Big Jack's Wee Games

[Big Jack McBastard]

Oh your filthy mind.

Recent-ish, dinky games that look sexy and are an hoot, that's the nuts and guts of this topic.

What with getting my paws on World of Goo (and liking it a lot) and the popularity of Super Meat Boy which I will be firing up this evening, 'little' games have made a bit of an impact on my gaming of late and so I'd be interested to hear of any other gems of a similar ilk (or indeed an entirely different ilk, provided it's an ilk, that's what important here) that yous lot have ran into and have been taken with.

With that in mind, I was intrigued by screenshots of Defcon the thermonuclear war RTS:

Atlantic Aggro. Take that Europe. Oh the drama! Have that for yer dinner Brazil.

It's another of those lovely wee games [nb]Coming in at between 70 and 50-oddMb (depending on your, #ahem# retailer)[/nb], It's simple enough, the Tutorial tells you all you need to get going: Building your silos, radar, airbases and fleets, how to launch planes for reconnaissance or bombing runs and subs for sneaky underwater shenanigans and kick several hues of poo out of your opponent(s), but do mind your ass when the enemy subs pop up and deal out a torrent of abuse on your nuke happy ass. The ponderous pace of the navel vessels is mitigated by the 'Speed up Time' function, which I found myself using quite a bit as it gives you ample time to sort out your defensive and offensive placement before it all kicks off. Defcons are dropped from 5 to 1, though the only ones of real importance are Defcon 3 (when navel and air battles can commence) and Defcon 1 where you can break out the nukes. The interface is pretty nice and the menus/elements of the HUD can be moved around to your liking to prevent moving the screen unnecessarily which is a minor gripe with the default placement of said 'Speed up Time' bar. It's a bit of an impersonal way to fight a war you might think, via radar screen and so forth but they like to remind you of your actions impact by tallying the dead after each nuke hit and by subtlety bringing up the distressed cries of a woman with the BGM as the conflict progresses. I understand the multiplayer is a large facet of the gameplay and have yet to dive in to that realm might be nice to have a VerbWhore War if anyone fancies a bit of idle nuke flinging. La, la laaaa. ...tum tee tummm.... Annd relax... no, post some games you scrag ends.

Spoiler alert

_{Hoping this looks alright.}

[close]

[Zetetic]

• You're a cunt if you don't pay for DEFCON. I'd quite like to see Subversion reach release. Introversion nearly went under last March, and (as I'm sure SNG will corroborate) now is not a great time to be a British game developer.
• Diplomacy games, where you all start on the same alliance, is a great way to play multiplayer.
• I'd love to play multiplayer again.

(P.S. I am rather irritated by the fact that Introversion don't do Mac versions as 1st class citizens, but instead palm them off on Ambrosia, who I don't have much faith in these days.)

(P.P.S. I'd really love a version of DECON that actually dealt with distance on a sphere properly. I managed to knock something up in SVG and JS once that did all the basics of an interface and the distance and map stuff (a far more sensible approach might be to use Google Maps or something, but I really wanted multiple projections. Ultimately I produced a horrible mess) but never got around to the actually difficult part of a backend that did stuff...)

[Big Jack McBastard]

You're a cunt if you don't pay for DEFCON

Steady on, they put up the demo (which is essentially the full game bar authentication) on their site free for download.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Yes I'm dusting off the flies to say..

Ohmyfuckinggod  I just stopped playing for a minute to share this gaming opiate with you fine folk, it's called Terraria and it's a bit like being in a terrarium, albeit one populated with zombies, flying eyeballs, goblin armies, malicious bubbles of slime, rabid bunnies and three big nasty bastard bosses.

It's all dig, build, dig, fight, dig and craft and it's addictive as a heroin gateaux. I've not played Minecraft but I'm wagering this is of a similar ilk albeit in a cutesier guise.

You'll start off plonked in a generated map which will contain:

A Exclusive Big Ass Dungeon - Must kill a boss to get in.
An Underground Jungle - Full of arsey bugs and plant life
'Corruption' Dank manky environments where 'orrible things spawn: I've got 2 areas with many hella deep _{(or so I thought at first)} caverns but I've heard it can go higher.
2 small seas - On the edges of the map
Floating Islands - High up in t'sky you need to build some vert poles or a sky bridge to get to them.
Hell - Right down at the bottom once you're past mud and rock and the lava gets thick.

Each is it's own environment and though there is some crossover you'll see different enemies in each area (even more-so as the new releases come out, the saves have been forwards compatible so far) some more troublesome than others.

and also some helpful NPCs, and some pretty useless ones.

Wiki is pretty damn handy.

The first order of business is build a house. 'Meh I'll get round to that' you might think until night kicks in and a hoard of zombies  and floating eyes comes roving over the land to chomp on you and your Guide mate. Never mind a Blood Moon when the spawn rate increases and the Zombies can open bloody doors!

So then best get to chopping trees or digging up some stone to keep your ass, the asses of your buddies and more importantly, your stuff, safe.

Lots to do and discover the worlds are bloody massive and getting from a humble wooden box with a poxy wooden sword to a full on zombie-proof ass kicking gold clad pad swanning about in your Hellstone pants takes some leg work to get done.


- Alriiight looking pretty fly (this is many hours in) time for some action, Vile Powder is needed!


- Add some Rotten Chunks and stir up at a Demon Altar for some delicious Worm Food


- Nip over to my custom built 'Eater of Worlds Killing Floor'^TM show the bait and up he pops!


- Gah I've cut him in half! Bloody thing is actually loads of little monsters connected and so, new head to deal with...


- Oh bollocks, too busy taking screenshots to keep an eye on my health, bah.


- I'm chopping an Eater of Souls in 'The Corruption' there, at the bottom a Shadow Orb awaits. Give these a belt with a hammer and interesting shit starts going down.


- King Slime pops up unexpectedly just 5 minutes ago! Handily my Dungeon adjacent glass Summer home and a platform I knocked up for nicking dungeon blocks keeps him nicely contained.

It's at version 1.05 at the mo I started on 1.0 in my world and have just gotten the new release and the changes are mostly welcome, though the introduction of cacti is a minor annoyance.

There is a map viewer available and a bloody good thing too as flying blind will have you lost for aaaaages unless you've left a trail of torches behind you and not accidentally flooded the tunnel behind you with water, or worse lava!


- My sweet ass Obsidian Mine, this took a bastard age to set up

That ^ is at the bottom left of the pic below where the shit-load of water meets the shit-load of lava at the purple square, linking all those caverns got my ass rich and pimped out, though it did almost break my mind. The house in the first pic is the purple stripe at the top, with the Killing floors for Goblin invasions and Eater of Worlds on the left in the sky.


- Roughly a 15th of my overall map, this is much reduced in size too. The angle is a bit wonky (though semi-cool) as I don't think the World Viewer is compatible with the new version yet, might just be my old save file though.

It's a killer once you get going, I've got 3 new games for my Xbox just sat waiting, I'm not even arsed about starting them.

There's Multiplayer too.

I need moar Obsidian.

[small_world]

I like all of this.

That's my evening and next two days gone.

[mcbpete]

I bought Defcon for the music alone - I'm absolutely shocking at the game itself. I'm pretty gash at strategy games in general - I think I've 'won' one match, though I have no idea what or how I did it. Love the atmosphere of the thing though

[madhair60]

I have Terraria but don't really know where to start

[Big Jack McBastard]

Get to digging for better gear, once you've knocked up a furnace and anvil (torches+stone and 5 bars of Iron for the anvil) go after gold and silver ores to upgrade your clobber and monster killing tools or they'll tear your ass up when you decide to go exploring (yeah I know a suit of armour and a pickaxe made of gold would be bloody stupid ideas in real life).

Get some houses built (it's handy to have them linked with corridors or opening onto one and other) and your first friendlies will move in and they can sell you the odd piece of invaluable kit (the miners helmet, piggy bank and dynamite come to mind), plus you can sell all your crap to them, which you'll need to as said stuff don't come too cheap. The wiki up thar ^ is an immense help especially as it keeps getting new features and enemies and crafting materials.

Oh the pickaxes can be used continually by holding down the left mouse button, I thought you had to click for every hit up until about 3 days ago d'oh.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Keep an eye open for heart crystals when spelunking, you have to whack them with a hammer, stick them in the top bar of your inventory and then 'use' them and your life meter will go up permanently, also Falling Stars will give you access to Mana (you need 10 of them to make a Mana Crystal and then use them the same way as the health ones) go striking out at night and you'll run into a fair number of them. I've rarely used mana reliant weapons or what appears to be the only *spell* in the game, though being able to use Star Fury during my first goblin raid saved my ass.

Spoiler alert

Stick a couple of building blocks in front of the door to your house/houses, NPCS don't really need to go out once housed, knock them out as you come in and re-build as you leave

[close]

this will prevent zombies getting in on Blood Moons.

The Piggy Bank is an interesting one, if you have more than one in the world they link to the same pool of items, so you can stash a load of gear in a safehouse with a piggybank in it and bugger off back to your main pad (perhaps picking up another full inventory of stuff on the way) and the stashed gear will show up in the menu of the piggy bank there. If you take one with you it's like having access to another 20 inventory slots provided you can place it somewhere, take a table or work bench with you too, plonk the surface down put the Piggy Bank on it and fill it up with the stuff clogging your inventory (it's also a good idea to put your cash in it as you loose half the money you're carrying when you die, getting in the habit of putting it in the all in the bank once you're done buying stuff circumvents that to some extent) give them both a whack with a hammer (not to worry it just makes them collectible again) and continue on.

Spoiler alert

Goblins will try and nick stuff from the piggy bank if you have one in your main house when they arrive. Either fight them somewhere else (best choice, they'll follow you) or pick it up before they try and get in.

[close]

It's a good idea to knock up some chests to store this stuff too, I'm on about 8 in my main place.

I spent the first couple of days mining for stuff and by consequence ended up making the top part of that water table, which became a bit of a self imposed barrier to further downward exploration until spread my wings a bit and knocked up the almost-'Hellevator' (tunnel straight down) on the right, which is where I first spotted lava. I built a small obsidian mill about 2/3rds of the way down which promptly ran out as I used most of it on stupid shit so I then dropped further down to see a veritable lake of the stuff under me, a bit of re-direction of the water flow and a few new connections between other lava pockets had me sorted, knocked up a new pad right next to Hell and went mining for elusive high-end ores.. once I'd gotten the kit to prevent myself catching fire while trying it.

[mikeyg27]

Terraria deserves its own thread. I've been verging on starting one although I've haven't played it quite so much lately.