Month: May 2014

Samorost 2 Is A Quick But Beautiful Adventure

On May 21, 2014

Whew… I’ve found myself very busy once again, so I’ve been slow to post. But I have managed to write this short post about a short but very pretty game.

Amanita Design, the small independent game developer based in the Czech Republic, is most famous for their point-and-click adventure game (a genre for which I gave a brief historical summary in this post) Machinarium. Or perhaps for their next game, Botanicula. But before those, Amanita Design made a pair of short, charming and beautiful adventure games, the first of which, Samorost, is completely free and can be played in a web browser. And I did, a long time ago. The second, Samorost 2, is in the same mold, with the first part available free in a browser but the second part costing a modest $5 (and including the excellent soundtrack). In my typical fashion of playing games in order, I’d intended to play Samorost 2 before Amanita Design’s more recent games, and I finally got around to it recently.

But, in a sense this post is timely, as Amanita Design recently (well, sort of recently) released a trailer for the third Samorost game. So I’m actually totally on the ball with this, right?

Right?

History Lessons: Call Of Juarez

By waltorious

On May 11, 2014

In Uncategorized

New readers may wish to read my History Lessons Introduction first. Previous History Lessons posts can be found here. Also remember that you can click on images to see larger versions.

How old must a game be before it qualifies for History Lesson treatment? I’m tempted to say that it’s my blog and I can do whatever I want, but I actually do think I’m justified in this case. While Call of Juarez is only seven years old, playing it felt like revisiting an earlier generation of design, one that corresponds to a gap in my own gaming experience.

I wish I could say that the positive response to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the latest entry in the series, motivated me to buy the original. But that’s not the case; I bought it because Kieron Gillen told me to. I further wish I could say that the positive response to Call of Juarez: Gunslinger was what motivated me to finally get around to playing the original game, but that’s not true either. I had just finished the melancholy and thought-provoking Anodyne, and decided I needed something a little lighter and more action-packed to play next. After realizing that my backlog contained a distressing number of huge role-playing games and puzzle-focused indie offerings, I spied Call of Juarez on my shelf and decided that a Western romp would fit the bill perfectly.

Roguelike Updates: New Crawlers and Redder Rogues

By waltorious

On May 3, 2014

In Uncategorized

Readers who are unfamiliar with rogulikes may wish to read my introduction to the genre, or some of my Roguelike Highlights posts. Also remember that you can click on images to view larger versions.

One of the two updated roguelikes I’ve been playing is somewhat timely: Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup reached v0.14 a mere three weeks ago (and is now on v0.14.1 with some bugfixes). The other is not: Red Rogue (which is actually a roguelike-like) reached v1.0.3 over a year ago (and I even mentioned it an an earlier Roguelike Updates post), but I hadn’t gone back to try it until recently. And then I found myself drawn in once more, playing it far more than I expected and being impressed all over again. I decided it was worth adding to my original post about Red Rogue with my more recent thoughts on the game.

Read on for details on these two, plus a run-down of other updated roguelikes.