Good Intentions

A friend turned me onto Travian, which is a real-time strategy game where you control a village and build it up in various ways. Your neighbors are located around you on a random map, and you are able to make alliances with them eventually, though at this point in the game I am not able to.

Around your village are wheat, woodcutting, clay, and iron mine resources, which you can upgrade for more harvesting of each per minute. And yes, those times are real-time minutes; if it says it’ll take 22 minutes to build a building, it will take 22 minutes. Needless to say, the pace of the game is slow, but still rather enjoyable. This kind of gameplay is a bit lacking in the current RTS4 games, so it’s nice to have this leisurely walk of a game.

The graphics are very simple, but interestingly enough, you can upload icon packs to change how it looks; I have yet to play around with this. There are also a number of random events–for example, a group of merchants just came to my city from the homeland. What they do, I haven’t any idea right now.

I’m having some fun playing around with this, so join up and take a look. I’m on Server 2.

EDIT: If you’d like to join, use my invite link here.

The World Ends With You is a new game for the Nintendo DS from Square/Enix. If you’re tempted to roll your eyes and scoff at The RPG Company That Shall Not Be Named, please, I beg you, just five minutes of your time.

This game, simply put, is unlike anything I have ever seen before.

If I had to single one thing out–and trust me, there are a multitude more than just one–it would be the battle system. It’s an incredibly unique, functional-yet-stylish, and engaging battlesystem. Gone are the menus and action timers; this is combat in real-time, with your participation. You use the stylus on the bottom screen to control Neku, the angsty and irate protagonist, while you use the directional pad (or the A/B/X/Y buttons for lefties) to control your partner–for me, this is Shiki, a disturbingly attractive and spunky girl with a desire to create her own clothing line.

The partner’s attacks are controlled through a series of combos using the aforementioned inputs. You press a series of buttons for a given attack; eventually, these attacks become crucial to a bonus combo attack with Neku at a certain point in the game.

Neku’s attacks are controlled in a variety of ways with the stylus: tapping, dragging, quick stabs, long swipes. All of these attacks are performed through the use of psychs, which are a type of pin. The pin/psych system is also very intuitive and unique, and it does not distract from gameplay at all (materia and Draws, I’m looking at you…).

Oh and I forgot to mention the puck, and your threads, and food, and Tin Pin, and the Friends system, and Noise…

You’ll have to check it out for yourself. I haven’t been this intrigued and sucked into a game since perhaps Planescape: Torment, which is an entirely different kind of game. But really, check it out. You won’t regret it.

Well. A friend of mine turned me onto PMOG, or Passive Multiplayer Online Game, which is pretty much what it it says it is, but so much more. Essentially you sign up and install the Firefox plug-in (Yes, you need Firefox. Grow up.), and you’re ready to go. The site has a full explanation of the entire system, which I don’t feel like giving here. But I’ll give a few observations.

1. The game is incredibly addictive. I probably did it way more than I should have today, at work, where I should have been working, some might say. I apparently don’t follow that philosophy quite so vigorously.

2. I found myself going to many pages just to see what was left there, and also seriously thinking about how well-trafficked a site is before I set something there. Yeah. Kinda sad, right? Wrong. Strategy, my friend. Strategy.

3. Mines are incredibly fun. I found myself chuckling in glee when I set them.

4. Missions are entertaining, and you can even learn something while you do them.

And many other things. You just really need to check it out and play around with it. Maybe I’ll see you around.

I was also thinking about the implications of gameplay like this. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, it’s innovative and creative and far more entertaining than say WoW or anything like that. As a bonus, you can keep going on with your life while you play it too, even forget about it. It’s really incredible. Go check it out!