Apologies for missing last week’s post. I’ve been a little busy (this week included) fending off exhaustion, imminent sickness, and trying to please my advisor with my mundane writing that I’m having difficulties getting right. In short, life has been stressful and frustrating. Oddly, my normal escape to gaming has taken that odd turn towards casual games even though I just bought another Humble Bundle. I haven’t been feeling that gaming urge and it’s most likely a cyclical effect and I’m just in my off-period.

So, less moping and on to hidden object games!

Alright, a quick summary of where things are. I finished Bulletstorm and was disappointed the game didn’t do so well. The language is bad, but the gameplay was actually very fun. Unrelated to gaming is I need to make some changes to the blog so the older posts can be accessible. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to make that change, but it’s on my list.

This week, I sampled Voxatron, a voxel-based game. I only played for about an hour (shows how busy I am lately), so my thoughts on it are flavored with very little game time.

I was originally interested in Bulletstorm because of a couple of articles. First was the journalist’s interpretation of a psychologist’s comment on the game. Second was the psychologist’s clarification of his comments and critique of the article. This vague interest in the game (as I have no interest in FPS games to begin with because it a) makes me dizzy and/or b) involves jumping and ultimately lands me in the hole instead of over it) was full-blown when I started my summer research on text in games. I haven’t yet been able to use it in any of my written work, but it’s simmering in the back of my mind.

So, when Amazon had a sale of the game for $7, I had to jump on it. It also made me wish I had bought a game during the Christmas sales so I could have gotten a $5 off coupon, making the game $2. I penny-pinch, but so far it’s been worth my lunch money.

I played through Eufloria a couple years ago but still wanted to talk about it here. It falls under a niche genre called “ambient” games because of its relaxing properties. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that a lot of the indie games I have bought are puzzle games, which are sort of relaxing but it requires a lot of thought, strategizing, and planning which I don’t want to deal with right now. Probably explains why I have been hesitant to start up a new game each week (as I don’t want to keep talking about the quality of the puzzles and whatnot), but let me return to Eufloria.

I have a backlog of previously-sampled games. Frozen Synapse is another one of them. I was originally being pressured to advancing this quarter, which would have made the next three months all kinds of busy, but now I am advancing next quarter so I should be able to start playing a new game a week again.

Happy new years! I’m aiming to write a new post every Friday about my trial runs through various games this year. I may miss some depending on how busy I get, but I’ll do my best to keep regular updates.

While I was working on a prototype to enter for an educational mobile game contest, I was interested in Cogs but didn’t really understand how it worked. I knew it was a puzzle game and was sort of steampunkish with the gears (cogs, duh), but beyond that I was really just enamored by the aesthetics. I finally downloaded the game and gave it a trial run.

So, here’s something interesting. While dutifully taking a break from working on my paper (fine, I was “procrastinating”), I sat down and put together a spreadsheet of all the indie games I’ve bought from bundles with a couple exceptions (Indie Love Bundle and Steam sales). This collection includes all of the Humble Indie Bundles and two Indie Royale bundles (#2, #3).

I have just over 60 games to play total. I left out all of the duplicate games. Since I always pay above average for HIB, I got the previous bundles as well and then IR and HIB sometimes overlap. Over 60 games! That’s over a year of one-week sample play! I’ve also left out the Steam games I picked up from their sales (e.g., Orcs Must Die). I’m gonna be busy. I’ve played only two or three completely through and am just starting on the one-week trials.

The Binding of Isaac. Roguelike. Difficult, but not too frustrating. I still have yet to finish it. I like to think I’m getting better, at least.

This past weekend, I made a road trip with my roommate, her sister (S), and her best friend (B) up to San Francisco for the Dickens Fair that was at the Cow Palace. Let me just say this: a building used to house animals not cleaned very thoroughly means allergens are ever-present. Me and allergies do not get along well.

During the Steam Thanksgiving/Autumn sale, I picked up Orcs Must Die. Yeah, I know, adding to my ever-growing list of games to play. I saw articles on it on my usual news sites but never looked very deeply into it. It got good reviews and positive remarks from the commenters so I was generally interested, but I had no idea what to expect. I was expecting something Torchlight-y and Diablo-y, but instead I got something more like Plants vs. Zombies.

I’ve been a little iffy about indie bundles after Humble Indie Bundle (HIB) has changed their fundamental method of offering a bundle of 5ish excellent quality games from a variety of indie devs to offering a bundle of 1+ okayish games from a single dev. Sure, they have added games over time as an incentive to buy and it has worked for me, but I have actually been decreasing the amount I’ve been paying as sort of “voting with my money” by 75% ($20 -> $5). I like that I can contribute to charity and get games at a reasonable price for a starving grad student. Something I wish IndieRoyale (IR) would do. I skipped on the first round of IR because I didn’t recognize any of the games and/or I already owned the ones there.

I’m essentially relying on the bundle providers to choose the good games for me. I’m lazy or busy, depending on how you want to put it. I have a stack of indie games I’ve picked up over the past 2 years from these bundles. Some of them I look at for a few minutes before losing interest, wondering why I have it in the first place. Others I’ve played through to completion because they were worth way more than what I am capable of affording. I’ve only touched the tip of the stack so far, but I have been wanting to dip my fingers in each one for a while. I’ll write up my initial impressions and thoughts here, even revisit some of the older ones I’ve finished. First up: Scoregasm.