DuckLife2: World Champion Review

DuckLife2: World Champion
Flash
PC/Mac

DuckLife2: World Champion is a simple monster-raising game with engaging graphics and simple mini-games that makes for a very enjoyable experience.  Developer Sims5000 has proven that he has the ideas and skills to make fantastic games, and with a little more experience, will be a top tier game designer.

DuckLife2 is the sequel, obviously, to DuckLife.  You control a duck (although I think it looks much more like a chick) in a quest to become world champion.  Your Duck has stats for climbing, running, swimming, flying, and stamina.  Each of these is trained up through a different mini-game, and you then compete in races against other ducks.

That is the basic premise.  What makes this game so engaging is the training of the stats.  Running, swimming, climbing, and flying are all trained through very simple mini-games, where for the most part you are dodging obstacles.  These games are well settled to require only minimal grinding, and you almost never tire of them.  Stamina, however, is trained by feeding your duck special food, which you purchase with coins from winning races, and collecting during training mini-games.

Not is all good here, however.  Some of the training games (running comes to mind) are heavily luck based, while others (swimming, say) are fairly buggy.  This never completely stops the game, but it gets a bit annoying.  Also, in the flying game, you dodge obstacles until you lose momentum and crash into the water.  Since dodging obstacles is very easy, you basically play until you lose momentum.  Then you take your new experience, and try again, going a bit farther.  This basically means that you could just click a "level up" button and have pretty much the same experience.  On the one hand, I like that all the games are varied, both in the way they play, and the way they award experience.  However, some of them need a little re-balancing.

Additionally, the previous version has a special food you could purchase that allowed for stamina and minor stats increases.  I thought this was genius.  Since the running training is frustratingly random, I would simply train my other stats, win some races, and then use food to make up the running difference. This is not an option in the sequel, to its detriment.

As for the races themselves, they are absolutely genius.  The computer controls all the Ducks, yours included, so its up to you to get him ready.  The races are tiered, so you know about what level the competition will be at.  Some races are one skill (just swimming) some are a few skills (climbing then flying) and the championship races combine all 4 skills.  This adds some awesome strategy.  For example, you can train your swimming to max, and hope that your duck gets enough of a lead to ignore your weak flying ability.  Also, even with the races that use all 4 skills, some use more or less of a particular one.  The races are well animated. take the right amount of time to complete, and really exciting to watch.

But even here we see some small problems.  The races must be done in order, so you can't skip one where your skills are not up to par for later.  Also, your max level is controlled by your race tier, so for the final race, you generally just train to within two levels of max in each skill, meaning your duck pretty much always has to be well rounded.  To me, this is an example of the game idiot-proofing itself at the expense of strategy.

My only final complaint is the money system, until you win your first race, you don't have enough to train your stamina.  Once you win two races, you have more money than you can possibly spend.  Then, you beat the game, and they give you tons of coins... but you have literally nothing to spend it on?

Nonetheless, this game is awesome, and gets a really high recommendation.  Also, I think the developer has some great ideas, they just need a little fine polishing from someone who thinks a little bit more "technically" about game design.  This game has really cool humor and charm, and you will actually feel some sort of affinity for your duck.  There is probably an hour or so of gameplay here, maybe a bit more if you are a big fan. Everyone should check out DuckLife2: World Champion.  My highest recommendation.

Review: Action Turnip

Action Turnip
Flash, PC/Mac
Play Action Turnip on Kongregate

Action Turnip is a one button, forced run, time waster in the view of Canabalt, although perhaps it is better compared to Robot Unicorn Attack.  There is enough charm, gameplay, and challenge to keep you well entertained for the first half hour, anything after that will only appeal to high score obsessives.

Action Turnip contains two game modes, which from the start gives pause.  Does this game have enough awesome content that you need two ways to enjoy it, or was the developer unable to appropriately put their ideas together and instead offered up two disjointed experiences?  In Action Turnip's case, each game mode is complementary, and well suited for the division, although the replay value isn't exactly satisfied.

The first mode, "Turnabalt mode," makes no attempt to hide its influences.  The game plays almost exactly the same as Canabalt, except Action Turnip provides so many control schemes that all do exactly the same thing.  The second game mode is called Run and Gun, and this expands on the gameplay, added four way directional control and firepower.  This mode actually could be called "full featured" with power-ups, a combo system, and a full dose of wit and charm.

The comparisons to Robot Unicorn Attack come primarily from the style of the game.  Action Turnip has some fantastic chiptunes style music done by Pelle och Ponta.  Additionally, you play as a running turnip, fight one eyed bats and low flying spaceships, and the level terrain often spells out messages, including the names of those involved in the project.  On top of all this, getting a good combo multiplier rewards the player with trippy graphics, and some power ups temporarily change the graphics to black and white or Intellivision-style block colors.

This game does have issues.  First of all, the instructions are woefully inadequate.  You spend a few rounds experimentally dying, just to see what certain parts of the HUD mean, and how power ups work. The game might actually be too-easy, for example, both Canabalt and Action Turnip have Kongregate awards for getting 5,000 points.  I cleared Action Turnip on the third run (before I even figured out how everything worked), I still have to clear Canabalt, several hundred attempts later.  Although this surely speaks somewhat to the punishing difficulty of Canabalt, Action Turnip provides entertainment for 30 minutes, tops.  After two runs of regular mode, and three of Run and Gun mode, there is nothing else to see.  With adequate instructions, you could probably be done with the whole game in 15 minutes.

Action Turnip is still highly recommended, as it provides an excellent time waster for an half hour.  If nothing else, one should enjoy the soundtrack at least one.  Also, for the most challenge, try playing Run and Gun with WASD for movement, and IJKL for shooting.

Review: The Enchanted Cave

The Enchanted Cave
Flash, PC/Mac
Play The Enchanted Cave on Kongregate

The Enchanted Cave is a short flash based game that combines random dungeons, random level ups, and random loot in a way that is both engaging and entertaining over the 2 hour life of the game.

The Enchanted Cave is essentially a Diablo style dungeon crawler, possibly related even closer to the more recent Torchlight.  You are a simple character facing a 100 floor dungeon.  Each floor is randomly generated each time you play, meaning that every game is guaranteed to be different.  The combat is very simple, and resolves itself automatically.  Simply walk into an enemy, and you each pound on the other until one is dead.  Later, the game introduces spells, but these never play a large role.

What keeps the game interesting is the progression system.  It is impossible to clear all 100 floors in one go, however every time you leave the cave, most of your loot stays behind.  The few exceptions are called "artifacts" and they are found in special gold chests.  Additionally, you keep any gold you have earned, as well as any stat boosts.  As one might expect, dying means you lose everything, including any held artifacts or stat gains.  Therefore, a bit of tension works in from balancing the need to go one more floor, and possibly find that new artifact, versus the desire to just get out safely, and try again.

While this all sounds very typical, it is the way the game handles these mechanics that makes it so enjoyable.  First of all, combat is very simple.  It resolves itself in one or two rounds, meaning you can easily fight through a horde of enemies.  Also, the combat is predictable enough to allow you to take some risks, but has just enough of a random element to make you think twice about fighting that last monster.  I have bemoaned games such as the "My Pet Protector" series, for the auto combat is lengthy (30+ rounds of misses) and entirely unpredictable (one fight you win in one round, the next you lose in one round).

In addition to the balanced and quick combat, the progression is handled nicely.  You find enough artifacts and stat boosts to make each trip successful despite the random nature of the dungeons.  There is a point when you hit floor 40 that you reach a critical mass and can zoom all the way to 80 without stopping, but generally it takes two to four trips to hit the next checkpoint (every 9 levels is a shop, and you can re-enter the dungeon at the shop ten levels prior).

My complaints with this game are few.  The first time you play, you are utterly lost, the game has only minimal instructions, and no tutorial.  Also, the first time I went in, I went 12 floors without finding the item necessary to escape and save my progress, and died.  Otherwise, however, it was almost always in one of the first two chests I opened.  Since stat boosts are random, you have no control over how your character develops, even though the weapons and armor allow for some interesting customization.  The spells are pretty useless, and explained terribly.  Pro-tip: Despite the in-game instructions saying otherwise, you DO keep spells if you safely exit the dungeon.

The graphics are simple but clear, the music is nice unobtrusive, and the sound effects are well done.  The game controls fine, and has achievements.  My only gripe is that even after finishing the game, I don't have some of the achievements simply because the item required never was randomly generated.  I suppose that also brings up my last complaint, that many of the game mechanics are never used.  You can plan attack strategies based on the mobs strengths and weaknesses, but it never really matters, since simply attacking is generally fine.

Still, the game has worthwhile Kongregate badges and will last about 2 hours to clear.  It took me exactly 200 floors of exploring to clear the game, in other words I played each floor twice in order to be strong enough to win.  There is an achievement for exploring 300 floors, and I doubt I will go back to get it.

This game gets my highest recommendation.

Currently Playing

Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems
Flash
Play on Kongregate

Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems (CT) is a tower defense style flash game. I spotted it on Kongregate when it first came out, clicked on it, read Tower Defense, and clicked away before it even loaded up.

Then of course, I log in one day and see this:

Still, I was able to ignore it, but later, after a few hours of Portal, I couldn't help it.  I wanted the card...

For the record, I absolutely abhor TD type games, especially the million clones that aren't original in anyway.  ArmorGames put out an interesting TD game built around elevators, that also had a Hero element to it, and I admit I checked that one out.  But generally the tutorial levels are enough for me, then I am pretty much done.

But CT had a card, and the challenge took some effort.  You needed to get a perfect on 5 of the 15 levels.  Sure, there are two tutorial levels, but I didn't get a perfect on either the first time through.  Nonetheless, I set out to get it.

After about 30 minutes I surprised myself, as I was still enjoying playing.  I know, odd, right?  I was really actually sort of having fun (maybe).  I actually earned one perfect rating, and was really hooked on earning more.

I thought about it, and here is a brief, although somewhat unorganized, run down of why I enjoy this game so much.

1. The progression system of towers.  They level up both through experience, and money.  An interesting combo, where there is some benefit to having one tower do the work and level up, some benefit in having a ton of towers, and some benefit in saving your money, some benefit in spending it all.
2. The tower progression is both simple and elegant.  There are three basic types of towers, all of which are fairly similar.  Each type then splits into two variations at about the fourth level.  At the split, each tower specializes in a very different way.  So a total of 6 towers, each with a specialization.  Complicated enough for some depth, simple enough to understand without hours of trial and error.
3. The levels are short, and the speed up button is well implemented.  TD games tend to bore me after one hour of play time, but no real accomplishments.  Each map is small, the number of waves are fairly low, and the speed up button works perfectly.  You don't mind playing maps twice.

Overall character progression: A pinnacle of design so many other games should strive to achieve.  This gets its own category.  Regular readers will discover that I play games specifically due to character progression systems.  In CT, you gain EXP from every completed map, based on your performance.  Every map or two, you gain a level, and three skill points.  These skill points get split into the three categories of towers (basically earth/orcs, fire/demons, ice/undead).  Each of these has a skill tree, with some (but not much) branching.  They have different specialties, such as magic, money, and leveling up, as well as improving each type of tower and granting them added effects.  On top of that, every time you put a skill point in each category, it improves your range, fire rate, and damage.

Here is why this is so great.  On one hand, you are always getting inherently better, overall.  The damage, range, and fire rate are latently applied to all towers, every map, etc.  On top of that, it makes since to do some specializing in one category, because the higher up the tree, the better the skills.  The more you go up one, however, the more you are tied to that one type of tower.  The problem with this, however, is that each time you buy a tower, its price increases, so you cannot just spam one version.  Furthermore, you are allowed to pick and choose different categories here and there, as needed.

The major thinking comes in when you start down one tree.  You get three skill points per level, which is not really enough to make any major improvements.  But, you often find that once you are two levels down one tree, those three points can give you a nice bump, provided you stay within that tree.  But you already have nice magic, you now want more gold per kill.  Well, that takes 9 points in another three just to unlock, so not only do you know you have to wait a few levels, those 9 points invested in that tree are not going to help you much.  So do you just sock away one per level, and use the other two?  Or sacrifice all three to make it go faster? Or just ignore it until later?

I still have a few more levels to go, but this is a rare TD that I am really enjoying.  Worth a check.