Egoboo is a dungeon-crawling action RPG first released in 1999 by Aaron Bishop. After his brother Ben convinced him to release it as open source, the game began to enjoy quite a bit of development thanks to a willing community. It’s had its ups and downs, but currently the game is being developed at a fairly steady rate. Though sometimes gaps between stable versions can be a bit long, the in-development beta version can be accessed through a subversion repository, which is updated any time a change is made.
The original idea of Egoboo was to create a game like Nethack, but in real time and with 3D graphics. Although most of the gameplay resembles a typical ARPG, there are a lot of subtle aspects that are reminiscent of roguelikes (and Nethack in particular). There are quite a few strange secrets and “Easter eggs”; discovering a couple of these can even result in unlocking an extra class to play as in addition to the eight you can normally choose from.
To start the game, you must choose a class and beat a “starter module” before you can go out into the game’s main dungeons. These modules will help you become familiar with the specific abilities of the class you chose, and require you to apply strategies that will help you use your character more effectively in the future.
After you beat the starter module, you are ready to play through the main game. The main series of modules consists of seven dungeons (two of them are divided into two separate halves, so there are actually nine in total). Once you beat one, you will be able to play through the next, and you are always welcome to go back to modules you have already completed. There is also a small town that is available from the beginning and a larger city that is unlocked later on. You can visit these peaceful areas to purchase more gear. There are also a few NPCs who will send you on side quests, most of which will culminate in the discovery of rare and useful loot.
You can play through most of the game with up to four players (on the same machine) using the keyboard, mouse, and joysticks. The only exceptions to this are starter modules and a few side quest dungeons that are only available for one player. (Many of the modules that can only be played by one person do include AI-controlled companions, though.)
Most modules consist of playing through until you find a boss monster, then defeating it. The game isn’t all hack and slash, though; there are also puzzle elements every once in a while that make the game feel a little bit like something from the Zelda series.
Egoboo is still a little rough around the edges, and some people may be turned off by its graphics, which look a little like something from the N64 era. But beneath the questionable exterior lies a very charming game with unique style, solid gameplay, and a fair amount of depth. It’s definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of ARPGs or Zelda-esque adventures. Be on the look out for when the next version is released in a few days; it should have quite a bit of new content.
The Way by Lun is an episodic jRPG-style game in six parts, created in RPGMaker. The first episode was released in 2002, and the entire series took three and a half years to develop. Although very popular within that community, it’s lesser-known elsewhere.
The game involves a long search for a missing person, having many adventures on the way. It uses a few twists on the standard RPG formula, with a custom battle system and equipping auras (acquired from defeating bosses) instead of weapons and armor, and it has an interesting ability upgrade system. Interestingly, apparently the player can elect not to play the battles at all, and just go through the game for the story and exploration.
As Malefact goes into in his Let’s Play, if you don’t like the first episode very much, don’t be put off, since it’s widely considered the worst of the six: it gets better as it goes on. Unfortunately the game always uses mostly unoriginal graphics and music, which can distract from the game—this is the bane of most RPGMaker games. But if you can ignore that, this is one of the best games made in that engine.
Zeldarius was released in 2002 for Game Maker (version 4) by Scott Hiroshige, and is a Zelda/Gradius hybrid fan-game. The graphics and music are all ripped from other games, but it’s still very fun regardless. I especially like how they timed the music perfectly with the oncoming enemy waves; playing it is a musical experience.
I include this in classics week not because it’s particularly exceptional (although I have played through it at least a dozen times) but because it’s almost unknown, almost disappeared from the internet entirely (even most veteran GM users have never heard of it), and I think it deserves more attention, because (as dessgeega once said) some games desire to be played, and are made happy when people play them.
It was the first Game Maker game I ever played, when I tried it I was amazed at how much can be done with that engine as opposed to the O.H.R.RPG.C.E. In my mind it’s a great example of the type of game that Game Maker allows people to make—some kid just thought “wouldn’t it be great if I combined Zelda and a shmup?” and then BAM! The game existed.
Adam “Atomic” Saltsman’s Flash game APIflixel is out. It’s a vastly-improved version of the engine he used to create his popular web games Gravity Hook and FATHOM.
Features:
- High performance 2d Flash rendering
- Lots of retro game physics and effects built-in
- Easy to learn, uses no Flash libraries or Flash classes
- Object-oriented Actionscript 3
- Includes the source code for a complete game
- Forums to help collect tutorials and whatnot
And the online documentation is generated dynamically by Ivan “toastie” Safrin’s Nanodoc system.
Ladies and gentlemen, the world just became a better place to make games exist in.
Photopia by Adam Cadre is probably his most famous interactive fiction. It was released in 1998 for an IF contest (which it won). I don’t play IF games that often because their puzzles can often be maddeningly obscure, but this is an exception, and is one of my favorite games—it’s not a typical IF game.
As much as I hate when others say this, Photopia is a game that it’s best to go into unprepared for, without knowing what to expect. Expectations can affect the experience. But I’ll at least say that it’s short, very well-written, that it involves only a single puzzle, and that it’s linear. If that isn’t your cup of tea, ignore this post. There are a lot of things about it which don’t make sense until the end. The nature of its single puzzle and its ending are the things people tend to remember about it.
Cadre’s other IF are worth checking out too—he personally feels that his best work is Varicella (also found on that same page), because it is a full world and Photopia is more of a short story, but Photopia is probably better for the casual IF user since it’s less difficult to get into.
Version 1.4 of Johan Peitz’s popular jumping game Icy Tower was released today, and features a number of improvements, including new graphics and options for stat-tracking and customizing your experience. The last version of the game came out at least 3 years ago, but Icy Tower has maintained its large and loyal fanbase since its release in 2001. And it’s perfect timing for Classics Week… did you plan this, Johan?
Posted by Guest Reviewer
Thu, 04 Jun 2009 01:25:00 GMT
[This is a guest review by Duckmeister.]
Ore no Ryomi 2, by Mr. Chubigans (Sandbox of God, ShellBlast), is a cooking/restaurant simulator that places you in the role of an entrepreneur chef who opened his new restaurant. The game is based upon the fantastically successful Ore No Ryouri cooking game series in Japan. Depending on the time of day and your advertising, you will get customers who order various foods on your menu, and as they wait in line, you can take their orders and are placed in a fast-paced minigame which resembles cooking that food. For instance, an order of beer involves you filling the glass to order (half-full, overflowing), or an order of fries involves you dipping the fries in the deep-fryer for the perfect amount of time.
Based on how well you do in the minigames, you get money for every order that is completed. You can use that money to advertise (get more customers), buy foods (add more items on the menu), add items (like televisions which increase customer patience), or even game-changing upgrades like a delivery system that completely changes your business model. Ore No Ryomi 2 provides a great risk vs. reward system.
A “round” in the game takes place over the course of the day, and during that day you have to regularly run the garbage disposal, wash dishes, put out kitchen fires, and prevent robberies. Each of these minigames distracts you from your goal of getting food to your customers, and provides a great “beat the clock” element to an already intense game. If you decide to skip these minigames you are penalized, both monetarily (getting robbed) and in other ways, decreasing the efficiency of your kitchen even more. Plus, if you skip enough of these your Health Rating goes down and the Health Inspector fines you heavily.
The game is really polished, and you can tell the amount of work that was put into it. If you take the time to do something, like the read various news stories, you’ll really start to see the immense charm of such a game. The artwork is great, and seeing the expressions on each person’s face and experiencing the quirkiness (maybe Japanese-ness?) of the game really draws you in. Plus, there are challenges that are totally optional, which is great. For instance, if you get all perfect orders in a day you get an extra $200, but it’s not something that’s stuck in your face or even portrayed as some sort of achievement. And because it’s presented that way, you really get a great rush of satisfaction when you receive that $200 after all of your hard work.
Mantra, a Mac freeware game by the Syzygy Cult released in the mid-90’s. It was a fun Zelda-style game with really good music.
There’s no download for Mantra, or Mantra 2, its sequel, on the author’s site anymore (or really much mention of them), but you can get them both here. Unfortunately, the games will only run on OS 9 and Intel-based Macs like my Macbook Pro don’t support the Classic environment. Would someone with an old Mac or an emulator kindly take some screenshots of the two games so that I can add them to the database?
From snooping around it sounds like it was a fairly well-regarded game back in the day, but for the life of me, I cannot find a single screen online.
Update: Thanks very much to Ben Donatelli for the screenshots!
Back in the day, Fallen Angel Industries, or FAIND, was a well-regarded group in the Klik community (the community of people who use Klik n’ Play, The Games Factory, and Multimedia Fusion). They released a number of entertaining and polished titles, including Super Ken Senshi, Factor X, and Siege. Some of their former members include Joakim Sandberg, who released the original Noitu Love under FAIND, and Hamish McLeod, the creator of the now-vaporware War Angels.
Of their games, Tango Strike continues to stand out to me as particularly entertaining and polished. In the game you control a squad of three operatives which you can switch between. Each operative is better at one thing or another. Johnson, for example, is the weapons expert. Miles is good with tools. Vasquez is a woman. You can outfit your squad before each mission and are given a money bonus depending on how well you do in speed, stealth, and teamwork.
The missions, which can get pretty complex, span large maps, and there is some freedom in how you accomplish your various goals, which generally involve rescuing hostages, disarming bombs, and blowing stuff up. But the flavorful briefings and varied locations make it fun to play and see what the next mission is. Which is good, because it’s definitely a pretty challenging game at times.
Speaking of Klik history, the Daily Click recently put up The Click Museum, where you can download a lot of classic Klik games, including Tango Strike! Let me know if anyone still has the RPG Sword of Cobalt. I loved that game. It’d be a shame if it were lost forever.
Posted by Guest Reviewer
Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:40:00 GMT
[This is a guest review by ForTheUSSR, who first encountered the game on a CD called 300 Arcade Games.]
XEvil is a fun, free, ultra-violent, 2D side-scrolling deathmatch arena. It was developed by, believe it or not, an M.I.T. student named Steve Hardt (it’s freeware and open source). Released in 1994, it runs on Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms. You can play as many different characters (including a soldier, ninja, alien, robot, and several others) in a variety of game modes. You have your run-of-the-mill elimination mode, team deathmatch, and even a campaign mode. Also, the levels are randomly generated. Each character has unique abilities (ninjas can crawl on walls), but there are weapons and items that all the characters can use (like a pistol, laser, and my personal favorite: the chainsaw).
You can play by yourself against computer opponents, but the best part of this game is, in my opinion, the ability to play networked multiplayer. You have to manually type IP addresses, and I had some problems with this at first (if you’re not sure which IP you should tell others to type, use ipconfig in a DOS prompt). Once you get it working, it’s really addicting. The cooperative campaign mode is a fun challenge, and you get a short title after you die depending on how well you played (e.g. Hell’s Gatekeeper). You can play against bots in team deathmatch or just have a free-for all with your friends.
There are several things that I think make this game fun. The plot, characters, sound effects, and backgrounds are ridiculous and somewhat humorous (There are signs in the backgrounds saying things like “Strangle Your Pets”). The variety of items ensures that the game doesn’t get too repetitive, and lets you develop strategies. And nothing, NOTHING, beats co-op games (unless you can’t find anyone to play with).
At times the game is a little buggy, and the AI isn’t very intelligent. In addition, the control scheme takes some getting used to. But none of that seems to matter when you’re chainsawing your way through a screaming cluster of aliens, robots, ninjas, and Flying Burger King Guys while high on PCP. And the best part is, you don’t need a fancy computer to play it. If you have some cruddy old PC and a bored friend, just hook it up to your network and play away.
Anyways, check it out if you’re in the mood for some fast-paced, old-school action. You might get a kick out of the website, too. Especially the character page (look under the Characters and Weapons tab).
