InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Skate It (iPhone)
May 14th
After doing a race down some flood pipes, I decided to play about with the skatepark creator.
The design view.
It’s fairly simple – choose an object, plonk it down, rotate it – but can be a little fiddly. Getting things to line up is a pain and I ended up just shoving stuff down more or less randomly.
Skating round my spot.
Still, it does feel good to be skating round an area you designed yourself, even if it feels like the Fortean forces of the universe gave up on frogs and decided to indulge themselves with a shower of skateable objects.
Dungeon Solitaire (iPhone)
May 14th
Another update, more cards to play with. There’s also a new option to build a random deck with the cards you’ve got.
One more hero card and I've won.
Me, I prefer just to choose all the expansion packs and go for a big game. It is, of course, heavily luck-based – will you get something to deal with those pesky dragons? – but that’s Solitaire for you.
It really seems to be pretty much endlessly enjoyable. I leave it for weeks at a time, but I’m never sure why. When I do play it, I enjoy it tremendously. Definitely needs to be seen as one of the premier iPhone games, I reckon.
100 Rogues (iPhone)
May 13th
So, yes, I did go back – and I had my best game ever. I got down past the Bandit Hole into the dungeon.
A different tileset! New enemies!
You can tell it’s a roguelike, though. Things were going swimmingly until a new type of enemy appeared and destroyed me in a couple of turns. That’s just the way it goes, I guess.
For future reference, then, the pink skeletons are lot more dangerous than the yellow and white ones. Ouch.
The Impossible Game (iPhone)
May 13th
I completed The Impossible Game last night!
Look! Proof!
Yeah, yeah, I only completed it in practice mode, but that was hard enough, thank you very much. Chances of me ever doing it for real? As close to zero as makes no difference, I think. I should probably delete it from my iPhone now, before I start actually trying.
Zombie Defense (iPhone)
May 13th
Generic title ahoy! I mean, really.
Anyway, this seems to be an interesting little game. You’ve got four survivors, with different skills, and you kit them out with weapons, then lay down sand bags to try and delay the zombies that pour in through the entrance. Once you kill them all, you get to spend some time searching for new weapons and laying down new defenses, then its on to the next wave.
Basically, you need to design a maze where you can shoot the zombies, but they can’t get you. You can choose where to spend each night, which adds a nice wrinkle to things. If you stay in a location you’ve already used there are more zombies, but you get to use the defenses you’ve already set up, as well as new ones.
Not got the hang of setting things up properly yet.
It’s a nice little mix of tower defense and that Flash zombie defense game I’ve forgotten the name of. Laying down defenses is a bit too fiddly for my liking, but there’s no time pressure.
The game’s free, but that only gives you three nights. For the full twenty nights you need to pay 59p, which seems like a very reasonable way of going about things. I died on the third night, though, so I didn’t need to spend any money. Worth a look, especially as it’s not going to cost you anything except your time. And we all know that’s worthless. Don’t deny it. You wouldn’t be reading this sorry excuse for a blog if it was.
Skate It (iPhone)
May 13th
Totally rad, dude! I like, totally, nailed some wicked lines yesterday evening! Word to your mother!
See, I can talk like a youth person…
::blinks::
::strokes beard::
::ponders::
…but I never will again.
I’m thirty-six years old. In a survey the other day all the age ranges were about ten years until mine – which was 36-64. Thanks for that, pollsters. Way to make me feel old.
Anyway, that’s by the by. In the world of Skate It, I can still look like a appallingly-dressed twenty-something, albeit one made out of about six polygons.
Looking like a fool...
I can also perform crazy stunts that my obese, failing body would never let me perform in real life. (And I can fall of my skateboard in a manner that would result in feeding tubes and comas.)
Is that the appeal of skateboarding games, though? Not for me, no. The appeal is purely as a video game, rather than a simulation of real world desires. I like to complete goals – whether set for me by the game, or ones I’ve set myself – and the skating is just a vehicle for interesting game mechanics and controls.
I think.
But maybe there’s a part of me that really wishes I could skateboard. Maybe it is feeding on my ever-growing sense of my own mortality. Maybe I’m on the downward slope to my midlife crisis Harley.
Probably not, though. I may be older than I was, but I’m still not, you know, old. And I’d get a Harley today if I could afford it – and thought I could ride it without falling off. (I’m pretty much never happier than on a long road trip in America. The open road of the USA appeals to me, deep down in my core.) Midlife crises are for people who regret growing up. I’ve never really grown up and don’t ever intend to, so I think I’m safe.
100 Rogues (iPhone)
May 12th
Absolutely fantastically designed game, it really is. It requires real thought to survive – along with the usual roguelike dose of luck. I’m experimenting with different skills, learning how best to use items, ways to move that limit my exposure, etc. The levels themselves may not be especially interesting, but I seem to have several fantastic fights every time I play. (Along, of course, with a few “stand in one place and attack the enemy in front of me” ones.)
Slice a beetle into mush, level up.
It’s going to be amazing once, you know, it actually works properly. It’s pretty stable at the moment, but I’m running into odd problems here and there. In one game yesterday my health and energy refused to regenerate, which made for an interesting challenge. More annoyingly, after my best game ever the game crashed as I died and didn’t record my score. That was a bit of a blow and I’ve not gone back since. I will though – and probably soon.
Crush The Castle (iPhone)
May 12th
Watch stones bounce off the castle and get increasingly annoyed, more like.
Played a few more levels of Crush The Castle last night, but, frankly, it’s becoming less interesting the more I play.
Skate It (iPhone)
May 11th
Only one blog entry today, because one game has dominated my gaming time over the last twenty-four hours. (Not that there was an awful lot of gaming, what with spending most of yesterday evening watching Johnny Cash’s America, Glee, The Cleveland Show, Have I Got News For You, etc.)
The game in question was EA’s Skate It, a portable spin-off from their popular Skate series. Originally a DS game, way back in 2008, they’ve iPhoned this version up and stuck on the App Store for a fraction of the price of a DS game.
As you might expect, given that I’ve not played anything else, it’s rather good. A long way from perfect – the graphics show their DS origins and are really rather ugly – but skating around feels good. The trick system seems a little random, but that’s probably down to me being a bit rubbish and the game being quite generous with how it interprets your input. Pretty much any random swiping will mean something happens.
Tilt to steer, draw lines to do tricks.
There seems to be an absolute ton of content – lots of levels, the ability to create your own skatepark, lots of customisation for your ugly, ugly skater – and I’ve spent most of my time just skating around trying to find lines, rather than doing the actual challenges.
If you can put up with the rough edges, I think there may be something of a gem hidden away here. As always, though, this is a blog post based on playing around with the game for a bit, not a review or definitive verdict. Any opinion I offer in any post on this blog is subject to change.
100 Rogues (iPhone)
May 10th
The latest roguelike to hit the App Store, it’s been as hyped as it’s possible for an indie roguelike to be. By which I mean I actually knew about it before release. I’m even a fan on Facebook.
It came out a week or two again but was, unfortunately, bugged to hell and back. Constant crashes, the player spawning in walls, the lot. So, despite it being one of my most anticpated games, I held off until a patch hit at the weekend. The patch stopped the Challenge game mode working, but was meant to make the core game much more stable.
So, still slightly worried, I gave it a go.
How I did I find it?
(Pause for suspense and screen shot.)
I normally play as the Crusader - he's easier to keep alive than the fairy wizard thing.
Well, it’s excellent. Really. The graphics are made up of lovely, cartoony sprite work (equipping new armour even results in a palette swap for your character!), the controls seem to be well thought out (I’ve certainly had no problems so far), there’s a skill tree so you can customise your character, the enemies have interesting behaviours and it requires real thought to survive fights.
It’s perfectly playable now, but once it’s properly stable and optimised and the promised updates have come out (more classes to add to the two included in the current game, shops that aren’t just boarded-up store fronts, etc.) I honestly think this might be something of a classic. Right now, though, you’re still getting a game that’s worth the three quid price tag.
