The latest thing I’m playing: Jolly Rover, by Andrew Goulding of Brawsome. It’s totally bringing me back to the glory days of LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures. I was initially a bit doubtful about the whole “pirate dogs” setting, but I’d completely accepted it by about five minutes into the game. As much as I love the guys over at Telltale, their “Tales of Monkey Island” games never really felt like they lived up to the Monkey Island lineage. Jolly Rover, on the other hand, stands up beautifully even against romanticised memories of those classic old games.
As a developer, I’m totally blown away that this game has basically been pulled together by a single guy who designed, wrote, and programmed the whole thing across both platforms, and even wrangled voice acting and everything. A stunningly awesome effort for a solo developer.
There are free demos available. If you grew up with point-and-click adventures, or just wonder what you missed, then you really owe it to yourself to download and play one of those demos; they’re easily long enough for you to decide whether or not you want to buy the full game and continue playing.
For those who like to use Steam, the link to the free demo download is here: Mac/PC Steam Demo.
For those who prefer to avoid Steam, you can grab the demo for Windows, or the demo for Mac, either from those links or from any of the other online stores which carry Jolly Rover, including Greenhouse, Direct2Drive, and many others. So if you have a particular favourite online store, it’s worth checking to see whether it’s available there as well.
I’ll post a development update on what I’m up to, tomorrow. But until then, enjoy some piratey adventuring. :)
I’m a day late in posting this, as the weather here was shocking enough yesterday that I didn’t even turn my computer on. But it’s really worth mentioning that Terry Cavanagh has just released his epic platformer VVVVVV. There are already a goodnumber of lavishreviews on the net, so I’ll just give the very basics here, before diving into a discussion of interesting points in the game’s design and implementation.
I need to take this opportunity to give a quick shout out to Alex and Rudolf, who have just released Eufloria, the updated, commercial-quality successor to their game “Dyson”, which was created for (and took second place in) the same Procedural Generation Contest at TIGSource for which I created the first version of MMORPG Tycoon. I always knew that they’d beat me to market! ;)
Eufloria is basically a space RTS, in which colonies of spores fight against other colonies of spores for possession of asteroids within an asteroid belt.
Now, people who know me will tell you that I have a thing about RTS games. I want to love them; I eagerly await their release, purchase them, install them, and then play them up to about level four, at which point I remember that I don’t actually like RTS games, and then I never play them again. This cycle repeats about every four months or so, whenever a new RTS is released. But Eufloria is the most laid-back, casual-friendly, and atmospheric RTS game that you’re ever likely to see, and I’m still playing it. It’s one of the few games released this year that I honestly wish I had created myself.
Anyhow, check it out. There’s a demo and everything, so you have no excuses! Eufloria can be purchased directly from the developers’ site, or via Steam. Mac and Linux versions are in the pipe, but haven’t yet dropped.
Blast ships. Grab any surviving bits from their wreckage. Bolt the salvaged goods onto your ship to make yourself stronger (and repair any damage). Goto 10.
While flying about, you may spot a ship with a powerful laser cannon that you want. If it’s a peaceful ship, you need to decide whether it’s worth attracting the attention of the sector’s law enforcement by destroying that ship to get its cannon. But even if it’s a pirate vessel that’s already initiated hostilities against you, you’ll still need to figure out how to destroy the ship without destroying the cannon in the process. And as you’re bolting your new laser cannon to your ship, you’ll have to carefully maintain your ship’s balance in order to keep it handling well. But don’t take too long rebuilding; the police and that pilot’s friends are sure to be looking for revenge!
Captain Forever, created by the inimitable Farbs, is a surprisingly deep and addictive little browser-based shooter which has recently been pre-launched. By pre-launched, I mean that one can pay cash to support the game and get access to the current version and all future versions, but there is currently no free version available to the public. The idea is that when Farbs releases a major new version of the game, then the old version becomes freely available to all, and only those who have paid are given access to the new version. Oh, and at that point, the price goes up, slightly. This process repeats each time there’s a major new version; the old version becomes free, and those who have paid gain access to the new version.
Speaking as somebody who’s working on a game and would like for it to be playable by everyone, but also has to figure out ways to financially support the development, I find this approach really interesting, and I’ll be watching Captain Forever’s progress closely. Of course, I’ve already become a Captain Forever supporter, but I’d played the game during its early closed beta, so I knew that I like the game and that it runs well on my computer, so it was sort of a safe purchase for me; others may prefer to wait until the first public version is released, to verify.
On the other hand, it really is an awesome little game and Farbs is a good guy who absolutely deserves adulation and large wads of cash from random internet denizens.
Derek Yu’s Spelunky is a fantastic free game for Windows. it’s a blend between platformer and NetHack; platforming mechanics in a randomly generated world, with dozens of different objects and monsters, and all sorts of secrets and fun little game mechanics to discover. It’s also one of the few games which has me regularly rebooting into Windows just to play it. MMORPG Tycoon 2 would undoubtedly be much further along in development if it wasn’t for Mr. Yu’s little game.
And now it’s been announced that Spelunky is coming to Xbox Live Arcade next year, with buffed up graphics and even more stuff. With that sort of productivity-killing distraction coming down the pipes I really need to hurry up in my own development, or I’ll never manage to finish my own projects!
EDIT: Oh my, that was embarrassing. When initially posted, I mistakenly credited Spelunky to Derek Smart, rather than to Derek Yu. Derek Smart, of course, is the controversial man behind the equally controversial BattleCruiser series, whereas Derek Yu is one of the affable and entertaining chaps responsible for the equally affable and entertaining Aquaria. Big apologies to both, for my inexplicable brain fart and the confusion it may have generated.
The latest thing I’m playing: Jolly Rover, by Andrew Goulding of Brawsome. It’s totally bringing me back to the glory days of LucasArts and Sierra point-and-click adventures. I was initially a bit doubtful about the whole “pirate dogs” setting, but I’d completely accepted it by about five minutes into the game. As much as I love the guys over at Telltale, their “Tales of Monkey Island” games never really felt like they lived up to the Monkey Island lineage. Jolly Rover, on the other hand, stands up beautifully even against romanticised memories of those classic old games.
