A Dark Room by Double Speak

A Dark Room is a text based browser game that is surprisingly fun. The game is developed by Double Speak, with a minimalist design that reveals more as the game progress. A Dark Room starts with a player in a dark room (no surprise) and the sole option to stoke a fire. With fire burning hot, the game introduces a builder and another game ‘area’ outside the room, where player can gather woods. The area is initially named ‘Silent Forest’ which will become a Lonely Hut, and eventually A Raucous Village.

Builder will subsequently introduce more options, e.g. a cart for more efficient transport of woods, and huts to build a simple village. With more gatherers, other options start to appear, e.g. building a lodge (for hunters to gather more fur and meat), a workshop where crude weapons and torches can be built.

Without spoiling the game, here’s a couple of quick tips:

Build up the Village

In my first try, I did not max out the number of huts. However, the hut houses the important resources of villages (indicated via a number and each hut can house 4 population) that generates more woods and eventually workers to manufacture things.

There is a maximum of 20 huts (huts get progressively more expensive to build in terms of woods) and that gives the player a cap of 80 population. When the maximum number of huts are built, the game will display a ‘no more room for huts’ message.

After the Huts, do build the traps to maximum. Baited traps work better of course, and doesn’t cost much (1 meat for each bait).

Resources management

Resource management is a key component for ‘A Dark Room’ where each villager assigned to produce some resources, will also consume the primary resources e.g. fur to leather, meat to baits. With a maximum of 80 villagers it is much easier to increase production for the needed resources. Try adjusting the number of villagers assign until the game sort of balances out, e.g. 2 hunter will generate 1 fur and 1 meat every 10 second, while a tanner takes 5 furs for a leather. So 10 hunters will support a tanner (5 furs to give 1 leather) and a charcutier (5 meats and wood for a cured meat).

A Dusty Path

Once the player buys the Compass from the Trading Post (or cheaper from the Nomad, which is a random event), another game segment will appear – A Dusty Path. This new area allows the player to explore beyond the village, fight enemies and eventually reach an important game objective (sorry – not spoiling the game for you). The location of this ‘objective’ is roughly along the direction pointed by the Compass when you first bought it.

While tempting to immediately explore the Dusty Path, try not to do so until you have a couple of important items e.g. the basic bonespear (weapon), waterskin and rucksack. I will suggest taking along 4-5 torches, and about 10 cured meat as well. Each step on the Dusty Path will consume 1 water unit and 0.5 cured meat. These can be replenish at various points e.g. encounters and caves.

Mines

The initial objectives are to find mines e.g. an iron mine (and later coal, and sulphur). There are only 1 of each mine and the location is random. Dying while fighting (or due to thirst / starvation) means everything that is carried will be lost – not a good idea. Thus take exploratory steps to find rest points for water / cured meat replenishments before you venture far into the map.

Finding the mines unlock more resources, and more objects to build e.g. better armour, better water container (e.g. water tank) that allows you to explore and survive longer trips.

Once you find (or build) different weapon types, they can be used (subject to cool down) simultaneously in the fights. Only 1 weapon of each type is needed, i.e. no point bringing along 3 bone spears for example.

All these explorations is for the sole purpose of finding the ‘objective’ as earlier mentioned. Once you find it, gather more resources e.g. Alien Alloy, and then the player can embark on a final trip… that requires nimble fingers i.e. quite different from the main bulk of A Dark Room’s wait for resources type gameplay.

A last tip – random events occur (e.g. the Nomad) and some of these events offer a chance to impart important Perks (e.g. Scout) that will be useful for playing A Dark Room.

Rubble Trouble by Nitrome

After getting bored with yet more social games, I decided to try out the good ol' single player flash games. There are pretty good ones like Samorost, Machinarium, Bomba etc. One can easily find good games on Miniclip and one of the latest top games is Rubble Trouble by Nitrome.

Nitrome has many good games, including Bomba (which I covered earlier) and another game involving dismantling of ice pieces. Well the current Rubble Trouble game is also about dismantling of items, in this case it's buildings and the job centres around demolition using various tools.

The Rubble Trouble game play is very simple. It's just a mouse and click game where the player select given tools to destroy the required building(s) in a fixed period of time. There is ample time for most of the levels. The tools are pretty self explanatory and there will be a simple description tied to each tool. For example, using a canon ball tool means the player can position a canon ball firer and click to fire the ball at various angle. Clicking longer means there will be more power stored in the fired ball. Of course, the power bar for the canon ball is reactivated under prolong holding of mouse button.

There are many other tools and here's the description for some of them:

Nitro - area effect bombs with small radius. The 1st tool for demolition.

Grabber - A 'grab' machine to hold on to a piece of the building. Very useful to move pieces in order to avoid damaging surrounding important buildings.

Missiles - tough to control but useful.

Airstrike - carpet destruction with limited range but easy to use.

Chain gun - well, chain gun! A rotational military grade weapon and now it is used for demolition.

At the end of each level, the player can submit the high score and be compared against other players' scores for some competitive play. The fun part is not in the competitive play (I feel) but in completing each level of the puzzle.

There are other elements introduced into the game, for example some levels will include surrounding important buildings (e.g. glasshouse) and the player must not cause the destruction of these buildings. Another element is the trapped characters in the buildings and that means players must be careful when demolishing the buildings.

Another aspect of the Rubble Trouble that is interesting is the simple and fun dialogue at the beginning of the levels. These dialogues introduce the levels and make the game more personable. The Ivan's and the Larry's of Rubble Trouble do bring a smile to the face while the player tries hard to complete the levels.

I've only managed to finish up to level 23 out of the 30 levels and yes do give the Rubble Trouble game a try!

Machinarium - Snapshots

It is nice to get away from all the Facebook games and play other games for a change. One of the other games worth playing is Machinarium, a point & click browser game developed by Amnita Design. They are also the developers of the Samorost 1 & 2 games.

I like Machinarium. There is a storyline to the whole game and the simple interface helps a lot. The entire design gives the same feel as the Samorost series, i.e. a somewhat out-of-the-world atmosphere with the in-game soundtracks. This time round there is an inventory function in the game, which allows the player to store items and also combine the items for new functions.

Here's some of the snap shots of the game. Yes I played it last year in December. The in game hints, as well as the after the-mini-game tips are pretty useful.

Some of the scenes from the game:

One touching factor about the Machinarium is the occasional memories bubbles from the main character, that flashback some of the more 'romantic' events that happened in the past between the character and his girlfriend / fiancee. This adds a very human touch that is further emphasized because the characters involved are actually robots.

For those who are interested to play Machinarium, you can download it from their website. Free demo has limited scenes (of course), and the price of $20 for a full package will entitle the player to 30 locations / scenes. Quite worth it!

Go give it a try!

See related:
- Samorost 2 by Amanita Design
- Samorost 1 - Equally Interesting Game

Restaurant City: Latest Playfish Game in Facebook

Playfish has created yet another popular hit with Restaurant City in Facebook. Restaurant City is a simple and yet addictive game where you operate a restaurant with choice of your own friends as cook, waiters, and cleaners. Dishes are created from ingredients, and there are a few ways of getting them.

Starting Out:
When you first started in the game, you would be prompted to select two of your friends to be employees of the restaurants. You could also choose yourself as an employee. Be careful who you choose as employees since sacking an employee requires a severance pay of $200.

After selecting the employees, you could assign them jobs as waiter or cook, and voila the restaurant starts operations! Once you have enough cash you could buy nicer clothes for the employees, e.g. chef's hat, sushi master' stop...etc. As the restaurant operates, you would also earn gourmet points. With sufficient points the level of the restaurant goes up. Leveling up the restaurant means you could hire more employees or get a bigger restaurant.

One thing to note is that gourmet points are earned only when the main restaurant is operating. If the player visit other restaurants, or go into the dish selection menu, or restaurant decoration menu, only coins will be earned and not gourmet points.

Coins are earned when your waiters cleared the empty plates left by customers. Each plate earns you 2 coins, regardless of the level of the dish. You could also shake the trees (similar to Pet Society) and 1 coin may drop out of the trees. Leveling up or earning awards will also entitle the player to coins / cash. There were some sites that advertise about cheat engines and such, but I think it is not much point cheating a game like Restaurant City since there isn't exactly a win / lose concept embed in the game.

Dishes & Ingredients:
The restaurant serves 3 types of dishes each time, starter, main and dessert. You could earn new dishes, or level up the existing dishes via the use of ingredients. Higher level dishes give more gourment points per customer served by 0.2. Thus a level 6 dish will earn the player 2.0 points per customer while a level 1 dish earns only 1.0 gourmet point. Higher level dishes also comes with nicer sounding name, e.g. luxurious, delicious...etc. The plates design for higher level dishes are also nicer.

Getting Ingredients
There are four ways of getting more ingredients. 1) Every day as you logged into the game, you would be rewarded with an ingredient. 2) There will also be a food quiz everyday, and answering correctly at the quiz earns you yet another ingredient. 3) First visit to new restaurants started by your friends will also earn you with a new ingredient. 4) Restuarnt City has just started a new function of 'Ingredient Market' where 3 different types of ingredients could be bought with coins each day.

More likely than not, there will be extra ingredients and players could trade among themselves for the correct ingredients for their dishes. If your friends didn't locked their ingredients, you could trade with them freely. If the ingredients are locked, a message will be sent to inform them that you requested to trade these ingredients.

Decorations & Layout:
Restaurant City offers many different ways of decorating the restaurant. The external view could be changed quite easily with coins to create different themes. New windows, decorations, trees, signboards are available often.

Similarly the interior layout of the restaurant could be changed. Unlike the exterior decorations, the interior layout plays a more important role. Functional items like toilet are needed once you reach certain levels (8 if I am not wrong).

The layout of the tables and chairs also determine how customer walk around the restaurant. Some players have suggested to arrange the restaurant like a maze, so that customers take longer to walk to the chair. It is also useful to arrange the tables and chairs such that the waiter minimises the walking distance from the chef to the customer.

One thing to note is that the stove design does not change the speed of dish cooking. The different designs are purely aesthetic.

So it may be better to arrange the chairs and table such that waiters are confined with a smaller space. Leave the corners for toilets and such.

Each satisfied customer will add to the popularity index, which means new customers will come in faster. Each time the customer is disappointed, e.g. too long a waiting time, or dirty restaurant, points will be deducted.

Give Restaurant City a try! The game is fun, and the only drawback is the slightly longer waiting time to load the game. New functions are constantly added. There is now a rating system where other players could become critics and rate your restaurant as well.

See also:
- Restaurant City is up! Added Photo Feed & Gourmet Street

Dragonica - Simple Review

Having played in the recent Closed Beta Testing, here is some of the screen shots, details and views about Dragonica.

Character Choice & Tutorial
The game is pretty simple to learn with good graphics and background music. There are four characters (warrior, archer, magician, thief) to choose from at the beginning. As the character levels up say level 20, there are other 'split professions' to choose from. This reminded me of Maplestory somehow. The characters vary in skills and I think Warrior class is an easier class to start with. Magician is long range, while thief is fast and short ranged. More description could be found on Dragonica's site.

Dragonica is easy to learn because of the tutorial. Once a new player enters the game, there are on-screen instructions about the movement and other keys. Skills will be learned along the way, and can be assigned to keys (e.g. Q,W,E,A,S,D) for ease of activation. Oh, when one press direction arrows twice follow by the jump key, the character actually fly into the air to cover a long distance, quite cool.

There is also a floating pet that tags along with the character and give instructions and advice on what to do next. This pet is quite helpful in towns in the beginning, especially for those who are not familiar with how MMORPG works.

Towns, Shops & Mission Quests

Navigation in the town is not that difficult. There is the general map on the upper right corner, that indicates NPC with "!", i.e. quest givers. In any map, the player can press 'N' to bring out a mini map version of the area. I've only visited the first two towns in Dragonica, and I read somewhere that there are a lot more towns, and a few continents to explore.

In towns, other than quests givers, there are other NPCs, including shops, guild master...etc. Some quests can class specific, i.e. unique to Warrior, Magician...etc. Generally I think the items and equipments provided in mission quests will be better than those in towns.

Speaking of mission quests, other than those quests that ask for monsters to be killed in the general area maps, there are also 'mission quests' that teleport a group of players (up to 4 normally, but I heard as many as 25 for PvP) to instances.

There are a couple of maps in such mission quests, and other statistics like combos, attacks, damages ...etc will be tracked. Try to complete the quest faster in order to get higher rankings. The rankings will also be tracked at the end of the game, and different groups will be ranked accordingly.

There will be a boss monster at the end of the mission map, and that can be quite a pain to kill depending on your character's level. Of course, there are minor / normal monsters in the same map as well. Having potions and boosters will be useful.

At the end of the quest there will be rewards. Higher 'ranks' will earn the player more rewards if I am not wrong. The rewards given is random, and you could see the 'scrolling' of the rewards on the screen. Different mission maps will give different types of rewards, with higher level mission quests giving better rewards (of course).

Others
Generally Dragonica is fun. Other than the normal hack and slash, there are other minor in game play e.g. cooking that is pretty amusing and yet provides boosters that is useful to the game. Their combo counts, as well as monsters killed counts, provided more incentives for players to 'kill' better in the game. High combos gives more experience per kill, while monster kill counts hitting bars like 100 monsters, will give an in game box with random items.

The GMs are quite responsive to gamers' request. For example, many gamers have asked for their character names to be retained even post-CBT, and GM agreed. There is also an on-going competition to develop game guides with attractive rewards.

I hope the Open Beta for Dragonica will be released soon. :) Looking forwad to the game. Want to see a YouTube of the PvP war: Emporia War for Dragonica? here's it.

Ikariam - Simple Review

After playing Travian and pretty much enjoyed myself, it is only natural that I started looking for other city building games. One that caught my eyes was Ikariam. Ikariam is a real time city building games centred around Greek mytho.

I gave it a try, and the game is generally alright. The goal is not exactly clear, i.e. no particular objective except to grow the cities you own. Cities in Ikariam are grouped together on an island, like the picture shown below. Each island will have two particular resources, wood and another e.g. wine, sulphur, crystal. Players on the same island can help each other by upgrading these two available resources on the island, thus allowing for more of these resources to be harvested.

Within each city, there are empty plots where buildings could be sited. Initially the range of buildings is limited. There are some default plots for walls and harbour. After some 'research' in one of the 4 areas, buildings options (e.g. embassy) will appear. Buildings could be upgraded for better functionalities later. News and updates will result in one of the 4 advisors (the 4 faces on top of the screen) having a lighted background.

In Ikariam, resources can be traded easily or shipped among your settlements. If you clicked on the main townhall, a report is shown containing coins, happiness of the citizens, housing left... etc. It reminded me of SimCity somehow.

While gamers in Ikariam are generally cooperative, the existence of battle options mean players will get attacked. I haven't exactly see the benefits of attacking, except perhaps to loot the resources. Walls are useful to up the defence attributes of your troops. Various troops are available, e.g. slingers, archers... etc. Players need to upgrade their barracks level before troop options are available to be built. If the level is not high enough, the game will indicate that.

There are many other islands in this Ikariam world, which contain the default wood, as well as another resource. So players will colonise a few more settlements, partly to reap these other resources. Wine (and taverns) is useful to keep citizens happy, and thus allowing for bigger settlement. Sulphur allows for troops to be built (I don't understand the logic of this but oh well), and crystals can be used in research to improve the attributes of the troops. Stone blocks are needed to upgrade the wall and for higher level buildings.

One thing to note is that when players want to colonise more settlements, remember to send wood piles along with the ships. Once settlements are built, it will be ideal to build governor building soon to reduce corruption. The number of settlements allowed is tied to the level of the palace built in your capital. Also, when more settlements are built, the respective governor buildings have to be upgraded to reduce corruption.

Generally the game is not fast paced enough for my taste, and so after 3 settlements are built, I left the game. :p Give it a try and see how you like it.

MyBrute Flash Game - Simple Review

There is another flash game attracting much attention for the casual online gamers, and that is MyBrute. MyBrute allows the player to create an online character which fights with other players' characters of the same level. Upon creation, the character will have one special skill / item / pets and a set of three attributes, namely strength, agility and speed. As the character levels up, additional weapons, skills or pets are acquired.

The skills are interesting, offering benefits like better speed, agility, more health, or the capability to immediately respond to opponents' blows with their own additional blows. The descriptions of the skills can be quite funny.

Fights are conducted in the arena. While the player could choose which of the opposing characters to fight, he cannot control the exact skill or weapon to use. So the fighting is quite random. There are times when I wish my character could be smarter in his choice of weapons. It can be frustrating to see your character fighting with bare hands and not use his store of better weapons, e.g. spear, against the opponent. Other times I wonder why the character throw his knife / spear at the opponent and not hold onto it longer.

Another drawback of the game is the limited number of fights per day. When the character is first created, 6 fight opportunities would be given. After that, only 3 fights per day is allowed. 3 fights is somewhat limited, and given the experience per fight (1-2 points depending upon victory or defeat), the character progression can be slow.

Other features of the game include pupils and clans. If you create a new character by fighting against one of the existing ones, your character becomes the pupil of the said character. The pupil then showed up as an avatar in the dojo. When the pupil level up, the main 'teacher' could get some experience as well. I've not tried the clan function but the game said that one could create a clan upon level 10.

Overall the feel of the game is alright. I suspect the game is created by the same group / developer who done Myminicity. The look and feel of the game, and the buttons announcing the progress of the games, e.g. leveling up, seems familiar. There were also some posts in the Internet about a downloader.swif.C virus when users access Mybrute via Internet Explorer. Firefox or Chrome have no such issues.

Want to give it a try? If so, click on www.scraze.mybrute.com and have fun!

See also:
- Abilities in MyBrute (some)

Bomba by Nitrome - Miniclip Flash Game

Miniclip offers a lot of interesting flash based short games. One of them is Bomba by Nitrome, a game where the player controls a small green critter via the use of mouse, to light up the dim stars within the Bomba stages / maps.

While the concept looks deceptively simple, the game play is not. Player needs to avoid the solid walls, moving objects, other creatures...etc. Along the way, new functions are also added in the different stages of Bomba, to help the small green critter get past obstacles like green moss. The green moss can be demolished via the use of bombs. Again the control is via mouse and mouse clicks. Bombs could also be used to kill the other creatures like flies (they look like flies to me) and fishes. Only one bomb can be released each time.

The bombs are floatable. Once the bombs are released in water, they can float up. The green critter only have a short breathing time within the waters before the critter would drown and so the player has to be fast and strategic. There are also 'flying' bombs which remain stationary at the spot where the bomb is released. Players need to be careful about the flying bits released when bombs destroy the green moss. Maybe the name of the game, Bomba, is derived from these bombs in the game.

Other than bombs, there is also the 'flaming' function introduced towards the middle stages of Bomba. Flaming function has a limited timespan, and while activated the small green critter can burn through green moss. There is a danger though because the moss may hide walls which are still deadly to the green critter at flaming state.

Stages of Bomba may introduce a combination of these different functions, and the player need careful timing and innovative use of these tools to get pass the obstacles.

The game is never boring because new features are added frequently, e.g. laser beams that only allow bombs to pass through and not the critters, and also bombs with short timing before explosion.

Generally Bomba is fun and worth a try. Players need to be patient, and think carefully before navigating each stage. Each stage of Bomba offers only 3-4 green critters, i.e. lives, but the game remembers which stage the player has cleared, and the player could always start from where he left off the next time.

See also:
- Canyon Defence on Miniclip