Puzzle Pirates - Ayy Matey

Arrr ! Today's browser game is a not really a browser game , it's not even a real MMORPG becuase it doesn't have the basic RPG elements and it's not really free because there is a subscription for those who wanna see the other half of the game . If you didn't understood what I just said don't panic , is nothing wrong with you . It's just rubish pirate talk and I chosen to review this game because thin month will be the Talk like a Pirate day .

Puzzle Pirates is an MMO without the RPG -- a persistent world, with persistent characters, where the goal of the game is something besides killing monsters to get xp. Scandalous!


In case the title is too ambiguous, Puzzle Pirates is a massive multiplayer puzzle game where the player accomplishes piratey deeds by doing puzzles. Skill has nothing to do with stats or gear and everything to do with a player's actual mastery of the game's puzzles. Every possible pirate pastime -- from sailing and swordfighting to drinking and playing cards -- has a corresponding puzzle game to be mastered. Many of the puzzles aren't far removed from familiar favorites. For instance, pumping the bilge from a boat requires playing a game not far removed from Bejeweled, sword fighting will be easy for anyone well practiced at Puzzle Fighter, and patching holes blown in the hull requires the careful placement of pentomino shaped boards.

Puzzle Pirates is one of those games that will give you simple ideas and suck you in with them, never letting go. Puzzle Pirates is based around the concept of using a variety of short puzzle games to interact with the game, with the setting, of course, being piracy on the high seas.

Different puzzles will affect different aspects of the game. For example, when sailing a ship to pillage goods and money from enemies, the Sailing puzzle will affect a ship's speed, the Gunning puzzle will load the cannons for a captain to fire at the enemy, the Carpentry puzzle fixes damage done to your ship, and the Bilge puzzle pumps out water from the hull. All of them collaborate together and affect the overall effort of the crew on board.

Of course, there are plenty of puzzle for the landlubber types too. You can challenge other players to a Swordfight or Drinking puzzle, hold tournaments with big prizes, or just chill on the docks, chatting with mates from all over the oceans.


One aspect that catches many players' fancy is the completely player-driven economy. Players have the opportunity to open shops of various types, from an iron monger that makes swords and cannonballs, to a distillery that makes rum and oils, to an apothecary that makes paints and dyes, to a weavery to make cloth, or a tailor that makes clothing, or a shipwrightery that builds vessels of all sizes. Each type of shop is unique, and each one will soon have its own labor puzzle that contributes to production of goods.

Ah yes, that brings me to an important point: Puzzle Pirates is not a complete game, in a "final gold copy" sense of the term. The developers are hard at work all the time, adding new features quite often, with new puzzles and goods being introduced every month or so. Not only that, the player community is constantly involved in the changes development of the game. Many people say that the community itself is part of the big attraction to the game. I myself have made many friends (and a few enemies) in my months playing Puzzle Pirates, and it has never had a dull moment.

If you love puzzle games, check it out. If you love economic challenges in a game, check it out. Hell, just check it out anyways. You can download the free trial from the Puzzle Pirates website. Three Rings Design has a big hit on its hands here, so jump on board before this ship hits the wide open seas.

Weewar

WeeWar is an online game that lets players battle each other to win the war, of course. There are lots of units to choose from each with their own special abilities and drawbacks .

The game is simplistic in design, but fun to play. You can practice your strategy, join existing games Game reviews , start your own, or observe games that are currently in action. The homepage features a live ticker of everything that’s going on with live games on the site. You can stay abreast of which users are taking which actions in their respective games. Unfortunately, the ticker updates so fast, it’s hard to click on a game for more details. There is a community involved with WeeWar as well. You can make friends, check out their WeeWar ranking, view their recent opponents and invite them to your games.

What’s more, one of the WeeWar users has recently made a video of the game being played on the iPhone. Watch it here on the WeeWar blog. Who wouldn’t want to play a battle game using a touch screen?

If you like a fast paced RTS style game that requires little of your time that weewar is perfect .

Browser game : Travian

Travian is a browser-based massively multiplayer online real time strategy game (don't worry , it's a good thing :P ) , built by enthusiasts in Germany. At a first glance you would say that it looks a bit too childish , but in fac it's more of a "user friendly" game .

www.travian.com

Gameplay is based around short visits to the site a few times a day (usually once every few hours, but a lot more often if you're beginning to build up a new village or in the middle of a war), so it can be a pleasant distraction from whatever you're meant to be doing without in theory taking over your life. The problem is that the only way to do well in the game is to let it take over, to be constantly launching attacks and making sure that new building is lined up as soon as the old building is finished. Victory depends equally on skill and your willingness to sacrifice your real life. I've heard this is normal for MMORPGs, but this is the first time I've played in a game where this is true; and I didn't like it.

The game was most fun when I picked a fight with another player and tried to conquer their village. I spent a weekend calculating move and countermove, being bluffed and counterbluffed, and convincing his allies not to attack me. It was fun, and the slow speed of the action (it would take two hours for the units which could damage his defences and convince his citizens to switch sides to reach him) reminded me a little of news reports and made the unfolding fight much more immersive and involving. Most of the tactics ended up boiling down to maths (when do I have to send the powerful cavalry to get them to arrive just before the weak-but-vital catapults?), which I'm geeky enough to enjoy. But not many people are that geeky, and most people probably want to get out at some point during the weekend.

Because the game often boils down to being in the strongest most active alliance, you can spend a lot of time chatting to other players and trying to corall them into joining a plan. Many of the alliances are based around particular nations, particularly the smaller European nations. And Poland. I once accidently attacked someone without realising they'd joined a large Polish Alliance, and wrote to them with sympathetic noises about the UK's failure to achieve its main war aim in WW2 and the Molotov Ribbentrop pact. I don't remember a German or an English alliance, for which I'm very grateful. (Although there was a Yorkshire one. So if no-one was refighting WW2, there is still potential for the Wars of the Roses.) The software has several functions to support alliances - such as fora and listings of who is allied or at war with whom. Unfortunately, alliances are often too important - the sheer scale of the game often means that success or failure depends less on your tactical choices than on whether your alliance gets into a large war or not.

Unfortunately, this problem with the scale of the game overwhelms other chances for interesting decisions. The degenerate strategy is too obvious, and relies (notice a theme?) too much on sacrificing your real life. When the first game closed, the winner (simply the player with the most points) thanked the many people who had helped them, largely by pitching in and sharing the running of the account so that whilst one person is busy or sleeping, another is making sure that no move is missed.

As a piece of software, it is sometimes slow, and occasionally processing stops. But given that it's a large game funded entirely out of a few euros a month for optional extra features, I'm quite prepared to tolerate that level of faults. I didn't notice any bugs which affected game rules, and there was good communication on the forum between admins and players.

In my opinion the game is good enough to keep you busy for a while but nothing more . People that look for other gameplay options beside just attacking an opponent will be disappointed by the game . The reason why I dropped the game after 6 months is that the game has almost no protection for people smaller than their opponent . I had the bad luck to be spotted by someone larger than me and in a more powerful alliance than mine . The result was that I lost 6 months work in about 3 days .

Bottom-line , if you like a competitive game , with friendly interface and nice people , you should try Travian at least for a while .

Browser game : Adventure Quest

Adventure Quest, or, Battle-On, is a classical RPG point and click game that you can play in you're browser using Shockwave Flash . This game was designed to play at dull or boring times of your life, like when you're at work or at home with nothing to do. Though it's a fun game, I usually play other games during my spare time. Should you become a member on this game, well, I think yes, you should, why, because it's almost impossible to log in and members have over eight tenths more of the game then non members, and its much more fun and exciting, also, its only a one time fee, and if you do, then you can join Dragon Fable which is made by the same people and is like 100 times better then this, well, lets get to rating the game!

www.battleon.com

Graphics 7/10 - Why do I rate it 7, well, they are not that good, there's really no leg movement, actually, it seems like the arms just move up and down and your whole body turns sideways when ever you attack someone . Anyway , concerning the fact that is a browser game made in 2002 , I guess you could accept them .

Sound 5/10: There's almost no music. And there are only a few sound effects that happen in rare moments, (though, the sound effects are good) . Sounds are easily supported by browser so this is no excuse for the developers .

Storyline 5/10: It's kind of hard to go along with the story. You're a paladin that waits until a war starts and then you fight on a certain side. Whenever a certain side wins the war , new cities and areas are unlocked and new weapons and stories are unlocked etc . And, after a while, it happens all over again. But each time it's a better story line, (they have started to connect the wars and events happening. Which is good, cause before it was utter confusion).

Overall 6/10: Overall, the graphics are not so great (with the current money rolling on the game , they could make them better or 3-D even ). There's almost no sound in the game except in a few rare moments. But the story line is getting better. I also like the battle system and the way you fight, which is turn by turn fighting, I think that is normal for a browser game . Well... mostly, this game is for anyone who likes the classic Hp, Mp, Magic, Skills, Levels, Gold, Monsters, Shops, Quests, and Turn by Turn Battle System, all the things a good classic RPG needs . Sadly, it's not an MMO-RPG like Rune Scape, Wow , its only single player, so most people who want multi-player won't fall for it easily .

Boxhead Review

Today's browser game is Boxhead - made in Flash . A game designed and developed by Sean Cooper , a game industry veteran . The game is fully free (which means no fees at all , no membership options etc) .


http://www.games.seantcooper.com/

Thumb UP : - Sean took a can , threw in there some zombies , a lot of action and fun , shook it well and the result was Boxhead . The game has simple gameplay accessible to anyone and it is fast paced making it perfect for killing time when at work or when you are at home while verifying emails or blogging .

The player can choose from a variety of rooms each requiring a different strategy regarding zombie killing . After the room is selected the game starts without any delay . You will find you're self controlling a hero type character made from boxes which is armed with a normal pistol . Blood thirsty zombies made also by boxes will charge (I use this word as a figure of speech because in fact they are slow) at you're position . At first will be easy because the spawns aren't s o often and large but as the game progresses , you will have to defeat more and more opponents .
The good news is that you're small box-man won't be left without an impressive arsenal of weapons some of them bringing extreme firepower . By killing zombies the hero will receive lots of weapon and ammo upgrades that will aid him greatly in the struggle .

The game has no ending , the central idea is to survive as much as possible . Big time = many kills = a lot of score points which are ultimately stored under you're name . So yeah , another game where you can brag about you're achievements :P .

Thumbs Down : - There are some inconvenients like the fact that :
the game is not a persistent world ( you're actions will not influence anyone else actions) .
there is no real end so the satisfaction of wining over the legions of mindless zombies doesn't exist .
after a while it gets repetitive .
very few elements of multiplayer (only some rooms have cooperative maps and by cooperative I mean no more than 2 players ) .

Bottom-line ? A fun and simple game . In my opinion , if you like casual games , Boxhead is 'a must try' .