SIN CAR

SIN CAR is an arcade racer with a very different control scheme. Your car moves in a sine pattern at a constant vertical speed and the only thing you can control is the frequency by moving your mouse up and down the screen. Using this method of movement you need to dodge walls and pick up items for bonus points. It's a very simple game but it works really well and it's fun.

SIN CAR at Kongregate

Serious Sam - The Random Encounter

When I first saw the video of Serious Sam The Random Encounter on Steam I thought "jesus christ, a cool co-op side scrolling shooter with some RPG elements", but when I read further I realized that this is a turn based game. Yet, the video seems to indicate other wise. Has anyone bought it and care to share some insights? I guess I'll have to buy it and check myself...

Serious Sam: The Random Encounter - Gameplay Trailer from Vlambeer on Vimeo.

ifttt - If This Then That

ifttt is a really nifty site for web-service scripting using simple conditionals. With ifttt it's possible to do things like  sending all your starred Google Reader posts to Read It Later, saving all Facebook photos where you are tagged to Dropbox and send you an SMS to remind you to buy some cold beer if the temperature is above 30 degrees Celsius.

It is really easy to create your own scripted tasks. You chose a Trigger Channel, a Trigger, an Action Channel and an Action. A channel can be anything from Facebook, Twitter, Weather, RSS, LinkedIn, flickr, Gmail, Dropbox to YouTube or SoundCloud.

Available Triggers depend on the Trigger Channel. For Facebook it could be "New Facebook status message by you", for Gmail "New email from a specific address" and for Dropbox "New file added to public folder".

As with Triggers the available Actions depend on the Action Channel. For Gmail there's an action to "Send an e-mail" and for Dropbox "Save file from URL". The input data for the action can be taken from the Trigger, be it the e-mail subject or the Facebook status message.

You are also able to share your tasks with other users. When you share a task it becomes known as a Recipe. Before creating your own task make sure to check the list of recipes as chances are high that someone has already made a recipe for it.

I've started using ifttt myself to propagate all Dweller related blog posts to the Dweller Facebook page. Now that the Google+ API has been released I sure hope there will be a Google+ channel as well so I can get Dweller posts automatically put up on G+ as well.

Dweller - the quest for more content

I am now fairly happy with the changes made to the UI and I feel that I can finally focus on adding more content to Dweller. There are several things I'd like to improve:

The map
The maps need a lot more variation. On the top of my list: More variation to the rooms, room features that can be used tactically in combat and rooms with puzzles. The caves and sewers need a lot more love as they are pretty dull levels at the moment.

Spellcasting
I really need to improve the repertoire of spells and the way spells work. It is pretty boring to play a Wizard at the moment. Some spell ideas:

• Leaping flames - fire spell that leaps from the target to a chain of adjacent targets
• Blink - teleport in a straight line
• Tornado - knocks back opponents
• Icetomb - encase and paralyze target in ice
• Mass sleep
• Summon elemental

Character advancement - perks/abilities
I would like to provide the player with more choices on level up. I'm thinking along the lines of passive perks/abilities/talents to chose from. Some of the perks that may make it into the game:

• Silent Death: Increased damage against sleeping monsters
• Light Step: Reduced chance to trigger unseen trap or waking up monsters
• Sewer child: Increased poison resistance
• Shield wall: Increased chance to parry if wielding a shield
• Marksman: Reduced penalty for missile attacks at a large distance
• Magic insulation: Increased chance to resist magic attacks
• Lock-pick: Automatically pick locks
• Pack mule: Increased carrying capacity
• Eagle eyes: Increased sight radius (the Ranger already got this one)
• Conserve magic: Wands deplete slower
• Barter: Merchant buy price increased and sell prices decreased
• Piety: Increased healing by your god
• Steady hands: Reduced chance of triggering traps when disarming them
• Increased effectiveness of healing, decreased penalty when using heavy weapons, increased effectiveness of scrolls and wands etc etc

If you have ideas on how to improve Dweller, then please don't hesitate to share them with me! I really appreciate all the feedback I get from players.

ffflood and DotWar

I've been toying with the idea of writing a tower defense style game with use of swarming and influence fields for the surging attackers to make them flow and swarm around your defensive positions in a manner that seems intelligent and constantly forces the player to adapt his defensive positions. The graphics can be kept simple without ruining any of the fun. Have a look at ffflood and DotWar for two games that use simple graphics while still being really fun:

ffflood is a tower defense game with simple graphics, a lot of swarming attackers, powerups and research in between swarms. Simple yet a lot of fun:

ffflood

DotWar transforms twitter avatars into swarming armies of soldiers, one per pixel. Depending on pixel color the soldier gets different properties. Black pixels are stationary, red are slow but strong and so on. Really fun!

DotWar

Dweller 1.11.4 - fixes, fixes, fixes...

Time for yet another batch of fixes for the 1.11 release. I think I've managed to solve the last issues related to the recent changes made to the user interface. I also managed to fix a few quirks and minor bugs that will increase playability. Give the new version a try and let me know what you think!

CHANGES

• The stats of missile weapons and ammo wasn't shown on the Examine screen. Since the stats are important to determine attack effiency they have been added.
• Going back from the buy/sell menu brings you to the inventory category you came from and not to the start of the inventory
• The character menu button will show the correct character class and not always the warrior

BUG FIXES

• Your carried gold is now properly displayed when buying/selling items
• The map wasn't properly centered (it was off by one both horizontally and vertically)
• Cursor movement using mouse/touch wasn't working as expected
• You can now disarm a trap even if there's an item on the same cell
• The message box at the top of the screen started to scroll after scrolling on the map
• Sometimes the width of menu items were too long and didn't wrap properly causing text to go off the screen
• Your gold will not show up in the inventory when selling to a merchant
• The desktop version didn't redraw the screen after being brought back from a minimized state
• Scrolls of Enchant were broken

Roguelike Radio - Deity systems

The latest episode of Roguelike Radio was released a few days ago. The entire episode was dedicated to the use of deity systems in various roguelikes. I like the idea of having gods in a game, though it has to be well thought through and should preferably be added as a central part of the game right from the start or not at all. There are many features a roguelike developer could be tempted to add just because they are cool or because one of the major roguelikes does it. Adding gods and a deity system is one of these things you might be tempted to add without giving it too much thought.

I also prefer having a range of active gods giving passive perks rather than in some other games where you pick a single god and actively have to [P]ray to trigger the god and the system. In the latter, gods and the abilities they grant almost becomes an extension to a spell system and something you can use when you need it. Gods should not be under the player's direct control, rather a thing that could help you in a tough situation if you have been playing by the rules of the gods (be it wearing certain items or killing certain monsters).