In one of those rare occasions where I’ve actually had the time, I’ve been looking for that one magic game that will grab a hold of my attention and then refuse to let it go again for the better part of a year or so. In my quest to find this Holy Grail of Video Games, I’ve been sampling all manner of things. This time, I’ve been tangling with ghosts, mutating in New York, plotting to rule the world and getting lost.
After being pleasantly surprised with Coyote’s Tale, a hidden object game which does very well at providing hidden object enthusiasts with almost everything they could want out of a hidden object game, I spoke with Matt Shetler of Merscom to find out more about what went into the creation of Coyote’s Tale and in the development of hidden object games in general.
Living in a country where it is nigh on impossible to buy PC games via retail outlets, I have inevitably found myself using various digital distributors. Add to this the ever increasing desires of publishers to also make the move to the digital stage, and considering that retail outlets in countries such as the US and UK are also phasing out the sale of PC games, more and more consumers and publishers are going to be making the same switch. But how do these services compare? Which ones should be used and which avoided? To help answer these questions, I present the first part of an on-going series based on my own experiences with several digital distributors. First up, Valve’s Steam.
So Legend – Hand of God has turned up on Steam, and having not heard anything about it before I decided now was the time to give the demo a whirl. After all, the write up on Steam store page, true to the marketing hype machine that most game publishers buy, made the game sound very tempting. And even the screen shots make it look fairly pretty graphically. To top it all off, it even comes with a nice price tag of $20. But then the mouse pointer just had to go and open its mouth.
Yet another item shamelessly lifted from RockPaperShotgun, but funny none the less. It seems that Popcap are really hyping up their next game which involves plants, zombies, dolphins and a bobsled team. Not surprisingly it has the name Plants Vs. Zombies and is their take on the tower defense theme. While the game isn’t out yet, they’ve rolled out a several amusing items…
It’s simple, free and in 3D. This is one independent game that deserves to do the rounds around the ‘net some more. Found via way of Rock, Paper, Shotgun who decided to give this a little more exposure after it turned up on Indie Games as their freeware game pick for Sunday a few months back, this is a simple little gem with a simple little name: Where.
On the 16th of March, Valve issued a press release announcing the ability for Steam to offer downloadable content (DLC) for purchase directly within games via Steam. This was kicked off on the same day with the two downloadable “deleted scene” levels for The Maw, both priced at $1.25. Naturally this was then also accompanied by a whole bunch of complaining in the Steam forums. So why all the fuss over DLC?
I’m not the sort of person who likes to play just one game at a time. In fact I like to play a range of games as and when I feel like it. This last week, I’ve jumped from 17th century Japan to World War 2, from feeding a whole bunch of cute to a blob with teeth to getting my hands wet with goo. Here’s a short highlight of some of the games I’ve played.
In one of those ever increasingly more common situations, I found myself once again forced to set sail on the torrent seas in search of a game that initially interested me. I didn’t want to do it, but the publishers deemed my location unfit for their game, regionally restricting not only the sale of the game, but also the very demo I wanted to try before considering importing! Now, while I was on my hunt through places I would have rather not touched with a ten-foot barge pole, I had a mind blowing epiphany about the large majority of the vocal ilk found on such sites.
Love them or hate them, they’re here to stay. Casual games are on course to becoming the largest, most profitable niche in the PC gaming market within the next year or so. But as their popularity increases, so does the obviousness of the flaws which casual game developers must address if they want to stay ahead of the game, and ultimately within the current economical climate, in business.
