnappers’ butts.

The thing is that when I come up against someone with, say, a Win-Loss score of 3 – 16 I really feel bad about beating them. Obviously that one insane Yoshimitsu player with like a 90% win ratio over 300 matches, I had no issue about trying to beat the crap out of him. But when it’s someone who just doesn’t seem to be so good at the game I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt as I turn their braincase into mush. I just find myself imagining them sitting there, losing yet again – who are they? Is it someone’s dad who was urged to get one of these new-fangled consoles? Is it some kid who is not yet coordinated enough to carry on? The weird thing is I don’t have this issue in face-to-face gaming. I’ve beaten the absolute crap out of small children without a second’s hesitation or remorse when we’re in the same room. And of course if it’s a team game, like a WoW battleground or a game of Team Fortress 2, I don’t have any issues about bringing my A game.

What if I'm fighting someone vidya impaired?!

Pike will no doubt mock me for this, as she insists I should be as merciless, as vicious, and as absolutely stone-hearted as possible whilst playing games. Nevertheless sometimes I just feel like a jerkface, even though of course everyone there is there by choice and it would be more insulting not to do my best. But do any of you out there have these similar twinges of guilt and worry, where you can’t help but imagine the person on the other side of the screen and how sad they must be to, yet again, be getting pounded into dust?

The Android's Aural Receptors (Music/Sound), The Android's Jetpack Augment (Platform)

SteamQuest 3: Bit.Trip Runner

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SteamQuest is a series based around Pike’s quest to play all the games she has on Steam. Which is a lot. Her definition of “play”, here, is at least one hour for smaller games and at least three hours for more substantial ones. Feel free to follow along!

BIT.TRIP RUNNER
Developer: Gaijin Games
Genres: Platform, Rhythm, Arcade
Website: http://www.bittripgame.com/bittrip-runner.html – and the Steam Link
Time Spent by Pike: 71 minutes – unfinished

Bit.Trip Runner sort of reminds me of Robot Unicorn Attack. Both are about controlling a running character and having lightning-quick reflexes. Both have catchy music that entices you to keep playing. Both look like a technicolor rainbow barfed all over your screen.

Yep, something like this.

There are a couple of major differences between the two, though. One is that the music plays a much more active role in Bit.Trip Runner, because your actions determine the music and vice versa. Another big difference is that, where Robot Unicorn Attack has two actions (Jump and Dash), Bit.Trip Runner has a whole bunch of them. Oh, and lastly, there are something like fifty different levels in Bit.Trip. Yep.

Now that you sort of have an idea of what this game entails, I’ll launch into more specifics.

Bit.Trip Runner has a sort of retro, pixel look to it. Inception-like, we go deeper and the retro gets even MORE retro when you unlock a bonus stage which is basically a parody of Pitfall (not gonna lie, the way the game even emulated the old-timey Activision logo at the bottom of the stage here made me smile). Appropriately, the music is chiptune-inspired electronica, and it’s very, very catchy chiptune-inspired electronica. You are rewarded with better versions of the music as you go along a level, because not only do your successful actions add little riffs to the song but powerups add more complexity and make the catchy music even catchier. This turns out to be a brilliant and unique hook because you want to beat the level not just to beat the level, but because it lets you listen to more and more great music.

The happy bouncy music and colorful aesthetics are in pretty hard contrast to how unforgiving the game actually gets. One mistake gets you ported to the beginning of the level. Yes, even if the goalpost is in sight and the actual level is as long as the Missouri River. There are no checkpoints. Checkpoints are for pussies. If you mess up, you get to redo the whole thing. It would be frustrating if the whole game wasn’t as completely addicting and entrancing as it is. See, once you sort of know how a level turns out, it becomes rather zen, and any mistakes just encourage you to try again, because, deep inside, you sort of don’t mind the repetition.

In fact, if I wasn’t trying to pump out this blog post before work, I’d still be playing right now, trying to beat this freaking level. (Watching this now and seeing how close the goalpost is to where I made it last time is absolutely maddening.)

So, in short, this is a solid, upgraded version of Robot Unicorn Attack, and fans of that famed flash game could do much worse than to check Bit.Trip Runner out. It’s on Wii and Nintendo 3DS aside from PC/Mac/Linux, and I do recommend using a controller instead of a keyboard if you’ll be playing it on a computer. The controls are more intuitive that way.

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Casting Magic Missile (RPG)

A Spouse Derided

So it’s time for another Paradox post! I’m sorry, but they keep doing stuff and seeing as they’re one of my favorite developers (Against my better judgment!) I’m going to have to keep writing about them!

Today I got around to downloading the Crusader Kings 2 demo that was released recently and gave it a whirl. And I have to say, yet again, Pox are really knocking it out of the park of late. I’ve played CK1 a little but could never really get into it very well – not so here. I was riveted to my bloodline’s fortunes! I found a wife, then we had children, then we had twins! She was a good wife. Then I had to decide, for example, who the children were schooled under. I also really pissed off the Bishop because I removed him from my Cabinet, but some gold sorted that out. A corrupt man of the cloth?! Who’d have thought!

After repeated attempts to marry my son to my neighbor’s daughter I got fed up of his constant rejections and decided to just acquire her lands (He had died by this point) by force. I sent one of my cabinet out to forge claims, and after a few years he had done so! A war later and voila, my territory had doubled. I gave it to my second son, because I had changed to a succession law whereby my first son gets EVERYTHING, which understandably upset the rest of them. Especially wee Brebinn, my first-born. She was not happy. Not at all.

Sadly the game does not have immortal Pony princesses, nor can you banish anyone to the moon. Should be able to send them to Scotland though, I suppose.

And then the time limit ran out and that was that. But I think, despite a couple of bugs (Some of the events don’t seem to be properly written, especially) that I’ll be picked this one up in a couple of days when it comes out, because I clearly don’t yet have enough Paradox Sperg Games!

In technical terms Pox have carried on their wizardry from A House Divided. This thing runs incredibly quickly and smoothly, as well as looking gorgeous. Definitely give the demo a try if grand strategy games are your kind of thing! And if they’re not, well, this blog must bore the crap out of you!

The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Favorites

A House Divided

Yesterday the latest offering from Paradox Interactive was released, the expansion for Victoria II known as A House Divided. As you may surmise from the name, the expansion’s centerpiece is the American Civil War (As a Brit all I can say is we had our Civil War before it was cool). So let’s get this out of the way immediately; the Civil War scenario entails a new starting date, which seems to be reasonably well put together, and just about nothing else. If you win as the CSA, there’s nothing much that makes them a unique nation. There are no events to, for example, remove the USA’s cores on your territory. So every few years they will take another swing at reabsorbing you.

It is strange that the expansion’s centerpiece would be its weakest element, but there it is. The scenario is anemic and underdeveloped, and doesn’t really add a great deal that you wouldn’t have in the normal starting point of 1836.

On the other hand, “Loads of Small but Great Improvements” wouldn’t make for a very snappy expansion title, now would it? But that’s what it contains. I played an entire game yesterday as Persia and it was the most fun I’ve had with Vicky 2 by a fair way. The new elements work extremely well. The new method for modernizing countries that don’t start out that way seems very arduous at first, but soon reveals itself to be a very well-judged mechanic that is a lot more involving than the previous system. Similarly the new way you generate Casus Belli before you’re allowed to declare war (most of the time) was something I was very wary of, but in practice it’s a really clever mechanic that not only helps you feel involved, but becomes something rather tense as you hope you manufacture a war goal without being detected. It also helps keep the AI on a sensible path. Their need to make CBs means they seem to be acting rather more sensibly than they did beforehand, which is good!

The economic changes are similarly positive, or at least they seem to be, because Vicky 2 is rather hard to wrap your head around in that regard. Money is definitely scarcer, and you need to make decisions about what you are funding and how much. No more can some podunk middle-rank power field a first-class army, navy, and civil service all at once!

The Persian Empire shall again rule!

The one other negative thing is China, or more properly China and the new Substates system. See, in vanilla Vicky 2 China was something you really wanted to get into your Sphere of Influence. They were huge in every way, and getting first dibs on their market was immense, it would single-handedly keep you on top in industrial terms. To counter this we’ve got the new Substates system, where China is divided into six or seven different entities who are locked together as unbreakable satellites. Ahistoric nonsense. And it’s not like the 19th century was a time of unconstrained positivity for China! Where is the Taiping Rebellion for example? It’s a lazy and strange way to work around the problem. That said, using the substates system for, perhaps, the Confederacy, might be a very interesting way of doing things!

So overall I would say that if you only care about the American Civil War, this expansion probably won’t prove to be very interesting. However, every other aspect of the expansion is pretty much golden, and I highly recommend you get a hold of it if you’re a Vicky 2 player! Oh, and it runs far more smoothly and never really seemed to slow down for me.

The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Hiding Your Power Level

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This is a term that is bandied about in various (usually rather geeky) fandoms: “Hiding Your Power Level”. Hiding one’s Power Level involves not letting anyone know about your chosen hobby, or at least not letting on that you’re so, well… fluent in it. It means not wearing that anime/My Little Pony/furry/whatever shirt out in public. It means downplaying your involvement in said hobby when people ask.

People seem to have different motivations for this. For some, it goes back to feeling a sense of shame. For many others, it’s because they don’t want to be associated with “the fandom”, either because it’s gotten a bad rap or because their taste for the fandom has soured (or both). And still others just like the idea of having a “personal” hobby which is their own personal space which they don’t share with other people.

For me, it’s social anxiety.

You don’t see this on the internet. On the internet, I’m very out and proud about my love of games and the fact that I spend a lot of time playing them, as anyone who follows me on Twitter can attest. There is no closet because I smashed my way out of that a heck of a long time ago.

Real life is different. Nobody at my current job knows about my love of games. Partially it’s because I never talk to begin with, but mostly it’s because my anxiety likes to kick in at full speed when someone brings it up. I always beat myself up for it. When someone asks “So Pike, what are you going to do on your day off?” I want to say “I’m going to play a minor country in Europa Universailis 3 and take over the entire continent.” But I don’t.

Instead I say, "Oh, I'll uh... just, you know. Hang out. And do some errands. Yeah. Those."

It’s not always this way. At one of my last jobs about 75% of the employees played World of Warcraft so everyone talked about it all the time, and I very eagerly joined in. This was back when I still played and two of my coworkers, including my department supervisor, rerolled on my server and joined my raiding guild. I was literally raiding with my boss. That was fun.

But now I’m at a new job and nobody seems to play anything and certainly nobody knows that I do. It’s not that I’m not fiercely proud of my hobby– I am– but my mind certainly likes to trip me up when it comes time to actually bring it up. It’s something I’d like to get over at some point, but until then, it’s a struggle.

I do, however, wear my Steampunk My Little Pony shirt all the time. There are some things you’re just not gonna take from me.

Do you guys hide your power level?

The Android Collects Random Objects (Adventure), The Android's Deranged Killing Spree (Action), The Android's Favorites, The Android's Sandbox (Sandbox/Open World)

Boss Fight of the Year

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Having finally bothered to set aside some time to play through Batman: Arkham City, I have to say it’s a fantastic game whose story (Or rather the last fifth of the story) is a little bit of a letdown, but that doesn’t bother me because holy. Christ. This game has one of the best boss fights I can ever remember enjoying.

Also dat voice HNNNNNGGGGGG

The fight with Mister Freeze is superb. It is brilliant. It is genius. I’m almost tempted to leave it there because saying almost anything could begin to spoil things, but that would make for a rather short blog post so I’ll take that risk. The core of the fight is that Freeze’s suit is a giant-ass super-awesome thing that even Batman can’t damage directly, because if he tries Freeze will just shoot him with his ice gun or something. (I want an ice gun.)

So you need to figure out how to attack him. Only here’s the thing; everything you do he will adapt to. You cannot use a single tactic more than once, because he will sabotage anything you could use to repeat it. This is not a gimmick or anything, it is brilliantly executed and it genuinely felt like I was in a battle of wits to try and figure out new tactics to try against him, whilst he was hunting me down and I was trying to avoid him. It took me several goes to win the fight, and I did not mind one bit. In fact I loved every second of it. It is, for my money, a quintessential example of how to stage a boss fight. He is entirely unique in the game, requires a wide array of Batman’s abilities, and engages the player completely. Every other developer should take notes on how this whole thing is conceived and formulated.

So I’d like to throw the question out there to y’all about this topic. What are some bosses you’ve found particularly enjoyable and engaging in your gaming?

[disgusted noise]