My Life as a Dark Lord: Impressions So Far

So I finally got this game! Yay!

While My Life as a Dark Lord is a direct sequel to My Life as a King, gameplay is completely fresh and unique. Oh yeah, and that bit about playing as the "bad guy."

At the beginning of a stage, all you get is a tower with a staircase at the bottom and the big heart balloon that houses your dark crystal. You also have a certain number of points to spend (In the picture a blue heart at the upper-right that says "500" is your indicator).

Your goal is to protect your crystal from all the adventurers that come along. Use your points to add floors and summon monsters in them. Watch what types of adventurers are approaching, and you can plan the best way to fight them.

Melee beats Ranged beats Magical beats Melee. Pretty standard 3-way setup. But you have to add floors and monsters in real time. New adventurers approach 1, 2, or 3 at a time. You need to prepare floors that will be effective against them. You are awarded additional points for beating each adventurer, so you can continue to add to your tower as the stage progresses.

The chart on the left of the screen shows what types of floors and monsters you've placed, and which adventurers are attempting to climb your tower. Yellow indicates generic typed creatures/floors/adventurers. Blue is magic-type. Green is Ranged Type. And Red is Melee Type. The icons also empty as HP is depleted, so you can see how high an adventurer is getting and gauge whether he'll reach the top before your monsters can stop him. Hopefully you have enough resources to react if they can't!

So far, I feel like this game has engaged my critical thinking with each stage, as it continues to introduce new adventurers and offer me new types of floors and summons. Getting a feel for what type of defense is best against which adventurers takes some experimentation. The game is also humorous, as the Dark Princess tries in vain to be the most fearsome bad guy ever, but nobody will take her seriously. It is highly polished, with lots of dazzling effects and a great depth of detailed artwork drawn up in a charming style.

I've had nearly 2 hours of gameplay out of it so far. Very excited to keep playing!

In case you missed it... Lego Universe!

Here's a great preview and screenies of Lego Universe from 1up.com!

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3176641

I am personally looking forward to this goofy game but I don't know if I'll be able to afford it...

addendum: Found another great post here:
http://www.destructoid.com/brick-by-brick-in-a-whole-new-world-lego-universe-153176.phtml

Title decided for our Tactical RPG

Thallian and I have made lots of decisons about our game in the last few months.
We've given it a title: Reclaimers of Rhuidia

And Thallian recommends I use my more sophisticated character designs rather than the simplistic ones I've been showing in the past. Here are some sketches. Enjoy!

Current Gaming Trends

I'm actually really optimistic about current gaming trends. Developers are slowly learning that they need to do more than they have been. The old formula of "make the graphics and sound great and everyone will buy it" is starting to fade and developers are focusing more on the "heart and soul" of the game instead. There will always be junk games and niche games produced on the side but the great freight train of the mainstream of the industry is rolling forward and not backward. You can only improve the graphics for so long and eventually that ceases to be an option to wow people anyways. Then you have to work on more important things, like AI, story, character development, humor, and adventure.

Some things I don't personally like much is that every one of my favorite companies is starting to release games with nudity in them. I feel that porn denigrates women. It reduces our ability to appreciate them in appropriate times and places by making things that should be kept for bonding in marriage commonplace. It also exposes kids and teenagers to feelings that they have trouble dealing with and no defenses built up against. It weakens marital satisfaction by creating unrealistic expectations of spouses. Therefore I am saddened by some of my favorite game IP's going into the Nudie land, such as Dungeon Siege, Bioware's Dragon Age Origins (derived from Baldur's Gate, one of my favorite games) and of course certain MMOs (Age of Porn anyone?). I currently refuse to buy anything that has nudity or an M/R/NC17/X rating, (I haven't yet, honest, believe it or not) and I encourage you to do the same. "All it takes for evil to take over the world is for enough good people to do nothing" as the old saying goes. If enough consumers did this it'd send a stark message to the industry and Hollywood. Fortunately some companies like Turbine haven't gone this route yet but if they do I'll boycott them too.

That said I like where a lot of games are going. I'm happy about experiments in phasing (like WoW), scalability and accessibility (like Lotro's skirmishes), and other fun things going on. I like the new Sandbox games coming out and skill based games becoming more prevalent. There's a lot to look forward to soon. All of it hinges on the games being actually fun rather than having some zingy new feature, but all in all I'm optimistic.

In the MMO world I am currently interested in all of the new ones that launched, but I've mostly just been reading about them on your blogs instead of playing due to my limited time and money. I upgraded my subscription to Lotro to take advantage of the deal going on, cuz I want that goat darn it! And I have been doing lots of other random things. I played DnDOnline on Saturday with my wife's sorceress and got her to lvl 2. Levels are hard to come by in that game. The dungeons are very hard even on solo for a caster, but easy even on hard mode, for a melee fighter with lots of armor. Thanks to MBP for pointing out crowd control is possible with mesmerize type spells. I shall invest in those.

In Lotro I've been trying to get my jeweller some Galadhrim rep so he can churn out Lothlorien rep items for the kinship and friends. I also got my first radiance gear with Rumples and am still working on getting 2.5.5 group together and getting the rest of the dungeons' radiance gear. (I enjoyed my runs through Fil Gashan and Forges but got no gear, just exp and quests done)

In other news a lot of MMO's came out in September and some (Champions Online, Fallen Earth, Dawntide) I really wanted to play badly but have no time and even less money, thanks to paying 20 dollars to upgrade each of my Lotro lifetime subscriptions for the expansion. Still I look forward to learning more about them all, and Champions is on my list still if it survives that long. (Prolly in January now) Tonight I shall play with Anton in Neverwinter Nights on his world and this weekend who knows....(Prolly chore time :P)

World of Goo offers pay what you want... I'm in!

As long as I can remember to, I'll buy that for a dollar! My goal is to buy it for somewhere between a penny and a buck.. And you should too kids. Goo is good for Yoo.

Theres a great article on the escapist about it here. Offer good till October 25th.

Not surprisingly, you make more money letting people pay whatever they want than you do forcing them to accept things on your own terms. But not always as Tobold pointed out and linked to us Camels and Rubber Duckies

I personally think these startegies are great for promos in a dry season, but if you did it initially then you are a fool. And if people know you're going to do it eventually, then it becomes less effective again because they will just wait until you crack so they can get the game cheap. I know I did that with DnDOnline.

Lost Winds, winter of the Melodias

Occasionally something resembling higher quality releases on Wiiware. Lost Winds was one such thing although it was too short, I bought it and was very impressed with the graphics, sounds and controls. However the fun level was limited as I got stuck easy and frustration soon ensued. Perhaps they have made it more accessible this time, but anyways, in the new one you can switch between seasons at will which just makes the puzzles more complex, as you know if you ever played Link to the Past or Paper Mario Wii. Anyways for those who might love it, I just thought I'd give a heads up that the sequel released yesterday. One neat thing about the first one was the ability to blow flame around and out with your wind. I thought that was neat.

Happy Eleventy First Birthday Anton!

Here's a special cake for a special friend, who helps me smile each day while I endure the drudgery of work. Here's to you Anton! Good on ya and thanks for all you bring to the blog! (Yes ok this might be a cop-out cuz I'm too cheap (i.e. see broke) to get you anything this year... would you like a spare license of an old rpg? NWN2? I have a one with your name on it...)