Thursday, May 22, 2008
Four Games and Two Shows
Sooo tired (sleep tired)... not enough hours in the day anymore. Also Flash is pretty frustrating sometimes. It seems I'll be programming (and testing) the whole day and at the end, not that much would be accomplished. The game will get closer to completion, but quite slowly. That said, work is going fine, but sometimes, to be honest, I'm not sure if I have all the skills for the job. But, practice makes experience, or however the saying goes.
Cheese Repulsor
Anyway, a few weekends ago was ToJam. Duy, Isaque, and I were team "The Glace and The Vert", and the theme of the event was cheese, so we wanted to create a Super-Metroid-esque game where you're a piece of cheese that was chopped into pieces and thrown into a taco. You have to go around from taco to taco picking up pieces of yourself, to build yourself whole again and get stronger and get more abilities, meanwhilst fighing off other taco ingredients and whatnot.
Unfortunately, the game was too ambitious for 3-days, so we scrapped the project (while at the event) and started on another idea that Isaque had, that we decided to simply name the "Cheese Repulsor Game" (or Cheese Repulser Game, depending who you ask). In this game, rats are always taking your cheese, so you build these two magnetic contraptions, called Repulsors, which you can use to guide cheese around. As implied, Repulsors "repulse" the cheese the way magnets repulse other magnets, and you guide them through little mazes to put into the mousetraps. Some mazes are just walls, some have lava pits or fire pits or other mice, and you have to repulse your cheese correctly without touching the obstacles. The level ends when you safely guide your cheese to the mousetrap, and then you go on to the next level.
We'll release the game one day... actually, we're (ToJam) having a release-party early in June in Toronto at some bar, maybe some of you should come down, heh.
Balderdash
The other day Jason and Alan came over, we played some Magic, and then Ambrose came, we had steak, and then David came... and we all had a big game of Balderdash. Long time no see! We had a 9-player game, which was so huge but overall it was a lot of fun. Had a few good moments here and there, but most of you who care were there and I don't think the memory carries well over blogger, but for reference and memorysake, I'll post my favourite moment.
It was on David's turn I think, and we had to define a word, Furfur. I wrote:
"Furfur is a knapsack traditionally carried by mountain climbers that typically contained emergency rations."
So it gets to me, and I bluff and I vote for my own. Jon next to me voted for something different, then Mai voted for mine, Vinh voted for mine... and then Duy's contemplating - "Aw man, 3 people already said the knapsack one!" - cuz you know, it's probably a good answer, but you don't want to give all the points to some guy, so sometimes you want to spread your answers around... So I'm like "come on Duy... worst case scenario, dad will get 4 points"... so that convinced him, haha. I got him good =D
Thanks Siblings!
Gankutsuou
That night, David stayed over and he said "okay bao, let's watch something, you pick anyyything".
"anything?"
"anything."
One thing led to another, and I was able to show him some more gankutsuou. I asked him to watch episode 15 and half of 17, and we ended up watching 15, 17, and 18, so that was pretty good. So, David admits that he likes these episode, but probably couldn't've have handled going through the other 12 episodes between 2 and 15, or whatever. In any case, I'm done that mission... and now that I think of it, I don't have any other "missions" at the moment. I got Firefly into him, I got a few action and comedy movies into him, and I got Gankutsuou into him. Heroes isn't a mission, Lost I don't care if he watches it either way. Lucky Star or Mushishi is his own thing, I'm not trying to get him to watch whatever. So... I think I'm done for now. Although I think I heard him mention "Friends" once, long time ago... so if that ever comes up, I'll just pick my two or three favourite episodes. Also, there are Firefly episodes still left, including the two that he first mentioned on his blog before we started watching ("Malcolm naked" and "Malcolm is dead")...
Echochrome
Nowadays, we just use the PS3 to play movies. After the movie is over, they turn off the system... anyway, so we were watching special features of AVP2 (note to self: rent "The Onion Movie") and everyone left, so it was just me and the PS3... so I say, "why not" and I go online and check what else is new for PS3. And one of the things I downloaded was the trailer and demo for Echochrome.
What a neat little puzzle game! It's a game where, depending on your perspective of the level, you can do different things. For example, let's say there's a path with a gap in between them. Your character can only stay on one side of the path. But if you rotate your view so that the gap in between can't be seen... then your character can go from one side to the other. It's very neat. There are 5 rules in total, and it really is a neat game. Here's the video of the 5 rules:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33193.html
Played the demo, got stuck on the 3rd level until I realized the solution, facepalmed myself... and that convinced me to buy the game. $10 for 56 levels + downloadable levels and the ability to make your own levels, not bad! A few gripes though... the objective in the game is to get to certain places and grab your 'echoes' or 'shadows', so it's not very deep... the game's sometimes frustrating... the graphics are a simplistic black and white, but sometimes it still feels really bland (even though it's supposed to be). Music is oookay, classical music, yet it keeps repeating so I actually don't like it so much anymore. Game feels a bit slow and clunky... and sometimes you think your character will do something but he doesn't, so it's quite frustrating. Overall a great idea, and most likely worth the 10 bucks. Sweet.
Guillotine
Tuesday night, Isaque invites me to a "game night" after work in Toronto with some people he used to work with at Pseudo. As Isaque shows up, everyone's like "did you bring BANG?" and everyone gets upset because Hawk didn't bring it. Actually, everyone forgot to bring games, so later Mr. McCloud went out to buy a new card game from 401 games, called "Guillotine."
In guillotine, each of the players represent a guillotine operator, and your goal is to kill the correct french nobles so that you become the most popular guillotine operator. So different french nobles are worth different amount of points - like, the "Hero of the People", nobody wants dead, and is worth -3 points. But someone like an unpopular judge is worth 2 points, and Marie Antoinette and King Louie are worth 5 points each.
So what happens is each day, a line of 12 french nobles (dealt randomly from a noble deck) lines up in front of the guillotine. Each player gets action cards, like spells, that will help them win the game. So on your turn, you would play an action card (optional), take the noble at the front of the line, and take a new action card (whether or not you used one). The most common type of action cards rearrange the nobles in the line, such as "move target noble up to two points forward." So if it's your turn, and the line looks something like this:
-1 1 4 2 2 3 ... then you would use "move target noble up to two points forward" and move the 4-point guy forward twice, and grab him and get a new action card. The text on the cards are much funnier and less rigid than "move target noble" but whatever. There are other spells such as "trade hands with target player", "take two nobles this turn", "target player gets target noble in front of the line", and a bunch more. There are also enchantments such as "you get +1 points for each blue noble you have in your score pile" or "players may not play spells that rearrange the line" (which is quite jerk-like).
There are 3 days, so a total of 36 nobles, and the game is meant for 2-5 people. The cards are colourful, the text and the names of the spells and people are fun, and overall the game is pretty good. It's not overly complicated, but it's not bad of a game.
Indiana Jones
We're watching Indiana Jones tonight! And that's it for this blog update. Oh yeah, Duy's heading off to Texas for two weeks tomorrow, so if anyone needs an extra bed, we have one :P I guess most of you know about Duy going off to Texas, but to save from writing a long blog comment, I'll just say that it's a youth development/leadership camp run annually by Vietnamese students/mentors/etc, and it's in Texas. Kevin, a VSA leader and also a WinMagic employee invited us, except I have work so I can't go, but Duy can, so he's going. Should be fun! Wish I could go. Oh well.
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Cheese Repulsor
Anyway, a few weekends ago was ToJam. Duy, Isaque, and I were team "The Glace and The Vert", and the theme of the event was cheese, so we wanted to create a Super-Metroid-esque game where you're a piece of cheese that was chopped into pieces and thrown into a taco. You have to go around from taco to taco picking up pieces of yourself, to build yourself whole again and get stronger and get more abilities, meanwhilst fighing off other taco ingredients and whatnot.
Unfortunately, the game was too ambitious for 3-days, so we scrapped the project (while at the event) and started on another idea that Isaque had, that we decided to simply name the "Cheese Repulsor Game" (or Cheese Repulser Game, depending who you ask). In this game, rats are always taking your cheese, so you build these two magnetic contraptions, called Repulsors, which you can use to guide cheese around. As implied, Repulsors "repulse" the cheese the way magnets repulse other magnets, and you guide them through little mazes to put into the mousetraps. Some mazes are just walls, some have lava pits or fire pits or other mice, and you have to repulse your cheese correctly without touching the obstacles. The level ends when you safely guide your cheese to the mousetrap, and then you go on to the next level.
We'll release the game one day... actually, we're (ToJam) having a release-party early in June in Toronto at some bar, maybe some of you should come down, heh.
Balderdash
The other day Jason and Alan came over, we played some Magic, and then Ambrose came, we had steak, and then David came... and we all had a big game of Balderdash. Long time no see! We had a 9-player game, which was so huge but overall it was a lot of fun. Had a few good moments here and there, but most of you who care were there and I don't think the memory carries well over blogger, but for reference and memorysake, I'll post my favourite moment.
It was on David's turn I think, and we had to define a word, Furfur. I wrote:
"Furfur is a knapsack traditionally carried by mountain climbers that typically contained emergency rations."
So it gets to me, and I bluff and I vote for my own. Jon next to me voted for something different, then Mai voted for mine, Vinh voted for mine... and then Duy's contemplating - "Aw man, 3 people already said the knapsack one!" - cuz you know, it's probably a good answer, but you don't want to give all the points to some guy, so sometimes you want to spread your answers around... So I'm like "come on Duy... worst case scenario, dad will get 4 points"... so that convinced him, haha. I got him good =D
Thanks Siblings!
Gankutsuou
That night, David stayed over and he said "okay bao, let's watch something, you pick anyyything".
"anything?"
"anything."
One thing led to another, and I was able to show him some more gankutsuou. I asked him to watch episode 15 and half of 17, and we ended up watching 15, 17, and 18, so that was pretty good. So, David admits that he likes these episode, but probably couldn't've have handled going through the other 12 episodes between 2 and 15, or whatever. In any case, I'm done that mission... and now that I think of it, I don't have any other "missions" at the moment. I got Firefly into him, I got a few action and comedy movies into him, and I got Gankutsuou into him. Heroes isn't a mission, Lost I don't care if he watches it either way. Lucky Star or Mushishi is his own thing, I'm not trying to get him to watch whatever. So... I think I'm done for now. Although I think I heard him mention "Friends" once, long time ago... so if that ever comes up, I'll just pick my two or three favourite episodes. Also, there are Firefly episodes still left, including the two that he first mentioned on his blog before we started watching ("Malcolm naked" and "Malcolm is dead")...
Echochrome
Nowadays, we just use the PS3 to play movies. After the movie is over, they turn off the system... anyway, so we were watching special features of AVP2 (note to self: rent "The Onion Movie") and everyone left, so it was just me and the PS3... so I say, "why not" and I go online and check what else is new for PS3. And one of the things I downloaded was the trailer and demo for Echochrome.
What a neat little puzzle game! It's a game where, depending on your perspective of the level, you can do different things. For example, let's say there's a path with a gap in between them. Your character can only stay on one side of the path. But if you rotate your view so that the gap in between can't be seen... then your character can go from one side to the other. It's very neat. There are 5 rules in total, and it really is a neat game. Here's the video of the 5 rules:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/33193.html
Played the demo, got stuck on the 3rd level until I realized the solution, facepalmed myself... and that convinced me to buy the game. $10 for 56 levels + downloadable levels and the ability to make your own levels, not bad! A few gripes though... the objective in the game is to get to certain places and grab your 'echoes' or 'shadows', so it's not very deep... the game's sometimes frustrating... the graphics are a simplistic black and white, but sometimes it still feels really bland (even though it's supposed to be). Music is oookay, classical music, yet it keeps repeating so I actually don't like it so much anymore. Game feels a bit slow and clunky... and sometimes you think your character will do something but he doesn't, so it's quite frustrating. Overall a great idea, and most likely worth the 10 bucks. Sweet.
Guillotine
Tuesday night, Isaque invites me to a "game night" after work in Toronto with some people he used to work with at Pseudo. As Isaque shows up, everyone's like "did you bring BANG?" and everyone gets upset because Hawk didn't bring it. Actually, everyone forgot to bring games, so later Mr. McCloud went out to buy a new card game from 401 games, called "Guillotine."
In guillotine, each of the players represent a guillotine operator, and your goal is to kill the correct french nobles so that you become the most popular guillotine operator. So different french nobles are worth different amount of points - like, the "Hero of the People", nobody wants dead, and is worth -3 points. But someone like an unpopular judge is worth 2 points, and Marie Antoinette and King Louie are worth 5 points each.
So what happens is each day, a line of 12 french nobles (dealt randomly from a noble deck) lines up in front of the guillotine. Each player gets action cards, like spells, that will help them win the game. So on your turn, you would play an action card (optional), take the noble at the front of the line, and take a new action card (whether or not you used one). The most common type of action cards rearrange the nobles in the line, such as "move target noble up to two points forward." So if it's your turn, and the line looks something like this:
-1 1 4 2 2 3 ... then you would use "move target noble up to two points forward" and move the 4-point guy forward twice, and grab him and get a new action card. The text on the cards are much funnier and less rigid than "move target noble" but whatever. There are other spells such as "trade hands with target player", "take two nobles this turn", "target player gets target noble in front of the line", and a bunch more. There are also enchantments such as "you get +1 points for each blue noble you have in your score pile" or "players may not play spells that rearrange the line" (which is quite jerk-like).
There are 3 days, so a total of 36 nobles, and the game is meant for 2-5 people. The cards are colourful, the text and the names of the spells and people are fun, and overall the game is pretty good. It's not overly complicated, but it's not bad of a game.
Indiana Jones
We're watching Indiana Jones tonight! And that's it for this blog update. Oh yeah, Duy's heading off to Texas for two weeks tomorrow, so if anyone needs an extra bed, we have one :P I guess most of you know about Duy going off to Texas, but to save from writing a long blog comment, I'll just say that it's a youth development/leadership camp run annually by Vietnamese students/mentors/etc, and it's in Texas. Kevin, a VSA leader and also a WinMagic employee invited us, except I have work so I can't go, but Duy can, so he's going. Should be fun! Wish I could go. Oh well.