Game Review: ….Bad Rats.

That’s right, Bad Rats.

If you dont know what Bad Rats is, then….

….

good for you.

To put it simply, Bad Rats is known to be a “joke game” in Steam. One of the reason it’s so popular is that because one, it’s cheap, and two, everyone’s gifting this game to their friends as a joke on how the game is bad. Also people are giving out sarcastic good review everywhere on Steam. It have a “Mostly positive” review in Steam.

So is the game’s sale successful?

….I GUESS? I mean they’re buying it? And they’re buying like ten copies to give out to their friends, so…. I guess?!?!?!?

“There are shitty games, and then there are legends. And then there’s Bad Rats.”

~Kotaku

“Well if you say so, then without reviewing, I would already know to totally stay away from that game, right?”

Actually, after looking around…. I dont find the game to be…. as bad as my expectations would be, if I’ll be completely honest… I’ve played much worse…

Alright, I’ll tell more about the game instead of the reviews and the tradition of gifting bad games now.

A.G.E

Action and Gameplay…?

Bad Rats is a strategy game where you have an arsenal of bunch of different rats that you can place almost anywhere in the stage. You know games like Amazing Alex, Cut the Rope… those kinds of physics based puzzle games? Yeah, that. Except that the point of the game is to trigger something that would kill a poor cat that have been ball-and-chained.

You have a bunch of types of rats in your disposal. A rat can launch a ball while holding a bat, another can ride a small tractor, another can self-explode, and so on and so on. All you need to do is to trigger the one small….whatever it is that would kill the cat. Ranging from triggering a gun, a microwave, a guillotine, a bomb, dropping a vault etc etc.

You just set up the rats and… hope something flies off and triggers whatever that will kill the cat.

“But it’s a puzzle game, there’s supposed to be like only a few solution to it and you cant just “hope something flies off”! That’s weird!”

THAT is EXACTLY where Bad Rats is doing wrong. The one thing that made people say that Bad Rats is a bad game, is how HORRIFYINGLY BAD the physics are here. A lot of things can happen by mere RNG, sometimes re-doing the level with the same exact rats placement can lead to different results, and even if you follow the tutorial level exactly how they told you to, it’s not a 100% guarantee win. The physics are horrible and the graphics too.

The model is super undetailed and just…. well, bad. They’re Bad Rats after all…. I guess…

At this point I’m not even sure if I should get to the E part in A.G.E. Since it’s mostly just how poorly executed the game is. It’s mostly just rage on how unpredictable the physics are when this is supposed to be a puzzle game.

Nevertheless, this game actually have potential. The idea itself is alright, just like those physics-based puzzle game like Amazing Alex and all. Those kinds of games sure are fun, and this one have pretty much the same idea. It’s just… very very very poorly executed.

Honestly, if it have better physics, graphics and some other details, this would be a great game. But unfortunately, that didnt happen. It could’ve been a Good Rats. It’s too random for a puzzle game, and is mostly just ‘put random things, hope something happens’ kind of thing which really isnt fun… Also the levels are really short too. So…. not much fun in that.

Even though I said that it’s not as bad as what the reviews would say, it’s…. still pretty shit. Not recommended, but it does have potential.

Game Review: Five Nights at Freddies

I’m sure a lot of people have heard of this indie horror game that got a lot of attention for its simplicity. It’s a point-and-click horror game that takes place in a pizzeria called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The pizzeria have some animatronics that are active during the day. These animatronics are like the mascot of the pizzeria, although they have a somewhat deep history if the player pays attention to the details.

You control a night guard who stays up midnight in the security room in the pizzeria. As the night goes by, you can listen to previous nightguard’s recording tape to know what’s up. According to the previous nightguard, the animatronics are set to ‘free roam mode’ at night to prevent…rusting or something. Therefore, they will walk around at midnight.

The room you’re in have two doors with windows near them. There is a button that will close the door on each doors, one on left and one on right, and one light each for each doors which will let you see what’s on the window. 

You also can take up a screen monitor out to check the rooms with the camera around it. The monitor will show a minimap of the pizzeria, and you can pick a room with a camera to see from that eyes of that camera.

A.G.E Framework

Gameplay!

Remember how the animatronics are in “roaming” mode at midnight? Well have we got a good news for you! They will try to “stuff those who are not an animatronics into animatronic suit for breaking regulations at midnight”. AKA, you! Which also means they’re coming to get you to stuff you into a suit filled with robots parts and everything. Which, also, means, they’re going to kill you if they got their hands on you. Fun, right!

If you close the door to your security room, they can’t come in though, so ‘why dont you just close the door?’ Well for some security reasons or something, the door uses magnet system which requires electricity. Pulling monitor up, closing the door and turning lights on will drain energy. So does your fan, I mean come on, you need some wind in that room, right?

This is when you know you should immediately close the door.

The pizzeria is ‘low on budget’ so that they have to limit the energy the night guard can use. If you used it all up, well… lights will be off, doors will be open, and… they will come for you….

Actions!

The night will start off at 12 AM, shown on the top right corner of the screen. To win the night, you need to survive until 6 AM, where the animatronic will then return to its original position as the pizzeria opened up.

Basically, you need to save up energy while you defend yourself against the animatronics for 5 days straight. The strategy is to learn the pattern of the animatronics, close door only when necessary and check monitors once in a while, pinpoint where the animatronics are, and check your window if you cant find one.

There are also another animatronic, Foxy, which instead of slowly traversing through the room, he will instead do a fast sprint towards the office when triggered by certain events, bangs the door and lowers the power by a huge amount…if you closed the door that is. If not then he’ll come in and kill you probably.

fnaf

Experience!

The game’s simple design, small room and dark surroundings makes it up for a lot of things. Not to mention that there is a long lore than meets the eyes if one pays attention to the previous nightguard’s recordings and the things scattered around the wall. It have quite a spooky aura around the office, and the lack of music makes you very alert to every small sound and focused on every details.

Before you know it, you forgot one important detail, and the animatronics are already on your face when you put that monitor down.

Overall, it’s a pretty tense and fun, simple yet rather challenging horror game. There are some flaws of course, several things like being ‘too simple’, and dont forget one of the most horrifying thing in FNAF is not the animatronics: It’s the fanbase.

….dont come near the FNAF fanbase

Game Review: Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Kirby games, ahhhh…. these games are awesome… although this one in particular, something feels a bit off…

You guys know the popular pink puffball, right? The one that sucks enemies, and then he can transform with a trait of the enemies he sucked in. Thaaat’s Kirby!

In this game, he angered a magician called Yin-Yarn (by eating his special tomato), and he got banished into a dimension fully made of yarns called Patch Land. Even Kirby himself is now only yarns! He then meet up with a companion named Prince Fluff. Kirby saves Prince Fluff from a pinch, and the prince explains the basic of this world, how everything is fabric. He also said that the tomato Kirby ate was the Metamato, which allows him to transforms into several different versions of him.

Yin Yarn have cut Patch Land down to seven pieces, and the prince needed 5 more “magic yarns” to collect to patch the land together. And so Kirby sets off to help his newfound friend, while in Dream Land, Yin-Yarn are making a havoc out of Kirby’s homeland, the Dreamland.

A.G.E

Action!

Unlike the traditional “Suck up enemies and be like them” kind of games, Kirby’s yarn form allows him to transform into several things without even needing to suck enemies up. Kirby’s dash transforms him into a car, he can descend slower by turning into a parachute which will also increase wind effect, pendulum when hanging onto a button, sleigh when dashing through the snow (pun intended), snake when tunneling, strength (or a small tank) when trying to pull something strong, submarine when underwater, 2-ton or weight when ground-pounding, and a top when spinning an enemy.

Speaking of spinning an enemy, I’ll get to that. You know how everything is basically cloths and yarns now, right? That also includes enemies. Kirby can throw his yarn and latch it into the enemies, and if you hold the button long enough, Kirby will spin the enemy up, unraveling them and turn them into a ball of yarn that they can use for projectiles.

Kirby can then throw the yarn ball at enemies to destroy them, or sometimes to bosses to weaken them before Kirby can slowly unravel them up.

Gameplay!

Kirby can venture through some stages in one area, and in every area, there will be one final boss. The bosses will then drop a magic yarn upon defeat, which lets them continue to the next area. Of course, the boss would be in the last stage, and you’ll have to complete all previous stages to reach the boss battle.

It’s a sidescroller game with quite a bit of puzzles and tricks to use your abilities to the maximum potential. Sometimes you gotta think a bit outside of the box to progress, otherwise you might be stuck in some parts.

Most of the bosses have buttons that you can pull to damage them greatly, or use them to throw the boss across the screen. Everytime there is a button in a bossfight, it’s almost 100% sure that the button is their weakpoint. Do something that gets their button to be in your reach, and then pull them up.

There are also powerups that lets Kirby to transform to even more powerful things, but only on certain levels and occasions.

Robot Epic YarnUFO Epic Yarn

Experience!

One thing that you should note is that… in this game…

….you cant lose…. you cant die, you cant get totally hurt or forced to restart stages after taking too much damage whatsoever…

there is no healthbar or whatsoever for Kirby, and getting hit by an enemy will simply either gets slightly knocked back or losing some currency, like losing rings in Sonic, except that you just cant die at all.

So… I guess there’s really not much challenge in it? Nevertheless, getting as much as money as possible is definitely a good thing though, so that’s something I guess… Still, the feeling of not being able to lose really eases the tension, so there’s barely any feeling of anger or anticipation when playing this game.

That doesnt ruin my experience though, the beauty of the style and wondering how the story will progress still made me fall in love with the game. The style of the art is just amazing and cool, and the wide variety of gameplay is also cool, but like I said, not much in challenge. Still, a recommended game. for me at least.

Game Review: The Battle Cats

Yes it’s a mobile game.

You might see this picture, and then think…. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?

You’ll get used to it. I know I have, for three years at least.

This is quite possible the most faithful I’ve been to a mobile game. I have never thought that I would last more than a year with mobile games, yet this game just keep on sucking me in…

Overview

It’s somewhat of a tower-defense game where the point of the game is to destroy the enemy’s unit base as you protect yours with your cat units. The enemy will spawn units sent to destroy yours and you do the same. Just gotta be better, that’s pretty much it.

The story here is that the cats want to take over the world, so they travel from countries to countries, battling out the base, taking over countries, and soon, the world.

The more you progress, the more cats you can unlock. There are 9 basic cats that will be unlocked as you progress through the first chapter, which is Basic, Tank Cat, Axe Cat, Gross Cat, Cow Cat, Bird Cat, Fish Cat, Lizard Cat, and Titan Cat.

There are 3 types of compilation of chapters, Empire of Cats, Into the Future and Stories of Legends. There are 3 “Empire of Cats” chapter, 3 more “Into the Future” chapters (which are considered the fourth until sixth chapter) and about 28 subchapters in “Stories of Legends”

You first started at Empire of Cats. The chapter will progress as you slowly take over the world, and it ends with the cats conquering the moon. The exact same thing happens in Chapter 2 and 3, except that the enemies gets stronger and you have several bad handicaps. According to the ending, the cats simply want to borrow all of their power source to activate a time machine to travel to the past so that they can awaken legendary cats, where afterwards the cat will ‘politely says goodbye, and didnt even forget to switch the lights off’.

This event leads to Stories of Legends, which for me, is more to where the ‘main game’ actually is. Stories of Legends have a lot of mini sub-chapters that the developers sometimes update and keeps on putting more stages every now and then. This is where the fun takes place as the enemies gets much more interesting, and the mindset of “mindlessly spawning every unit you have and can” is lost. Strategy completely changes, way of thinking is totally different, and one should really think about what units to bring before battle, and when to spawn them.

You can visit Into the Future after clearing Empire of Cats. The story of it is that the cats returned from the past, only to see that the future has been taken over by aliens. Of course, the cats are unhappy, and battle the aliens to regain what was once taken over by them.

It definitely sounded stupid, does it not? But holy hell, it’s sooo fuuuun…..

A.G.E

Actions!

There’s 3 main things that you can do in battle. If you see the screenshots, you can see that at the bottom left, there’s a “Level 1” with a picture of a cat. The bottom right have “Fire!!” and in the middle, you have a selection of units that you bring. The left one is “Worker Cat”. The higher his level is, the higher your money production per second would be. Upgrading him requires money though, and sometimes it could actually not be worthed. The “Fire!!” button is called Cat Cannon. Pressing it fires a mediocre-damaged cannon across a huge area. This will slightly knock back enemies and damage them, but it have a long recharge. The middle one, well there are 10 units you can bring into battle. 5 are only shown here, but if you swipe vertically, it’ll show the other 5 that you brought along.  Spawning units costs money and have cooldowns, as you can see, the rightmost cat needs 4500 money, but I currently only have 3700ish, shown on top-right corner, so I cannot spawn it yet. I can spawn the two titans on the left of it though.

You can get ‘basic’ units from chapter 1, ‘special’ units from either purchase, events, or clearing chapter 2 and 3, and some chapters in Stories of Legends, and ‘rare’, ‘super rare’, and ‘uber rare’ units from “Golden cat capsule”, or from certain limited-time events.

Golden cat capsule is a feature in where you can pay 150 “cat foods” (like the currency in this game) or use one rare ticket that you can get from some special events, to get a chance in unlocking rare cats. If you’re lucky, you can get super rare cats which are mostly more stronger, or even uber rare cats if you’re extremely lucky! These guys are usually extremely helpful.

Let me brag about my Uber collection.

End of brag.

Gameplay!

Like I said earlier, you sent cats out, enemies sent their units out, you duke it out.

Enemies do not have cat cannon, nor do they have money system. They usually have one big tough boss that they will spawn, with a constant stream of weaker units to protect the big boss. Once the boss is dead, usually that’s when you can get to destroying the enemy base.

The cats differ in a lot of ways. Some are meant to be ‘meatshields’, some are main damage dealer, some  are more of a tanky type, some are meant to bypass enemies that cant hit close-range, some can knock back enemies and all that.

There are a ton of enemy type, from super weak enemies, to super speedy enemies, or enemies with an extremely big damage but slow movement, or just plain annoying. Most of them will overpower your cats, but strength in numbers show them what’s up.

Experience!

You know those games that are frustratingly tough… but you cant stop to go back in because you know that you CAN, you’re just not doing SOMETHING right? That’s Battle Cats for me.

The first 3 main chapters are easy peasy, no problem Stories of Legends, however, brings a whole new challenge that will get you stuck in a stage for a few hours or days, before figuring out what you did wrong and decided to change strategy.

The thing about this game is that it have “energy” system. Playing a stage will use “energy”, and energy recovers through time. So sometimes you cant play the game because you have to wait for the energy to fill up. Luckily, the community have some tricks up their sleeves.

The energy system gives quite a bit of a bad name for The Battle Cats, but nevertheless, it’s an awesomely fun experience to use weird cats to take over the world.

Game review: Undertale

Game Review: UNDERTALE

What is Undertale?

Undertale is a unique RPG game in which, true to what the trailer says, nobody have to die. Instead of the usual mindless-killing-and-grinding-for-experience-points, Undertale can be completed even if you do not kill anything. In fact, killing is rather discouraged.

The player controls a human child who fell into Mountain Abbot, where monsters were sealed by the humans after a long battle between the races. Surviving the fall with the help of a bed of golden flowers, the human first met with a happy-looking sentient golden flower who refers himself as “Flowey the Flower”.

Flowey explained how in the monster world, you would get power from LOVE. He then tells you to catch his ‘friendliness pellets’, which turns out to be lethal projectiles that would damage the player as Flowey reveals his true evil smile before getting shoved away from a friendly-looking humanoid goat monster. This introduces the player to the mechanic of the bullet hell game that the player will experience. The aforementioned goat monster introduces herself as Toriel, the guardian of ruins, who then mentioned that it has been a while since a human have fell down.

Toriel will then escort the player through the ruins, and on the way, you can encounter some somewhat hostile monsters. You can either try to interact with them until they decided that they dont want to fight you, or do it the classic way: kill them. These can lead to different dialogues and events, and some ending changes too. From this onwards, the choice is yours.

Along the way, the player will meet some unique set of characters. Right after out of the ruins, you’ll meet Sans. A short, joke-loving skeleton monster with a huge grin and a lazy, carefree attitude. Then, there is his brother, Papyrus, who is an energetic, tall but somewhat childish skeleton with an obsession of the dream to capture a human and a love of spaghettis.

Some others include Undyne, a strong warrior-like fish monster lady who is always pumped up and ready for action with a great sense of justice. Alphys, a dinosaur(?) monster girl who is a royal scientist, who is also a huge dorky anime lover with a little crush on Undyne. Her robot, Mettaton, who was supposed to be a human eradication device but also have an entertainer’s passion, being the biggest star in the underground. Then there’s Asgore, the gentle, kind hearted king of the Underground with a hearty face and a dream to break the barrier seal using 7 human souls’ power.

(From left to right: Asgore, Undyne, Toriel, Sans, Alphys, Papyrus)

Now, the bullet-hell mixed with RPG and the ‘kill is not a must’ system may make Undertale a unique RPG, but the one thing that really stood out from it is how even the most basic monster enemies have distinct personalities. There are 3 main endings; “Genocide”, “Neutral”, and “Pacifist”. I think the name kinda explains itself. Genocide is where you kill every monsters you encounter. Neutral is if you kill some, and Pacifist is if you dont kill any monsters at all.

A.G.E

Action!

In Undertale, you move around controlling the human character from a top-down view, and you can interact with things around the map like a usual RPG. For the battle system, it’s a turn based RPG where you have 4 menu choices: Attack, Items, Act, and Spare. Attack does what it says, attack an enemy. A box will show up and a line will slide across the boxed area, which will stop if you click a button. The more centered the line is, the higher the damage. Items well, lets you use the items, mostly just healing items.

This is where it gets interesting and different. Act button will give you several choices of things you can do to the enemies, that are not harmful. These choices differ from enemies to enemies, and the choices will usually lead to them ‘sparing’ you. Once an enemy has ‘spared’ you, you can then spare them which will leave you victorious, with no EXP gain, but gain in Gold, and no soul lost.

When it’s the enemy’s turn, they will attack you, but in a rather unique manner once more. You control a heart-shaped sprite like a bullet hell game in a small square shaped box. The enemies will then have different attack patterns which you can learn from experience, dodge their bullets and their turn will end in a while.

Gameplay!

As like most other RPGs, battle systems are encountered either from certain events or by random chance when just walking around a normal path. You can save everytime you see the glowing yellow star sprite that is shown at the top left of the human in the screenshot.

Sometimes one event can lead to another. Wont go too much into details since there’s a lot of them, especially in pacifist route. The point of the adventure is to guide the human through the monster world and to meet king Asgore, and hopefully find a way to return to the human world by crossing the barrier that Asgore is near with. Plot ensues of course, not gonna go too detailed again because… too long and spoilers.

Experience!

The thing about Undertale is how amazingly HUMANE the NPCs are. It’s amazing to see how every NPC have distinct personality, even the enemies and shopkeepers have distinct traits and distinguishable way of talking. You can interact with shopkeepers too, and even sometimes triggers some bunch of events.

This guy is possible one of the most chill shopkeeper I’ve ever seen in videogame.

What people truly experience in Undertale, I would say would differ on what route are they choosing. Genocide will probably give you a lot of regrets and sadness for others. Neutral…. well, depends on what you do, since Neutral have a huge variety of things you can do. Pacifist…. Pacifist ending also definitely have a lot of ‘feels’ moment. Revelations, plot twist…. also, awesome fitting music.

It’s so hard to explain and not spoiling things ARRRGHHH

 

….basically, awesome. Just beautiful… The game’s amazing, the plot is well-thought, the writing is amazing, the jokes are nicely placed, the battle system is also fun, and the music… Well, come look at my handphone’s playlist and take a look yourself!

Oh yeah, the game knows if you did something wrong, restarted the game and changed your course of path. Flowey knows. He knows the truth. Some monsters even know how many times you have died. Let’s just say you killed, Toriel, then you regretted it. You restarted and spared her instead. You think you can got away scot-free? No. Flowey’s there to remind you.

You cant escape the guilt.

….well unless you know how to mess with the game files, I guess

Game Creation: Puzzling~

Ah yes, puzzles…. The bane of the brawns and the part where the brain shines the most. Looks like we’re creating one of these now.

Designing a puzzle is definitely not an easy task. To make something not too easy, but challenging, and not frustrating. To be in the middle of all that, to create a good puzzle, it’s already a hard puzzle to solve.

…but hey, it’s better to try, right? So we saw some tetris stuff a bit earlier before working on this and we got the idea of making tetris-like pieces too, but with hexes instead of squares

 

…..and then what?

 

Tetris-styled game? No, that’s way too much copying for Tetris to be simply an ‘inspiration’…. what about… path-finding puzzle games? Yknow, creating a path to reach the end goal kind of thing… That should be alright

 

Like players would be given a set of the pieces and make paths to reach the end goal, but maybe with obstacles so that they have to put specific paths on specific places? That might do…

 

We then made some example of the paths. Maybe, something like these would do goodhex dice map.jpg

The numbers represent what tiles you can get based on die roll. Roll a 4 and you’d get the straight 4-straight-hexes tile, roll 5 and you’ll get the one with 3 branches, and so on.

 

….we never really got a chance to continue it though, but in the end, we decided to take this base idea off to another project. With the same system of ‘getting tiles with dice rolls’. This time, it’s a multiplayer race-to-the end.

Hexes tiles colored.jpg

Basically, that’s how the map goes. One starts from Red other starts from Blue, they take turns to get tiles and whoever reaches the end wins. Something like that… It’s pretty simple and good c:

Game creation: The 5 Rooms Dungeon

Trying to come up with game ideas and challenges is not an easy task. Sometimes you cant get any ideas to come. Sometimes you get overexcited with your ideas that it gets too absurd, and you cant just seem to balance the story up and all.

 

One template that a person can use to make a design for a story in RPGs is called, well it’s in the title, The 5 Rooms Dungeon template.

 

The 5 Rooms Dungeon consists of, obviously, 5 parts of stories and encounters, which consists of:

 

Room One: Entrance and Guardian

Room Two: Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge

Room Three: Trick or Setback

Room Four: Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict

Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist

 

I’d say the names are somewhat self-explanatory, but here’s a bit of the details.

If there is a reason to go to venture to a certain location, than it might be something important. If there is something important, it is almost bound to have guards on it. Then, to test the brain and not the brawn, a puzzle is presented inside. Things will be calm after solving a non-physical puzzle, and then, poof! Something unexpected! A sudden challenge out of nowhere! But of course, it’s just the beginning before they then enter the big battle against the one big boss, the last guardian of whatever you’re after. Once they’re defeated, the heroes can then claim their treasures and walk out in peace.

Of course, we decided to try this template out.

Room One: Entrance and Guardian

We start off with the settings. A Golden Cat treasure is sitting at the deepest part of a Pyramid.. guarded by two… mummies? No, dont think they’ll be wondering outside… Black, anubis-like dogs? Sure! Put 2 of them!

Room Two: Puzzle or Roleplaying Challenge

And then… puzzle huh, puzzle puzzle puzzle…. we’re not so good at making a smart puzzle so… riddles? Riddles it is then! A big giant near-impossible-to-kill giant who asks riddles, that should be great! For the riddles… we’ll look some up from the internet…

Room Three: Trick or Setback

Then, a sudden challenge! Let’s see… Aha, since the heroes are a party of two, we’ll separate them! A wall rises from nowhere and they have to fight monsters on their own, no working together now!

Room Four: Climax, Big Battle, or Conflict

Final boss… usually like a creepy mummy or something, right? Oh and some skeleton armies and- no wait… here’s a better idea… what if the boss is a mummy, but they turn into dust right as they appear? That would make a funny boss, wouldn’t it? Sure will!

Room Five: Reward, Revelation, Plot Twist…. big battle…?

Treasure chest sits there and heroes takes stuff out… But there’s no fun to that… maybe we still need a boss after all… maybe the boss is… oh! The boss… the boss is the golem from earlier! Let’s see, he’s mad because… because… he said we looked it up on the internet, maybe? No wait he’s supposed to be insanely overpowered though… What if the treasure contains something that can help killing him? That’ll do! That’s it, we got it!

 

And so we’re done! Here’s a picture of our draft. Well, unfinished draft….

5 rooms.jpg5 rooms - Copy.jpg

 

Tabletop RPG game, the game!

Being the one true hero, or heroes with friends. Adventuring through lands and kingdoms, from the tallest mountain to the deepest caves. Fighting monsters, zombies and dragons. Traversing through obstacles with any means necessary and become a legend…and then dies from a level 1 kobold. Such is the beauty of role-playing games.

TableTop RPG?

Role-Playing Games, or RPG for short, have been massively known for all the fantasy things one can do in a simple game. Although right now RPGs are mostly popularly known by gamers for electronic videogames, tabletop RPGs are still the one to start them off.

Dungeons and Dragons is one of the most well-known tabletop RPG to date. With its simple mechanics, yet vast amount of things that the player can do, this game is fun to play for casual and hardcore gamers alike.

Its a nice simple turn-based game with dice-roll luck system to decide the outcome of most actions the players do. The actions are close to limitless in possibilities, yet challenges still exist as the gamemaster’s story unfolds.

It sounds like a fairly cool concept, but also rather confusing for the newer eyes. But what would a review be if the reviewer have never even tried the game? That’s right, grab them character sheets and dice and get ready to roll.

M20

M20 is a game with a similar basic with Dungeons and Dragons. It’s pretty simplistic and easy to learn, and starting out the game is also not a hard task. We were given a character sheet with a bunch of stats to be written in it. Picking a race and a class to have different perks, and rolling a D20 die to determine the original stats. With the provided starting gold, the players can then buy items, ranging from weapons to tools.

Roles

One person will be the “Dungeon Master”. They dont really ‘play’ in the game, rather, they control what the other players will face. They make the story and adds the enemies, putting the challenges and setting up the traps. The Dungeon Master does not have a character, they are like the narrator of the story, the story teller, and the base of the adventure. For our case though, we were given a linear script that the player and the Dungeon Master should follow to help us get to know the game better.

For the players other than the Dungeon Master, they get to use their previously created characters inside the story. They will then go on a quest and face challenges that the Dungeon Master have provided for them, where the players can then decide on what to do in the situation. The Dungeon Master can also decide a ‘difficulty level’ when a player wants to do a certain task, such as climbing, disabling traps, or other skill-based miscellaneous actions outside battles. Whether the action is successful or not, it is based off the player’s stats that would affect the chance of success and with the help of dice roll.

Testing out the game

For this week, we’re given a fixed story where the characters helps a little girl that had her money stolen from her. The characters then will go on a small quest to retrieve the stolen money from bandits.They will encounter low-leveled enemies and some simple traps along the way, before finally fighting the bandits and retrieving the items.

I got to become the Dungeon Master, and I have to say, playing in the background is actually not bad. After all, if only we’re not supposed to mostly follow the script, I would get to make my own story.

Review

The game is indeed fun, minus the part where you have to keep on checking back and forth for the stats and calculating everything manually that is, but other than that, it’s a very fun open-storied game. Imagine these days’ modern usual turn-based RPG, but literally anything can happen, in any theme, and someone you know (or yourself) gets to make your own story on what’s happening. It’s a very fun game especially when played with close friends.

Adventures in Creating some Random Games #2

Another quest in creating yet another board games, this time with different pairings.Our target is no longer a race-to-the-end games, rather, a Territorial Control game.

A terriwhat game?

Territorial. Also mostly known as Area Control games.These are the kind of games where you’d like to get ‘the most area by the end of the game’ kind of thing. Or where a bigger control of area would give a significant advantage for winning the game. Risk is one good example of Area Control games, it’s a game where you control a country that you can use to attack a territory from another country, get that area for yourself, expand your army and rule the whole map.

Getting the basics

OK, so we’re kinda brainstorming our ideas for a territorial control games, what is the objective? What can we capture and not capture? What’s the “Territorial control” here?

We decided to try to make a game where the point of the game is to capture one hard-to-get area. That way, the players can have the choice to run straight to the main area and try to capture it immediately with more effort, or get some things along the way to help them capture the last point more easily.

At first, I thought of making the map a bit closed with certain passages and walls that must be traversed, but that seems a bit too complex for now, so we decided to just make it open without obstacles.

Territories and objectives

2 players, both controlling some kind of “group of mafia”, are trying to capture one important neutral area that will let them win the game. This important area, let’s just call it the ‘police station’, we haven’t really decided, will only be capturable by a group that have captured at least 3 capturable territory in the area, let’s just say that they’re “important shops”. There are a total of 8 important shops in the map. 3 are near one of the mafia’s base side, other 3 near the other side, and 2 in the middle.

Mafia map

Each team will start at the S mark (Start mark, obviously) and they will have 6 units, which are 2 “Big group” and 4 “Small group” units. They are all stacked at the starting point, but outside the starting point, they cannot be stacked. Let’s just say that the “Big group” is a group of 10 people, and the small one is 5 people, just for convenience’s sake. 2 small groups cannot merge into one big group.

Movements and Capturing

Each turn, a player can only move one unit only, with the maximum of 3 hexes distance. If they can stand on a shop hex (T) and stays there for 3 consecutive end of turns, that territory will belong to that person. Whether it’s a small unit or a big unit, they both have the same movement speed and capture rate. A captured shop can be recaptured by enemy unit if they can stand there for 3 turns, too. As I said before, the police station (P) can only be captured if you have at least 3 shops captured. Capturing the police station, however, requires 10 consecutive turns instead of 3. It is the very last point of the game, after all.

Battle

If you meet an enemy unit right next to your hex, you can start a battle against that unit. That unit will then be forced to battle you, and cannot refuse. You dont HAVE to declare a battle everytime a unit is besides you, though, and you can even take a roundabout around the unit.

If a battle were to happen, there are 4 possible outcomes: Either a unit wins, loses, or both sides leave without injuries, or both side leaves with injuries. If a unit wins, then that unit will stay on that hex, while the losing unit will be teleported back to the starting position, and that specific unit will not be able to move for 3 turns. If both units are injured, they will be teleported to an owned territory instead of the starting point. If they dont have any owned territory or their territory have a unit on them, then they will still go back to start. They are also stunned, cannot move for 3 turns too If both sides are not injured, then they both will be teleported to selected territory, but are still able to move instantly afterwards.

Deciding the outcome

Here are the table that will decide the outcome. “5v10” means small group against big group, and this is viewed based on which unit is the left one. For example if it says 5v10 and the result is “Win”, then it’s a win for the small unit, not the big unit. Contesting a point and not contesting a point also makes a difference. Contesting a point means that one side is in the middle of the process to capture a point. There are different tables for when a battle is contesting a point or not. The outcome is decided with a D10 die.

5v5/10v10 (not contesting)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
lose lose lose both both in none none win win win
5v10 (not contesting)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
lose lose lose lose lose lose lose both none win
5v5/10v10 (contesting)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
lose lose lose lose lose win win win win win
5v10 (contesting)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
lose lose lose lose lose lose lose lose none win

 

That’s pretty much it for the game. If we got more playtesting and all, we can definitely put more improvements and put more balance changes.

Adventures in Creating some Random Games #1(?)

Board Games?

Not to be confused with Bored games.

Board games, the games where like any other versus multiplayer games, is the times where friendships are made or severely broken. There are a tons of board games that I have seen, and a tons more that has yet been seen by my own two eyes. This simple kinds of games that usually only requires tokens, dice, and a one-ton rulebook usually have an impeccable simplicity, well, although it scales inversely to how thick the rulebook is.

A simple board game can be very easy to understand. All a player really needs to know is what is the objective, how do they move and what else can they do? This makes not only learning board games easy, but making one isnt an entirely hard task either.

And so we tried to make one.

A group of three, two of them that seems to have known each other well with the addition of… me. Anyway, we discussed some already-existing tabletop games that doesnt seem to be too simple and appealing, mostly because most simple games idea pretty much already existed.We are to make a “Race to the end” type game, where players attempt to test their decision-making skill and luck in order to reach a certain spot in the map first.

Starting it off with ideas.

They suggested a big, open area game where you can go anywhere you want, and I said I’m down with that, as long as we don’t get out of hand real quick with the ideas.

Long story short, we got out of hands with the ideas. We started making up rules and features like we’re building a country.

It started of rather simple. It’s a race to the end game where the area is a big, square-ish size with hexes as tiles. One player on the edge, the other at another edge near the first player, and they gotta race to the middle of the other edge of the board.3f0wcnk

Basically, two players, one starting at number 20, the other at 24, both trying to get to tile number 55. The first time we’re making it, this map wasnt this small. It was way bigger.

Clearing more basic things

We started thinking about the RNG element. At first, we thought of the usual ‘roll dice to see how far you move’ but then decided that it’s basically snake and ladders where everyone’s just gonna go straight to the end. So we decided to make it only 1 movement per turn. but then what else?

One of use decided, we need cards. A deck of cards with special effects on it, that’s for RNG. Players will pick a card from the deck and they can use the cards face down as ’tiles’. The players can only walk to tiles, and will activate the faced down cards which then may be blank or may have special effects. So in one turn, each player have a phase to put down a card, and a phase to move.

Going wild with ideas

….that’s where we got out of hand, basically. It’s simple yet complicated, and I honestly have told them about it too. We placed too much complexity in a simple game, we placed a bunch of traps cards and boosts cards. At first, it’s only the usual plus turn or decrease turn kinds of cards, but then they for some reason decided to put things like ‘wormholes’ and stuff.

And I cant really stop them. They kept on saying that it’s fine and it’s not complex enough. Well, it’s not *that* bad I suppose, but yknow, for a first draft this definitely feels too much. In the end, we got the aforementioned map, 64 cards and 2 players, and we haven’t even playtested it in time.

Deck overview

The 64 cards are 20 blank cards, which doesn’t do anything on flip, 20 are trap cards which will be bad to anyone who steps on it and the other 20 are bonus cards which will help anyone who steps on it, plus 4 ‘wormhole’cards. Traps includes things like movements slow, which will stop you from moving for a few turns, teleport traps, which will take you back a few tiles and some other bounce traps which will move you around to your disadvantage. The bonus cards includes boost, which will let you move twice or more in one turn, or things that slows your enemies or move you forward. There are also these wormhole cards that when you place it and there’s another active wormhole in the area, you can teleport to the other wormholes that are active in the field.

Anyway, like I said, it’s very complex for a simple game. Maybe if we tone it down a bit, it should be a much better game.