Josh Reviews: Frozen Synapse

I'm back! Sorry for the days I missed, I had a bit of a writers block problem. Clearly I'm not cut out to blog every day for a week! There go my hopes of doing one of those 'blog every day in X month' type things

Anyway, review for today is Frozen Synapse. Frozen Synapse is a turn based, top down, tactical strategy game where you control a squad of men in an attempt to vanquish the other guy's squad of men. All of the maps are randomly generated too, so its always a shiny new map to work out the best way to play on.

You can issue incredibly detailed to commands to your men so that they do exactly what you want, from movement to aiming to ignoring the bad guys on sight so you can move faster! Your men come in a various styles too, from machine gun guy to shotgun guy to rocket guy, and many others too! Your teams are randomly selected on the generation of the map (identical to the other team though!) so each match is quite individual. Just hope you don't get a team full of grenade guys! Explosions everywhere....

The style of the game is great too, as you can see from the screenshots. Nice clean lines with a cyber-punky style that carries over to the really nice soundtrack as well. Yet another very well produced indie game! What is the world coming to....

This game is definitely multiplayer focused, I mean they only sell it in packs of two copies! That way you always have someone to play with! The turn based nature of a game means that you can start a game, make your first moves then close the game and wait until the other player has completed their first turn too and await the outcome! You even get emails when a turn is ready, its rather marvellous really.

If you're the type that agonises over tactical decisions then Frozen Synapse really is the game for you! You can buy it from Steam or from the developers website here for about 20 pounds currently, its probably better to wait for it to go on sale. I still have my second copy though, so comment your Steam username (if you have one!) if you want me to gift you my spare!

Josh Reviews: Postponed

Hi internet people, this is just a note to say that Thursday and Friday's reviews are being postponed until Monday/Tuesday. They will be up then! Figures I wouldn't manage the whole week....

'Til Monday, stay classy internet

Josh Reviews: Desktop Dungeons

Day 3! I'm not doing too badly I think, haven't missed a day yet! Though this is a late one, blame my cousin for being born 14 years ago today.....

Desktop Dungeons is a game that you can play a full session of in about 15 minutes, and is great as a short time waster/something to do whilst you drink your choice of hot (or not!) beverage. You start by choosing a class to play as (anyone who's played some form of RPG will know what I'm on about) and you get put into a randomly generated dungeon to fight your way through and kill all the monsters! Simple enough...

Or is it? You start at level one and as such you can only effectively fight characters who are level one too! Maybe level two if you're careful about it. Monsters of various levels between one and ten are strewn throughout the dungeon and you need to fight them in a way that lets you level up to match the levels of the remaining monsters. I probably haven't described that well at all, but it's late so cut me some slack please :). Just play the game! Its pretty self explanatory in the end

As you complete dungeons with various classes you unlock new classes to play with, so there's always something to do. There's a lot more to the game than I'm getting into here because A) There's a lot to it and B) I'm very tired. Again, just go play it!

The developer has two versions of this game, the first is freeware which you can just download and play, or the paid version which has more content, but obviously costs money. Both versions are available at www.desktopdungeons.net. Personally I just caved and bought the paid version, but my download link hasn't arrived yet... Even so, the free version is good enough to convince me to part with money, so take from that what you will!

Just play it! Takes about 15 minutes, has tactical gameplay and the random element that keeps the game fresh. Play it!

P.S Fraps is playing up, so I can't get screenshots right now. I'll update this when I've either fixed it or have the patience to screenshot it all and crop it manually....ugh

Josh Reviews: Kerbal Space Program

So, day 2, review 2.

Kerbal Space Program is a game, but its also sort of not a game either. I suppose you could say its a space program simulator with flight simulator elements? Lets go with that....

You start in Kerbal Space Program with a command module for your spaceship in the hanger, and a list of parts that you can attach to make a functioning multi-stage rocket! This is definitely a game for those people that spent their youth building Lego spaceships....

Simple rocket! Won't get you to space though....

Once you have built your magnificent ship to sail the stars, you then move to the launch pad to see if you can actually get the command module into space, which is rather hard... I've found the controls to be a bit hard to use when actually steering the ship, but it is possible to get the hang of it. Adds to the fun anyway...

This is more like it! 

Well that's it gameplay wise, it's in the beta stage of development at the moment and doesn't have much in the way of structured gameplay beyond 'build a ship then launch it.' The developer is updating the game frequently however, so hopefully soon there will be some kind of mission structure in place to make the game more goal oriented.

The game starts off with a limited number of parts available for you to use, but there is a healthy part creating community at the game's forum that made lots of new interesting bits and bobs, including new engines, couplers and other ship-parts.

I've had a lot of fun with the game just messing around with the ship creation part of the game then seeing if it can actually make it off the launch pad! Here's the best part though, its free! At least it is in this stage of development... Regardless, you can download it from www.kerbalspaceprogram.com/ and tinker to your heart's content! It's not exactly rocket science....

Made it! Now the long wait until re-entry...

Josh Reviews: Osmos

It's been a while since I've done this!

So, Osmos is a....you know I'm not all that sure how to classify this game with the usual game labels. It's a.....thing. Steam labels it as a 'Casual, Indie, Family' game which is no help whatsoever. I suppose its a physics based 'chillout' game. Bear with me....

In Osmos you play as an organism (of some sort). This organism moves by expelling mass and utilising Newton's third law of motion (Every action has an equal and opposite reaction) to propel itself around the play area. You as the player do this by using the mouse to control the direction and rate of mass ejection. The aim of the game is generally to get bigger, which you do by absorbing other organisms until you reach the required size. The thing about absorbing other organisms is that you can only absorb ones that are smaller than yourself! Any organisms that are smaller than you will be blue, any that are larger will be red. If you try and absorb a red organism, it absorbs you instead! That means game over.....

Sometimes the aim of the game is to simply get bigger to reach a goal set for the level, other times it is a means to an end to achieve some other goal. One such goal is absorbing an organism that actively tries to avoid you! Very hard seeing as you lose mass in the chase, you might get it only for it to absorb you instead!

Visually, Osmos is a rather pretty game, with a clear minimal visual style that works incredibly well with the game's soundtrack, which is as chilled out as chilled out can get! Together both the graphics and soundtrack make the game a really relaxing experience to behold. All of these factors make Osmos a really great game to play for those who aren't of the inclination to shoot/maim/blow someone up and are more looking for an interesting game that is well produced with fun gameplay mechanics.

I'm now going to completely invalidate everything I've written by posting a trailer for the game below (If a picture is worth 1000 words, how many words is a video worth? Depends on frame-rate and resolution I suppose!)

Why is blogger making the player so small?!

Osmos is a great game to play if you want a bit of a mellow but fun gaming experience and is good value for money at around £6/$10. However if you're a cheapskate (or simply wish to try before you buy) there is a demo available both on the developer's website or on trusty Steam! If you purchase the game from the developer's site, you get a totally DRM free copy of the game that will work on Windows, Mac AND Linux! Bargain if you ask me! You can also buy it on those wretched iPhone things too....

I'm back! This time I plan to be back with more regularity too!

Oh my it's been a while.....

When I left off I was planning on writing a review for the game Osmos, but that was indefinitely postponed due the the impending doom related to my undergraduate computing project/dissertation! Safe to say that's all over now and I managed to graduate with a 2:1 under my belt. I have successfully made the transition from lowly student to lowly unemployed leech on society! As a side note, finding a job is really rather hard! But this isn't a blog where I complain about the bad things in my life! Besides, there are far far more good things in life that I am exceedingly happy about!  

With Matt and Hannah having one of their contests (feeling somewhat left out guys!) I too have felt the need to set myself a blog related challenge to get back into the swing of things! After my computing project was over I had the idea of posting a game review each day for a week to make up for the absence of content, so I'm going to pilfer my own idea and use it now. This week shall become:

Josh's Most Excellent Game Review Week Spectacular! 

Starting this Monday and ending on Friday I plan to post a review of a game each day (that's rather self explanatory though). The games are as follows:

Monday: Osmos! (Finally getting round to it)

Tuesday: Kerbal Space Program

Wednesday: Desktop Dungeons

Thursday: Frozen Synapse

Friday: Minecraft! (I have something special in mind for the Friday, keep an eye out!)

So there you have it, I'm back and I have plans for content! This blog has never been so organised....

TTFN Internet! 

Josh Reviews: Machinarium

This is the problem with starting up a new thing and setting yourself a goal - you immediately forget about it until about 10 minutes before your self imposed deadline. That's exactly what happened to me on Saturday night, so I failed one week in! Still, it's my deadline so I can do whatever I wish with it. This week I'll try and do it on time, I promise.

Seeing as I've been busy with work this week, I haven't had much time for playing new games, just the old standbys. I did however boot up a game I received in a game bundle called Machinarium. Seeing as I haven't spent that much time with it, this is more of an impression than a review.

Machinarium is an old school point and click adventure game with a lot of charm for such a simple game. Well, I say simple, sometimes the puzzles that you need to solve can be a tad infuriating! In the traditional point-and-click style, you walk around the environment (by pointing and clicking no less!) trying to work out how to advance to the next part of the story by solving the puzzle that you are presented with.

 The difficulty of these tasks is largely subjective, one person may spend forever trying to solve a level while another person might just 'get it' instantly. Even on the most difficult levels, the one thing that can keep you going is the absolutely gorgeous game art. It's like playing a game that's been made inside a painting. The size of the screenshots here really don't do the game justice. The soundtrack is well written as well, it really fits with the atmosphere that the game produces. It's easy to see that a lot of love and care has gone into making this game and that effort has paid off! The game is really worth giving a go.

You can find a demo of the game and more information at the game's website - http://machinarium.net/demo/
The game is written in Flash, so it will run on most operating systems with flash support. You can buy the game from the website for $20 which includes the game's soundtrack, or the game is available for £14.99 from good old Steam sans soundtrack.

Next week: Osmos. Of course by next week I mean this week, look for the next review around Friday

TTFN

Josh Reviews: SpaceChem

Seeing as I am often bereft of ideas for what to write about for my blog posts I've decided to write a little mini-series of blogs consisting of reviews or impressions of games that I've recently played. I'm also going to challenge myself to write one review a week, with it being posted by Saturday evening. Considering how much work I have at the moment that's a pretty big deal!

The game that actually inspired me to write this series is the one that I'll be posting about today. The game is called SpaceChem and if you like puzzles and not sleeping much, this is definitely the game for you.

SpaceChem is a puzzle game made by Zachtronics Industries, which is a small indie dev that you probably wont of heard of and I hadn't heard of until I found this game, but I'll definitely be looking closely at their future titles from now on. The premise of the game is that you are a Reactor Engineer for the SpaceChem corporation, a company that specialises in producing valuable chemical products from raw materials such as water and air. The idea behind the game is that you take those raw materials and through a series of processes turn them into a useful product.

This is what I'd call a programming game, as what you end up making is a sequence that will execute and produce the desired molecule from the given raw materials. In the game is design the paths for two 'Waldos,' which are machines that can grab and drop atoms as well as execute other functions such as synchronising with the other, executing the bond command or outputting the current content of an area. These simple base functions have to be used in increasingly complex ways as the difficultly of the games ramps up and ramp up it does! Every new set of levels has a new mechanic introduced with it, so just as you think you have some semblance of understanding everything that's going on, the game introduces a new element to the game which makes things complicated all over again. 

The game sets you to task on either Research or Production assignments, which is just it's way of saying that you either have one reactor to produce a chemical or you use multiple reactors to achieve a more complex goal. The game achieves the very fine balance of being very complex and frustrating whilst still being enjoyable. Some production assignments have as few as 2 reactors available to use whereas some have as many as 6 available to achieve your goal! I can say from personal experience that one level of the game kept me up until 3 in the morning one night, only to get me up again because I had thought of the solution after trying to get to sleep! That's the kind of creature that the game is, it's the kind of game that occupies your every thought until you find that elusive solution that makes everything work. It's a lot easier to enjoy the more complicated production assignments because the amount of craft that goes into them evokes a very rewarding feeling in the same way that completing a hard piece of work might do.


There's really not that much to the game mechanically, but the complexity of the puzzles that the game throws at you really stretch your thinking until the puzzle is finished. If you're looking for a puzzle game that will give your brain a good exercise, look no further than SpaceChem.


You can find out more about the game at it's website - http://www.spacechemthegame.com/
The game is available for Windows, Linux and MacOS for whatever $20 is in pounds these days.


___________________________________________________________________________






Well that's my first review in this new series! Please leave comments to tell me what you thought of it, what you think I could improve about my writing and recommend any games that you think I should review!


TTFN       

I made a video! Well I say me, I mean I helped ^_^

Another blog?! So soon?!

Really I'm just posting a link to a video that I just uploaded to my YouTube channel, so this isn't really a blog if you think about it, more a complicated hyperlink. The video is part of a project module that I am doing as part of my third year at university. We had to make 3 videos associated to a game we were making in another module, an Advert, a Crossover, and an Ident. It fell to me to make most of the Advert but In the end it was a team effort, as is everything really.

Seems like I cant make it widescreen like the video actually is though, click through to YouTube to see it in the widest of widescreen formats!


Tell me what you thought of it in the doobly-do/down below/describey/comment section!

I'm Back!

Surprise! I am indeed alive! I'm back after a lengthly 4 month absence. My laptop imploding caused the absence in the first place, then after that got replaced I just wasn't in the swing of it to keep up blogging, what with all the work I'm trying to get done, as well as all the new games are getting played instead of the work that I'm trying to do. However, seeing as my brain is in overdrive tonight and I cant bring myself to start another level on SpaceChem(a new awesome game I've discovered, I might review it at a later date) I decided to complete a challenge that Hannah set me quite a while back now, which was to write and upload my testimony. Here goes nothing....

I started life as a baby, much like everyone else. Like a lot of English children, I was Christened at an early age at my parent's and grandparent's church. As soon as I was old enough, my grandparents started taking me to church and to Sunday school, where I learnt all the things you learn at Sunday school. This continued up to around the age of 15 for me, as the church had a more discussion oriented group for people 14-16 or so. As my GCSEs loomed on the horizon, I stopped going to church under the premise of working during the time, but really I think I had just decided that church was too young for me anymore. Instead of seeking out the next level of church, that is going to the main service and listening to the sermons, I continued to not attend. All through this time I still considered myself a Christian, although now looking back I would not say that I was. During that time my understanding of God, Jesus, and the natures of sin and salvation were only skin deep, they had no greater impact on my life than any other piece of knowledge. Time passed, until I met Theresa, a Christian, and we started 'dating' when I was 17. Seeing as I still thought I was a Christian, everything was okay, until one day Theresa confronted me and told me that she didn't think that I was a Christian. She took the time to explain to me the difference between just knowing the facts and actually having salvation from my sins. It was after this that I started searching for my own personal salvation. It took a very long time for my search to come to an end, almost 1 and a half years. In the summer of 2009, me and Theresa went on a study trip to Israel. During the week, I mentioned to the leader of the trip, Paul, that I wasn't yet saved, information that he passed on the the man doing the speaking that week, Micheal Ots. On the last night of the holiday, Theresa convinced me to go and talk to Micheal about everything. We sat on the edge of the Lake Galilee and really discussed all the 'issues' that I had with becoming a Christian, and he explained each one away to the point where I really had no choice but to pray for the forgiveness of my sins. After that he prayed with me and I felt really positive about the whole experience, as you might expect! Since then I have been trying to learn more about my God and have been trying to become more like Jesus. Its not always been plain sailing. Me and Theresa broke up a year after my conversion, which was a pretty tough time. I was helped through it by prayer and the support of my Christian friends. More recently, my aunt has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. I cant comprehend any kind of good coming out of that situation for anyone involved and it's really testing the limit of my faith to try and keep hold of the fact that God works all things for good. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that once you become a Christian everything becomes easy. If anything, life gets more complex and a lot lot harder. All we can do is rely on God to pull us through, and that's what I'm trying to do now.