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Nitronic Rush

Sun, 04 Dec 2011 05:53:31 +0000

This is an impressive racing game developed by students at DigiPen Institute of Technology. There are seven normal tracks, and several challenge tracks that teach you new ways to use your car's abilities and are actually quite challenging. I must have failed at least a hundred times trying to beat those tracks. The Tron-like aesthetic and the bumpin' soundtrack only add to the impressiveness of this well put together project.

Although I said this is a racing game, you don't really race against anybody. You can set up ghosts to race against that are uploaded runs from other players. But those ghosts are damn near millisecond perfect and aren't really fun to race with at all (in my opinion). So really it's just yourself versus the city that is trying to destroy you.

I highly recommend using a PC Xbox 360 gamepad to play this game. I found the keyboard controls to be adaqute, but the analog controls and sight rumble feel much better on the gamepad.

Go to the Nitronic Rush website to download this game.

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High Tea

Mon, 07 Mar 2011 12:02:27 +0000

In High Tea you play as a british smuggler selling opium to provide tea for Britian in China's Pearl Delta.

You need to buy cheap and sell high to be able to keep up with the increasing demand for Tea from Britian. The prices of the opium and the tea fluctuate as game play progresses to keep things interesting. You'll be balancing your ships and purchase of tea, and accepting offers for your opium (not all good offers) while managing the risk level of being discovered at ports all at the same time.

One of the reasons why I wanted to feature this game this week is because of the very clean presentation and interface and also the "spinning plates" gameplay dynamic which I am a fan of.

This is a very short game to play, but I found it to be entertaining and somewhat challenging towards the end.

Play High Tea ...
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Transformice is a lesson in mob stupidity

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 04:03:49 +0000

Transformice is a multiplayer game where you play as a mouse (or the shaman) that has to get the cheese and then back the mouse hole before time runs out. The main problem with this is that there are several other mice also with the same objective. Throw in physics based puzzles and you have yourself a hilarious time.

The shaman is the leader mice that is mainly responsible for getting the other mice to the cheese. The shaman can summon blocks, affix joints and pulleys to objects, etc. On some maps there will be two shamans and each mouse hole is color coded to a shaman. In order to get more points the shamans will have to try to get the other players to go into their mouse hole than their rivals'. This usually leads to anarchy as the two shamans immediately try to kill each other or hamper each others progress.

The most common way is with flying canonballs. Then they MAY do it to you too so you gotta stay alert.

By registering an doing very well with returning blocks of cheese back to your holes, you'll be rewarded with unlocks of titles to put underneath your names and clothing that you can dress your mice in.

Right now the game is free to play but is currently having server issues due to player volume. So if you enjoy this game then donating a few bucks to help out this entertaining multiplayer experience.

Play Transformice

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Grabbin' pills

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 03:10:29 +0000

Hey everyone! I know it’s been awhile since my last update about this project but I’ve been fairly hard at work. Well, that and getting my butt kicked in RealTime Worlds' All Points Bulletin.

I added the ability to assign doctors from the break room (where you put exhausted doctors to replenish their stamina) to a bed in the hospital. When assigned to a bed, if there is a patient there the doctor will run their AI puzzle board analysis function to determine which set of blocks to remove to meet the goal of curing the patient. Right now the analysis function is a random coordinate on the board, but I was pleased to set up the logistics of connecting a doctor to their current patient and watching the automatic interaction between them.

Because there were also some situations where the player (or eventually the AI) would be completely screwed in dealing with a patient (a layer of ACHES on top of a layer of SCABS = patient death in 30-40 seconds) I added a pill mechanic. Each doctor starts off with 5 pills. The player can click on a super virus and will consume a pill to remove that virus. Right now pills are set to work 100% of the time, but I may change this so that they don’t always work with viruses of higher levels.

There is still exists strange problem when a patient dies the doctor doesn't automatically go back to the break room to wait for more orders. One of...
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Shoot First and Ask Questions Later

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:23:01 +0000

Shoot first is an action game that has rpg and roguelike elements. The main objective of Shoot First is to find the stairs that lead down to the next level. There are occasions when the stairwell is locked off and you will need to find a key to unlock it before you can descend. Your character can only use one weapon at a time and they grow stronger through usage. However using a new weapon will reset weapon level back down to 1, so you'll have to choose wisely when selecting a weapon. You also have 3 equipment slots for treasure that you may find on your journey.

All of the levels are procedureally generated and it comes with a very useful automapping system in case you get lost (and you will). There is apparently a two-player co-op mode and an online high score table. The likely hood of me being up there is pretty close to 0%, but I'm sure some of you pros can get on there.

With rolling boulders that attempt to crush you, tall grass to impede your path, tricky enemies, and trap rooms to ensure your death I think that roguelike and topdown shooter lovers will definately like this game.

Download and Play Shoot First

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Give your Dungeon a Makeover in Top Hero Arena

Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:29:00 +0000

In Top Hero Arena by Dave Cambell, you play as the Dungeon Master ... well more like the Dungeon Interior Designer.

Every level involves a hero and a hexagonal grid dungeon map, and you're given a selection of creature tiles and trap tiles. They all have their own attributes and powers of course. Your goal is to arrange these tiles on the grid to create a gauntlet of death that guarantees the hero cannot make it to the exit alive.

Immediately upon playing this game you'll realize that there is a certain order of tiles that will deal the most optimal damage to the hero However later on in the game there are pre-set tiles on the board that help the hero out such as additional armor or more health and the AI WILL double back to get them when necessary.

The difficulty curve of the latter part of the game raises fairly quickly and is my only major gripe about the game (apart from the somewhat crude art). I had to consult a walkthrough in the last 2 levels, and I feel that this game would benefit from not having just a single solution to a puzzle.

Despite the shortcomings I found that the gameplay was entertaining and was a great way to kill some time.

Play Top Hero Arena

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Refactoring code is just like wrestling bears

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 02:56:50 +0000

I actually enjoy the codebase refactoring process. Being able to take an unruly piece of code that you knew was completely inelegant when you wrote it, and to beat it into a clean efficient solution is part of one of the reasons why I absolutely love coding.

Recently I realized when I would get to the AI heavy part of the Active Pain puzzle game that I would need to pass around several representations of the puzzle board around to all of the different doctors (Controlled by AI), and then also pass around theoretical boards around to other methods for heuristics.

However I then realized that Flash is how it encourages you to put your model together with your view and controller. So I spent the past week or so trying to seperate that kind of logic from my code. Thus I'm left with a visual representation of the board, and a model (data) representation.

So when the AI is analyzing the board to find out what group of blocks to remove I'm not passing around N movieclips to various analytical methods (and not making sure they're also hidden too). I'm hoping this adds a bit of a speed boost when things get crazy later.

To do all of this refactoring felt like wrestling a bear. At first you don't want to do it because you may die [break everything in your program], but if you manage to live through you'll be a better person in the end [cleaner code].

That and wouldn't you want to...
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Is Trivia your thing?

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 10:22:25 +0000

Though I mostly play games as a method of immersion and escapism; sometimes I have the pleasure of playing non-video competitive & social games. These games include (but aren't limited to): Carcassonne, Munchkin, Settlers of Catan, House on Haunted Hill, etc. However, this past weekend, two very close family friends turned me on to an online trivia game that we had an excellent time playing - Sporcle.

Sporcle has a varied trivia base that includes trivia by image, sound, matching, etc. In addition to several methods of composing and answering trivia, there are a plethora of trivia categories. I believe that most of the content is user generated, which is fantastic.

Once we started playing, we were addicted for hours trying out several different categories. We played the game as a large group and the more people that were involved, the more fun the game became. At first, I wanted to make the game competitive, but the trivia is not setup in a manner where that is actually possible. If they ever implement a time-based or answer-based team system WATCH OUT (for me that is).

If anyone is interested in trivia games please follow this link http://www.sporcle.com/. Please enjoy!

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Elements the Online Card Game

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:49:14 +0000

Recently I have stumbled upon a great Flash card game called Elements. I thought that I would share this game with everyone as apart of our Game Kudos category. We will try to share and talk about great games that we are playing or have already played.

Elements is an online fantasy card game. You are playing as an elemental spirit that has to dual other elemental spirits (AI or real players).

That's really about it for plot - which I'm perfectly okay with.

There are a total of 12 elements in the game. This may seem like a lot but they only add to the variety in cards.

Each elemental has an array of skills that can be used to battle against other elementals. Every skill (whether it is a creature or a spell) corresponds to a card. You can pick which cards you want to use in a card deck using the deck editor, and collect and purchase more cards using gold from winning duels.

Your deck has to have a minimum of 30 cards and you are encouraged to dispose and sell cards that you don't use so that you can purchase more and fine tune your deck for more wins.

The game has a quest system that acts as a tutorial to show new players to the game. There is also a very helpful fan-made FAQ in their official Elements forums as well.

It would be very difficult to explain this game without comparing it to Magic: The Gathering. In this case, being similar to MTG is not...
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Introducing the Strategic Puzzle Game Project Pain

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:39:01 +0000

So our first game is an idea that I've had for a long time. It was going to be a game about a new virus that has taken a hold of a city and you play a newly hired head doctor that has to deal with this new outbreak that only seems to get stronger and smarter as the days go by.

So this idea is a hybrid of:

A Real Time Strategy in the form that you're making real time decisions on ordering your followers where they should be and what they should be doing.
Puzzle Game in the fact that you're removing blocks and there is an element of strategy to it to where and when.
A Tower Defense like element of pressure from a stream of objectives to overcome.

Let's go through what this game will consist of so far.

Main Board

There are a lot of things going on in that screenshot. In the middle of the screen you have the game board that represents the viruses that are currently in the patient you're looking at. To remove a virus the player just clicks on it, and all adjacent virii that share the same color are also removed. All of the removed gaps are collasped by the blocks above it and new blocks are randomly generated to fill in any spaces on the board.

Stocks

To the right of the game board, you'll see a patient status screen. There is a number next to a block. This number represents the stocks - I need a better word for...
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The First Post Is Always The Most Awkward

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:04:44 +0000

So, this is it. Finally we have a website up and going. Words cannot describe how great this makes us feel. After a few years of messing about with other side projects I was finally able to come back to the one that matters.

This one.

But, what is this? This is the website for us, the Bandit Revolvers. A duo that's dedicated to entertaining the masses with our thrilling stories and entertaining games.

There are a lot of things to still do around here before things start looking a bit more to my tastes. The forum is basically unstyled and has no way back to the front page - which is non-existant at this point in time. However, the look of the rest of the site I am pleased with.

One thing that I have had to understand about web-design over the 9 years I've been doing it is that design is an evolutionary process. Very rarely can I design a site, plop it down, and just declare it 100% ready for the world (or a client).

You don't even want to know how long my co-founder and I have been designing stories and games. We have so many incomplete - yet 100% certifiably awesome - projects it's laughable. I'm laughing right now writing about it.

Creative people in general can spend years and years designing and dreaming, and reordering, and the throwing it all away, and replotting again etc. Unfortunately there comes a point where you have to put your foot down and say,...
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