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