Armchair Diplomat

Scroller / Magic Puzzle Winnination.

Came across this little game, called Continuity, from Kottke and felt it deserved a re-posting.

An awesome concept, and brilliantly simple. Get the key into the door, and go through.

So four squares, and you can move them like a magic puzzle (you’ve all played one, usually a tiger or something and have to make the picture look like the tiger again, after being jumbled up). Except, pressing the space bar zooms in on your little dude, and you can jump and run your way through the changing map that is the magic puzzle.

Fun!

I found this image by googling fffuuuuuuuuuuu, which is also one of the phrases people have used to find our site. Who would've thunk it?

Okay, I rarely rant (don’t laugh). What the fuck is with tonight?

Every freaking game Matty and I try to play just will not work. And it’s a fairly even distribution of whose machine is the cause of lack of gameplay.

Matty came around after a bit of site work, and we hiked up to my place to play some gentlemanly games. We’ve been really keen to crack at Section 8 Beta, so we can review it… And a bit of DoW2. My xbox is still at his place (until the kindly return of his RRoD’d console), so it was a pc affair (even though, my pc, is secretly a mac in disguise, now with iMoustache and everything)

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Works on all the senses. Even smission!

I’m not usually a big fan of puzzle games, when other options present themselves, but after giving the demo of Auditorium a try, I was impressed by the originality of the title, and also the rather beautiful way the game is put together.

Auditorium is a game about harmony.  It’s a little difficult to gain a lexicon of appropriate words, so some of this might sound a little odd to anyone who hasn’t played the game, but stick with me here.  The object of the game is to run a stream of particles (or your “Flow”) over a volume indicator, which starts it playing.  To move the stream of particles, you’re given a set number of moveable fields that effect the particle stream in different ways.  You can adjust the position and size of these fields to effect the stream in different ways.  To complete a level, players have to run the particle stream over every volume meter on the level at the same time, which plays a complete tune.  Once you manage to get the particles activating each volume meter at the same time, the level finishes and you move on to the next.

Still with me, camera guy?

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Play now secretly!

I’m sure everybody has appraised themselves of the ever-spammier ads for the online game Evony, but I received a call from a friend today who was laughing his ass off.  Strolling through the interwebs, he’d found the pinnacle of Evony’s current advertising campaign (pictured right).  What’s not to love about an online game that just does away with any semblance of decorum in it’s advertising and just drops a big set of boobs on you?  Why even bother mentioning the game anymore?  Hell, why bother even making your own version of a spam ad?

But I’ll admit it, I’m intrigued.  Not by the breasts, there are plenty of places for that on the internet, but by the game that wants to rely on them to attract new players.

So off we go to the Evony site.  Registration is surprisingly easy, which is a little odd when you think about it.  This game doesn’t even have an authentication email.  In a practical sense, this means you can create as many accounts as you like, something that would usually be a little dodgy in a normal MMORPG.  But as you might have already guessed, this game is a little dodgy all over.

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The visuals are simplistic, yet elegant

For anyone who hasn’t played it, I’ve recently been distracted from my console by the browser game Auditorium.

Auditorium is a rather creative puzzle game where you have to control a stream of music through a series of flow altering orbs to create a harmony.  To complete a level, you must have your stream flowing through every music track on the board.  It can be quite complex at points, and can take a lot of trial and error.

It’s really a very difficult concept to explain, but it’s a fantastic puzzle game and you can check out the demo for free.  It’s fun, a little bit different, and the only reason why I haven’t bought myself the full version yet is because it could very well be making it’s way to consoles via XBL and PSN soon.

Give it a try!

He's a sword and martini kind of guy

For an era where graphics are sometimes more important to reviewers than the actual gameplay of a given game, it says something that I’ve been playing Kingdom Of Loathing on and off for around five years now. This might suggest to you just how much I enjoy the game’s writing and community.

For those of you who haven’t heard of the game, it’s kind of like a strange combination of an online RPG, a paper-and-pencil table game and an encyclopedia of the most obscure pop references and puns you’ve ever read. The overall idea is to defeat the Naughty Sorceress and free the enprismed (that’s not a typo, by the way) King of the Kingdom. Players accept quests, customise and create different armour and weapons, raise their stats, accrue Meat (the Kingdom’s currency) and eventually ascend to begin the game again (while keeping their accumulated items and making one skill permanent each time). Players are given 40 adventures (essentially like a turn) each day, that can be boosted by consuming food and alcohol. Players have to be careful with their consumption, however, because consuming too much booze means that the character will be “Falling Down Drunk” and be unable to adventure properly for the rest of the day. Better food and better drinks yield better adventure gains, but in turn is harder to make (and can be sold for a better gain). Read more