Plants vs. Zombies

by PopCap Games

Huh? I review something the day after it comes out? Pure chance. A quick surf around the intarwebs tells me that this game came hotly anticipated, and yet here I was, in my cave, completely unaware.

I logged onto Steam yesterday and literally just stumbled onto to this, still not realizing that I was looking at it on the day of its release and that a gajillion people everywhere else were slobbering all over it. I just thought, "Hmm, could be fun," and downloaded the demo.

Thirty minutes later my wallet unhinged and money changed hands. 10 dollars is a hard price to argue with when the game is so damned fun.

I have never played tower defense games before, so the concept is still fresh to me. Someone with more experience in the genre might find this game a little less exciting, but from what I hear, it's got enough innovation to please even the most jaded stalwart.

The concept and gameplay go as follows: You defend your cartoony house from hordes of cartoony zombies through the cunning placement of plants. Vegetable-flinging hilarity ensues.

It has a lot of the elements of ye olde real-time strategy game, but the resource management and tech-tree aspects are simplified, while strategic focus is on defense and careful positioning.

Where this game really suceeds is in its immense variety. Playing through adventure mode yields five different environments, each with their own rules and considerations. Every ten levels, just when things are about to get repetitive, you change scenarios and the game changes dramatically. Outside adventure mode are even more gameplay options. In fact, the game's 50 levels are really just prelude to all the other modes of play, (Yes, I already played through adventure mode - I got that hooked. I haven't devoured a game like this since 5th grade when all I played were rentals).

In all you have up to 48 different plants to fight with. Yes, with that many weapons there is some overlap and imbalance, but PopCap really has done a good job spreading out the utility. They found an awful lot of design space in what is a terribly straightforward genre. It helps that the Zombie horde is similarly varied, offering up new problems to be solved and anticipated by the player.

With all that said, the game is a little, well, casual, which doesn't bother me but might bother others. It's really not very hard and for all the variety in the game certain basic strategies still emerge as dominant. Most of the game's problematic units can be solved with emergency one-time-use explosives or something similar, leaving you to wallow in your repetitive horde strategy if you want to. It isn't until you play survival mode on hard difficulty that you are thrown enough curveballs to actually necessitate playing a more well-rounded defense.

And yet I'm still hooked. This might be a product of it being my first tower defnse game, in which case I'm still thrilling with the discovery of a fun new genre.

Certainly the demo could be better. It sucked me in because the concept was so fresh to me, but I think it is a huge, almost arrogant risk to limit your player to 30 minutes (Total! Forever!) when you could just give them the first ten levels and let the game sell itself.

Eets

by Klei

Got this one off Steam. This game is about three years old so I'm breaking exactly zero ground by writing about it. I told you timeliness was not going to be my strong suit. All I know is I'm so sad that I showed up late to this party.

I feel it's still worth writing about now, however, because it was just released to Xbox Live Arcade. Also, I feel like this was 2006's World of Goo - (Which I will be reviewing eventually) - a weird, beautiful, unique puzzle game that makes your brain work in ways it hasn't before.

Eets is touted as "Lemmings meets the Incredible Machine" and as high-concept sales pitches go, this one hits the mark dead on.

It's a puzzle game, like I said, and a completely bizarre one at that. In fact, perhaps the greatest criticism one can levy against this game is that it might be a little too weird. Strangeness can have mechanical implications in gaming: In this case the pieces you play with can be counterintuitive. It's not a big problem, mind you, but I can't say I wasn't a little baffled when I stepped away from this game and came back to it weeks later.

The game is like Lemmings in that you are guiding a hapless creature, (named Eets, if you can believe it), to an exit point. Unlike Lemmings you are given only one hapless creature to save, so there is no exploding him or turning him into a wall or shrugging your shoulders when an acceptable percentage of him falls into lava. Unless of course you like failure. Or comedy.

The game is like Incredible Machine in that you place objects all over the level in an attempt to construct the Rube Goldberg Device of Hilarious Victory. In other words you alter the environment so that a series of objects will bonk your stupid Eets over to where he stupid needs to stupid go.

Of course, a la Incredible Machine, you are free to solve puzzles wrongly in the name of playing Hilarious God of Physics. I spent a chunk of 7th and 8th grade seeing exactly how many bumpers I could make those little men hit before they died, laughing maniacally the entire time I did. (Admit it! You did it too!)

The game's formula is enhanced by Eets' emotions, which range from scared to happy to angry. Depending on his mood he will interact with the environment differently. Things can be done to change his mood, the most basic of which is to feed him different foods. Part of the puzzle becomes knowing when and where to change his mood so that he will behave in the way you need him to, (Hence the game's subtitle: Hunger. It's Emotional). This emotion mechanic is simple at first, but has increasingly dramatic effects as you progress through the game.

The game develops nicely as more and more contraptions and challenges get thrown your way. I will say the early worlds are a little repetitive and maybe too easy, but once the game ramps up the stakes it gets to be quite fun.

Where this game really succeeds is in its art-style and goofy items. This goofiness lends the game much of its appeal, but I must say that mechanically speaking, this game isn't quite as odd as it first appears. Allow me to explain.

In a "normal" puzzle game you might have a catapult that propels your character in an arc. Here instead it is a cranky looking whale that swallows you up and ejects you out his blowhole.

Elsewhere you might have a cannon that fires explosives when touched. Here it is a pig that, um, farts out a smaller pig-with-a-cape that soars through the sky until it hits something and explodes. Mechanically these things are normal, it's the crazy art concept placed on top of them that makes the game feels so strange and wonderful. Bear in mind this isn't exactly a complaint.

The music fits the game's art style very well, but could be better - and more varied. I keep wishing there were more songs in rotation as the ones I keep hearing are getting bland. The music is still a major strong point here, but if I am to draw more comparisons to World of Goo, Eets loses the music competition.

Finally I come to the demo. Considering that I bought this game the demo clearly does what it is supposed to. You are given the game's first "world" which does an admirable job showcasing the game's many weird concepts. I will stress like I always do that more might be gained by making the demo even bigger. Two worlds? So maybe I can see the game's puzzles outside of a "tutorial" setting? Am I so hard to please?

The Maw

I'm about to make a few enemies, because what I did was download the demo of this game and then promptly refuse to purchase it. Oh I know, everybody just lurves this game and it won the Pax10 and it's cute and innovative and cartoony. I'm sure it's great. Its demo is awful.

We have a cinematic cutscene with high production value and a plot that is sort of a knockoff of Lilo & Stitch. By the developers own admission, the characters and ideas are meant to be easily marketable. That's not a bad thing in itself, but I also find the charming nature of the game to be a bit forced. Maybe I'm just being a grouch, but I'm also not the sort of person to hate something popular just because it's popular, (Come on we all know a few of those people).

Anyway, the real problem is that the demo ends well before the game reaches "interesting" status. What on Earth is the risk of letting me play more of your game than the first 10 minutes? Couldn't I have at least finished the first level? Given the community response to this game, I have faith that it is everything they say it is, but the demo proves nothing. Somebody who just glances at this on Steam is not likely to be impressed.

In fact, the demo demonstrates so few mechanics that you don't even use all of the controls listed on the help screen. And the weird control-two-characters-at-once-with-a-leash thing is potentially awesome, but so underproven in this tiny demo that you feel like you are fighting against it before you even get to understand why it could be so fun.

So in conclusion, I kept my ten bucks. I imagine I will have reason to purchase this game later - it's just too well received to ignore, but right now I want to hold it up as a perfect example of how not to do a demo. Developers, heed my words: There is nothing wrong with giving away a lot of content for free.

Spectromancer

If you've ever played Magic: The Gathering and enjoyed yourself more than a little, stop reading and just download the demo. If you watch the game trailer offered: it will garner one of two reactions from you.

1) WTF is that? This game makes no sense. This game is nonsense.
2) That is the coolest thing I have ever seen.

If you're in category 1, you might as well just not even read this blog post. Just move along. It's okay I've got nothing against you. CCGs and CCG-esque computer games are, no bones, extremely nerdy. But if you are this nerdy, download the demo now. The worst that will happen is that you will not enjoy it and you will not be out any precious monies.

The demo offered here is perhaps the benchmark that all demos should be modeled after. You are given fully a third of the single-player game, but limited to playing as only one class. When I sat down with this demo it devoured my soul for about 3 hours until I had run out of content, at which point my wallet unhinged and money changed hands. A major feat, really, because for as much as I like this game, I feel that it is overpriced at 20 dollars. 10 would have been the magic number for this one, I feel. But that's what happens when you make your demo really big.

Want to know more?

This is a card-based strategy game, with mechanics and designs very reminiscent of early M:TG. Fans of the old Microprose computer game will also note the single-player game's similarity to Shandalar, in that you are traveling the countryside, dueling a series of wizards in bizarre situations, and earning new spells as your reward for victory.

Anyway, either you "get" this sort of game or you don't. I've had a lot of fun with it, and will continue to have a lot of fun with it, but it is not without its shortcomings, so here are my criticisms:

The production value is a little low, even for an indie game. While the art and music are not bad by any means, and any turn-based strategy game relies on its design more than its visuals, just about anything on Steam that costs $20 is going to look damn near retail quality. In fact, most things that cost $20 on Steam are retail titles.

Worse, however, and much less forgivable, is the fact that a lot of the game text is filled with typos and errors. Enough said there. Bad copy editors, bad.

A mechanical departure from traditional CCGs is that there is no deck-building, which is too bad for me because deck-building is my favorite part of the CCG process - I find it more fun than actually playing the game I'm building for.

Instead each duel sees you with a hand of 20 cards randomly selected from the available pool, all of which can be played over and over again at any time, provided you have the resources to play them. This approach makes for a well-balanced game in some regards, but it can also feel too pernicious. Randomization helps prevent abusive combo-building, but in truth the abusive combos will sometimes appear in your hand anyway.

Also, a player's class has only a small impact on what you can do. Spells of five different "colors" are made available to you at all times, with four of them always being Earth, Air, Fire or Water themed. The fifth color is determined by your class. The end result is that the bulk of what you do is the same from class to class.

Admittedly your class spells are more efficient at what they do than similar cards in the elemental colors so you play them more frequently. Your play choices from the elemental colors will also vary to create synergy with your class-specific spells, but the end result is that a lot of duels play out the same way regardless of your class.

What this last complaint really comes back to is deckbuilding: The player is not given much control over what resources they can bring to a battle. I understand that the game as-is would be unbalanced if the player was given this control, but I feel like the better choice would have been to balance the cards to a point that the player can be trusted with more strategic options.

Strange Attractors 2

I wanted to start with this little game because I think it is emblematic of independent games. Not only is it mechanically unique but it is perfectly executed. It is nice to look at and yet democratic enough to run on any computer. It is also a rarity in that it is available at the Greenhouse and not on Steam.

Ludologists might call this a "pure" game - that is it is narrative free and nearly devoid of all metaphor. I have been assured that I am in command of a "ship" that flies through "space" - that is to say a "spaceship" - but in all reality this "space" is just a Cartesian plane. There is no greater purpose. This game is a toy. You manipulate the game state and things change. And that is all you do. In its way it is wonderful.

This game isn't about what you do, but about how you do it. What you do is patently basic video game nonsense: You navigate an environment, collect collectibles, avoid hazards, unlock doors and move forward toward a finish line. This formula has been perfected since 1985 so it sounds like a laundry list of boring until you get to the control scheme.

You can do three things: Turn gravity on, turn gravity off and reverse gravity. Mind you these are not bonus powers that you get in addition to traditional options such as "go left" and "go right" and "stop" Gravity manipulation is the only thing you can do. You play this game with two buttons.

How it works is that the playing field is replete with objects that have gravity potential, (and others that don't). You turn gravity on and you begin moving according to the rhythms of science - mass and distance factor in. You get up some speed, find yourself going in a direction you like and you let go, turn gravity off, and sail straightwise through inertialess space. Maybe you bounce off something. Maybe you tap gravity back on for a second so you can briefly sink into a tight orbit and turn a corner. Maybe there is a door to your right and a source of gravity to your left so you reverse gravity and push yourself on through. Maybe you miss your target by a hair and end up ricocheting down the halls of some neon labrynth, hurlting far from your goal, shouting "nooooooo!" and wondering why I recommended this game to you.

Basically the game is physics homework. Wonderful physics homework. There is a learning curve, but after some time with the game the controls start feeling intuitive. You begin to feel like a sucker for all that time you squandered playing games with characters that move under their own volition instead of with all the grace of gravity.

The graphics are firmly grounded in what I call the "Tron Aesthetic" - everything is bright neon on black. I generally eschew nostalgia of any kind, but I'm a sucker for this look. You might not be. It is conducive to interpreting the environment, but it is not the most innovative design. The soundtrack is techno-ish, mellow and atmospheric. I only find one track memorable at all but it is never grating.

The game is never "addicting" which is good or bad depending on what you want from a game. I'm never dying to play this game, just generally pleased when I do. I'll play one level and call it quits for the day. It hits all the right notes on difficulty. It frustrates and challenges without punishing. The game will continue to surprise you with new mechanics and designs.

The demo is lacking, but I like things that look like Tron so much I bought it anyway and am glad I did. Developers need to understand that it is safe to reveal much more content in a demo. This game gives you one lousy level, the purpose of which is just to demonstrate the basic mechanics of the game. While it succeeds at doing that much, I will say that if I had been given the first nine levels instead I would have been irrevocably hooked.

How I Purchase and Review Indie Games

As of the writing of this post, I ingest Indie Games on two platforms: WiiWare and PC. XBOX Live and the PS3 are fine services, but my narrowness is defined both by personal taste and financial restriction. I'm not here to play every game ever, just offer my opinion on the games I do choose to play.

I obtain these games via three avenues, ordered by preference thusly:

1. WiiWare
2. Play Greenhouse
3. Steam

If a game is available for both WiiWare and PC, I will play the WiiWare version, (though I might demo it on the PC first), for two reasons: 1) I like playing games on the Wii console, (duh), and 2) I want to support Nintendo's Internet efforts. Yes, Nintendo is already a big successful corporation without my dollar votes, but they have that oh-so-Japanese tendency to completely misunderstand and fear the Internet so I want to encourage these baby-steps.

On the the PC, I want to encourage the Greenhouse because of its relationship with Penny Arcade, a pair of men who have become an important voice in the gaming world. So if a game is available on both Steam and Greenhouse, I'm purchasing it from the Greenhouse because that's where I want my dollar votes to go. After them, however, Steam is still an absolutely wonderful service, and insanely comprehensive.

In the case of PC games, I will not purchase a game that does not offer a demo. In this day and age, not offering a demo is patently stupid. If grocery stores can hand out free samples of food, game developers can hand out free samples of game. Why ignore the opportunity to get shoppers excited about/addicted to your product?

Further, my reviews will discuss the merits of the offered demo, and how well it sells the game. I will also review demos that fail to sell me on a purchase. I want to blog about this because nobody else is, and I think it is an interesting discussion to have. The point of reviewing Indie Games is that I want to help expose the industry, so it follows that I want to see it improve. Proper use of demos is a skill some small game developers lack.

Beyond all this, my standard rules for reviewing apply. My love of games is really a love of problem solving, and games are simply an artistic expression of that activity. Like with everything, I have broad tastes, but I gravitate toward certain genres.

I like strategy and puzzles most, most often in a turn-based environment. This is not a mainstream inclination, I know, which should explain my investment in Indie Gaming, where my tastes are rewarded more often. I'd like to say I like RPGs, but that is a complicated matter, one to be expounded upon in later posts. After that there really isn't any kind of game I don't like, but they have to be mechanically interesting and innovative in some way, and I have to be asked to think and problem solve or I'm going to glaze over and get bored.