Addictiveness through candy rewards

There has been recent articles on gamasutra about how easy it is to apply MMORPG-like leveling and "candy reward" and have immediate addictiveness. This game is another example :

http://neyrod.mybrute.com

While the gameplay is almost inexistant (you choose an opponent, you see an automated fight sequence, you win or lose), it's very addictive due to the new weapons/technics/pets you can get when winning a fight and the fact that while the fights are completely automated, the is a lot of depth in them, with lots of different technics/items. For example, in melee fight, you can dodge, counter-attack, steal your opponent's weapon, disarm your opponent, throw you weapon and there are probably lots of other technics (I'm only level 4...). The fights are always different and interresting to watch, especially since you're limited to 3 fights per day.

Kukkatytto stealing my bludgeon before crushing me...

Wakfu - the game

I mentioned a few days ago the wakfu tv series, but the associated MMORPG seems interesting as well. I'm not sure it will escape the usual MMORPG grind feast, but at least its graphics leave me completely speechless. I can't imagine how they do them. Maybe they have hundreds of artists working in shifts...


And here is a trailer presenting the setting and some in-game scenes.

Wakfu !

Probably a bit off-topic, but I've just fallen in love with a french anime, created by the guys behind the quite amazing free flash MMORPG dofus. Well, not only do they plan a new Dofus 2 game with absolutely gorgeous graphics, but also another MMORPG named Wakfu, which happens 1000 years after Dofus. Even better, they did a Wakfu anime series with one of the best animation I've ever seen.

The first episodes can be watched on their site (sorry, french only). You can probably find them on youtube or dailymotion too :
http://serie.wakfu.com/fr/events/episode1
http://serie.wakfu.com/fr/events/episode2

PS : while quite mangaish, I think the graphics can even please non-manga fans. I find the character design simply awesome..

Ether Saga Online

We've been used to seeing loads of free insipid asian MMORPG released every two months. Sometimes, one game steps above the others. The previous one that attracted my attention was Holic Online. Now it's a Chinese WOW-like named Ether Saga Online. It seems really pollished and complete. Though, be aware that if you're allergic to kawaii mangas, you'd better not look at following screenshots :)

Character creation screen

The character creation is quite simple, WOW-like, with 3 races and 6 classes. Though, note some interesting features :

• first you start directly with a pet (ok it's a pink cat, but it's still a pet!)
  
• you enter a birth date and an astronomical sign that will give you special feats

Main game screen

As you can see, it's definitely not a quick and dirty MMORPG. 3 actions bars with bindings to either 1..7, Alt-1..Alt-7 or F1..F7 keys, a pretty complex minimap with autowalk feature to easily follow the path to a far destination. Even the characters widgets are far from basic, and look at the pet widget. The pet is definitely not some kind of foil that can only follow you. It has his own stats, actions and RPGish evolution as seen on the detailed pet screen :

Pet screen

The crafting system, while not as rich as star wars galaxies or Ryzom, seems to be interesting too. You can add new sockets to your gear and embed gems in them to improve their characteristics.
You can gain skills either through Ethyr (artifact you get from quests or monsters) or Nascent skills (when you level up) depending on your birth date.

Skills screen

Another interesting feature with skills is that you can automatically chain skills by saving the sequence in a macro. You can also gain transformation cards that allow you to transform into a wide list of pokemon-like critters...

So if you're interested go and try it. It's free !

Escape From City 17

Completely off-topic.

I urge any Half-Life fan who hasn't started steam for two days to watch this :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1UPMEmCqZo

[OT] Gamer theft 4

This pixel soup runs at 5 fps, while Far Cry 2 and Crysis run perfectly fine on my pc

There was a time some game company did great games, with unprecedented freedom, great gameplay and awesome story/dialogs. This company produced 3 games that were huge hits. For some reason, this company decided to stop earning money from pc gamers... My advice to everyone reading this blog : DON'T BUY THIS SHIT UNTIL THEY FINISH IT (maybe in two years according to the current status of the game...).

The worst in this story is that the game was probably done by enthusiast game programmers until some millionaire producer woke up one day decided that he needed another ferrari so he stuffed the game with shitware and released it before it's finished... I hope he dies in horrible agony, being raped by a cave troll...

Diablo III

Ok, this news is completely obsolete since it's already more than two weeks old :)
Anyway, I was expecting the next big thing in the RPG world to be either Fallout 3 or Fable 2. That was without allowing for the announce of Diablo 3. Even if lots of fans seem to be disappointed by the new visuals, I watched the gameplay video and find it awesome...

True 3D, Havok physics, cooperative gameplay... yummy

Go and have a glimpse of this delightful 3D roguelikiness :
http://www.blizzard.com/diablo3

Holic Online

While doing research for the Chronicles of Doryen, I came across this nice MMORPG. It's rather unknown (well I guess so since I had never heard about it until a few days ago) but seems pretty promising.

It has clean manga-style graphics that may not please everyone but it's really a cut above the bulk of free corean MMORPG. Some details could be the signs of a really good game, like the use of Oblivion's speedtree library for the tree rendering. The usual quick and dirty MMORPG doesn't care about having nice and moving trees.

The user interface is very intuitive and pleasant. If fact, I would even dare to compare it to World of Warcraft's GUI in terms of intuitive-but-powerfulness, with some very nice innovations like tags on the ground in cities to show the direction of the main shops.

I didn't play enough to catch a glimpse of the whole game, but early impressions are really good. Of course there are the usual "kill x critters" quests, but WOW has them too. You can upgrade and/or enchant items, there is even a background story which seems much more interresting than the usual MMORPG stuff (in fact the background story of WOW or Guild Wars is so dull that I wouldn't be able to tell anything from them).

And I kept the best bit until the end, it is completely free ! So if you're interrested in MMORPGs and got a not-too-old graphic card, I can only urge you to give it a try :
http://holic.netgame.com/

Fable : The Lost Chapter

I recently came across Fable : The Lost Chapters. I've been hearing from it for years, but never took a look at it. Now it's a 3 years old game, it's very cheap, so I bought it, thinking "even if it sucks, I won't spend too much money"...

I've been playing it for a week, and ... what a good surprise ! The best gaming experience since GTA San Andreas... It's even better than The Witcher in term of gameplay, and it definitely entered my list of top game references for TCOD (along with Oblivion and Guild Wars).

Oblivion was my first source of inspiration and the first features I wanted to have in TCOD was Oblivion-like towns with houses full of objects you can steal. But I found out quickly that it would be a hell to implement. Oblivion tags stolen objects so that you cannot sell them to merchants. I don't like this, but Oblivion do it because every single object in every house of the world is an actual world entity that can be taken, dropped, stolen. Allowing you to sell stolen item would allow you to empty the whole world.

Doing it in ascii was also pretty difficult. How can you represent a house full of objects, dishes, furnitures in an ASCII world ??

Fable handle this in a very elegant way. Every object in the house is not a world entity. Instead, furnitures full of objects are only figurative. A bookcase can be represented full of books, but when you interact with it, you will be able to take only one book. Thus, each house contains only a limited number of objects that you can steal (0 or 1 per furniture), and when you have taken everything you can, the house don't look empty. Of course, this is not as realist as the Oblivion approach, but I find it superior in term of gameplay.

After I release the Arena, I'll probably add this feature to TCOD. Why objects in houses are so important to the game when it lacks so many other basic gameplay mechanisms ? In fact, in my mind, the stealth gameplay will be very important in TCOD. With objects in the houses, the thief gameplay will be within reach. I can't help myself thinking about tactical missions where you have to break into a manor/castle and evade the guards to get a precious object. This will be very refreshing after an hour of troll bashing... :)

The Witcher

I've been rather disappointed by the Hellgate London beta, which is a rather good news for the development of TCOD. But there is this other game I've been following for a few weeks :
The witcher


From the gamespot review :
"Memorable story, immersive combat, fascinating characters--what's not to like? A few fit-and-finish issues mean that The Witcher isn't quite an all-time classic RPG. Regardless, it's awfully, awfully close, warts and all, and it provides a new benchmark for future developers that are looking to lift their games out of the done-to-death elf-and-orc ghetto."

And IGN review :
"The Witcher really is a good game and one that PC RPG fans will surely enjoy. It combines some entertaining and fast-paced combat with a well realized world and pretty decent story that branches and can end in three different fashions. With a load of choice in character creation on a point assignment and morality level, there’s plenty of reason to want to come back and play the 40-50 hour game again. [...] The Witcher is definitely a game you’ll remember well over the years."

With this game, and Crysis coming next week, I wonder when I will be able to finalize the first release of TCOD... The good thing is that The Witcher has a lot of features to study from a roguelike perspective, and especially from the TCOD perspective.

After one or two hours of gameplay, I've got already lots of good ideas to work on...

• real time combat system : you can string combos of increasing power by attacking again precisely when the previous attack ends. This could be a good think to avoid the "attack as fast as you can until the creature dies" thing and would be particularly adapted to the TCOD skill casting system.

• potion crafting system : first you learn recipes, then you find ingredients and a base liquid. Most food found in the world contain some base ingredients but there are also rare or special ingredients like remains from killed creatures. A potion can be the base liquid for a more powerful potion.

• skill system : instead of having a single list of skills in which you can choose any skill you like, each skill has a cost, thus you can quickly learn a low cost skill or wait another XP level to learn a more powerful one. Each basic attribute (endurance, vitality, ...), weapon type and magic category gives you access to 5 levels of skills. The advantage of limiting the skills you can learn is that you won't have to choose a single skill from a list of 30, which is difficult and boring. There is also a strategic aspect : you don't learn a skill only to use it, but because it can lead you to a more interresting one. I think this is definitely something I'll have to put in TCOD.
  

Hellgate !

This has nothing to do with TCOD, but it's important enough for the roguelike community to be announced here. The demo of Hellgate London is already available here :

http://www.gamedaily.com/games/hellgate-london/pc/game-features/hellgate-london-exclusive-demo/4251/67004/

So go and download !! Don't know how much time the link will be valid, though...

screenshot from gamespot.com