Team Liquid released an infographic last month on creeps. If you do not know what a creep is, then clearly you have not played the StarCraft series. I’d suggest giving it a go on Battle.net!
Tag: Games
Banished
On February 18th, an Indie game was launched on Steam. Interestingly enough there already was a Reddit community for it, and the game developer had done an AMA on it. I chanced on this gem of a game last week and decided to give it a try. The game is selling on Steam for 20 USD, and it’s a good purchase to go for if you like building cities. If you have tried Dwarf Fortress, or Sim Cities … then this is one game you have to try out!
A bit of History
As a child, I had always loved playing strategy games such as Age of Empires … and then came city building administration games such as Caesar III, Pharaoh and Cleopatra … followed by Zeus and Poseidon (these are still my favourite). However, post those games there were no follow-ups … there was a Caesar IV, but that really did not do so well. There was a huge gap of city building games and only the likes of Sim City (which is meh these days) seemed to fulfil it.
There were good games in the meanwhile such as the Anno series which had you going and more on this later.
Banished is addressing that need
This year, one look at the game and I started liking it to no end. It has a series of tutorials which quickly gets you up to speed in the basics of building a town. Post which you start the game on varying levels of difficulty.
The game is a sandbox city building game, with some force majeure thrown in to make your life difficult. The whole idea of the game is to think of yourself as a mayor of the town and keep building the town to address the requirements of the citizens and keep flourishing your town.
Get food, wood, shelter and clothing for your citizens. Help them build more things, trade to get access to commodities not available to you. Flourish as a city.
Gameplay
The game is fairly simple, and allows you to do multiple things (such as work or blog!) while you are busy building a city. When the game begins you get a small amount of villagers .. now these people are what you may call (go ahead, objectify them!!) as a resource. You ask people to do things and they will do it (haha! in real life I wish it were that simple), but in the world of Banished, they have to listen to you if they want to survive.
So you quickly allocate the jobs for each of them, so I have half of my villagers on gathering food, fishing and farming.
The game is also about striking a balance with mother nature … the only way you get access to tools and stuff is by using natural resources. Go to fast and you would deplete your world … so when you cut a tree, be sure that your foresters will plant more.
Roti, Kapda aur Makaan
Finally, to get started its all about getting the basic hygiene factors for your town. It’s about surviving against what Nature throws at you and flourishing as a community.
This is a good game to while away the Sundays and the beautiful imagery just makes it a pleasure to play the game.
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Free to Play != Pay to Win
There have been games and there have been great games. Most of these games require a huge amount of time and effort to create and maintain. Along with just the technical overheads, there is also the community management aspect of the game. In short, if a company or a publishing house is releasing a game, they have to make money. Otherwise it will not be sustainable, and the gaming community which is playing that game will have to rely on the developer to keep supporting that game. Having said that, there are still few games which are still played, are free and have a large team of developers supporting them.
Solstice Arena – Zynga’s answer to MOBA
This week Zynga launched their version of a Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA). Some of the other well known titles in this genre of gaming are League of Legends, Heroes of Newerth and of course the ever so popular and by now the clear leader, Defense of the Ancients 2. My personal favourite in this is by far DOTA2 and I have been also written simple tips on how to avoid dying often in DOTA2. Having said that, I was quite piqued to see how the company which did scientific data analysis and extensive research on how users planted crops in their fields in Farmville, will create a game for this audience.
Solstice Arena’s different take on MOBA
Zynga have taken a different look at MOBA, where the standard game is to keep killing creeps and farms and get enough money for weapons. Once you have equipped yourself to the hilt, then the actual game begins. Thus, the initial game is almost always wait and watch farm. This is where Solstice shines through … there are no creeps.
Yes, you read it right the first time around. There are absolutely no creeps. In fact Zynga calls this game a Speed MOBA, where the focus is to start battling as soon as possible. Which means, the entire game is a series of team fights. The better team wins.
Simple Gameplay
Unlike other arena games where you get kills, then XP and then unlock your skills, Solstice Arena gives you all the skills you require right off the bat.
Even weapon selection is minimal. In short, there is no point in farming, the whole focus is to kill the enemy and take down their towers. This simplicity ensures that games are short … sometimes short enough to not even let you fully equip your hero! The game involves taking down three towers and then the main oracle of the opposing team.
What makes the game interesting is a rich source of power-ups which are available throughout the map. Certain power-ups are made for you specially, and certain are meant for other team members.
Hero Development
So this is how Zynga is introducing the replay value of the game. By rewarding the player to keep playing more games with the same hero!
What this means is that for each game played, the user gets experience points per hero. Every time the hero levels up (this is outside the game), he gets to increase the effectiveness of his spells. Thus a fully enhanced hero would be far stronger than a new hero.
It also ensures that the user gets acquainted with a few heroes and works towards getting to know them.
Pros
- The game is pretty simple and enjoyable. The focus is not on rich character development, the focus is on team fights. There would be lots of these. Since there is no character level, loosing a team fight is not such a big thing and you can always come back.
- The game cannot last more than 20 minutes. If it is getting stretched beyond that, then you are doing something wrong.
- There is a limit to which you can farm, after which you cannot even use all that gold you have amassed. The message is clear. Stop farming, start killing.
- It’s fun and simple.
- Installation is a breeze, only 500 MB in an age where games are on an average 10-12 GB.
- Even a newbie can start playing, the community is not yet fully vocal and accepts mistakes :) … unlike the other MOBAs you see where a simple mistake can lead you getting blasted by your own teammates or even worse reported.
Cons
- You cannot play with all heroes. You have to unlock each of them. This could mean quite a grind.
- The game is Free to Play (F2P), but for the person willing to pay money, he gets to up his heroes and be far stronger in the game.
- Free players are going to be fodder for paying customers. This although is the complaint of almost all F2P games, with the exception of DOTA2.
Will Solstice Arena save Zynga?
I thoroughly enjoyed Solstice Arena, in fact when I started playing it initially, I was not even aware that this is a Zynga product! For people who have been following Zynga for the past few years. you would know that the company has seen a few ups and a lot of downs. Ever since they went public with an IPO, they have had to fire their CEO, layoff a lot of their staff and drive their current set of employees to work longer hours. This was primarily due to the fact that almost all of their games were solely relying on Facebook and Facebook at one point stopped cooperating with Zynga.
Solstice comes in as a breath of fresh air and may yet give hope for the company to survive. This is a game which is fast being adopted by a lot of players, is available for free on Steam, and yet has enough products to give Zynga a fair shot in the MOBA genre. Definitely worth downloading!!
Civilization V: Brave New World
Released this year, Civilization V: Brave New World is probably the best game in the successful franchise by Sid Meier. In case if you do not know who is Sid Meier then stop reading this article right now, go and read his wiki entry instead!! Civilization series have been turn based strategy games, and had gone silent for quite some time.
We had seen other war oriented turn based games (Total War series), but the Civilization series has a cult following. Yours truly included. So what has changed since the last version?
Tactical Genius over sheer Numbers
The important part of keeping any game active is that
What has changed is the sheer importance of tactical gameplay over numbers. In the previous versions of Civilization, we had the option of stacking multiple units on the same tile and then spamming units to defeat the other player in military domination. In the current version of the game, you cannot stack military units, however you can stack a general with your military unit or a civilian unit with it.
What this means is that now you can keep a strong unit to protect a choke point and protect your area. Exactly like in the movie 300, this will be far more effective than spamming units!!
More ways to win a game
You do not have to be a war lord to win this game, there are other victory conditions. You could use your culture (new concept!), you could use diplomacy and of course the science method to win the game. This makes for interesting games, since you could actually be dominating throughout the game with an army, but a weaker player could be Allies with all the other players and beat you still!
Hexagonal Tiles
Well, gone are the square tiles of yore! We now have hexagonal tiles and with more than 200 hours in the game, these are feeling natural to me. This means, that the player now has to smartly position his units to win battles.
Hexagonal tiles makes it easier for an isometric world as well. I feel changing the tiles has actually added to the game dynamics.
All in all, this is one game you have to try! Leaving you with a wallpaper with all the keyboard shortcuts in this game!
10 tips to save you from dying in DOTA2
DOTA 2 has been around for less than a year, but the gaming community has been fast adopting to this game. This community is mostly made of people who have been playing League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth … and also the successful predecessor DOTA. What this means, that sometimes this community can be unforgiving for newbies.
There is a reason for that as well … when you die unnecessarily, the enemy hero gains money and experience
I have not seen a Pub game wherein the newbie does not get flamed for unnecessarily dying and feeding the opposition. To survive this onslaught, you just need to follow these steps … and people will stop calling you a n00b!
Tips to increase your survival
- Always carry a Tango at the start. That will help you stay in the lanes longer.
- Do NOT auto-attack. It’s tempting to do so … yes I know … even I used to do this. But it works out better if you don’t. When you auto-attack, you end up pushing the creep wave towards the enemy tower making ganks and one-on-ones all the more difficult. As it is, the only thing that matters is getting last hits. If you can get 100+ last hits in a game, you should be good.
- Keep a tab on the mini-map. You can tell by looking at the mini-map where are the other enemy heroes. Tracking them is useful since this can help you avoid possible ganks on you.
- Before you commit to any fight, ask yourself this question – Can I survive, are my team mates around to push/defend if I die?
- Farm happily, but stay away of towers. Some of the best farmers out there do not farm if they do not see the enemy heroes on the mini-map.
- Know your hero’s build. All the hero’s are meant to be used in a certain way. Practice with them before hand to know the best way to use them.
- To stay longer in a lane, learn how to use a courier to fetch items for you.
- Do not initiate a fight wherein you are going against multiple enemies. If your lane partner is not around, stay back and focus on getting last hits.
- If you are running low on health and do not have a courier at your disposal, go back to the base. The loss in XP for not being around action is lesser than the loss in XP when you die.
- If you are saving up gold for a particular item, remember that most items are made up of composite items. These composite items can be seen in your Quick Buy panel (Shift + Click on the item for this). If you know you are going to die, then just go ahead and buy as many composites as possible. That way at least the money is put to good use.
- (Bonus) Relics are good, but if you cannot farm, then getting intermediate items work better. Consider Power Treads for their versatility.
Practice on these tips and you should be safe enough!!
DOTA 2
For Warcraft fans (the Strategy game, not the MMORPG), the game is a hallmark for many things. Among them being the origin for multiple different genres of games – including World of Warcraft and DOTA 2. DOTA 2 is the sequel of the most popular Defence of the Ancients (DOTA) mod of the game Warcraft III: Frozen Throne. What started off as a difficult last scenario in the campaign, has now ended up being a whole new game itself.
The Real Time Strategy (RTS) game was soon converted into a Multiplayer Team Sport, where 2 teams of 5 players each battled in an arena for the destruction of each other home cities.
Fundamentally, the concept sounds simple and it’s often that the simple thing becomes so popular. But think again, this simplistic goal of destroying the opponents capital becomes more complex when you have a wide array of characters to choose from, and an even wider array of weapons to wield. Let’s not get into that so early in this post shall we? Perhaps a different post is required for this …eh?
Each battle lasts for around 30-40 minutes and is the perfect mix for multi-player sessions across the world. Currently the game is in beta stage and at any point in time you will find at least 200,000 … if you are lucky enough then your application for getting a beta invite might even be accepted.
As I say this I have 10 invites for the game lying with me!! The first 10 comments asking for an invite get them!