So I recently have been trying out a few Free/Open Games that I haven’t played before. Unfortunately none of them have been exceptional.

LordsatWar
LordsatWar is a relatively new project that is a fork of the abandoned FreeLords Project. It is a clone of Warlords II. I tested the package that is in the Hardy Heron repositories. There is a new version out that fixes some of the bugs and adds some new artwork. Which is good because the version I played crashed frequently. But it was a very nice crash. The program just quit and so I could just start it again and load the autosave and not ever lose more then the current turn. The Objective of the game is to take over all the other castles. Each castle can recruit a 1 – 3 types of soldiers. Your hero units have the ability to explore the ruins or little towers as they appear on the map. It is very worth it. sometimes you get experience, free high level troops like dragons, or even a magic carpet. It was quite nice that my hero had like 35 movement. He could take over more then one enemy castle in a turn. If you liked Warlords II give it a try. I think the project would be greatly improved if they started adding new stuff instead of just trying to clone Warlords. To me it seemed quite basic and didn’t keep my attention very long but if you like that kind of game try it out.

I think Lords at War is the perfect example of the most common problem in open soure game development. The majority of open games are just clones. Mere copycats with little or nothing original about them. Too bad more projects didn’t follow the example of Battle for Wesnoth. I think Lords of War should forget about adding every feature that Warlords II had and make something original instead. Of course thats a lot harder to do.

Its been a while… I updated the KQtheBetrayer with the release plan as it stands now. Progress is being made on it. If a bit slowly. Though there are definitely going to be a good amount of new tiles in the next release, as well as some new battle backgrounds and enemy sprites.

I recently upgraded to Ubuntu Hardy and with it came more available game packages. Heres two that you can try if you want to play a free (FLOSS) mindless game.

Kenta Cho’s Torus Trooper
Torus trooper is a psychedelic space shooter where you fly on half of a rotating cylinder. The fact that the playing field is constantly rotating adds a lot to the craziness. For some reason the default mode on hardy is windowed mode. But if you really want to play it make sure you play full screen. Surprisingly this game doesn’t make you as dizzy as you would think. Though I would recommend focusing on the top half of the screen.

Don Ceferino The website is only in Spanish but its not that informative anyway so dont worry about a translation. Ceferino (the title of debian package) is a game similar to the online flash game “Super Pang”. The graphics are nice and clean. The object of the game is to throw your dagger to destroy the alien green spheres that bounce around the screen. You have three maybe four lives. Each time a sphere hits you lose a life and have to restart the level. Fortunately you have unlimited continues or this game would probably be impossible. Though I think it would be improved if they let you start off at the level you stopped at. But at this point they don’t really have that many levels. I think the gameplay would be vastly imprroved if they added different types of baddies. It gets tiresome that each level is almost the same just with a few more baddies.

I’m not really one for puzzle games, but I have to admit that I find Hex-a-hop unusally entertaining. As is so often the case with these kinds of games the basic idea is simple enough (get rid of all the green tiles, they disappear when you step off them) but there are plenty of new and interesting things combined in intriguing ways to keep you coming back.

This game is clean and bug free, the animations are smooth and not at all annoying, and overall Hex-a-Hop has a lot better graphics (check out those reflections in the water!) than a lot of puzzle games I’ve tried. A handy undo feature means that when you walk yourself into a corner (or jump in the water, like in the screenshot) you don’t have to completely restart the level (though you can if you want). There are lots of levels included (I’ve only completely about 70%) and if you run into a tough one, you can go back and try another one that you’ve unlocked and come back to it later. I’ve done that a few times, but I haven’t really run into any insanely difficult levels, which means that the game should be pretty playable for most people. Happy Hex-a-hopping!

Lately I’ve been exploring some of the games you can install painlessly with Ubuntu’s Add/Remove Applications feature. Mostly I’m just looking for something to occupy my hands while I listen to podcasts and lectures. So I figured I should share what I’ve found out.

Ri-Li

Supposedly this is a kid’s game because it’s about a train moving around a track and acquiring cars. But I have to admit that I kept dying on the higher levels until I finally gave up and set the speed on easy. The game is like Nibbles (or Tron) where the difficulty arises in not running into yourself when you get big. The difference is that you can only go where there are tracks and only change direction when you get to a switch. So I actually found it pretty enjoyable and was impressed with the finished and polished look. It’s not buggy at all. The only annoying part is that between each level you are asked to identify the article number of a specific paragraph of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I mean I believe in education and all but expecting rote memorization of an obscure document seems pretty pointless. I couldn’t even get myself to read the paragraph. Just clicked one of the buttons (it’s multiple choice) and moved on.