The Android's Horn-Rimmed Glasses (Indie), The Android's Nerf Gun (Shoot 'em up)

Guest Post from Rilgon: Jamestown!

Hi, I’m Rilgon, and I’m lucky enough to have Pike and Mister Adequate let me grace the Android’s Closet! Today, I’m here to talk to you about Jamestown and why you should be buying it and playing it – ideally as part of the Humble Indie Bundle #4. I consider myself somewhat of a shmup person. I’m not the greatest, by any means – I’ve never 1CC’d Ikaruga, never even come close to beating any of Treasure’s greatest on their hardest difficulties, and playing Touhou on Lunatic’s still a pipedream. I enjoy them dearly, however, and when a good one comes along, it’s hard to not take notice! I initially bought the Humble Indie Bundle #4 for Cave Story+, but Jamestown has stolen my heart – or, at least, the adrenaline-filled shmup-loving part of it!

For a game to be good enough to grace the annals of the Android’s Closet, it’s got to be best-in-breed. This is the blog that sings the praises of X-COM and SMAC on high (worthy recipients, mind you), so anything reviewed has gotta be up to snuff – and Jamestown fits the bill. Right off the bat, the steampunk styling and quirky story will grab anyone to whom a good steampunk slant attracts. The premise is simple – it is the year 1619, and you have escaped execution at the hands of the British king. You have made your escape to what some call The New World and other call Mars on a quest to clear your name. From here… well, that would be spoiling, wouldn’t it?

Steampunk pony? Steampunk pony.

Novices to the shmup genre are more than welcome. Jamestown has a staggering five difficulty levels – Normal, Difficult, Legendary, Divine, and Judgment. Normal will be approchable by anyone who’s been gaming as long as readers of the Closet no doubt have, especially after Jamestown’s fantastic tutorial that teaches you the basics of the minimalist hitbox that defines so many bullet hell shmups, the interaction between your weapons, and the Vaunt scoring/comboing system. Those of us to whom shmups are our bread and butter, though, will be treated to some seriously intense stuff. I saw a bullet arrangement that’s right out of Touhou 8, Imperishable Night on the second stage as early as Difficult level, and I’m still struggling to finish the final stage on Legendary. Divine and Judgment are… still to come, let’s say.

Shmups are visceral things, though – you’ve got to have catchy visuals and catchy music, or the whole thing just feels bland and unfulfilling. Jamestown brings this to play with bravado. Final Form Games, the makers of Jamestown, have something great here. The soundtrack is amazing (and comes with your Humble Indie Bundle 4, hint hint!), and definitely gives both context and conflict to the game, especially its bosses. One of the bosses you face is a steam-powered battle train, and the boss theme for it is sublime. You really FEEL like you’re racing this train down a railway, dodging its littany of fire and returning attack with your own.

Oh, and if you happen to be lucky enough to have friends over, Jamestown supports 1-4 players, using keyboard, mouse, and Xbox 360 controller schemes. It will also apparently recognize multiple mice independently. And if you’re a Mac or Linux gamer (*nods to Pike*), you’re also in luck, because as of the release of the Humble Indie Bundle, Jamestown works in Mac and Linux as well! I can’t speak to how easy it is to install, given I have nothing to do with OSX and all of my Linux installs are textual, but I’m sure Pike could cook something up on the Linux front as a follow-up post, should it be needed.

Today’s post was written by Rilgon, who you can also find on Twitter and on Tumblr!

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

The Joy of Exploration

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I recently had a thought. (I know, right?)

This thought was about very young kids who played games. Have you watched a young child play a game? To many of them, it’s not about meeting a set objective– rather, it’s about making your own objectives, learning, and exploring.

One of the very first games I played was Dig-Dug. To this day, I still have a soft spot for it. Dig-Dug, in case you haven’t played it, is a game about digging your way to monsters and blowing them up. Did I play it that way, way back when I was clutching the joystick with pudgy, much-too-small hands? I’m sure I did. But I also recall trying to clear all the dirt from the screen for no other reason than, well, wanting to clear all the dirt from the screen. It didn’t accomplish any in-game objectives, it was just something that Baby Me found fun. I was moving the character around because of the sheer joy of moving my character around.

Good times, the 80s.

I can think of other examples, too. We had a game called Fidgets, for example, which was some sort of proto-typing game. All of the letters were represented by a crude image of a singing bird and you had to type the correct letter to shut the bird up. If you typed the wrong letter, that letter’s bird got all scrunched up to indicate that you were incorrect. I thought the scrunched up bird was hilarious and and whiled away many, many long minutes carefully scrunching up all the birds, while driving my parents crazy with the one correct bird that continued to sing one note.

Back then, you see, I made up my own game objectives.

Kids today still do this when they play modern games. If you haven’t seen Child vs. Skyrim, you probably should:

This girl is gleefully exploring, making up her own objectives, going through with them, and then, well… learning that perhaps her objectives aren’t the best way to go about things.

There is a certain nostalgia for this simplicity and I think that’s where the much-bandied about idea of “nostalgia goggles” comes from. People pine for Vanilla WoW because they were exploring and learning about a new world before they “grew up” and got their big adult raiding job. Perhaps people pine for the games of their childhood for similar reasons.

Some game devs are trying to latch on to this and design new games with no rules, but I sort of think that what the particular game is doesn’t matter as much as what the game does for you: my Dig-Dug is the little girl’s Skyrim.

Playing a game vs. playing inside the game… an interesting idea, don’t you think?

Alright, I’ve rambled on about this for much too long. Here, have a Fluttersquid:

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

Ah, Christmas. The time when our wallets get wrecked.

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So as you may or may not know, GoG.com has decided that they’re not going to stand for this ‘Steam getting all the money’ shit, and have thus launched their own huge sale. Front and center of this is something that really stretches the definition of the word “sale”, because it is costs no pounds and no pennies, which means in foreign monopoly money they presumably have to GIVE you money when you download it.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/empire_earth_gold_edition/

Empire Earth was a pretty great game. It was essentially Age of Empires, only on a Civilization timescale, from prehistory to a cybernetic future with mechs and stuff. For free? You have NO excuse not to give it a shot, it’s a wonderful game that is probably even better these days thanks to the fact that modern computers should be able to handle obscene numbers of units and stuff.

At ten bucks, EEII is probably worth it for fans of the genre. Not as good as the first, but still a pretty solid and enjoyable game.

III is right out.

I’m leery of sounding too much like an advertiser for a website or anything, but it’s really difficult not to enthuse about GoG.com when they’re in the middle of a sale that means you can buy The Witcher for four ninety nine USD. Is there anything you’re hoping to snap up over the next few weeks to while away the long lazy Christmas evenings, all wrapped up in a blanket and stuff?

(Ed. note: Obligatory pony picture. It's Christmas related, and also Mister Adequate related, because he's a Brit so we Yanks can make fun of him. -Pike)
The Android can't be arsed with a real topic (Weekend)

This Weekend – Christmaspunk Fluttershy Edition!

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I don’t really have a lot to report today– a particularly interesting round of Europa Universalis 3 has been eating up most of my free time– so I’m here to make one of the posts that our dear Mister Adequate usually makes around these parts and ask: what will you be playing this weekend?

As for myself, well– the Paradox bug has bit me nice and deep and I keep having to scratch the resulting itch, so I’m guessing there will continue to be a lot of EU3 and possibly some Darkest Hour as well. I’m also still slowly but surely working on Final Fantasy 2– although I keep getting sidelined from it by delicious strategy games– and there are a couple of indie games I’ve been having fun messing with, as well (The Binding of Isaac and Aquaria, in this case.)

Speaking of indie games, I’d also like to bring your attention to a new indie-bundle-type site that has popped up, called The Indie Gala. I’ve refrained from buying the package there yet– although I’m a sucker for cheap games so that may change quickly once my latest paycheck is direct deposited– but I figured I’d get the word out!

What are you guys doing this weekend?

The Android's Party Cannon (Holidays and gifts)

Pike trolls, then gets trolled. Also Christmas List!

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Let me tell you a tale. A tale of Mister Adequate getting trolled to an extreme degree. Yesterday my dear co-blogger Pike and I were playing a game of Civ IV. We were on Skype while we did this, as usual. On turn four she began giggling, and on asking what happened, she revealed that a tribal hut had just given her the Bronze Working tech. For those not familiar with the game, Bronze Working is one of the more expensive, and most useful, early techs. It opens several units up, reveals a very potent resource, gives a new civic, AND lets you chop down trees. It’s never a tech you don’t want, the only question is how hard to beeline for it. Oh but we’re not done! Fourteen turns after this, she began laughing with downright insane, maniacal glee. She had just randomly been given Iron Working from another hut.

I was rather perturbed by this. But while later, while she was dominating the leaderboard and teching up merrily in her little remote peninsula, she got a message from Julius Caesar: “Pay 500 gold” was the gist of it. She told him where to go. A few turns after this he declared war on her. Still nothing special there, and she didn’t feel threatened because there were three or four civs between Rome and England – Russia, Carthage, Spain, and someone else I can’t recall. Caesar had to go through at least three of these to reach her.

A few turns later his army showed up and burnt down Nottingham. He had not only trekked like 30 tiles across the world, and brought enough units to do the job whilst leaving his home well defended (I should know, I was his immediate neighbor and eyeing him up for invasion, only to turn my eyes on Sumeria instead because all dose defenders), he secured all the right of passage agreements needed to get there.

Pike was upset. I was amused.

But now the season of schadenfreude is behind us and The Season is now most firmly upon us; Good cheer, terrible music, and attempting to cause the stress-related deaths of retail workers all around the world. Christmas!

Christmas is a wonderful time for gamers, because it’s when we get more videogames to play. And this year there are sure some games to play! Here’s my own list, because I missed some stuff over the parts of the year when I had no money!

This would have been me if the economy wasn't wrecked!

Halo: Anniversary
Batman: Arkham City
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

And I’m also asking for a new mouse and a RAM upgrade! I always ask for a RAM upgrade, and nobody ever gets me any RAM. I guess it’s just a Christmas tradition now!

Pike, like me, is also eager to get videogames for Christmas. I know of one she’s getting for sure because it is my gift to her – but of course this must stay a secret for now. ;)

What are your gaming Christmas wishes, dear readers? Anything in particular you’re looking forward to getting? Some hardware you’re after? Do tell!

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

Gaming’s New Paradigm

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I had an interesting thought the other day and I’m going to try my best to turn it into a blog post, although I make no guarantees on my success.

Anyways, think back to the 8-bit and 16-bit generation of games. These games offered a form of “art” that you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Where were you going to find pixel art? Just video games. Where were you going to find chiptune music? Just video games. Sure, you had an emerging demoscene that was beginning to play with this stuff outside of gaming, but this particular minimalism– this style of visuals, this style of music, and this style of art— was what one thought of when one thought of video games.

We’ve reached a point now, though, where the art that video games offer can be found somewhere else. The music is orchestral and symphonic, or rock, or electronica. The visuals have stepped right out of a computer-animated film. We have cutscenes, we have storylines, we have characterization. We have art that we can find not just in games, but in movies, or books, or iTunes, or orchestral concerts.

Is this necessarily bad? Oh no, of course not. I love when games have a good storyline or good music or what-have-you. But it speaks of a paradigm shift in gaming that occurred relatively recently.

But if gaming is coming closer to other forms of art… what, then, do games have to offer that is truly unique?

I imagine it’s the gameplay itself, and various aspects of it. The micromanagement. The options. The user interface. All those comforting elements and building blocks that have been in games since the beginning. This is what is unique about games today and this is what they offer that other forms of entertainment do not.

A normal day for Pinkie Pie

Now at this point I imagine you’re thinking “What the heck, Pike, where are you going with this?” And truthfully, I’m not 100% sure myself. It’s something that’s been floating around in my brain for a few days and I’ve been trying to mold it into a blog post and I’m not sure how much success I’m having. And so I leave this post open-ended. Maybe people look back fondly on pixels and synthesized music because there was a point where those things, combined with gameplay, formed a trinity that epitomized what video games were, and we don’t really have that today? Or maybe I’m overthinking it and it’s just nostalgia goggles?

The world may never know, but if you have any thoughts, toss ’em at me. I’m all ears!

The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

Playing and Role-Playing in Space Empires IV

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I recently acquired Space Empires IV thanks to Steam’s big recent sale. My logic upon making this purchase was “Oh boy! An old 4X game that I haven’t played yet! This should be good!” As it turns out I was not disappointed; the game is relatively easy to pick up and begin playing (although in true Old Strategy Game fashion, its learning curve is steep) and it’s already got me One-More-Turning as much as Civ does.

Let me tell you what really surprised me about this game, though. What really surprised me about it is its capacity for roleplay and how much it encourages the player to do so.

First, a word on the definition of roleplay. Although its popularity in MMOs and such has largely given it the connotation of being a multiplayer activity, it doesn’t necessarily have to be so. This is how Dictionary.com defines roleplay:

roleplay
[rohl-pley]
verb (used with object)
1. to assume the attitudes, actions, and discourse of (another), especially in a make-believe situation in an effort to understand a differing point of view or social interaction.
2. to experiment with or experience (a situation or viewpoint) by playing a role: trainees role-playing management positions.

Notice that the definition doesn’t say anything about requiring other people to be involved; obviously they are, in many situations, but it’s just as valid to “assume a role” by yourself.

Rarity knows a little about roleplaying, too.

Space Empires IV wants you to do this. When you start a game, you customize a race entirely from scratch, and there are big empty text fields given to you where you can input details on your race’s history, general physical description, and attitudes. These aren’t just there “for fun”, you’re expected to fill these out because any other race you encounter will have them filled out and if you don’t, there will be big glaring empty boxes next to your own race’s description in-game, and how embarrassing would that be!

You’re encouraged to continue roleplaying in the actual game, too. Not only do you design and customize every single ship you build, but you get to name the class of ship and then name the individual ships themselves. You can also rename planets, if you so choose. Now, certainly, plenty of other strategy games allow you to rename your bases/troops/etc. But none of the others that I’ve played actively encourage you to do so the way that Space Empires IV does. The result is that you feel personally invested into your little empire in a way that you rarely do with other games. It’s one thing when a generic “Scout Rover” is killed by an enemy, but it’s another thing entirely when FSS Nemo, Ensign of Exploration Class ship of the Fenolan Alliance, is killed. It’s something I personally invested time, thought, and personality into, and as such it hurts just a little bit more when something happens to it. It’s really a brilliantly done feature of the game.

Oh, one more thing about Space Empires IV. I invented a race of master engineer T-Rexes. I think I should win some sort of award for that.

Indeed.
The Android's Bunker (Strategy), The Android's Liberal Arts Degree (Meta/Critical)

Just one more turn!

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Here’s a thing we’ve all experience! Something that shows just how wonderful games can be, as rare with games as a real pageturner with books, and the mark of a classic. One More Turn!

A couple of nights ago my co-host Pike had gone to bed early and I found myself not yet tired enough to do the same. “I know” I thought “I shall play a little Hearts of Iron for half an hour or so.” Two and a half hours later I noticed the same, and also the sunrise, and finally crawled into bed. The thing with a lot of games which have this appeal is that they have some really tangible sense of progression. I think that’s why we generally it call “One more turn” – it came from playing Civ until the wee hours.

Twilight just can't decide. Operation Sealion, or Operation Barbarossa?

With strategy games, good ones at least, you’ve always got something really tangible dangling in front of you. You’re always about to build a wonder, or conquer a city, or research a technology, or otherwise get some sort of reward. (Incidentally I think this is the major area where Civ V falls down; you get punished for many things, compared to Civ IV’s model where at worst you’ve lost due to opportunity cost. You might build unwisely but you still get something from it.) For me on Tuesday it was the conquest of Ethiopia, then of Egypt, then I had to fight Hashemite Arabia and Persia. After that I took on the Ottomans and their allies in Libya, Armenia, and Crete. Then I was ready to grab the remains of National French Africa. Throughout this I was researching new units and building new units and factories to improve my industry. See how it always cascades and there’s always something new to look towards? It’s admittedly a real-time game, but it functions similarly enough to turn-based for this to still work.

Compare to other games with more discrete levels. You do a level, great! Maybe you got a new toy in it. But now the level is over, there’s little that keeps you immediately hooked, the game might be superb but the immediacy matters a great deal in hooking you and keeping you hooked. I was playing some Skyrim and had a great time in this little dungeon, it was fun to explore, lots of fights, all that stuff. But once it was done, it was, well, done. I still want to play Skyrim but there was nothing keeping me there right at that moment.

Which games have the strongest One More Turn effect for you guys? We all know that Pike’s answer is SMAC, but what about our dear readers?

The Android's Favorites

A Winner Is Me!

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So, I recently won NaNoWriMo by writing a 50,000 word novel in a month. Glorious, no?

You may be wondering what this has to do with video games. Well, for starters, games played a major role in my novel (everything I write is something I’m passionate about. In 2009 it was steampunk, in 2010 it was creativity, and in 2011 it was games.) But, much more importantly, my finishing up NaNo coincided nicely with three days off from work. Do you know what I am going to do for the next three days?

This.

I am going to play nonstop video games. Yes. Yes. It’s going to be glorious. I’ve already warmed up with some Civ this morning and now that I’ve sorted out some chores I’m going to launch into some delicious Space Empires IV and whatnot. I’ve got quite a backlog built up largely for similar reasons that Mister Adequate went into earlier, and of course there are classics to be played!

Classic strategy games, of course.

Don't mess with Pinkie.
The Android's Bunker (Strategy)

Naval Design Bureau

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In my recent overdose of space 4x fun I’ve been given the chance to compare one of the aspects that isn’t an X, but is very much a standby of the genre and which few space 4xes, at least, seem to do without these days. Even the most indie, one-man-team of them have the ability to design your own ships.

This is awesome, because designing your own stuff is half the fun of these games, and I thought I’d take a minute to look at some different ones to see how they operate and which I like the most.

One of those likely to be better-known, simply because the game itself is a relative success by 4X standards, is GalCiv 2’s ship design. GC2 is a pretty damned solid game all-around, so it may be surprising to hear that I think the Shipyard is the weakest aspect of it. This isn’t because the thing itself is lacking but rather more fundamental design decisions; you have three weapon-armor pairs; Mass Drivers-Armor; Missiles-Point Defense; Beams-Shields; so each armor is strong against its paired weapon but much less so against the others. The problem is that there is little distinction in each thing itself. A gun works pretty much the same as a laser, and though it’s certainly pretty gripping to try and second-guess the AI and figure out what you need to research, and there is certainly a fair amount of needing to trade between weapons, armor, engines, and support structures, I can never help but feel that GC2’s shipyard is very thin in terms of grognardy ship design, though it’s absolutely peerless in visual terms.

Star Ruler, which I’ve not yet spent too much time with unfortunately, has an interesting little system. Visually you seem to be able to change almost nothing at all, but you place all your desired components into a circle and the ship is built based on what you’ve included. One of the interesting things is that there is no upper limit to ship size. You can quite literally build something the size of a galaxy if you have the time and resources. Within that you choose component sizes which automatically scale to your ship’s size, so a size 2 Railgun on a size 12 ship will be the same as a size 1 Railgun on a size 24 ship. It’s a little unwieldy at first, but actually rather intuitive once you get the hang of it, and it definitely gives a sense that you are designing something of your own where your choices have a significant impact.

This is far from the most complex example of ship design. Remember Aurora?

Somewhat similar to Star Ruler is the ‘list’ system used in games like Space Empires IV and Distant Worlds. You don’t place components on a visual representation of a ship, but simply choose them from a list and they get added to the list of what is currently aboard your ship. This system tends to really let you customize things to a high degree, and you can make some pretty specialized ships with a long long list of components to choose from. But best of all, I think, is the Space Empires V ship design.

Now, in reality SEV is another addition to the “list” model. Your choices, aside from the ship hull itself and little graphical effects from weapons and shielding and such, have no impact in any visual sense. What you choose affects the ships stats and you are basically making a list of components that a given ship is equipped with. However, it’s presented in a very clear manner where almost everything you want to know is obvious, and because it gives a visual representation (however crude) rather than only a list of stuff, it’s a lot easier to get your head around and to make sense of it all. And that, in turn, helps you feel connected to your ships, stations, and so on. It’s taking the best of the list model in extensive customization and adding to it just a dash of the visualization for flavor. Star Ruler does likewise, but I feel SEV does it best.

Fortunately, organic ship design is the same as normal ships.

What other examples can you guys think of when it comes to designing your own units? Has anything ever topped Warzone 2100?

[disgusted noise]