The Indie Game Magazine » time management

On Trial: Minotaur China Shop

Mike Gnade — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:50:35 +0000

Minotaur China Shop is an absolute scream. As the name implies, you play as a Minotaur that owns a China Shop in ancient times – you’re big, move awkwardly and become enraged if you break too much stuff. The game takes the popular Time-Management genre and infuses it with some much needed physics and violence. As the owner of a China Shop, you must fetch the correct item for each customer. The quicker you deliver the item, the more cash you make. Of course knocking over and breaking china costs you money and angers you. Break too much and your get enraged. Lucky for you, the Minotaur’s shop has Rage Insurance so everything that you break during this period earns you positive cash. What makes Minotaur China Shop great, is that it’s like 2 games in 1. There is a legitimate time-management game here; there just also happens to be an equally fun violent destruction game as well. Personally, my strategy in the game is to play 1-2 rounds of time-management to build up my cash so that I can maximize my inventory, moves, and insurance for some great destructive payouts. The Minotaur’s angry noises are pretty funny and build to the real payoff of this game which is the enraged bashing, stomping, and charging of the Minotaur. The game is quick, simple and easy fun and while the Minotaur moves a little clunky – it serves the game well by creating accidents. For me, Minotaur China Shop shines as Blurst’s best title.

Score: 9.5/10 – Rank: 1st

Game Video: Carcophony

Mike Gnade — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:27:30 +0000

Carcophony is a traffic simulator type game for Xbox Live Indie Games – definitely a unique genre.

Happier than You Review

Taylor Hall — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:05:50 +0000

click the screenshot to download the demo

Happier than you” is a game wrapped in a message of peace and happiness, hidden under bad graphics and unique gameplay.

At its core, HTY is a game designed to teach empathy. Managing the needs and delights of multiple people and sharing resources for the common good. It is also, however, a game of “graph management” as players try to keep all graphs (and thus their avatar happiness) equal. But doing so is complicated by each graph having their own sub-graphs to manage.

It starts off simple enough, pick three colors to build an invention for one of your three people. Each person has a few favorite colors, and if you choose their colors as one of your three choices, an invention is built. Building inventions increases the happiness of the chosen avatars – something you want. This is soon made complicated by sub-attributes like “jealousy” that have their own colors to keep down. And as you progress, there are more colors to choose, more people to keep happy and more attributes to juggle. During all this, you must keep up with the prices of each of the colors, buy more when they’re in low demand, and sell when they’re in high demand, in order to increase your points as a merchant (awarded at the end of the level, along with inventor and diplomat points). I enjoyed this sub-game, but in the long run it became one of the most monotonous parts of the game because of the ease of trading.

The game rewards a job well done with trophies. These trophies give you keys and those keys open up the higher difficulty, but somewhere along the line, it became conflicting. While the game was interesting, the gameplay wasn’t compelling enough to play for more than an hour at a time. Though if you like the resource-management of RTS without the RT, then HTY is the scratch you’ve been itching for.

The game also suffers from “XNA Syndrome”, an indie game with bland graphics and textures that make it look like a Mac game from the emac-era. The people (avatars) to keep happy are represented by voodoo looking heads on a line graph; it works, but is very utilitarian in its delivery. The only problem with the graphics is that text boxes don’t have a background color to separate them from the game graphics. You have to constantly move the text box around to read properly or it blends in with the words in the game. It would have been nice if the developers had put more effort into making their game visually-unique, but HTY isn’t a graphically dependent game anyway.

The music is delightful. Using free-license classical music, the game sets a mood that is very in-hand with the gameplay. Mostly calm and soothing pianos, there are a few orchestrations involving creepy tunes that add tension, but I personally felt they were out of place. Some may see free-license as a cop-out, but I found the music to be one of the better parts of the game, particularly the song that accompanies the level victory – a very melodic and transcendent piano score.

The opening of HTY showers you with text, and not just any text – religious text. You start off with a quiz about the Ten Commandments to which you choose either “innocent” or “guilty”. I choose guilt for eight of the ten, to which the game told me that it was OK and frankly who hasn’t? Personally, I prefer a theology-less game, but even as it dissuades me, this might be one of the areas HTY shines.

You can tell that the developers didn’t start the process with a set genre that they were trying to fit their message into. They took the issues that were important to them and tried to represent that in a fun yet educating way. Finding an interactive way to represent the quest for human happiness is a lofty goal and one in which HTY mostly succeeds, and ultimately will be absorbed subconsciously by many that will play it. However, HTY is a polarizing game. Its gameplay, graphics, music, and potential theology, mix in a way that is unique to the game. Getting past the socialist and religious undertones, players will find a fun game and a unique experience, but ultimately not a very compelling one.

Pros:

decent resource management, music is delightful

Cons:

Bad Graphics, theology, No real Genre

Rating:

63%

On Trial Review: Hollywood Tycoon Demo Review

Mike Gnade — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 13:57:37 +0000

Click the Screenshot to Download the Demo Now!

Colt: 6
A relatively simple addition to the Tycoon and Sim genre, Hollywood Tycoon still managed to hook me. There isn’t much strategy other than construct movie set, buy script, find compatible actor (according to the 4 starred attributes), then buy more sets and repeat. There are no worker strikes or external factors like earthquakes to compensate, so you won’t find the depth of other management games. Still, I liked getting that little ego boost when my film was a hit. The interface and controls could use some polish, but the cheesy synth soundtrack and corny visuals add to the campy charm.

Kayla: 6
Hollywood Tycoon begins with your uncle dying and leaving you his studio. This would be amazing were it not for the fact that: A) your uncle is dead and B) his studio is mysteriously empty, leaving you with little choice other than to build it back up once more. As mentioned, you have the build the studio back up from scratch, meaning that you must build everything from actor’s trailers to sound studios to a prop storage area. The way you choose to rebuild your studio is entirely up to you, as is the choice of what scripts to use, which sets to employ and what actors to hire. This gives you a wide range of tactics to utilize to become a tycoon which, in theory, this sounds rather marvelous. Reality soon struck, however, and I grew frustrated after wasting two months in-game waiting for just the right actor or plot type to scroll by. Also, the slow pace in which you earn money put a slight damper on my enjoyment level, but I assume it’s because I was never meant to be a business manager. The music throughout is tolerable. It’s not ambitious by any means, nor is it particularly horrid. The same can be said of the graphics—there’s worse, sure, but I’ve also seen far better. The customizable avatar needs some tuning up. The game also skipped during every cut scene. Normally I wouldn’t be quite so finicky about graphics, but if I’m to pay twenty dollars for a game, I would prefer its graphics be comparable to a game I can buy for seven. Even with all the drawbacks, Hollywood Tycoon was still entertaining, though I had no desire to buy the game myself. It was just another way to let an hour slide idly by.

Andrew: 9
It’s the most fun I’ve had in a while. I created an explosion filled action flick called “Death Combat” starring tough guy superstars “Able Steel” and “Hunk McGiver.” If that alone isn’t worth the price of admission, I’m not sure what is. Unfortunately, the gameplay moves too quickly and prevents you from focusing on creating amazing films which is easily the game’s biggest strong point. Still it’s a delight to build huge sets and combine actors and scripts to make the perfect film.

Ben: 5
Hollywood Tycoon is great in its ability to admit the existence of a sci-fi romantic comedy, but little else. Hollywood lacks the depth usually found in a tycoon game, but tries to hide it behind funky pixilated graphics and a completely unnecessary avatar (or “avastar,” ugh) customization feature. Scripts, equipment, and actors all have proficiencies in four areas: comedy, drama, romance and action. Purchasing and combining elements with the same traits makes for a lucrative picture. You can spend money to expand your sets and improve the quality of scripts, actors, etc., but the game ultimately boils down to waiting for the right actor or script card to scroll across the top of the screen.

Average: 6.50

On Trial: Light of Altair

Mike Gnade — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:13:20 +0000

Click the picture for the free pc game demo download

Caspian: 5
Swimming with 3D polish from an ex-AAA game developer, Light of Altair is a nicely put together “Sim City” style game, where the objective is the timely construction and management of various planetary bases, the core of which is juggling space and time to get certain numbers to rise to required values. There’s a slightly uncomfortable mish-mash of hand drawn 2D and polished 3D and simplistic GUI interface which spoils the overall style, and the music is shockingly bad Europop which mercifully can be turned off using one of the comprehensive options settings.Light of Altair is a good first effort, but suffers from a common problem with games of this genre in that games are very lengthy, and it may not be apparent where you’re going wrong for quite some time – due in part to the fairly unclear interface and deep complexity – by which time you’ve probably already failed the mission but are unaware of the fact for ten minutes. Unfortunately this lack of reward for hard effort and steep learning turned me off wanting to play again.

Kayla: 3
For some reason when I downloaded Light of Altair, I expected more of an action game. Instead, I was surprised to see it was nearer to the Civilization series, where you’re expected to create a colony and ensure that everything runs smoothly. You’re placed on one of many spherical, 3-D planets, and thrown into the mix with little idea as to what is going on, how to maneuver, what the icons even mean, or even what in the world you’re supposed to be doing. I figured parts out on my own as I ambled through it, but other things still remain a mystery. Mostly I just clicked aimlessly, hoping one click would be the right click. As a result, I failed my mission. Miserably. The lack of a decent tutorial made the game far more frustrating than it needed to be. The music and sound definitely need to be revamped. The game, set in our universe, had a singular techno song to listen, and that was it. Few sound effects were in the game itself, leaving nothing to distract from the rave in space. Compared to other games, the graphics weren’t up to par. In fact, they were lacking. I got the feeling that there could have been a battle, somewhere, but repetitiously losing because I couldn’t figure out how to increase my monthly trade earnings soon led me to give up hope of ever figuring out the vague plot. Light of Altair is better off being passed over.

Mike: 7
On the plus side, I ended up playing the demo a lot longer than I intended, but I kept waiting for the gameplay and strategy to click and make a lot of sense. It never quite came together for me. It reminds me a lot of Ninja Bee’s Outpost Kaloki, but with deeper strategy. Everything about the game is slick: presentation, graphics, and sound. My biggest complaint is that the tutorial didn’t teach me enough to not have to be sprung out of debt or use the speed up ability. Maybe I’m just a strategy buffoon. If you’re more proficient or into strategy, the game will probably click for you.

Sam: 8
Light of Altair is a space colony building game. You have to build colonies and balance power, food, and happiness requirements while building up your industry and mining so you can build fleets of ships to conquer other planets, and build colonies there. The display can be a little crowded when you have ten different colonies on one planet and a rival faction has ten of their own, and it can be hard to tell one colony apart from another. But the developers did a good job of keeping almost all the necessary information at your fingertips: there aren’t any menus to click through, no micromanagement, no sliders to move around, just placing buildings and building fleets, and any information you need is on the main screen. The demo only gives a taste of the combat portion – it requires a fully built up planet with tons of fuel to even think about building a ship. Once built, fleets are moved by the player from planet to planet, and combat is resolved automatically – the player can watch the battle from a birds-eye view, but not participate or move around individual units. So there’s not really a focus on battle tactics, just on building and managing your colony so it can crank out more ships. All together, I enjoyed it, the demo only scratched the surface, there’s a good game here. Most likely not a lot of replay value since there’s only a campaign mode at the moment, but the developers have been discussing patching in a sandbox mode. The music is generic techno and a little grinding after a while, but the graphics are top notch, the planets are fun just to look at. Absolutely worth trying if you’re even slightly a fan of management games.

Average: 5.75

Romopolis Review

Rose — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:54:02 +0000

click on the picture to download the free pc game demo

Review by Rose

Romopolis is a strategy game set in “Roman” times with the overall objective of making money by constructing towns for Caesar. In every level you have 3 objectives that must be fulfilled to complete the level. These objectives are usually pretty straight forward and don’t require an extensive amount of thought or strategy. Perhaps the most challenging portion is keeping all of your residence happy. Yes, happiness of your tenants is actually a concern and objective. If only all of us had such luck with our existing landlords!

Gameplay:
Romopolis’s game play is straight forward and intuitive. The tutorial was very clear and helped you easily master the game. Simple mouse clicks easily guide you through the game. Features like pause, and detailed pop up instructions help keep you focused. The only real issue with the gameplay is it borders on boring. If you like these “build-a-town” strategy games, you’ll be able to find Romopolis entertaining for a good 20 minutes.To be fair, I did give the game a good solid hour of play before turning it off.

Graphics:
They were simple and clean and are one of the games strongest points. Because of the layout and design it was very easy to understand the game and follow along with your objectives.

Sound/Music:
The background music while you were playing was not distracting and fit in with the theme of the game. The basic sounds assisted the graphics to help the player understand what was going on and what needed to be accomplished. The only annoying part was the sound of the horn’s “Badom-Badom” as you were given your next mission or words of congratulations from Caesar.

Lasting Appeal:
Like I said before, if you’re really into this kind of game, you might play it all the way through, but it’s not something you’ll be dying to come back to or replay over and over again.

Pros:excellent tutorial, good design/layout

Cons:boring gameplay, low replayability

Rating: 65%

Now Boarding Review

Mike Gnade — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:48:46 +0000

Manage the Atlanta Airport

Review by Ben

Game by
Gabob

Gameplay: 8
Graphics: 8.5
Sound: 8.5
Appeal: 9

Final: 85%

Grade: B

Well, probably not. But now you can! Yes. An airport management game has been designed. Perhaps not the most exciting subject matter ever devised, but fear not! This game is actually pretty damn good! A round of applause for this 2008 release developed by Gabob. Utilizing Adobe Air to allow running the game on Windows, Mac and Linux, the game is thinking ahead. But I digress. Atlanta’s airport is struggling. Their last hope is your good self, armed with new ideas and a fresh faced smile.

The game encompasses some elements to that of Theme Park. You’re able to purchase new objects to place in your terminal to entertain your passengers prior to departure. Soda machines, hot dog stands, plants and arcades just to name a few. More are available later in the game as you find yourself managing larger terminals. This is merely to aid you in your quest though and this is where the game differs from that of our usual management game. You are to manage departures and arrivals.

You begin the game with three destinations. A tutorial, aided by your staff at the airport will teach you the ropes (quickly and effectively I might add). Your Atlanta terminal is visible in the top right of the screen with a map of the possible destinations on the left. The games levels are split up into working months. You have a certain amount of time to make as much money in that month as you can. As passengers begin to arrive in your Atlanta terminal, you have to entertain them until a plane becomes available and you can put them on board and send them on their way. Making them wait will ensure their immediate rage and eventually will cause them to “freak out”. Three freak outs will cause you to lose and you’ll have to restart that month again. It all sounds very easy I’m sure, but when you push further into the game and have 40 passengers all wanting to head to different areas of Europe at the same time and only a certain number of planes in which to juggle them, you end up being the one to start freaking out.

The pressure is immense, as is the satisfaction of successfully completing a financial month without any freak outs or failures. Aside from terminal attractions, you also can purchase new planes that can hold more passengers, hire staff to help you speed up the process’ that make the game challenging later on and also unlock new destinations that increase the influx of passengers and therefore increase your net profit margins.

Take charge and get the airport running smoothly

Each financial month is finalized with a run down of statistics that leave you either satisfied with your performance or mortified at the amount of people that gave you an F rating for your service. You’ll find yourself shouting “How dare you!” at your screens. Or perhaps a more violent variation.
As you progress further through the game you’re given more independence on your staff hiring. You have quite a range of candidates to choose from and you have to decide which ones you want and what department they should work in based on their short bio. Candidates with experience will be on a higher pay scale. Do we hire the experienced, pricey, safe choice or the young, hopeful student full of enthusiasm?! Choice! How we love choice.

The game has a fantastic atmosphere. A selection of smooth jazz tunes running throughout the game leave your feet tapping whilst you play and add to the 60′s style feel that you get from the game in general. Although charming, the graphics are very basic. 2D and no real movement aside from the passengers walking around (without legs) and the planes sliding across to their various destinations. This is ground for improvement, but as it stands the game looks pretty and the non realistic cartoon like characters really just improve gaming experience, implementing color coded game play and simplicity over the need for 3D. The sound effects are similar in this manner. Very simple, but they really don’t need to be anything more. Sounds are used when they need to be to make sure you know when planes are arriving and departing with a healthy “vroooooom” and the familiar “ding dong” for when your plane’s docked and awaiting passengers.

The game’s fairly long. The episodes don’t take too long to complete if you really concentrate on fulfilling your list of tasks as soon as you can, but I personally found it more fun to create a super successful airport first. You can make the game even more detailed by turning on “advanced routing” which basically means you have to pay more attention to whom your planes are picking up, but if managed well your airport will be far more efficient. You end up finding a great sense of pride in what you’ve managed
to do by the end of an episode.

To top it off, the game has two unlockable modes for replay value. A free play mode that you can either use to play a relaxing, no score based game or a challenging, competitive game in which you play for a high score year by year in which each year grows more difficult. Secondly, you have survival mode which is a continuous run until too many passengers freak out and you fail. Clear your schedule. This one will take up your hours rapidly.

On a slightly lesser note the game can get repetitive fairly quickly as most casual games do. It’s similar to playing a game of Tetris. A simple concept that increases in speed and difficulty, but it doesn’t quite have that grasp that it needs. You’ll find yourself needing breaks quite regularly. Providing you understand that before purchasing it then I really don’t think you’ll find yourself disappointed.

Townopolis Review

Mike Gnade — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Townopolis by Lonely Troops is a simple and fun real estate strategy game (with some time management thrown in). The basic premise is that you are a home developer and must do your best in each scenario to build a residential neighborhood and satisfy the folks who live there. The game has simple point and click controls and a nice isometric viewpoint.

Gameplay: 7.5/10
Pros: There are definitely some great strategic choices under the guise of this approachable casual building game. I really like how residents don’t like being near train tracks, industrial buildings, commercial strip centers etc. The gameplay is very approachable and easy to pick up and play. There’s an extensive tutorial that teaches you the ropes.
Cons: Gameplay is just point click over and over. It’s annoying to have to wait until you have enough money or material to do something else. There should be a mechanic to undo an errant click. Another design flaw is the fact that you cannot look up a building’s requirements without having an empty plot to highlight.

Graphics: 7.5/10
Pros: I love the Title Screen and all the GUI elements both in-game and on the title screen make the game very easy to navigate. It’s all nice, clean and standard issue.
Cons: Some of the people in the game just look creepy (look at the weirdo below) – I think a cartoon look may have worked better. There’s no real animation, special effects or wow factor. The most elaborate animation/effects you’ll get are some fireworks at level completion.

Sound/Music: 6/10

Pros: Sound fx are kept to a minimal but make sense and fit the mood and pacing of the game.
Cons: Music is incredibly repetitive. When each scenario is 10+ minutes, there needs to be more variety in the elevator music. Music/Audio as a whole is a little too thin … there could be more sound fx and music variety.

Lasting Appeal: 9/10
Pros: Despite the repetitive music, Townopolis is addictive. There are a ton of different buildings, licenses, upgrades, etc. You’ll find yourself replaying scenarios to get silver/gold stars or earn trophies by shooting for bonus objectives. Despite the simple click and casual friendly gameplay, Townopolis is actually challenging unlike so many other casual portal games. The difficulty really forces you to understand the complexities of designing your neighborhood. I forgot to mention the ability to design custom scenarios as well.
Cons: The repetitive music, inability to look up building requirements (and plan ahead) and other minor flaws detract from Townopolis and make longer play sessions tough without muting the audio.

Average: 75.00%
Tilt: + 1.00%

Don’t just look at the score of this review and judge Townopolis. It’s a very addictive, methodical, and approachable strategy game. Yeah, the construction dude who gives you tips looks like a pedophile, but these types of games aren’t about fancy graphics or complex gameplay. If you can look past the minor flaws of the game, you’ll find a very deep real estate strategy game. Townopolis appears to be a typical casual game with shallow gameplay, but almost every level in the game throws something new at you.

Verdict: 76%