Linux Game Awards: PotM March 2014 VOTE NOW!

It's time for another installment of the somewhat bi-monthly Linux Game Awards:

The list of nominees is again quite interesting, so choose your favorite.

This months winner was 0 A.D. by the way... I guess we need to increase the promotion efforts a bit in case you weren't aware...

Preparing for a crowd-funding: Torque3D MIT Multi-platform

I mentioned the nice developments on the Torque3D OpenGL and Linux ports a few weeks back, and now it seems like it is getting even more serious:

Planned platforms of Torque3D

Now don't spill your beer just yet, as this is just the proposal the developer makes for a crowd-funding building up on his great previous Linux/OpenGL work.

One of the first (hopefully soon to be) FOSS games that could benefit from this, is the currently also looking for crowd-funding RoTC abstract FPS. Only 9 days left, but they made another good increase in the last couple of days, so it is still possible to reach their goal of $1500. In fact the older (mostly closed source) version was also recently updated and you can try it on some new servers.

The (more or less friendly) fork GREED tech MIT that aims to make a full FPS development kit out of Torque3D also seems to make some interesting progress, so it looks quite bright development wise for now :)

The Sky of Verdun 3D - dogfight in HTML5

Came across this seemingly fun little game over here, too bad I don't have a Occulus Rift (yet):



Check their page for the Win32 and browser server/client download.

Code Combat: Open Source Javascript Tutorial Gamification (In A Good Way)

youtube.com/watch?v=dCOHjERswGw

Code Combat is a javascript programming learning IDE wrapped in a delicious cute RPG/2D RTS packaging that runs in the browser without any plugins. They recently announced their open source/free art release.

The current set of Code Combat tutorials starts with directional movement and activation of pre-programmed behavior, continues with coordinate movement and targeting and conditional behavior and continues towards prediction calculations.

Editor GUI

youtube.com/watch?v=H5u5ga5dHm8

There is an editor, officially described as "broken". I can confirm that the text editor was slow when I tried using it. :)

All in all, a very exciting project. I have noticed a few possible drawbacks so far:

• It's not yet clear which parts will not remain proprietary. It looks like the excellent humor (writing) unfortunately will do so (legal page).
• The music tends to be too exciting to code to.
• There's a CLA requirement for contributing.

What do you think? Persuaded to work on a HTML5 game yourself perhaps, seeing that this performs okay? :)

Long Live The Queen

The Short

Pros
- A "reimagining" of the old Princess Maker games...but more violent!
- Lots of varying events and activities help make multiple playthroughs different
- Single playthrough is relatively short; usually around 45 minutes to 1 hour
- Crunching numbers and min/maxing is surprisingly satisfying

Cons
- Not much to the game aside from stat raising
- Due to both the randomness and just how the game is set up, it's almost impossible to determine which stats to raise, and how high
- Emotions play a role in boosting/leveling skills, but nothing tells you what emotions do which things, meaning you can get stuck
- Deaths are frequent, and often appear random
- Only like two songs. Will drive you crazy.

Hope you like text. And bars. And numbers. 

The Long

The best part about video games is the massive range they can cover. The Stanley Parable, a semi-linear story-driven experience where the only "gameplay" is walking? Totally a game. Call of Duty, where you shoot dudes and it's like a summer blockbuster? Game. Wall Street Kid...let's just not talk about that one.

Anyway, Long Live The Queen is an interesting example of how games can be completely...different from each other. Based (sort of) on the old Princess Maker games that I never really played, Long Live The Queen tasks you with the princess soon-to-be-queen Elodie, who is a total blithering idiot when she comes to you. It's your job to decide what path her studies take her, and in that way the story will change. That's it. That's the whole game. Well, minus her dying. A lot. 

If that sounds interesting, read on!

Haven't seen this may bars since my trip to Ireland! (ba bum, chish)

The story is...well...honestly a bit mild, but it's also how you make it. Elodie is a fourteen (or fifteen? who cares) year old princess who will now become queen. Her dad, the King, is still alive, so...why do we need a queen again? Why is she so important? Is this a matriarchy, then? It's pretty clear from the get-go that your dad (usually) has to do what you say, but why is that? These things are never explained. 

While it isn't Game of Thrones levels of crazy political nastiness (though there is an army across the sea that can potentially invade, as well as a bunch of crazy in-house conspiracies), the game does a decent enough job of mixing up stuff that playthroughs feel mostly unique. And, when Elodie is failing every test left and right for poise, foreign knowledge, and even her own customs, you actually get a bit invested in trying to keep her afloat as she is completely overwhelmed. The game also has dozens of endings (most of them bad) and the paths to branch quite frequently. Play as a warlord and you'll see quite a different outcome later on than if you play it cool and simply exist to charm the court. 

The only downer is the beginning segments (before things can branch off) do tend to stay the same, though there are still enough random elements that it ends up being at least ok. Not the most compelling story ever, but interesting enough to get me invested. 

Expect to see a lot of Elodie making an idiot of herself. 

The "gameplay" segments are interesting, but often feel like random guesswork. To put it simply, there's 14 different categories where you can teach her stuff, and within these 3 specific focuses. That gives us a whopping 98 stats you can level, and with only 40 weeks in a game and the ability to raise two of those stats a week, you can't possibly max even a small percentage of them. Your first run (and maybe many future ones) will mostly involve dumb luck, failing every prompt that shows.

However, it's a game designed to be played this way. As you bludgeon your way through constant failures, never knowing what exactly you should be leveling, you'll revel in the small victories. And you'll being to understand how the game really works: min/maxing. Pick a focus, and burn all your time into it. Making her a jack-of-all-trades is a great way to fail early, even with many prompts being a bet more lenient and allowing you to pass if just one of a multitude of skills is leveled properly. 

Unfortunately, it's actually leveling these skills that Long Live the Queen's biggest problem emerges.

This thing is the bane of my existence.

See, the only way you can min/max her stats properly and with any sense of speed (only forty weeks, remember) is playing the emotions game. Based on Elodie's emotions, some skills will level faster than others. Being Angry, for example, gives a boost to Military should you choose to level it. Being Yielding adds a hefty chunk of points to her courtly mannerisms if you choose to invest (but will be cut down if she's depressed, afraid, or lonely). Every week you are given one chance to "flux" her emotions in a few directions, but there's so many and the amount gained so arbitrary, you have little to no actual control over it. 

What's worse is the game doesn't tell you what emotions govern which stat. For my entire first playthrough I couldn't level her poise because she started depressed (a -1 to it, meaning all experience gained is halved) and I couldn't for the life of me find out what to raise to make it work. There are no tooltips, no help options, nothing to give you hints, save perhaps taking extensive notes on the side or using a wiki. This lead to me basically just leveling the stuff that currently had the biggest boost, making her a bit one-sided (mostly in military) and ultimately bringing her to an untimely end because, while she was a sword master, she had no physical capabilities at all. Whoops?

You can also unlock weird clothes. 

The only other real "mechanic" is that, should you get any "set" of skills (read: the three that group together) to 30 or higher, you'll unlock a costume she can wear. This provides a decent boost to that category's skills, meaning you could (theoretically) equip it if you knew you'd need a boost the following day, but the only way you'd know that was via save-scumming, and at that point the game stops being fun. The costumes also range from "ok" to "absurd," with the "Magical Girl" outfit she wears upon learning magic completely stupid looking and not fitting the theme of the game. I get they're kind of trying to be silly, but it doesn't fit with the grisly death graphics and awful things going on to have her wear a tutu when she declares war on a foreign country because she was too stupid to study politics. 

Frustrations aside, it's addicting to level her up, and you sort of get into a groove after playing it a bit as to what you want to build towards. A big portion of the game is just giving up, realizing you will never know what the next week may require, and just pounding points into stuff randomly and hoping for the best. Not much of a game (there "strategy" here is near non-existent), but still oddly entertaining.

Oh I just can't wait to be queen.

Graphically...it's basically a visual novel, though I'd say it's a low-level one. The art is generally decent, especially of Elodie (and her weird "chibi" death scenes), but character portraits seriously look like the same people with different hair from time to time, and everybody is drawn in a style that makes them seem just out of high school, even the adults. It basically recycles the same 3-4 backgrounds for the whole game (you almost never leave the castle), so I'd imagine most of the graphical work went into Elodie's outfits. 

The music starts soft and carefree and quickly becomes intolerable, with one piano piece always playing during the portion of the game where you pick her lessons (and sometimes during the "plot" bits as well), with only two or three other music tracks breaking the monotony. My suggestion: turn off the music, turn on some dubstep, and have the most drop-tastic, bomb-bastic queen you can roll out.

SWORDED!

So...is Long Live The Queen worth your time? Well...I couldn't have gone over the game more (though watching someone play could help you get a better understanding. Keep an eye out on my YouTube Channel!), so if you like what you've been seeing than, by all means, give it a shot. The developers have a free demo on their site that's pretty extensive, and since the game is basically the same thing over and over if you like the demo, you'll like the game.

It's a hard sell, though, because mostly what I see is potential that isn't fully realized. With a better UI and more branching paths (And maybe less stuff to have to level and research, or lower costs to "pass" certain plot-wise tests) I could see this game being a very viable visual novel with a cool twist, and a true modern successor to the Princess Maker games. As of right now, however, it's more a toy than a game, something you play around in and mess with a bit, but don't really strategize or get too heavily invested in. Which is a pity, because it could be so much more.

It's running $10 normally on Steam and GoG, though I waited for the inevitable $5 price drop, which made it a much easier pill to swallow. For that price, it's a gleeful waste of time, and I'll confess I burned through it several times in my attempts to get Elodie on the throne. 

And most of them resulted in her death. Being queen suuuuuucks.

Two out of five stars. (but still recommended!)

What is this I don't even

Happy new year & Congrats to the LGA January 2014 winner!

Hello 2014 and happy new year to everyone!

One of the new things for this year will be the regular Linux Game Awards done by various Linux and FOSS gaming site (and which has been spearheaded by the great LGDB).

And the first winner is:



The votes have been quite clear, but our friends from SuperTuxKart got a very respectable 2nd place:

You can expect some further promotional news coming up this month for 0 A.D. so stay tuned :)

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

The Short

Pros
- Beautiful world feels straight out of a fairytale
- Unique controls that require no tutorials; you learn as you play
- Achievements are clever and encourage exploration on an otherwise linear game
- Music is phenomenal
- The "burned house" scene
- Ending segment's fusion of learned controls with story elements is quite powerful
- Four words: Valley of the Giants

Cons
- The bigger emotional moments lack punch or proper buildup (the ending being the exception)
- Game's ending may frustrate some
- Stick controls can be clunky to figure out for basic movement (works well for climbing)
- Little to no actual gameplay here; sort of a "co-op Uncharted lite"
- 90% of the game's impact is on the initial discovery; replays seem pointless
- Will only run you, at most, three hours to beat it from start to finish

Brothers will take you some incredible places. 

The Long

Something that I feel is often forgotten in the gaming medium is it's ability to transplant you in the middle of something of great beauty. Movies can often do this with special effects or good art direction, but you're tied to the characters and your time is limited. Books can also do this to great effect, though there is no visual representation for one to admire; it's all in your head. Games have a unique position, as they can create incredible, beautiful worlds, and allow someone to traverse it at their own pace. It's something that, I feel, is frequently forgotten as we push for "better gameplay" or "more enemies on screen at once."

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons is a downloadable game that tries to bring that sense of magical wonder to you, the player. Controlling two brothers you traverse a world that seems straight out of fairy tales. You'll see some downright crazy stuff, from the rustic, warm village you start in to freezing ice caps. You'll soar over mountains and climb massive structures. You'll dive deep into caves and find unspeakable horrors there. In a sense, it's like the first time you read The Hobbit: you never know what crazy thing is going to show up next, and how it will bewitch you. But the question is, is that enough to justify it's $15 price tag? Well...maybe. 

If you're looking for a visual feast, Brothers has got your number. 

The story is one of tragedy. It opens with the younger of the two brothers (neither of which are named) watching his mother drown in an unfortunate boating accident. Cut ahead a few years and (unrelated to said drowning), now their father is dying of a really bad cough (the known Movie Killer of Important Mentor Characters). The doctor in the village gives them a scroll with what looks like the Yggdrasil tree, but I might be mistaken, basically saying they need whatever is in that tree to save the father. So the two brothers go off together, trying to save their father before it's too late.

The characters don't speak an actual language (it's been compared to "Simlish," but it's much less obnoxious), but they don't need to; most emotional moments are done via physical reactions and character expressions. In this manner, the game does that very well, but particularly at merging these emotions with the actual gameplay. While the story itself is a bit light (and the final two "big twists" are poorly foreshadowed and lack an emotional punch), it's still a whimsical fairytale and feels just like it, so you're mostly there for the ride.

That being said, there are two rather emotional story segments that got to me: the burned house (which is a "side mission") and the final gameplay scenes of the game. While I don't plan on spoiling it, let me just say that the game does an exceptional job of fusing learned gameplay elements with story to really pack an emotional final punch. It's unfortunate that the actual final scene is somewhat...lame, and the game doesn't really build up enough to justify the twists it presents, but no biggie. It's not going to set the world on fire, but the story is ok. But just ok. 

"You kids wanna go on a super-dangerous quest halfway across the world to a tree that  might not exist? It'll...uh...totally save your dad!"

The gameplay in Brothers is fairly simple. Each brother is controlled with a different analogue stick (meaning a controller is a must for the PC version), and the triggers perform actions with their respective brothers. That's it. Since 90% of the time you'll be climbing up stuff, triggers have to be held and released to jump (the pressed again to catch ledges) for each respective brother. The game mixes it up a bit during a rather fun segment where the brothers are tied together, requiring some dexterous controller pressing, but ultimately the control scheme feels...cumbersome. Even after beating the game I never got used to moving the two of them at once, still forgetting which brother was which stick more often than not. I ended up positioning them on screen so they'd match (older brother on left, younger on right) in an attempt to actually be able to walk, but since you have no camera control that didn't really work. For an inexplicable reason the game doesn't have multiplayer co-op (though, to be fair, it would diminish the ending scene a little if it did), so it feels like a co-op game that you're trying to force your way through single player. Regardless, nothing is too dexterous that you'll die more than a few times, but you might have problems walking them down narrow paths together.

As for the actual gameplay...that's pretty much it. Since you have just sticks and triggers, your actions are limited. Granted, you can interact with a ton of stuff (chickens, benches, doors, wells, etc.) and each brother will react to the same thing differently (nice touch), but 90% of this game is climbing up stuff. Climbing up obvious pathways ala Uncharted but somehow even more simplified. Point being: you aren't playing Brothers because of the gameplay. Just...know that going in.

This is what you are playing the game for. 

Where it lacks in gameplay and storytelling it makes up in the journey itself. Brothers may not be a technical powerhouse (though the draw distance they got on the Unreal Engine is impressive), it's warm and soft aesthetic and incredibly detailed vistas steal the show. The developers knew this, too, and put random benches just around scenic spots where you can sit and stare in awe at their pretty scenes. In any other game I'd consider that a bit pretentious, but in Brothers it works. It knows why you are here, and gives you the means to best engage in that.

Perhaps the best bit about the visuals is the parts that are understated. While you're crawling through the mines (arguably the weakest aesthetics in the game), far below you can see a glimpse of silhouettes of giants mining next to large forges, miles beneath. As you carefully slide through an icy shelf, frozen shapes of figures in a battle field, flash-frozen and snowed over, are alongside you as you pass. And the Valley of Giants...well...let's just say it's one of the most shocking yet still incredible scenes in a game I've seen (and the buildup/hints towards it are also clever). Brothers is a game all about the journey, and it doesn't fail to deliver on the visuals aspect.

Sound is also phenomenal, with the soundtrack being one of the best I've heard in years. Soft, with slight celtic undertones, it kicks in  at exactly the right moments, being both somber and (in some rare moments) jovial as necessary. The "voice acting" is just nonsense, but you'll know the word for "brother" by the end.

Don't go to the Youtube video and read the comments (spoilers)

So...in the end, is Brothers really that amazing? Does it really pack that emotional punch that several reviewers are raving over? Is it a journey worth taking?

Well...it depends, mostly on the person. For me, the final moments were very emotional, but mostly because of the brilliant way it fused the learned gameplay with a reoccurring story element (as well as the underlying meaning of said element as it applies to the real world). That being said, the emotional punches the stories tries to pull are frequently not well deserved, and while you will get an emotional bond with these two simply by playing (I would often have the older brother go first, then wait for the younger one to "keep up" in dangerous areas), the story doesn't foreshadow the biggest twists well enough for it to work.

That being said...

Brothers is still absolutely worth playing if you value games doing something different. I, for one, loved just exploring the world. I'd often take things slowly, staring in awe and shock at the things I was discovering, and cowering in fear at the genuinely creepy bits that popped up now and again. I wish I could have spent more time in it, fleshing out the story and seeing more amazing places, people, and creatures. But, with a running time of just under three hours (and the game's impact being on a first viewing, meaning replaying it is pointless), it's a very hard sell. In addition to having the clunky controls, the game is certainly not for everybody.

But for me, I still heartily recommend it (especially since you can grab it on PC for under $7 if you're deal-savvy). It won't blow your mind with crazy gameplay or a jaw-dropping story, but it will entertain, enchant, and entrance you for it's whole duration. Please, game developers, make more games like this.

It's worth it for the Valley of the Giants. That's...just all I'm saying.

Three out of five stars. 

Just have a seat, chew on the scenery, and play some Brothers.