Saturday Game

As is the case with everybody that started to play PC games in the 90s, I’ve been a huge fan of adventure games (or quest, as they were called then). And you can understand my delight when I’ve seen that a lot of them get remastered for the iOS (iPad, especially) and Android.

Two of these games are some great games I’ve played then: two of the Broken Sword games. The initial one, though with a slightly longer story, a Director’s Cut of The Shadow of the Templars and the second one called The Smoking Mirror.

The first game is a classic and the first image of the game, with a Paris cafe in the autumn became an image any adventure fan would recognize. The characters of both games are George Stobbart and his girlfriend, Nicole Collard, an American guy and a French girl. She is a journalist that, of course, gets in a lot of trouble, while he is a “normal” guy getting involved in everything bad that his girlfriend generates (always women, right? :P ).

While the second game is not, in my opinion, as good as the first one, its presence in the App Store helped a long flight go far faster than I thought initially.

The games are point and click type of games (ok, point and touch!), where you choose different actions you can do related to different objects so that you solve the puzzles you need to in the process of discovering the mysteries Nico tries to uncover.

The link to the games, for the iPad: The Shadow of the Templars and The Smoking Mirror. Have fun (it’s about 12 hours of gaming for each of them, just to give you a heads up!). The links for the Android versions are here: 1 and 2

Have fun!

The best games there are have great story and great graphics. Or do they? :)

Last game I’ve played from start to finish was Last of Us. Awesome story, the graphics were gorgeous. The art takes you and gets you hooked in the apocalyptic world of the game, making it alive and almost real. What would be a game without this kind of design?

Well, A Dark Room tries to do exactly that: use your imagination as the graphic designer. The “simplest” game in terms of design, since it runs in the browser, it is just a bunch of text with some actions you need to take as the game unfolds. And unfold it does, since I played on and off about 2 hours and there was still lots of things to do.

You start in a dark room, in a dark forest. And you start a fire. Then you need to chop some wood. Then you hear something…

It’s a great game, something I didn’t think I would see anymore, a reminder of the text adventure games of the Z80 era (like Zork or The Hobbit).

If you never played these kind of games it might look strange. But think of it as an interactive book and start playing it. You should be hooked in no time :)

P.S.: I’ve found A Dark Room in this list on reddit, a list one of my colleagues at MavenHut, David, found. Thanks a lot! This is how a weekend goes…

I don’t like zombie movies. I don’t really like horror movies, to be frank. Still, there are two zombie games that I loved playing this year. One of them is The Walking Dead (I loved the story driven game, played it on the iPad on a transatlantic flight) and the other one is the one I am gonna tell you about: the PS3 game Last of Us.

I’ve first heard of the game about 2 years ago (a little bit less, maybe), after playing Uncharted 2. The same studio that did Uncharted, Naughty Dog, was supposed to build a really interesting zombie game, that would take the work from the Uncharted series to new heights.

The thing is, though, that a zombie game wasn’t exactly what I expected. Still, I some more trailers and screenshots from the game, as well as some info on the plot made me interested in the game.

So, finally, in the summer of 2013 Last of Us saw the light of day. And it’s one of the most gripping stories I’ve seen in a video game. You start with a loving father and end playing with a bitter killer. Still, through the entire campaign, you might not love the guy, but you will enjoy the father-daughter relationship that grows between the two characters.

The actual graphics and animation are some of the best I’ve seen in a game. Even Uncharted 3, made by the same studio, feels worse when compared. You will see the wildlife in the cities of USA (Saint Louis, among them) and you’ll feel that you are looking at a documentary of a real event.

Unfortunately, the game is only available to PS3 owners. If you have the opportunity, borrow the PS3 from a friend, take 2 days free and play the game. Last of Us is the best combination between a book and a movie I’ve ever seen. How about the zombies? Well, they are some of the enemies. The most difficult ones, actually, but I feel that they are just the setup of the story. Otherwise, the game is about what we do for the things we believe in.

Just look at the trailer and the extended presentation from E3 2013 below:

Did you see “Indie Game: The Movie“? If not and you are interested in the world of gaming, stop reading this and go watch it :)

In this documentary, you follow 3 indie game developers going through the process of launching their games. One of those developers is Jonathan Blow, the creator of Braid. The guy is considered “the philosopher” of the gaming industry and his game, Braid, on of the best indie games ever.

Braid is a platform and puzzle cross-platform game (I play it on my Mac, but you can also find Windows versions, XBox, PS3), a game that initially seems a clone of Mario Bros, but it is so much more than this.

You, basically, look for your princess in different worlds, jumping your way from room to room. The thing is, though, that the game is not as simple as it initially looks. It took me several hours and, in frustration, watching some YouTube walkthroughs to finally finish the first world. The thing is, the game is solvable all the time. If you cannot find the solution, you are not thinking the right way (not my words, but the developer’s).

If you love pixel art, Braid is a game where pixels look as great as they can ever look. The graphics in the game are perfect (every color, every move, every character is perfect in every way). And the soundtrack gives you the feeling of a triple-A title.

Finally, if you loved the Prince of Persia series and the fact that you could take back time, you will love Braid :)

Go, play the game, have fun. At the top of the article there’s a big sort of infograph I’ve “stolen” from their site, one that will explain the game a little bit better and give you some idea of what to expect (I bought the game cheaper in the Mac App Store and I think you can find good deals on Steam).

P.S.: the game made several million dollars, just saying.

We are always testing new games here, at MavenHut. On all devices, from anybody. Last week we’ve discovered Wooga’s Jelly Splash.

The game is a cross between Dots and Candy Crush Saga. It starts a little bit slow, but I got really into it after the first 7-8 levels. Now I am at level 50, to give you an idea :)

It’s a free game with inApp purchases. I managed to get to level 50 without spending any money (you start with some credits that can be used to unlock new areas, so don’t spend them in the first levels).

My advice: if you’re looking for a Candy Crush Saga like new game, try Jelly Splash. But don’t blame me for the lack of productivity :)

About 6 months ago I’ve discovered Score! (I think Cristi, my co-founder at MavenHut, told me about it). It’s a game for both iPhone and iPad, but I only played it on the iPad.

Score! is a kind of Pocket Planes for football. Basically, you take goals scored in the last 30 years or so and try to recreate them on the iPad screen. Based on the level (Amateur, Professional), you set up directions, shot power and let the game unwind and gain stars and points based on accuracy.

Initially it felt like a stupid game, I must admit, but with every goal I would go forward I would get more and more into it. So much, actually, that I wanted to buy a goal package (you have some initial ones, and some additional that keep updating, with goals from World Cups, Premiership and similar).

The thing is I haven’t deleted from my iPad it since I downloaded the game the first time, though I do not play it that often. And, thinking of it, I really, really enjoy it, from time to time (especially on longer flights, when I am tired and unable to focus on reading and the inflight entertainment is boring).

So, if you have the time and care to have a non-realtime football game, you should give it a try.

I’ve been playing computer games pretty much for ever. I am 35 now, and I have seen the first computer ever when I was about 5-6, a Sinclair ZX Spectrum (pictured above). My best childhood friend’s father, a Maths professor, had one of these brought in from UK, a rare occurrence in the communist Romania I was living in. That’s when my long love relationship with computer games has begun.

The first game I’ve ever played is either Lode Runner or Jumping Jack. Yeah, it’s been 30 years ago, do you really think I would remember exactly? :)

The thing is, I played a lot of games on that specific computer and I’ve played even more once my parents managed to find, through some connections (as with everything during the communism), a Romanian clone called HC85.

That’s when I started to play everything from the Dizzy series to Manic Miner, from Match Day (the precursor of FIFA games) to SimCity. But the games I fell in love with were the adventure/quest games like The Hobbit, Dizzy or Seymour. This is the main reason I started to learn English, after all, to understand the long lines of text that the characters of these games spoke to each other.

My fascination with adventure games continued into the PC era, with games like Larry. I remembered now that I’ve contributed to the KickStarted campaign for the re-mastered Larry – also, I still remember the happiness when I finally got the “Undress Her” command right. Space Quest, Indiana Jones games or the great Day of the Tentacle (not to forget Sam and Max hit the road, the weirdly funny game) were also games that I would spend my time on over and over again.

30 years later, I still love to play games and I book entire weekends just for this (not as many as I would’ve wanted, unfortunately). The last games I’ve played? The Last of Us, Dishonored and Bioshock: Infinity, on PS3, Runaway: A Road Adventure and Score on iPad, while on my MacBook the last download is Braid. Of course, I am not including here the throng of casual games I play on all devices to learn as much as possible for MavenHut, the gaming company I am part of.

What are you playing now? :)