Reviews & Articles

Steampunk is a style, to me, best characterized by the mixture of steam-powered technology coupled with current technology to create a fun, unique blend. This sort of style can be used in anything from computer hardware, to wardrobes, to everyday objects such as tables and chairs. This popular style is especially cool when coupled with games. In the browser-based Iron Grip: Marauders it's used throughout the game from the story to the graphics to the general theme and feel, and this makes it shine.

Shadow Era is a free-to-play collectible trading card game. This high-quality strategy card game starts by prompting the player to create a human character from a selection of battle classes. There are more than 100 beautifully designed game cards in Shadow Era.

Just the thought of reading about security compliance and regulations is enough to make many people start to yawn. The fact that it is required by many corporations, as well as the government, means that for a lot of folks, they just try to get through it as fast as possible to get it over with.

At the recent Unity '11 Conference, buried among the exhibitors showing off their hardware to develop apps for and tools and services to make developers more money and pump out more pixels, one exhibitor was showing off a spiffy finished game on the versatile and capable Unity platform. With a twist, one even M. Night Shyamalan might appreciate, this particular game isn't just bits-and-bytes software; it's also a full-fledged physical toy with bells and whistles. Rather, it's a combination of the physical and digital side of interaction.

Many people would consider Desert Bus to be the most boring game ever published — though, technically, it wasn’t released. In the game, players drive a bus in real time from Tucson, Ariz., to Las Vegas at no more than 45 miles per hour. At the end of the eight-hour drive, you score one point. The bus pulls to the right, so you need to steer left to keep it from driving off the road.

Lately I seem to be playing more Facebook games than “real” games, but if it’s a game and I’m playing it, doesn’t that, by definition, make it real? I suppose hardcore gamers would disagree, but essentially, a game’s a game.

I loved Legos growing up. Heck, I still do. There’s something special about connecting random blocks together and creating structures. I probably make the same old ones over and over again, mainly with the use of a boat (it is the largest Lego I own). As much as I love building, my hands do not naturally function in that manner. Fixing things, building actual furniture, modifying the house and understanding body movements are all well above this writer’s understanding. So be prepared to be baffled by my love of Minecraft.

German-based company Bigpoint unveiled Ruined Online this year at GDC. Ruined Online is a post-apocalyptic massive multiplayer online game in which players engage in various tournament-style matches. Ruined Online was built entirely in the United States, led by a San Francisco-based team. The game’s setting is in fact a destroyed San Francisco landscape, perfect for players to interact in ensuing carnage against one another. Ruined Online is presented in the third-person view with cel-shaded, comic book-like graphics.

GamersInfo.net recently had the privilege of talking to Stieg Hedlund, chief creative officer at Turpitude Design, about Wedding Street. Stieg is the immensely talented and impressively grounded polymath whose legacy includes (but is certainly not limited to) Diablo I & II, StarCraft and the Tom Clancy games. Find Wedding Street on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=123665324320009.

Restaurant City is a caretaking simulation game on Facebook. The core concept is similar to many of the popular games on Facebook — a customizable canvas. You start with a drab and empty restaurant, and as you level up, you expand your restaurant and decorate it to your taste. Your restaurant receives a stream of customers, and it is your responsibility they leave happy.

Facebook has become a playground for many game types, some predictable like puzzle games, some remixes of familiar brand names, like the resurgence of arcade classics. Lately, more and more games have challenged the Facebook platform to show what it’s capable of, such as 3-D games. Now, let’s add another category, the synchronous (simultaneous, not turn-based) massively multiplayer online game, which is exactly the rare breed of game that is Playdom’s Kogamu.

California is one of those unique locations that happens to be on the receiving end of a lot of catastrophes. Earthquakes, mudslides, fires, floods and blizzards, you name it. Bigpoint’s latest game in development, Ruined Online, is a browser-based online third-person arena combat game based in post-apocalyptic California, specifically the San Francisco area. Why not, since after all, California is a disaster magnet, and Bigpoint’s U.S. office is based in the city by the Bay?

The unending mayhem of MMO battle takes to the high seas in Silverlode Interactive’s upcoming title Captains of DarkTide. With the ability to customize your crew, ordnance, ship type and image, your swashbuckling days will be filled with options.

Fantage (short for Fantastic Age) is an online flash game aimed primarily at girls ages 6 to 14. My daughter is 10 and a lifelong gamer, so she’s the perfect test subject for me.

There are a lot of things you can do with Fantage. It really depends on what you like to do. Fantage is a lot of things rolled into one, from chatting to gaming to customizing your avatar and room.

Thanks to the popular television series, Battlestar Galactica has quickly risen through the ranks of treasured science fiction icons in North America. Now, due in no small part to the partnership of NBC Universal with Bigpoint, Battlestar Galactica Online will be making its way to computers as a browser-based game. GamersInfo.net recently had an opportunity to tour the newly established Bigpoint office in San Francisco and was given a guided tour through the early build of Battlestar Galactica Online, with Heiko Hubertz, CEO and founder of Bigpoint GmbH, leading the tour.

In reviewing a game like Weblings, I had to take a step back and admire a different experience than I’m used to. It’s all in the little things. This isn’t the kind of game I was able to become immersed in, but that was never the intention. Electric Bat has offered a different experience to the gaming community. This is the kind of game one plays in their downtime. It is a Web-based monster fighter, and it’s pretty good.

The 2010 Toy Fair and Engage! Expo brightened up the Jacob Javitz Center in New York, filling one wing of the gigantic convention plaza with overwhelming rows of the latest products for kids. Surfing through the sea of neon colors, odd shapes, discussion panels and sale-bent exhibitors, I managed to locate some games for kids that blend physical play with online interaction, including HexBug Nano, GigaPals and Bella Sara.

I’ve played many of the full-size versions of Bejeweled (in various names and incarnations). The basic premise is that you swap two objects to make a match of at least three of one kind of object in a row. The matches disappear, you earn points and all the little objects drop down on the screen with more filling in from the top. In Bejeweled, as you might guess by the name, you’re matching little sparkling jewels. If you’re good, you can play for quite a while on the full-size version.

It’s the one-minute timer that makes Bejeweled Blitz like gamer crack.

As a lover of older video game systems such as the Nintendo and the Super Nintendo (sorry I’m too young for the Atari days, I admit it), I would say I enjoy retro games quite a bit. Retro games usually resemble older graphics, older music styles, and are simple, fast and fun.

That’s the case with Captain Forever.

For those who play casual games almost exclusively — or if you’re like me, you owe your allegiance to no game genre, bwahah! — err, yeah ... portals for downloading games have been around since well, the beginning of casual games. That particular portion of the industry develops, publishes and distributes for each other — company for company — as if it’s the normal course of business. ...

Virtual worlds and microtransactions were the theme of this year’s Game Developers Conference. SmallWorlds fits this trend. Developed by Outsmart as a 3D browser-based game, Small Worlds is one of the best free-to-play games I saw at GDC 2009.

You may have heard of a little indie game that breaks the conventional mold. It is called You Have To Burn The Rope. You control this cute little guy who wields an axe and is sent into some short tunnel to kill the giant blob at the end. So how do you do this? Simple: Read the title of the game. Once the blob has been smashed/crashed/mashed (choose your favorite word, but I‘m going for all of them crunched together), it’s over. That’s it. By the time you’ve finished this paragraph, that’s how much time it takes you to play this game.

From the genre-bending, convention-bucking world of independent video games, Coil emerges to challenge the popular notion of what games can do, and what they can be about. Coil, a Flash-based game played entirely with the mouse, is clearly interested in breaking the traditional rules of game-making to present a new experience. Unfortunately, it rushes so eagerly into uncharted territory that it tends to get lost.

Some eight weeks ago, I began playing a multiplayer online game, and I've been hooked ever since. Yes, I hear the collective groan, "Ophelea, big deal. You're talking about half the games on the Internet!" Well, perhaps I am. But, this one is a little different, or I wouldn't have mentioned the time I've been playing — as verbose as I am want to be. You see, when I began playing, I was able to make a move every 7-15 minutes. Eight weeks later, I make maybe six to 10 moves a day. I am so hooked.

Runescape probably isn't a very familiar name to many, and as such doesn't inspire one to run out and buy it (you couldn't anyway). Maybe you've heard of it one time or another from a friend, but you won't find this game being reviewed by many game companies. 'Tis a shame.