Casual Corner

Welcome to the Casual Corner for July, the month of the Steam Summer Sale. Despite the fact that Steam was just enticing everyone with their amazing discounts, the three games I have chosen today are not from there. I might do a post about Quantum Conundrum later on, but right now it’s casual games. This month’s choices are Adelantado, A Gnome’s Home, and some games I want to rant about. We’ll start with the two games I actually like, though.

A Gnome’s Home is a game in the style of My Kingdom For The Princess, but is has some nice changes in the gameplay. Instead of upgrading the worker’s home to get more workers, you order them and they arrive by blimp. I love them bungee jumping from the blimp. However, the game has a high difficulty (luckily they updated it with various modes), so it is a long one. I like the idea of rebuilding an underground kingdom while I make my way through various landscapes. The graphics are very nice, bright and funny. The gameplay is well-balanced (although getting expert isn’t easy) and fun. I love A Gnome’s Home and can definitely recommend it.

Adelantado (that’s some sort of Spanish title, but don’t ask me for any details) is a rather unusual game, at least for a casual one. Instead of a long row of short levels, it only has ten levels (plus one bonus level), but you can easily calculate between 30 and 50 minutes per level in this game. It’s kind of a real-time strategy game, but mostly without the fighting. The ‘mostly’ has to do with some cavemen that come out to annoy you in the later levels. Still, I like the gameplay. Building up production lines, exploring the maps, fulfilling tasks, moving on to the next level. Even though I got a lot of playtime out of the levels it has, I can’t wait for part 2 and 3 of the trilogy. They are promising.

Now for the rant. The first targets of my rant are Ghost Whisperer and Criminal Minds. Not the TV series, though, but the games Legacy has made with the licences. I guess House, M.D. should have warned me, as that game wasn’t very good, either, but those two somehow are even worse. I love both series they are based on, but the games are not very good. To be honest, they are both so boring I haven’t finished them – although I usually finish a HOG (and they both are HOGs) in about three or four hours. I wonder how you can buy the licences for great TV series and make games out of them that look and feel like they’re out three years too late. That is annoying and both series deserve better.

The second topic for my rant is named Emily. Said Emily is the main character of the Delicious game series. I found the series late and have mostly played the latter ones (starting with Emily’s Tea Garden). By now, I love them and want every new one as soon as it’s out. The latest, however, has really annoyed me. Instead of releasing the full game, GameHouse has decided to release the game in episodes containing two normal levels and a bonus level each. For half a year (25 weeks) they want to keep it up, demanding far more for the game than usual. All Delicious games have 50 levels minimum, the last Premium Edition has an extra restaurant that brings the total up to 60. The standard version has always been out for regular casual game price, $9.99 for non-members at GameHouse, $6.99 for members, and $5.99 for Funpass owners. The Premium Editions of the last two games (Childhood Memories and True Love) were available for $13.99 for members and $19.99 for non-members. For those prices, you were always getting the full game in one go. The newest Emily game, Wonder Wedding, is available for the season ticket, $24.99 for all episodes, in 8-episode packs for regular casual prices, or per episode. All prices are far too high, in my opinion. I don’t want to wait for half a year, until all episodes are out. Neither do most of the people over at GameHouse, but the company isn’t listening. That is really annoying and might kill one of the few TM series that are still produced (now that Sandlot has been bought up and Playfirst has decided to drift into the app market – the Dash franchise and Cake Mania are gone).

So, now that I locked my baser nature back in the cage, here’s the verdict: A Gnome’s Home and Adelantado? Definitely give them a go. The new Delicious game, Ghost Whisperer, and Criminal Minds? Avoid, avoid, avoid. And now excuse me, the monster deep inside my mind needs to be fed raw, bloody meat…

Casual Corner

Welcome back to the Casual Corner (I bet you thought I had forgotten it) with three games this month as well. Two are pretty new, one has found its way in here, because it was finally released at a casual games portal this month.

Again we have three different game types in this month’s casual corner. The TM building game Build-A-Lot: Fairy Tales, the life-simulation Long Live The Queen, and the RPG-Maker-made RPG Skyborn.

I will start out with Skyborn, as it has been out for a while, but was only released at the first casual games portal (BFG, as a soft release) yesterday. Claret, the main character of the game made by Dancing Dragon Games, is a young and very talented mechanic, working with her brother in their own shop. A long time ago, their parents vanished without a word, something which Claret has not forgiven them. The world of Skyborn is ruled by the Skyborn, a race of people with wings. Humans like Claret are used as workers and usually left alone – mixtures between human and Skyborn however, like Claret’s friend and helper Corvin, are imprisoned and frequently killed for having magic. The day her brother does not only sell their workshop, but also tries to marry her off to the insufferable nobleman Sullivan, Claret decides to take the money and Sullivan’s airship (which she has repaired that very day) and find another place to live and work. Unfortunately, that brings her into contact with a rebellion that is going on. The game has very nice graphics and a Steampunk style that has by now found its way into the mainstream gaming culture. It plays well and is balanced out nicely. Unfortunately, you really need to pick as many fights as possible (thankfully, the monsters are visible in this game, no random encounters), so you can defeat the later enemies. Unlike most RPG Maker games, this one has a fighting system in which you can have more than four party members and can see who will make their move next.

Next on our list is the building game Build-A-Lot: Fairy Tales. The newest of the Build-A-Lot series is set in the land of the fairy tales, where the player develops venues for various communities, building and upgrading houses, meeting goals such as X houses of this kind, X money, or special buildings (usually in the last level of an area). The game has very beautiful graphics and is well balanced, although it does get quite hard to get expert levels quite soon. Like usually in such building games, you need to have enough workers (fairies in this case) and materials for building purposes. In addition, you need to have the blueprints for the objects you build. And, as usually in such games, you need  to take a very close look at what the level demands.

The life-simulation Long Live The Queen brings up the rear of this month’s casual corner. Elodie, a girl of fourteen, has forty weeks to become a queen. On her next birthday, when she becomes an adult in her world, she has to take the place of her recently deceased mother, who ruled the Kingdom before her. Unfortunately, a lot will happen in the forty weeks, while Elodie has to decide which things to learn and how to spend her spare time. Will she master magic? Learn all about strategy? Will she fall victim to an assassination attempt? A robbery on the way to a friend’s birthday? Will she have to face a rebellion? There are a lot of ways not to end the game positively and only a couple to actually become queen in the end. Elodie has a great chance to die before the forty weeks are over – or to spend the remainder of her life in a prison cell. It’s a very difficult game, although not a very long one. I have played it through several times in the course of one day, experimenting with a variety of abilities. There is, however, a long list of possible things that might happen to Elodie, making them all come true will require a long time, making this game worth its money. The game comes with very beautiful manga-style graphics, as can be expected from Hanako games, the makers of life-simulations like Magical Diary. However, like most games of this type, it is not something for people who don’t like to read.

This it is, the Casual Corner for the month of June. Enjoy the games, I will be there next month, presenting three more games you might want to try out.

Casual Corner

Welcome to what might become a new series of posts, the Casual Corner. Here I will present a couple of games each month, usually games that will not get any coverage in gaming magazines for being casual and/or indie games.

For the first Casual corner, I have chosen three different types of games: Kingdom Chronicles, Nancy Drew: Tomb of the Lost Queen, and SkyDrift. A time management game, an adventure, and a racing/flying game.

I will start with the last one released, which is Kingdom Chronicles. It’s a game like My Kingdom for the Princess or Roads of Rome. You have to make your way through levels, usually repairing a road, and do other stuff on the side. The game has very nice and very funny graphics, a varied gameplay, and some nice, new ideas. On the down side, it is rather short with only 40 levels (plus 6 for the collector’s edition at Big Fish Games). 50 levels and more are standard by today. The game, however, makes up for it by the diversity of the levels, even though the basic principle is, of course, always the same. The game is forgiving for beginners (or people like me, who are not obsessed enough to replay every level again and again), you can continue even after the time runs out and so finish a level in your own time, if necessary. On the whole, the games gets good marks from me, even though the CE, as usually, is not really worth the extra price (but then, I got it in a sale for less than normally). The additional content of the CE is a Strategy Guide that is pretty useless, 6 more levels in which you play the other side, and some design graphics from the game.

April/May and October/November are Nancy Drew months, as they are the time in the year when HerInteractive releases a new game. This year it has been Nancy Drew: Tomb of the Lost Queen in May (in October/November it will be Nancy Drew: The Deadly Device, as the end credits of the game tell us). With this new game comes a new starting screen and a new HUD for the games, as they have revamped their looks. Nancy’s desk at home (which she can almost never use in the games, as all except Alibi in Ashes are not set in her hometown) is gone, replaced by a more conventional menu picture. On the whole, though, the Nancy Drew games seem to get easier. If you compare one of the last few (The Captive Curse, Alibi in Ashes, Tomb of the Lost Queen) to earlier ones, you realize the time for playing through has definitely been shortened. They have gotten easier, so you can figure puzzles out earlier and thus will finish them sooner. On the whole, however, that doesn’t hurt the fun and adventures are for replaying, anyway (at least for me). The game is nice, even though the Egypt setting has been used a bit too often recently, at least for my taste. The game also is more puzzle heavy than earlier games (which rely more on the adventure-type actions like talking and using objects from your inventory). Still a lot of talk and a true Nancy Drew game.

SkyDrift is quite a bit older than the other two games I have listed so far. I have included it in this month’s Casual Corner, because I bought it on sale from Steam in May. At first sight it reminded me of Slipstream 5000, a futuristic racing game with flying cars that I have played endlessly a long time ago (you can still get it at Good Old Games, though). It is a bit more difficult, because you fly planes in SkyDrift and thus have to keep an eye on your distance to the ground, too. Yet the racing tracks are very nice to look at and each has its own difficulties. You can unlock a lot of different planes (and different skins for each plane) and there’s achievements and trophies, too. The different plane types do, indeed, fly differently. Some are more manoeuvrable than others, some are faster, or more durable. There are three types of races, too. Power races are your usual race type. Come in first to win the race. Survivor races are more difficult, because you have to make sure you are not in last place when the countdown happens. The last one during a countdown is out of the race. In both types you can pick up power-ups on the race tracks. Four of them (rocket, cannon, electrical field, and mines) are offensive power-up with which you can thin out the competition a bit. The other two (repair kit and shield) are defensive and help you to stay alive when others shoot at you (the electrical field can defeat you against a rocket, though). The last type of race doesn’t offer power-ups. Instead, the speed race offers a lot of golden rings. Fly through them to speed up, so you can stay ahead of the other contestants. I’m not a genius at flying, but I find the game quite amusing and fun to play. It’s definitely worth a look, if you like that type of game, and it’s very nice to look at.

That’s it, that was the first Casual Corner. Come back towards the end of next month for another one!

Tormented

I stumbled over the DVD of the movie “Tormented” (the one from 1960, not the one from 2009) and thought it would make for a nice movie evening (or afternoon) for a reasonable price, so I bought it. It turned out to be a wise decision, because I can certainly say I like the movie.

I’ve never had a problem with black and white movies – in fact, I find the black and white look more fitting for quite some movies. Old horror movies can be quite good, too, especially as they had to be far more story-driven than the modern ones. Today, quite some movies seem to rely more on gore or special effects than on the story itself.

“Tormented” has a tacky movie poster, as it were (I assume so, as it’s the cover art of the DVD and also turns up on IMDB) and a pretty tacky German title, too (“Der Turm der Schreienden Frauen” / “The Tower of the Screaming Women,” which is wrong, anyway, as there’s only one ghost in the story, so it would be only one screaming woman). Yet I have to admit I really liked it. There is a nice balance of horror and thriller elements. If you really want to, you can almost ignore the horror, as apart from the church there is no scene in which the appearance of the ghost could not just be a hallucination. In the church, however, all guests are witnesses to the strange dying of the flowers and spluttering of the candle.

The movie has a very nice pacing, starting of slowly with the last meeting between Tom (the main character, though not really hero, of the tale) and Vi, a woman he had a relationship with, but broke it off to be with Meg, who is younger and wealthier than Vi. Whether or not Tom really loves Meg more, isn’t really of any interest, as far as the movie goes. Vi and Tom meet in an old, derelict lighthouse on the island on which Tom grew up and Meg and her family live. During a heated argument, as Vi doesn’t want to accept it’s over between them, she leans against a banister that is not sound and falls backwards. Still holding on to the banister, she screams for Tom to help her, but he decides not to do so. Vi falls to her death – and Tom’s torment starts.

Vi is not prepared to let him out of her grasp, so she comes to haunt him, follows him back to his house at the beach, appears again and again. And Tom spirals deeper into crime. After the guy whose boat Vi rented turns up and demands the second half of her fare, Tom pays him to get him out of his house, but the man realizes Tom is marrying another woman and he knows Vi did not leave the island, so he attempts blackmail. Egged on by the spirit of Vi in the lighthouse, Tom kills him – but Sandy, the younger sister of his bride-to-be Meg, witnesses everything. Then Vi crashes the wedding and Tom flees to the lighthouse to tell her he will be leaving – will not marry Meg and will leave the island behind. When Sandy appears at the lighthouse and he learns she has seen him kill the blackmailer, he even tries to kill the little (8- or 9-year-old) girl. It is then Vi intervenes and makes sure Tom shares her fate.

The movie is very good at building up suspense. Small steps make it more plausible for Vi’s ghost to be around. A gust of wind at the lighthouse, where she died, a bunch of seaweed that seemed to take her shape (or her body that dissolved into seaweed, as you want to see it). Footsteps in the wet sand. A record of her voice (seems Vi was a singer in life, which puts her in close vicinity to Jazz pianist Tom) that plays while Tom is practicing. Her smell, her voice, her ghost in a dream. Vi becomes more and more ‘solid’ to Tom as the movie goes on. The only other person who ever has contact to Vi is the blind real-estate agent Mrs. Ellis. She realizes soon enough what is happening, even though she doesn’t know why. And her almost-death at the lighthouse (where Vi’s voice lures her up to the platform and the still-damaged banister) is a vision of things to come. Vi will lure someone to a death like hers – and chances are high, of course, that it will be the man she still loves and wants to keep to herself.

Even though I, personally, had no doubt Sandy would survive (because in a 1960s horror movie a little, innocent girl would almost never be killed), I liked to see Vi intervene here. It gave the vengeful ghost something of a deeper personality, as Vi had before only furthered Tom’s decent into crime, by making him kill the blackmailer. Like this, Vi did protect the truly innocent, despite being her rival’s younger sister.

Vi’s body is discovered only after Tom fell to his death (about a week after she died), and even in death, as they are taken to the beach, her arm comes around him – sporting the ring that disappeared mysteriously before the wedding. Vi has been united with Tom in death, she has won out in the end. Justice has been served when Tom falls to his death, trying to kill innocent Sandy. Fate, however, has played out the moment Vi and Tom lie side by side on the beach, united in death, for all eternity.

The movie relies more on the setup, the pacing, and the story than on effects. The effects that are there, like a body-less hand that holds the ring, a body-less head that accuses Tom of murder (which, technically speaking, he had not committed at that time, as the blackmailer’s death comes later), the dying flowers and spluttering candles in the church, and the ghost of Vi, translucent and in flowing robes unlike the dress she wore when she died, are good for 1960, even though they could not really hold a candle to modern-day effects.

If you like psychological horror far more than blood and gore, “Tormented” definitely is a good movie to watch.

Don't Encourage Him!

I think even outside of Germany, some people might have heard about Günther Grass and his poem (if that it can be called) against Israel. I have not really followed the storm this brought about in German media very closely, but I thought something when it all started: Why the heck are you encouraging him?

First of all, I have to admit I don’t really think very highly of Mr. Grass, unlike most people in culture here in Germany. He doesn’t write the kind of books I like to read and I find he’s highly overrated as an author. This, however, is just my own opinion and has nothing to do with why I mostly ignored Mr. Grass and his poem.

While I have to admit that not everything Israel does is right, I also realize that it is very difficult (historically speaking) for Germans to criticise. However, World War 2 ended about 70 years ago (ok, 67 years ago this May). It must be possible after a time during which most people active in the war have ceased to live for a German to criticise Israel without being crucified for it. But even that is not the reason why I have ignored Mr. Grass instead of being angry with him.

From my point of view, the ‘poem’ itself isn’t really worth all the energy wasted on it. It’s merely a way Mr. Grass (who has not been in the limelight much lately) tries to get noticed. Like a kid who knows a certain swearword will get the parents to react and notice the kid, Mr. Grass has whipped up a quick poem, so people start talking about him again.

Now, the best way to get a kid to stop using a swearword is to ignore it. So, logically, the best way to get Mr. Grass to stop embarrassing himself would be … to ignore him. Talking about Mr. Grass (about his latest ‘poem’ as much as about the ‘erotic’ ones he made a few years ago) only encourages him to continue down this road.

Seriously, what would have happened, if nobody had reacted to the ‘poem?’ Nothing. Israel wouldn’t even have heard about it. A few stupid neo-Nazi might have gotten a cheap thrill out of reading and reciting it, but apart from that…

Please, media people, no matter how little is happening in the world, be so good as to not encourage Mr. Grass in the future. Save the world from a few bad poems this way.

Spring Fair

Today is the last day of this year’s spring fair in my hometown. I’ve just been there, had the first ice cream of the year (I usually get it there, it’s some sort of ritual) and took a few pictures with my mobile phone.

The Ferris wheel is the symbol of the town fair here, so here it is:

And here’s the painted background … very nice art, looks way better in real life, though.

I took three pictures of the haunted house, although they’re not perfect, because I had to work against the sun.

Left side.

Right side.

The middle.

The Flying Carpet ride:

The bumper cars, they belonged to a friend of my mum once (I got free rides whenever Number One was in town).

Another wild ride that has been around since my childhood:

And one of my all-time favourites: the Taiga Jet.

Ah, the fair … a great place for a small adventure. Oh, and a good place for ice cream!

Mass Effect 3 and some thoughts on endings

First of all I will admit here and now that I have no idea what terrible ending Mass Effect 3 has. I only played Mass Effect 2 and, due to problems my computer had with the star map, never even finished that one. So this post will be more about endings than about Mass Effect.


As a fan of books, movies, and games, I have seen my share of endings, good ones, mediocre ones, bad ones. I have been tempted to throw books against the nearest wall for a stupid ending, I have been tempted to play Frisbee with the DVDs of movies that had a very boring ending, I have been tempted to throw game packages out of the window for no real ending at all (the dreaded To Be Continued ending). But I don’t do all that. Why?


Because I am also a writer. I create stories of my own and sometimes I feel like ending a story not in a traditional or expected way. Because, as much as I relay of my main characters throughout the story, I always know more. I know details of their lives, their minds, their hearts which I never tell, because there’s no time or place for them in the story. And those details tell me that a traditional ‘happily ever after’ ending is not possible for my hero. For some reason he or she (or it) can’t have the ‘happily ever after’ of a fairy tale.
Sometimes, even after the villains are slain (or behind bars, or whatever), after the world has been saved, after the crisis has been averted, nothing at all is well.
Sacrifices have been made, on and off the pages (or the screen).
Alliances have been made (out of need, usually).
Prices have to be paid.
Things that have been seen can’t be unseen again. Only very few people are lucky enough to lose their memory (and for them, it usually isn’t luck). And if a hero, after a very traumatizing situation, should lose his or her (or its) memory, they will not know they are lucky and will try to regain it.


I have no idea what sets people so at edge about the ending of Mass Effect 3 (the only thing I could imagine would be the ship and all crew and the main hero dying a gruesome death while earth is destroyed before their very eyes … but didn’t they have an ending almost like that at the end of the first game already?). I have a very good idea, however, of what will happen because of it. Fan Fiction has become a huge factor of the Web 2.0. People who like writing (like me, as I have also written my share of Fan Fiction) have found a way to be published, to hand their stories to the world, without having to find a publisher first. In blogs, on sites like Fanfiction.net, as free e-books on sites like Feedbooks, they can hand their stories out to everyone interested.
I can already see the many, many Fan Fictions that will ‘repair’ the ending of Mass Effect 3. Many people will write down how they think the game should have ended. Just like people have changed parts of the Harry Potter canon, have worked out their own Star Wars reality, have given numerous alternate realities to series like Buffy or Smallville.


Will that be good? Will it be bad? Neither, I’d say. It will be different – different visions of what should have or could have been. Visions that might tell more about the writer than about the topic of the story. They usually do, even with original stories.
Nothing really ends. Even if a life ends, a world is no more, there’s always something going on. Even should the universe cease to exist some day, there will be no ending – there will either be another one or nothing at all (depending on whether or not there is a multiverse).


The only ending I, personally, really hate is the To Be Continued ending. If I am in the middle of a story with multiple parts, a To Be Continued is appropriate, even though it might be wiser to end a story with some closure than with a cliff-hanger. Some games, though, do the To Be Continued, but never keep the promise. A company makes a game, adds a To Be Continued at the end, but never gets the chance to make another, because the market isn’t there (or doesn’t seem to be there). That’s pretty annoying, because the story lacks closure. It’s like walking into a movie in the middle and having to leave 15 minutes before the end. You have no idea how it started and no idea how it might end (because you didn’t see where the people came from and don’t see where they go to). You can, however, avoid walking into a movie late – or just come back another day and watch the full story (or get the DVD later). With a game that doesn’t get the sequel with the end, that option doesn’t exist.


A toast to the many endings Mass Effect 3 will have, due to having a ‘bad’ ending right now!