Playfish New Game - Hotel City

Playfish has launched a new social game centering around hotel management during mid-March - Hotel City. Not sureif this will be a big hit, but so far the various reviews seem positive, other than the occasional complains about software bugs. The graphics are typical Playfish graphics (which are nice of course) and I personally like the background music.

The game has a great tutorial. First the player starts off with about 50800 coins to buy various rooms and items. The hotel could be expanded (later as a leveling reward) and more rooms of various nature added.

The gameplay is intuitive and players could get more coins once a day by visiting other players. Coins could also be earned by clikcing on sleeping hotel guests. A bit weird, but that provides some in-game activity.

Playfish has also recently introduced a 'reviewer' feature. Randomly there will be some hotel guests who are actually hotel reviewers in the Hotel City. If the player clicks on them, the player has the additional option to share review stars with friends (and of course keep one for themselves). These stars are very good decorative items that help to boost the ratings for the rooms.

Players could also sign-on as helpers in other players' hotels and that would yield more coins (as tips) per day.

Of course, once the player levels, more coins and game options will be made available. Getting thru to level 8 is easy and could be done within 1-2 days. Beyond these initial levels, the player has to carefully managed a combination of guest rooms and recreational rooms.

There are many recreational rooms (which are made available at different levels), including gym, cafe, bar, cinema, and even a swimming pool. Each recreational room can allow for more guests and the staying time in each room is different. So it takes come maths to calculate which rooms can yields more coins and points.

Hotel City attracts more game play by offering coins, but it also penalises lack of game play by introducing roaches into the hotel when the hotel is not operational for some time. In order to keep the hotel operational, the player could click on different shift timing for the hotel staff. In general, the longer hours mean more coins paid per hour, and the temp staff cost more than 'friends' hired for the Hotel City.

Hotel City hotels are rated by stars, and these stars improved based on a few factors. Stars are gained when the players properly decorate each guest room, and also introduced other commercial rooms (e.g. gyms, cafe, cinema) for the hotel guests. The guests would occasionally indicate what features they want for the hotel Nonetheless, Hotel City also prompt the players by a message that appears beside the stars rating.

Overall the Hotel City is a nice game to play. Since the game is still in beta version there are bound to be bugs. One particularly irritating bug is that when a player clicks on other rewards before receiving his full hotel points (and coins) for the day, the rewards will supercede the hotel points gained, i.e. the player loses his hotel points for the day.

Hopefully Playfish can sort out some of these bugs soon, and perhaps introduce more new features, say more variety of music for the hotels?

Farmville Addicts

It is interesting how the mainstream media treats games nowadays. On one hand they published articles about games addiction, including one where a politician was sacked from the city council committee for playing farmville while attending budget meeting; and on the other hand the media published articles about celebrities playing the same game.

Yes the game in question is farmville, and here's the extract from the article about the sacked politician:

...one politician, Dimitar Kerin, was yet again nabbed tending to his online crop.

Kerin was promptly voted off the council committee for playing FarmVille on the job.

The other article focusing on celebrities had quotes from both local and foreign celebs, including Bryan Wong and Shu Qi, which gave the impression that it is alright to be addicted to the game.

Oh well, this is yet another example of how social games are changing our landscape, for both professional workspace as well as leisure purposes. With the arrival of the iPad where people could enjoy their social games on even larger (and stylish) devices, I am sure there will be more reports of games addiction.

Nope I was never addicted to Farmville, perhaps Restaurant City or Cafe World yes, but not Farmville. Lolz.

AsiaOne - Reported Attack Site

AsiaOne is one of the news website that I frequent to get my news fix.

Strangely today AsiaOne is reported as a 'Reported Attack Site' by Google. In fact a number of search results that point to AsiaOne also highlighted it as a dangerous site.

I clicked further and found these details. So apparently there are malicious scripting exploits and Google found the malicious software as recent as 27th April. That means the site has been down for nearly a day? Wow, I wonder why it takes so long for the site owner to remove the malicious scripts.

Yes this is a screen grab of the search results. I'm sure the site suffers major loss of traffic over this incident. Hopefully AsiaOne site owners can get it up soon.

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

Warstorm - Simple Guide & Review

I was enticed to play Warstorm (by Challenge Games) when I saw a friend's Facebook meesage about giving away free cards. Well it has been suite some time since I last played a card game and so I decided to give it a try.

The experience is not too bad if you have time to spare and are interested in such TCG (Trading Card Games) - like activity. Basically the game play of WarStorm involves assembling of cards comprising of a Hero card and unit cards. The Hero card has restrictions and may allow the player to include a Spell card or artifact / item card. These unique characteristics are reflected in the upper right corner of the Hero card (no. of units, artifact, and spell respectively). A total of 6 cards (other than Hero card) is allowed for each Squad.

The Heroes are formed from many different races, including Human (the 1st card you have is a Human race card), Elf, Orc, Undead etc. When a new squad is formed, there will be 1 Hero with unit cards associated with the Hero's race. The race is indicated at the upper left corner of the Hero card.

After the 1st squad is assembled, voila the player can start the battles! At the tutorial section, the player will be introduced to the various special abilities of the different cards, e.g. regenerate means the unit can recover health points at the end of its turn. There are many abilities, and counter abilities. For example, a unit with Sap ability (reduce opponent's attack) can be used against opposing cards with Frenzy ability (increased attack). Drainbolt can recover the unit's health when the unit causes damage etc etc.

At the bottom of the battle scene in Warstorm UI, the player can opt to increase the speed of the game. This is particularly useful once the player has the hang of the game mechanics. There is seriously no need to observe how each card is drawn slowly, and wait for the animation.

Each day that the player owns some territories, the player will earn 'silver'. These silver can be used to buy more cards. The Shop tab has a couple of options, including buying small packs of 3 random cards, or 6 random cards. There are also pre-packed bundle with characteristics of the cards stated clearly. Of course, every day there will be single cards for sale and some of these cards can only be bought with 'gold'. Gold coins are bought with real life cash (well the game developers also need to eat right?).

There are other ways to earn cards, and one such way is to log in consistently everyday for 5 days. With that achieved, the game will give the player an 'Expert pack' with 6 random cards. Quite useful actually for the beginning player since it is really tough for the player before they assembled their ideal Squads.

As part of inducting the players into the game, there are special scenarios / territory fights where the players will be asked to 'conquer' territory. Often each fight is accompanied with a storyline. The storyline is not particularly exciting, nor is the story closely linked to the cards. However, it is nice to have some background to each activity rather than plain fighting.

When there are many squads formed, the player can assembled Defensive Positions, which will be Squads to defend against other players / friends' attack. Want to show off how good your Squads are compared to your friends? Atttack their Defensive Positions and boast of the victory!

Well, with the above knowledge, it is sufficient to start playing Warstorm. It is sort of satisfying to level up although I don't really see the exact benefits given with each level.

Some simple tips: Keep fighting and complete the daily quests to get silver. Silver is especially essential for the beginning player since the units you get as default will be weak. You need the silver to buy Expert packs with better cards. If you can have more silver, do go for the pre-packed decks since some of them give pretty decent Artifact / Spell cards. The option to fight other players with rewards of 1,000 silver is useful.

2nd tip: Observe the card play (use the high speed). When the enemy uses powerful cards that require high number of turns to activate, try using simple decks with 2 turns activation in order to win the fight quickly. Simple trick but it works!

3rd tip: Try different combination of Squads that complement each other. For example, use deck with protection (Earthworks, Protection 2 to Infantry, Immune) that works also for other Squads (i.e. more infantry units respectively for Earthwork).

Genesis & Skaar

Castle Age has recently launched two monsters for group fight - Genesis & Skaar.

One thing interesting about Castle Age is that each part of the game has an accompanying story plot that helps to explain why we are fighting the monsters.

So here I've captured the screenshots for Genesis & Skaar.

For Genesis here's it:

Here's a screenshot of the loot available when you defeated Genesis.

And of course the text you received when completing the fight.

For Skaar the format is slightly different. Instead of using energy to build up defence (blue bar), the players are supposed to use energy to dispel the protective forcefield of Skaar (purple bar). I guess Castle Age just want to introduce some variety into the fights.

Here's the text when Skaar is defeated.

So far so good. Wonder what more monsters will Castle Age introduce next, e.g. in the other maps of Atlantis.

'Specials' of Castle Age - Generals and Items

Players of Castle Age will know that the favour points can be used to buy 'special' general and items that are somewhat powerful. Every month or so there will be new 'specials'. It costs 30 favour points to buy a general and 25 points for the related items.

I'm not sure how the new specials work because I am sure there are a lot more specials for different players, i.e. different specials are available to different players?

Here's three sets in Castle Age that I've found so far:
December: Lyra (16 attk 13 def) and her related items.

January: Dexter (13 attk and 16 def) and related items. Descriptions about him are subsequently linked to the orge Gorlak because supposedly Dexter took the powerful axe from Gorlak.

Current: Gorlak (15 attk and 15 def) and his related items. Gorlak's cudgel is made because Gorlak lost his axe to Dexter.

Wonder what other creative generals and items can the developers think of.