As for personal projects, not much to report on getting any games together. However, I've been working on a something to function as a kind of wiki for taking notes but as a desktop application rather than based on a web server. I haven't been able to spend much time on it so far but as I usually do I've been taking notes while I work and I plan on getting those up on my site and maybe mention my progress a bit in this blog. It's the first personal project I've worked on that uses C# so I'm hoping it'll be useful learning experience.
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[size="5"]Sprout
By: Jeff Nusz
Played 2011-04-19 on Agame.com
[sup]K. Helfenstein - 2011-04-21[/sup]
A coconut falls from a tree on a deserted island. A seed emerges from the coconut and tells the coconut tree that it wants to grow to be an oak tree. The tree tells the seed that oak trees are far from the island and teaches the seed to grow into a coconut tree. Since a seed can't do much other than grow into what it knows to be, that's what the player does in this game. But it turns out that seeds manage to travel around pretty good. Since this particular seed seems pretty good at learning from other plants how to grow into other things, it's simply a matter of figuring out what to grow into next to travel to where the seed wants to be. (I had no clue how else to explain this game.)
Will I play it again?
I finished it so, no. Actually, I cheated a bit by looking at walk-through to get past one part. Maybe I could've figured it out on my own if I took the time but there just wasn't much of an indication that a particular part of scenery was going to be involved in the solution. Other than that, the choices needed to progress though the game weren't tough to figure out with a bit of trial and error. Despite getting stuck, I enjoyed this game. Having learned what sort of thinking was necessary to progress, I wouldn't have minded another tough challenge like the one I got stuck on. Also thought that the hand drawn graphics were pretty cool.
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[size="5"]Causality
By: Bored.com
Played 2011-04-19 on Agame.com
[sup]K. Helfenstein - 2011-04-21[/sup]
The goal of this game is to kill all the people on the level without them seeing each other. This is done by clicking on parts of the level to either setup a situation or to cause something to happen. I get the impression this game has been around awhile as it looks like there's been a couple sequels.
Will I play it again?
No. I finished it but even if I hadn't I'm not sure it's something I'd come back to. Although, I was a bit disappointed that there were no more levels to play. Each level was quite different and I was hooked a bit in that I was curious what the next level was going to be and what could happen. But some of the things to click weren't really intuitive or didn't seem logical for the player to find and were just a matter of being lucky with random clicks. For example, when randomly clicking around a worker he looses his hard hat. Yeah ok, I should've thought of that. When clicking near a guy in a washroom the ceiling starts to crumble. I don't see how people are expected to make that connection.
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[size="5"]Evolver
By: FreeWorldGroup.com
Played 2011-04-20 on Agame.com
[sup]K. Helfenstein - 2011-04-21[/sup]
The goal in this game is to get a monkey to evolve first to a caveman and then to a geeky looking kid by interacting with various elements within the game world. That was pretty much how the description of the game was written on the host site. It's rather misleading as it implies that the player is controlling the monkey a lot more than what actually is needed.
Will I play it again?
No. I finished it (with a couple glances at a walk-through) but if I hadn't I wouldn't come back to it and when the game ended I was thankful there was nothing left. Two of the puzzles were pretty intuitive and required a bit of thought. The other puzzles were difficult because failing to complete the steps in the right order would result in a dead end and require a restart of the game. Without spoiling things, this game seems to use what would seem to be natural things for a player to do to create these dead ends. This would be fine if it was trying to break from cliche's or getting the player to think outside the box but it looks to me to only about getting the steps in the right order.
