Dungeon Keeper Mobile versus Dungeon Keeper 2 [iOS, Android, Windows]

Dungeon Keeper 2 (DK2), was released in 1999 surely it cannot keep up with a late 2013 release, or can it? Dungeon Keeper Mobile however is a freemium game, so is it worth it? Let's battle them out and see who wins.

DK2

Value: DK2 is available on GOG for $5.99 USD or about $6.48 AUD when I converted it online. The cheapest amount of gems in Dungeon Keeper costs $6.49 AUD and this amount isn't enough to even buy a new imp. Even if you paid full retail for DK2 back in the day I honestly think you would have gotten your money's worth.

Winner:
Dungeon Keeper 2

Dungeon Keeper Mobile

Graphics: DK2 is a game from 1999 and as such it looks pretty terrible though it is playable.
Dungeon Keeper Mobile on the other hand was released at the end of last year and looks great. It's done in a simplistic style to fit the mobile platform but it is clean and doesn't suffer from the cluttering of the DK2 interface.

Winner:
Dungeon Keeper Mobile

Dungeon Keeper Mobile

Gameplay: The mobile version lets you build, which takes hours without spending gems, or battle other dungeons and occasionally defend your own. That's it. I find myself playing for about 10 minutes then switching it off as I have nothing left to do. The first time I fired up DK2 I played a couple of campaign missions then spent hours in my "Pet Dungeon".

Winner:
Dungeon Keeper 2

DK2

Wittiness: DK2 says things like, "A lost soul has entered your dungeon. Oh... no, it's wandered out again" and "You have an excess of mistresses. There is a word for keepers like you!" Dungeon Keeper Mobile says stuff like, "Everyone likes lists" and "I never grow tired of witnessing the endless abuse of another's imp." So of course the winner is...

Winner:
Neither

Yes nobody wins this one, they both border a little more on the annoying than the funny side of things, especially when repeated.

Dungeon Keeper Mobile

Creativness: DK2 was heavily criticised for it's lack of creativity due to it's similarity with the original game. However, when compared to Dungeon Keeper Mobile, which adds very little new material, limits your gameplay to waiting for a clock to tick down and throwing some minions in at designated spots, DK2 seems extremely inventive.

Winner:
Dungeon Keeper 2

Dungeon Keeper Mobile

Dungeon Keeper 2 takes it out 3 to 1, a pretty impressive score for such an old game. Whilst it does suffer a bit from it's old age it is still worth playing. Dungeon Keeper Mobile on the other hand just leaves you feeling frustrated. It's main issue is it's gameplay, it doesn't even try to sucker you in to start paying to play. With no Dungeon Keeper 3 on the radar the alternative is to check out War for the Overworld, a Kickstarter campaign that is available already, in beta form on Steam.

Tiny Dice Dungeon Review [iOS]

Tiny Dice Dungeon is a free RPG played with dice. You play as a guy with a big sword who captures monsters Pokemon style and then uses them to beat up other monsters. There is looting and upgrading, mainly of your all important dice as well as in app purchases.

The way the game is played is you roll a bunch of dice. You start out with a small amount of dice but as you level up you get more and you can choose from different types of dice. You get to keep rolling till you choose to attack, or you roll a one. The problem with the, 'rolling a one' mechanic, is that it happens quite often on a six sided dice. Now there are different type of dice, including dice that cannot roll a one but you must always have at least one basic dice that can. It's really friggin' annoying, especially if your whole team rolls a one on their first go and this does happen often.

Items are handled really oddly in this game too, you get a whole horde of these things before you even have any idea what they do. Items could be things like a comb, or a pocket cactus and they give your characters bonuses and often negative attributes. Introducing items after you have collected a bunch only the makes the game more confusing, as now you have to go back and look through all the shit you've collected. Each character can have up to four items and because each item is so vague as to what it is and what it does, it's a pain to equip them, especially because it may negatively effect your character as much as it does benefit it.

Tiny Dice Dungeon is going for a Pokemon type monster collection but it doesn't make collecting and managing your monsters easy, nor does it have particularly interesting monsters to collect. You are very limited on the number of slots you can have for monsters for starters which is very un-Pokemon-like and it does the whole combining monsters together for better stats thing which is always irritating. It just feels like you are constantly hitting the pay-wall in this area. I am not against having pay for features but not when they complicate and confuse the whole feeling of the game.

Tiny Dice Dungeon is a good idea but it doesn't deliver. The dice mechanic is a clever one but it will never beat rolling real dice. Secondly, the game feels too clunky and out of order. Rather than keep it simple, with obvious ideas about upgrading and pay options the, game confuses you with pocket cacti and other nonsense. Finally, it doesn't have the design nor high quality art that Pokemon does and although its 8-bit style is cute it doesn't make up for its other short comings 5.9/10.

[Edit - Due to feedback from a reader I had to lower the score on this game or rewrite the review. I chose the easy option and also perhaps the correct one.]

Warhammer Quest [iOS]

The Games Workshop board game, Warhammer Quest, has been out for sometime on iPhone and iPad but it has been released free to play for one week. Then it goes back to $6.49 AUD. Sad news for Android fans though, with no plans from Rodeo Games to launch it on your favourite little robot.

The game is played out on a map where you can choose quests, visit towns and take care of your merchant/leveling up needs. Then you will enter dungeon crawl mode, which looks almost exactly like the board game, with squares laid out and all combat taking place in a turn based manner. The story is explained to you through text and is moderately interesting. It's mostly standard RPG fair but if you like the Warhammer world, there is a little extra appeal here. You get quite a lot for free but if you want variety, you are going to have to pay for extras. New heroes, new enemies and new dungeons to play in, cost extra. This is fair enough and the characters you start with are quite interesting it's just the monsters and world you fight, that is extremely repetitive. You are probably gonna want to get a region pack if you love this game and I think they are fairly priced for what you get. Dungeon packs on the other hand seem like an experiment in seeing how much you can rip someone off. Given that this is aimed at Warhammer fanatics, the answer is a hell of a lot.

In general I find combat quite exciting but like a lot of Games Workshop's games it can be a bit erratic. One turn your warriors are carving up every enemy in their path and then the next they are missing everything, like a bunch of drunken school boys. The Winds of Magic are incredibly erratic, they can make your wizard unstoppable or useless, which makes it hard to level him up early on. At times, combat can be free flowing, which I find to be the most fun but often due to the cramped nature of the dungeons, the heroes end up walled together, with no way to move, just chomping away at the tide of enemies. I suppose it's designed like this but it happens a little too often and takes away from the feeling of choice you have as a player. Also the turn based movement throughout the dungeon can get a little grating, especially when you are led down the wrong path and have to backtrack.

Aesthetically the game is a little mixed. Animations range from well done, to immensely poor. Often enemies will float across screen without moving their limbs at all, though most of the combat animations are done nicely. The music is quite nice but it is very repetitive and it ultimately becomes grating. Again the monsters and world are a little too repetitive to really keep your interest for long. There are lots of minor niggles with the UI et cetera. Accessing your inventory by switching your phone or tablet to portrait, is a cool idea but there is something of with it's sensor code. Plus, playing on the iPhone makes accessing your inventory and abilities a pain in the arse, as it's just too small. Also you can't skip the enemy kill screen shown at the end of every dungeon.

At the admission price of free it is well worth it, I can see myself getting an expansion pack for it and having a lot of fun but having to buy the game and then pay the same again for an expansion, I would feel a little ripped off. It has gone on sale for a dollar previously and that seems reasonable too, there is a lot of questing here. You can go on endless quests if you like but they all end up feeling the same without adding some new content to it. It's a cool little game, it gives you that board game feeling and it works well on iOS. It just lets it self down in a bunch of small ways that ultimately add up 7.5/10.

Creating Music for a phone game.

So a friend and I are currently developing a game for the iPhone and hopefully, if it receives even modest success, Android too. It is going to take a long time for us to finish this project as we are only doing it in our spare time, so I won't go into too much detail just yet. What I want to talk about now is a song I have recently created for it. If you just want to hear the song, scroll down to the bottom.

The Setup

iMac mid 2011
Logic Pro 9.1.8
MOTU 828mkII A/D
Newer Technology miniStack v3 (explained below)

The Instruments
Korg Microkey 25 key USB keyboard
Roland TD 15

The Cables
1x (Extra Long) Firewire 400
1x MIDI
1x USB, type A to type B
1x Firewire 800 (explained below)

The Music Creation Process

It's hard for me to say how I create music, because I don't think I really have a technique per se, it's more that I just blurt something out and then I begin working with the mess I've created. This whole song began because I was testing out a Christmas present, the Korg Microkey. I just wanted to have some fun with it and out came this riff. I used some sneaky short cuts to help me create this song. There is the obvious copy and paste of sections but also copying and pasting sections into different instruments to help me get an idea of the sound. Then I would take out unneeded notes, lengthen them or move them as necessary. Once I had finished using the keyboard and editing notes in the piano roll I moved onto the drumkit.

The Problems

Some of you may notice straight off the bat that the 828mkII uses firewire 400 and the mid 2011 iMac only has firewire 800. So to fix this, I used my powered portable hard-drive/hub, which handled all my connection issues. Next we come to the latency issue. I've never really noticed any latency issues with anything but drums in Logic and of course I wanted to record some drums, via MIDI in this project. I switched on Low Latency Mode in the options, which did nothing. So I Googled and read manuals and tweaked this and that to no avail. Turns out you have to switch the button in the arrange window, the option in settings does nothing. I guess it's a feature.

Mix for Mono

The first thing I noticed about my mix was that it sounded terrible through the tiny iPhone mono speaker. The combination of a stereo mix and the heavy bass sounds of Logics instruments meant I was getting some problems with sound going out of phase. To correct this I changed to a monophonic mix and I tweaked every sound I used. Mainly I needed to take out the bass, pretty heavily but on some sounds I had to cut some high frequency and adjust their volume/compression levels. After nine mixes I was happy to say it was listenable on that tiny iPhone speaker.

Read Before Listening: A Warning

Because Google are not the masters of the internet we thought them to be, mp3s are quite difficult to load into Blogger, so I have uploaded a video instead. I decided to use some footage I had taken with my iPhone at MONA and a gig I went to.

Warning: The video contains strobe lighting that may be dangerous for some viewers. Also it is of such poor quality it is recommended that you close your eyes and simply enjoy the song.

Hello Kitty Tap and Run: Super Cute and on the Run!! Review [Android, iOS]

Let's face it, we all want great Hello Kitty games to exist. Imagine if they made a Hello Kitty game so great, that everyone was playing it, from dude-bros to hobos, it would be amazing. Well… you better sit down.

Hello Kitty is a terrible game, I just don't see the point of any of it. I'm sorry to have built it up but you wouldn't keep reading otherwise. There is just so much wrong with it. Firstly, I hope you like the back of Hello Kitty's head because you're going to see a lot of it during the loading screens. Secondly, the translation is horrible, you are purifying the toys, purifying them!? I want to say so much on that but honestly, I think it's best not to. Thirdly, there are plenty of glitches Finally, the gameplay...

In case the name didn't give it away Hello Kitty Tap and Run is in the endless runner category of games, although it has stages instead of endlessly running. There is nothing wrong with this category but it needs something interesting to keep you hooked, Hello Kitty doesn't really have that. The levels are bland and often right at the end of them nothing happens at all. You can jump and you can attack, occasionally you might fight a boss but there is no skill to it. It's aimed at kids you might say but then why bombard you with all these dialogue boxes and crush kitties to make your ones stronger? Yes, you crush them together to power up your strongest (purest?) kitties. Okay they are meant to be mechanical toys but that fact may be lost on little kids.

There is more to this game than just terrible levels, you can design your room, or spend all your parents hard earned money in the market but there are also many more terrible features I haven't mentioned like graphical glitches and repetitive music. You know maybe I just don't get this game, maybe I'm not a Hello Kitty fan at all but I tried my hardest and now I just want to be left alone to play some violent video games, you know, to purify myself of this game 2/10.

What if I only rescue 95% of her?

Australia Day Warning

Australia day is coming up fast people. If you are sober enough to remember, you might want to check out the deals on the App Store and Google Play. Titles made in Australia will be offered at discounted rates and possibly even for free. Apps to look out for include Epoch and Epoch 2 plus any titles from Half Brick Studios.

Mr. Crab [iOS]

Mr. Crab is a crab themed endless runner, or should that be endless jumper? Here you have to jump your way to the top, jumping on monsters, jumping on bosses and occasionally rolling things along. The game reminds me a lot of the Mario series, particularly Mario Galaxy, as although Mr. Crab is a 2D game, the way the world moves is reminiscent of moving across a planet in Mario Galaxy.

The only control you have in game is to touch the screen to jump. Hold for a long jump, tap for a short one. So you jump from platform to platform, do wall jumps and use walls to send you in the opposite direction. Timing is critical with Mr. Crab and if you don't time things right, you may see yourself plummeting back down to where you came from. You see instead of killing you, enemies send you flying back down levels. The game does stop you from falling too far though with platforms collapsing to block the way back after you have reached them. But this can make the game frustrating as you continuously are knocked back to where you came from with no end game screen or anything to stop your next attempt.

I found that the difficulty peaked and troughed with no rhyme or reason, some early levels were hard, some later levels were quite easy. I didn't mind this too much though, as it just meant I needed to really focus and learn what steps were ahead. The levels aren't too tedious as they are usually quite short, perfect for a mobile game. You also get to fight some interesting bosses along the way, although, again all you are doing is jumping on them until they are defeated but it does add to the variety of the overall experience.

Although it is simple, I think it's worth a play as there is something enchanting about the world. You scuttle along as a silly little crab, unlocking new worlds and crab outfits(!?), it just has this odd charm. Also it's free, though you can buy extra levels for a dollar which seems relatively fairly priced. Oh, I nearly forgot! You pick up baby crabs throughout the level which are so adorable, now, who doesn't want adorable crabs in their pants? Nobody worth knowing. 7.9/10

The Best Games of 2013 as Reviewed by AGS

So 2013 is over allegedly and all the developers have been far too busy eating and drinking to release much in the way of games over this silly season. So here is my top favourite games of 2013 plus one dishonourable mention.

Number 4: Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol was a bit of a surprise entry into the mobile world for Sid and now there is the sequel Pacific Skies. Sid Meier has done very little wrong in his career and this game shows why he is the king of turn based strategy. You can't go wrong in picking up this title or the sequel.

Number 3: Natural Selection 2

Can we use the term asymmetric gameplay whilst not talking about the Wii U. If we can then that would be the best way to describe Natural Selection 2. One team plays the aliens, the other the marines in a first person shooter view, whilst one commander on each team plays an RTS. You can't get much more asymmetrical than that, yet the game is still quite balanced and a hell of a lot of fun to play. It's 90% off right now on Steam which makes it ridiculous cheap but only for another 13 hours.

Number 2: Company of Heroes 2

A lot of titles have come and gone this year and often they have received rave reviews from the early press only to be much maligned come launch day. Company of Heroes 2 is the opposite of this, it got solid reviews but it wasn't overly hyped and it has just been getting better and better. A bunch of free content has been released and there has ben plenty of balancing patches to keep the game fair. Well worth the play if you like RTS or WWII games.

Number 1: Desktop Dungeons

It's a tough decision for me between Desktop Dungeons and Company of Heroes 2 for the number one spot but I chose Desktop Dungeons because it is so different to the bulk of titles out there. A tactical rogue-like, with kingdom building aspects is quite unique. If you are looking for something unique it is a pretty cheap game (also available on the Steam sale for another 13hrs) but beware, it is immensely challenging.

Dishonourable Mention

Mechwarrior Online was another title that got a high score from me this year and it was only officially launched in September. What I have realised after a lot of play is that this game was better in beta, in fact it was great. You would get a share of money to spend and then the whole game would be reset and you'd receive your money again. You could have so much fun with different builds and try out the new mechs and guns but now that it is fully released, it's a grind. You have to grind to get a gun and grind to get a chance to try the new mech, or spend a tonne of money. I already put $60 into it right from the start and I don't think I got a full games worth of value out of it.

Band Stars [iOS]

Band Stars is a free to play, band simulation game. I was pretty excited to pick this up as the combination of being a rockstar plus Kairosoft style gameplay really appeals to me. If only it was as easy as playing this game to start a successful music career.

The game is divided into five different sections, firstly you have recording. Recording is the bread and butter of your group and is what you'll be doing most of the time. First you'll pick the label, the style and the lyrics of a song as well as one of your band members to write it. Then you select who should play what instrument on the track and if anyone will do a solo. Finally you choose someone to mix it. All of these different sections correlate to one of the five different skills, lyrics, creativity, melody, rhythm and polish. I am always confused by polish as they write it with a capital first letter. Who has the best Polish? It asks, umm... Next we have training. Training will improve your band members in one or multiple of the five skills as mentioned before. The higher their stats in these levels the better your song will do on the charts.

Hiring band members is the third section. You'll start the game with just four musos but you can have up to six working on a song at once, plus you can store others away in the VIP section. This allows you to collect the whole lot and complete all of their challenges which I'll get to shortly. Next comes upgrading. You can upgrade the look as well as the performance of all the instruments in your studio. You can also upgrade your furniture which allows your musicians to rest faster. Plus you can upgrade the strengths of your solos and because this is a free to play game you can also buy your various currencies here. Lastly we come to challenges which act as the quests of the game. You have various tasks to complete some of which come from the specific band members you have and some are just bonus challenges. Each musician has three challenges to complete which will provide you with various goodies for completing.

At first I was really sucked into this game. It slowly introduced new concepts and it felt like there was depth to this and it was slowly being fleshed out. But after a few hours I felt a little lost. There was still plenty to do but why am I doing it? Because it's free to play you'll have to play the waiting game with this one and you only seem to get rewarded with more waiting. The solo mini-game is boring you just occasionally tap to spend inspirado and there aren't really any other mini-games to play. Sure there are more challenges to complete but they are all essentially the same. Train someone in rhythm, train someone in polish etc., this game needs a little something more. I think this is what I don't understand about the way the free to play model is being implemented at the moment. You can pay to not wait but waiting is what the game is about.

The music is enjoyable if a bit generic at times but they do have to cover a lot of styles so that is understandable. Plus the presentation is great, it's colourful and cheerful. I still think it's worth a play because you will get some enjoyment out of it at first and perhaps some of you will feel hooked but in the longterm, you aren't going to even think about this game again 7/10.

Snail Dentist

So snails do have teeth, in fact they can have thousands of them. Luckily in this game you only have to deal with eight individual teeth. As far as I can tell this game is made by just one guy and it is based off a game that was released in October called Pumpkin Dentist. In fact I believe it is the same game just with a snail instead.

So right in front of you is a snail's head and it will open and shut it's mouth allowing you to clean its teeth. To clean its teeth you just need to touch on them until they turn white but if you try to clean its teeth whilst it's mouth is shut you will hurt it. Hurt it too many times and you fail the level. Also there is a timer and a little gremlin that want to ruin your day too. You do have some power-ups to combat all this. A toothbrush which cleans some teeth a bit, freeze will let you keep the damn snails mouth open for a while, and the finger? Well the finger just undoes all the times you hurt the poor snail.

There are just a bunch of odd things about the game. You are constantly bombarded by a message asking you to review or report a problem with the game. Eventually I thought why not leave a review so I hit the button and the whole thing crashed. The in app purchases aren't explained at all and it seems immensely dodgy to me, it just says 100. Is it going to charge you one hundred dollars? I am too scared to find out.

The only problem with this game is that it's boring, which is a fairly big problem for a video game. All you do is tap on the snails teeth every level. It isn't like Plants Vs. Zombies which throws in some new mini-games from time-to-time to keep you going. Still it is better than Ashes Cricket 2013 2.5/10.

Clumsy Ninja [iOS]

Clumsy Ninja is a pay-to-not-wait style game which puts you in charge of training a ninja and yes, he is clumsy. The ninja's sister has disappeared after fighting a mysterious villain and it is up to you to train him hard enough to get her back. It plays more like a virtual pet simulator than anything else.

The bulk of the game is spent training your ninja in one of four mini games. The first is a trampoline and in terms of gameplay this one is pretty boring. You have to slide the trampoline back and forth to keep him from falling off and slowly he will learn how to do new moves. Next up is punching bag training. I feel this one is fairly satisfying to watch but you don't really do anything but hold up the bag for him. Then you have my favourite mini game where you throw various things at your ninja like watermelons or basketballs and he has to learn to defend them. Lastly is the practice dummy. You don't do anything with the practice dummy except put it back in the ring if the ninja knocks out it. I wish the game was a bit more interactive.

Then you have the "Fun Stuff" section which includes some other training options and some general silliness. You get things like balloons and boxes, potions that make your ninja do a variety of silly things like get really dizzy or spin uncontrollably. You can combine some of these items with the training tools for some interesting results. For example, I set up a ninja tower from the fun stuff section, put the ninja on top and had him jump down onto the trampoline. Watching the ninja go flying after bouncing off the trampoline was pretty funny to me and this game really aims to be humourous. However it mostly falls short from my perspective but kids are bound to love it's simple slapstick comedy. One of the oddest attempts at humour is the basketball hoops you get. These will provide experience to your ninja every time you shoot him through a hoop.

In app purchases are handle by ways of buying coins or gems, plus there is also a "Holiday Box" purchase too. $2.99 AUD is the cheapest option you can buy which I think is a little silly. A dollar is about all I would want to spend on a game like this personally and there isn't that option. Coins and gems allow you to buy new equipment or recharge the equipment you already have. Once you have used a piece of equipment with the ninja a timer will start showing you how long you have before you can use it. You can get a lot of this game for free though because instead of paying to wait for some items to recharge you can watch a video, tweet or post to Facebook about the game. The Holiday Box adds a snow filled world with various activities set to coincide with winter in the Northern Hemisphere. 

The graphics, sounds and music of this game are all top notch. The way the clumsy ninja is animated is quite outstanding. Though at times he seems like a simple rag doll, as he learns new moves he gets a lot more interesting. At first when you throw him up into the air he will just collapse in a heap but eventually he learns to land like a ninja pro, which looks really cool. Whilst you can't flaw this game for its aesthetics, it's such a shame that more time wasn't spent on the gameplay. All the mini games are too simple and whilst there is some connectivity between training apparatuses it is very limited. To sum it all up, if you are looking for a ninja pet to keep and sometimes play with this is a good option. Just don't expect it to keep your interest for long 6.9/10.

Legend of Grimrock [Mac, Windows, iOS]

Legend of Grimrock has been out for sometime but I've only just gotten around to playing it lately. It's essentially an old school dungeon RPG with new world graphics and sound. Legend of Grimrock is made by another Finnish development team, who go by the name Almost Human, my second Finnish developer this week.

You're thrown into a dungeon with a team of four and you have to survive. The way you lay out your team is crucial as only the two in front can strike with melee weapons. The back is reserved for missile weapons and magic. I do recommend reading the short tutorial to get a handle on the game but very little is explained. It's all part of the old school charm, you have to figure out what is going on for yourself. This makes the game quite difficult at first and on my first try I died pretty quickly, after being overwhelmed by monsters. Once I figured out how magic worked and that you need to keep backing away from monsters, recharging your attacks and coming back in for the kill, I started to make some progress.

I love the lighting in this game it's so beautiful and really adds to the feel of being trapped in a poorly lit dungeon. I think the animations of the monsters are the most stand out aspect of the graphics. The character models themselves aren't amazing but they way the creatures move in the world really helps you understand how they fight and how you should fight them.

Like it's old school predecessors Legend of Grimrock is fairly frustrating. It rewards precise play throughs that can only be learnt with practice. It's all about the fine details, looking for that switch, figuring out that puzzle. This is what most people want out of this game but it does lead to some problems. The inventory suffers from this old school design and it feels like you are always poking through it to pull out a key, or a rock just to solve a minor puzzle. Combat is clunky too though the clunkiness does add to the sense of panic that makes each battle so intense.

I really see this as a niche game and I am very surprised with it's sales figures. Earlier this year they announced it had sold over 600,000 copies which is amazing for a small developer. That being said there are plenty of players out there looking for just this game, though I think most of them have already found it 7.7/10.