This odd little hand-drawn hidden object casual game was on sale so I picked it up, not thinking that I would like it all that much. It's just hand-drawn in black and white and I didn't quite understand what the commenters meant when they talked about clicking on things and funny noises. I thought it would be annoying or silly.

Now I get it. It's actually kind of pleasant in an odd, click-trancey sort of way.

It's a bit like a child's coloring book come to life. Pretty fun if you're feeling kid-like, actually :) Everything moves and wiggles in little animations. You can click on anything you like without penalties. There's always some kind of reaction when you click on a thing - it'll move or make a noise. Not annoying as I thought it would be. Oddly soothing sometimes, even!

I also thought it would be a bit overwhelming - some of the screens are quite huge and you drag the image around with your mouse in order to see the whole map. But I was surprised to find that I was able to find most of the hidden characters/items fairly quickly, at least for the first few maps. I finally came to a halt with one stubborn item which has so far resisted all my hunting :) I think it should really only be in one or two areas (by the logic of the game hint), but so far I have not managed to spot it. Gah!

[And wow. That tiny microscopic truffle on that giant campground map!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe I found it! Ok, actually, it was entirely accidental. I was clicking around just for fun to see all the various animations and noises, and somehow accidentally clicked on the right thing. Didn't even see it happen, LOL :)]

There seems to be at least some internal logic to the hidden objects. They show you a panel with a little drawing of the thing you're supposed to find (a person, an animal, an item, etc) and if you click on the panel drawing it pops up a little text balloon that gives you a hint about the thing you need to find. So for example on the giant campground, it tells you the black bunny is hiding in a burrow with its friends chewing on wheat. After examining the campground, you can see that it's not just one huge mess but is actually divided into distinct areas, each with a particular kind of activity going on. So there is an area where there appear to be several rabbit holes, and that helps you to zero in on the particular sub-section where you might be able to find that item. This is why it's not as overwhelming as it might initially appear to be.

The birds are also fun - they will sometimes fly up in the air. There are some tall grasses that sink down into the ground with funny noises when you click them - also oddly fun, like popping bubble wrap :) But I think my favorite so far is the water. There are a few ponds or lakes drawn in various maps and if you click on the water it makes a pleasant noise that I like to hear. In some scenes the leaves on the water will scoot around if you click on them and that is also very fun in a weird tactile sort of way. The boats in some scenes will also zip back and forth when you click on them.

I would definitely recommend this game, especially if it's on sale. Quite a good deal if you want a casual thing that you can fire up and play for a few minutes while you're taking a break, or at the end of a long day when you just want to relax for a while. The noises, incidentally, are also all human made and sometimes quite hilarious. (I found the crocodile noises very funny, I don't know why :) Also not annoying as I thought they would be.

Overall it was a very interesting take on the hidden object genre. Unusual, quirky and enjoyable - and quite fun and entertaining. I don't know about the replay value - presumably once you know where something is that's the end of it, as it doesn't seem to change as far as I can tell (haven't checked though). Except for the black bunny, which runs from hole to hole as you click, so it always changes location - that's quite fun too and you can amuse yourself idiotically for half a minute just clicking on the rabbit holes to watch them scamper :)


tags: hidden object games, HOGs, HOG, Hidden Folks

All this time I've been using native Steam on Linux and playing only those games which Steam supports on Linux.

Last week, however, I bought some games which were on sale but were Windoze only. I don't really like to support devs who don't support Linux, but once in a (loooong) while I make an exception. In this case I actually made the exception for the sake of a test. I was curious to see how well Steam would work on Wine, and if I could play windoze games that way. I figured it was a good opportunity to test this since the games were on massive sale (and I mean like pennies).

All in all I'm really impressed with how far things have come. Installing Steam on PlayonLinux was incredibly easy, since it's one of the built-in pre-configured options. Just pick it out of the list and go. It gave an error message and said that PlayonLinux had crashed towards the end of the installation, but it didn't seem to matter. By that point the Steam app was already up and running and downloading updates for itself. After it was done I logged in and installed the new windoze games and played for a while.

It was a little bit laggy, not that noticeable but definitely not as fast or smooth as if I were playing in the native version, but overall I was quite pleased. It's best I think if used with undemanding games, unless you have a high end computer.



tags: steam

Wed, 18 Dec 2013 02:15:07 +0000

Honestly, I don't even know how to describe this game. I can just tell you it's freaking addictive because I started playing soon as I bought it and then... Well, you can tell from my Archive on the sidebar. Notice the strange silence since June? :)

Haha, ok, so not all of it was Towns' fault. Real life intervened and I was kind of busy for a while. I did write several posts during this "quiet" period, but haven't had time to edit them properly so they're all still in draft mode at the moment.

In the meantime, I just want to say that Towns is really fun and well worth the $14.99 I plonked down for it - didn't even regret it (much) when it went on sale a few months later for a third that price, just told everybody else to go buy it at that steal of a price :)



The game has 2D top-down Eschalon-style graphics, which is a style I really like. It is infinitely replayable because the maps and dungeons are randomly generated every time you start a new game (hence why it's such great value).

The idea of the game is quite interesting as it's an inversion of the usual RPG adventuring plot of "we the heroes on our way to go bash some hapless mobs". Here, you actually control the villagers, while the heroes do their thing all on their own. You can also armor and equip your villagers - actually, you need to, because otherwise they will seriously just get slaughtered really quickly - the beginning of the game is not very forgiving!

When you get enough villagers in your town, and set up a tavern and tavern rooms, heroes will eventually be attracted to the town and show up to stay in those rooms. In between stealing your townies' armor and weapons (if the heroes happen to be of Low Moral Fiber, which is a random variable) the heroes will wander all over your map, killing monsters for you.

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Sat, 17 Aug 2013 19:36:00 +0000

Right on the heels of the good news about Balrum's funding came a blog post from Eschalon's developer, who has just released a trailer for Eschalon III. Seems like the music gets better with each succeeding release! The minute I heard the new music my hair practically stood up on end, I was so excited and so pleased =)

I really hope the OST is released for sale this time. It is still driving me crazy that I can't buy the soundtrack of Book II, which is really beautiful.

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Sat, 17 Aug 2013 18:53:43 +0000

Well, this has been a happy week for classic RPG lovers :)

The Balrum Kickstarter was funded with a surprise push in the last 48 hours of the campaign, much to my delight. I will admit I had kind of lost hope by the middle of the campaign period, but the last-minute surge pushed it just enough to get over the funding threshold, phew!

Now that that burning issue has been settled, however, there is one remaining thing that sort of puzzles me about Balrum. What I would really like to know is what game or graphics engine they are using. It's pretty clear to everyone who has seen both Balrum and Eschalon that the graphics are very similar. And Balrum's devs have acknowledged that Eschalon is one of the games they liked and drew inspiration from. I'm just wondering if there is some sort of free graphics set out there that everyone is using, or if this is.. well.. if there's a certain amount of copying going on here. Not a very nice thing to wonder about, but one simply can't help being curious given the similarities.

(Having said that, I should note that the devs have clearly made lots of changes to the base graphic set as well - trees, walls, doors, clothing, shelves, furniture, etc - all have been added to. It's just that the basic similarity is really obvious, despite the edits.)

On a selfish note, I have to admit that I am personally happy that the first stretch goal for Balrum was not reached. I really don't care for female characters in games. I much prefer playing male heroes. Not sure why that is, I just do :) If the first stretch goal had been "Seasons", I would have gone all out for it. Now that would have been cool! Unfortunately they put that as a fourth goal, after things like mining, fishing and female characters, a choice which really made me scratch my head as I don't consider any of those things to be at all exciting or interesting compared to the potential effect that seasons would have had, visually as well as in terms of effects on game mechanics.

That aside, I'm still scratching my head as to why so few people seemed to see the amazing potential of this game. I do realize that there are people who don't like this particular graphical style, or dislike old-school turn-based RPGs in general, but given that a lot of people do seem to like games like Diablo I/II or Eschalon, and how many really quite inventive and new ideas the Balrum team have said they plan to include in the game, I am really puzzled that Balrum didn't get huge support right from the get-go. Especially when other games which I really didn't find all that appealing somehow managed to secure funding within their first few days!

(I even took the unheard of step of stumping for their campaign by writing to a linux gaming blog to ask them to make a post about Balrum. Never in my life have I ever done such a thing before; I'm really much more comfortable lurking and being silent in these community affairs :) Sadly my attempt came to naught as it turned out the blog had already covered Balrum - they had done so in a sort of round-up post, not as a standalone post of its own, so I never saw the coverage. Perhaps other readers also missed it, since it was just a little paragraph or two somewhere inside a long long post covering tons of other games.)

Maybe it was the relatively poor handling of the campaign - good add-ons and in-depth trailers didn't even appear until late in the campaign. I usually like to have soundtracks and was very surprised when that was not offered as an option. Once they provided it as an option I upgraded my pledge immediately.

Still, what matters is that it got funded in the end. Now I have TWO Eschalon-like games to look forward to in the coming year - which is really more than I could have hoped for, so YAY!!! :) Also, from what I've seen, the Balrum devs seem to be extremely responsive to the suggestions of their user base, which is always a very good thing.


tags: Balrum, RPG, turn-based RPG

Tue, 30 Jul 2013 00:23:51 +0000

In my never-ending quest for Yet More Linux Games Like Eschalon, I just stumbled upon Balrum at Kickstarter a couple of days ago.

It sounds really AMAZING!

Seriously, I almost cried when I read the description. It sounded like the kind of fantasy world I have been dreaming of getting to play in for ever :) Big plus is that they seem to be using a similar sort of game engine to Eschalon and a lot of the graphics look very similar to Eschalon. I happen to love the look of Eschalon so this is a very good thing IMHO (can you ever have enough Eschalon? No! :).

The Balrum team has some fantastic ideas and I really hope they get a chance to make it to production. I pledged immediately, of course. And dragged another linux gamer pal of mine into backing it too, haha.

Right now it looks as though they really need more publicity. One of these days I think I'll make a post about the things I have observed about Kickstarter Projects, and what elements might be good to implement to improve one's chances of having a successful funding attempt.

But not today :P Today, I am just going to cross my fingers and hope that more people hear about Balrum soon. They have such fantastic ideas, which I have not seen elsewhere before. I would be really surprised if any RPG-lover saw this game and did not want to support it.

I hope they succeed. It would be wonderful to be able to look forward to both Eschalon III AND Balrum in the coming year! :)


tags: Balrum, Eschalon, RPG, turn-based RPG

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 06:02:10 +0000

Dynamite Jack is a great game and horribly addictive ("just one more and then I'll go to bed..."). I've only had one problem with it, which is the famous "Dynamite Jack only walks to the right" issue.

I play it on a laptop. A friend of mine plays it on a desktop and does not have this problem. Of course there are also plenty of other differences between our systems, but I'll note that neither of us has a joystick or gamepad - we both play it using the keyboard.

This is the fix that worked for me:

1) Add the line

gksudo chmod 700 /dev/input/js0

to the top of the script named

run_me

in

/opt/dynamitejack.

The script is chowned by root so you'll have to sudo to edit it if you're in Ubuntu like me.

2) If you're using a desktop shortcut/launcher in Drawers like me, the command in your Drawer launcher should be:

/opt/dynamitejack/run_me

3) When you click on the Drawers shortcut, you'll get the usual system prompt window asking you for your password. once you enter it, the game will begin and you will be able to control Jack normally with your key presses.

Hopefully the dev will figure out a way to fix this in future updates so that this step will no longer be necessary, but in the meantime, it has worked for me on both Ubuntu 12.04 and 13.04.


tags: dynamite jack, launcher, shortcut

Sun, 05 May 2013 22:22:36 +0000

Bastion is a gorgeous game and I got it for a great price from a Humble Bundle sale. The quality is clearly very high throughout, the graphics are fantastic, and the game play very enjoyable.

Some of the things I say below may be spoilerish, so I'm putting them behind the cut.

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Sun, 05 May 2013 21:52:53 +0000

I could not get Dungeon Defenders to work on my Ubuntu installation at all initially. It seemed to install ok, but attempting to run it would either produce no result whatsoever, or spew error messages.

In the end, it was time that fixed it, or rather an update to the game.

I downloaded a more recent updated version of the game and this one installed and ran perfectly. I still cannot run it via shortcuts/launchers - I have to go into the folder via terminal and run it via the command line to get it to run, but at least it runs!

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Fri, 29 Mar 2013 20:22:54 +0000

I got a copy of Legend of Grimrock from one of the recent Humble Bundle sales and installed it on my Ubuntu 12.04 LTS computer. Had a doozy of a time getting it to work. Eventually figured out that shortcuts and clicking on the icon from the HUD will not work with my installation of LoG, for whatever reason. Not sure if this is because I did not install correctly or if this is just an LoG problem.

The only way to run LoG on my computer is to open up the terminal and cd to the directory where the game executable resides. From within that directory, I can then run the game from the command line.

1. Making a launcher shortcut with a path to the game does not work.
   [eg. /path/to/game/grimrock.sh]


2. Running the terminal and calling the game executable using the full path from a directory other than the exact directory where the game sits also does not work. (I get an error message).


3. Typing Grimrock in HUD and then clicking on the icon that shows up in the search does not work (won't run).

The only thing that works so far:

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