A typical level in Portal

The PC game “Portal”, developed by Valve software in 2007, is in my humble opinion one of the most ingenious game ever created. The concept is simple, but a bit hard to wrap your head around. You have device that can shoot (over distance) a portal entrance and a portal exit, but only on certain surfaces, be it walls, roof or floors. Once both portals have been placed you can walk through the portals either way, and physics count (e.g. “speedy thing goes in, speedy thing goes out”). You can only create two portal openings, and as you progress in the levels you need to figure out exactly how, where and when to place the portals in order to cross chasms, up or over obstacles, around automated turrets that fires at you, transport energy balls into their receivers and open doors by using certain cubes you can pick up in the game. It’s a game that requires thinking, and often challenges you to think completely outside the box.

Scribblings from previous test subjects: The cake is a lie

The gameplay itself makes a great game, even though the game is a bit short. But there’s more. Throughout the game you are accompanied by a computerized voice which speak to you (and watch you) as a “Aperture Science” test subject in “The Enrichment Center”. The voice comes with witty comments and statements which really gives the game personality.

Weighted Companion Cube

Throughout the levels you also encounter the “Weighted Companion Cube”, a cube with a heart, another bonus which adds to the game’s genius. You carry and use the cube while the computerized voice reminds you that it will never threaten to stab you, it cannot speak and in the event that it does speak, disregard its advice. In the end you are told that your beloved cube cannot accompany you through the rest of the tests and if it could speak it would tell you to go on without it because it would rather die in a fire than become a burden to you.

You are constantly being promised cake when you have completed all of the 19 levels. But once you reach there you are, apparently as every other test subjects, being terminated by transporting you into a pit of flames. But the game doesn’t end there. As you cleverly escape using portals, you navigate through the building to find the source: the computer that have been talking all along. While you find your way towards the computer voice, it inquires you to give up, come back for your cake, jokingly excuses for trying to kill you or lie to you and threatens to start cutting and eating the cake without you.

The computer (voice) behind it all

When you have reached the computer brain behind it all, you are engaged in an end boss fight while the voice constantly tries to discourage you with hilarious statements. Among others how unlikeable you are and that nobody would come to your party, or imitate how stupid you sound. I won’t reveal how the game ends, but after it’s finished you are played the infamous and witty song “I’m Alive”. You are also given the option of replaying some of the levels in advanced mode.

I recommend getting the game, it is included in Valve’s Orange box or can be bought singly through Steam. But if you are convinced it’s not worth buying, (you are totally missing out, fool!) there is a free online Flash-version of Portal. It contains no less than 40 challenging which features almost every feature the real game does. Personally I prefer the real thing. “Portal” and its “Weighted Companion Cube” will always have a special space in my heart.

Still, through the years I’ve come across a few free online games I really think deserves credit. Some of the games contain great (though simple) graphics which is crucial for me to even enjoy looking at something more than five seconds. Other games are more clever and good at keeping the challenges.. well.. challenging and fun.

“Oil Panic” – move and react fast!

A typical level of Oil Panic

It’s rare that I enjoy an arcade game, where time matters. “Oil Panic” is one. It’s a very old game and I’m suprised that it’s still active. It’s in Norwegian, but you don’t need to know more than using the arrowkeys to move left, right and down and Space bar to retreat the oil drill. The goal is to gather all blue drops (presumably oil drops) in the level. The challenge lies in the enemies (in form of flames, red stars or other things) that suddenly appears at the border’s edge and move horizontally. The only way to kill them is by hitting them with the drill head – if they hit your extended pipe you die. That means that even though the drill head is picking up drops way at the bottom, if an enemy appears in the upper rows, you need to climb all the way back up before it hits your pipe and then climb back down again. Special walls and items appear in the later levels, as well as faster enemies and shorter time to react.

“Shift” – think in black and white

A Shift 1 level with a reference to Portal

There are now four “Shift”(s?), but i prefer the first two, “Shift 1” and “Shift 2“. These games don’t consist of many levels, but have a clever gimmick. The game is in black and white for a reason, because pressing Shift inverts the board. Otherwise it appears as a platform-game where you move and jump your way to the exit door. Reaching keys, switches and avoiding spikes have never been as challenging as in “Shift”. The games got humor too, including several obvious references to the great game Portal. I haven’t played “Shift 3” or “Shift 4” as much mostly because the last game runs on a timer.

“Fragger” – ninjahunting with grenades!

A typical Fragger level

I recently discovered “Fragger“, which is basically the traditional Tank Wars dressed up as throwing grenades killing ninjas in a more “urban” setting. You can set your angle and velocity using your mouse, and click to throw a grenade. You only have a limited amount of grenades, but unlimited retries at all levels. “Fragger” consist of 30 creative and challenging levels, where not only adjusting the angle and velocity is crucial for completion. When you have completed all 30 levels, you can play them again using a harder difficulty level.

“Orisinal” games – just cute

A selection of Orisinal games

Games created at “Orisinal” is not really games per se. They are more pleasurable for the eye than actually providing you challenges. The site provides no less than 60 individual games, all in the same style. Each game consists of really just one simple challenge, e.g. stack pigs in order to reach floating muffins high up in the air, or control a squirrel hunting for apples. What really attracts me is their beautiful appearance. My favourite games are the jumping rabbit in “Winterbells” and stacking pigs in “These Little Pigs“.

I’m talking about computer games from 1998, 1999 and 2000, so they don’t have all that super-duper-fantastic 3D graphics in a super-omfg-high resolution. Instead they feature fixed isometric perspective. But it was, and still is, amazing how they managed to cramp up such details on such a small surface – on maps, buildings, and people – so that everyone could easily figure out what it is and appreciate the details.

I have yet not experienced such appreciation of details and addiction of a cleverly designed game since that time. They don’t make games like this anymore.

The games

Not until quite recently I discovered that most of my favourite strategy games were part of something called the city building series, which is a collection of city-building computer games developed by Impressions Games (++) and published by Sierra (++). They started with their first game Caesar (1992), followed by Caesar II (1995), Caesar III (1998), and Caesar IV (2006), all set in the Roman Empire. Other games were Pharaoh (1999) set in ancient Egypt, Master of Olympus – Zeus (2000) set in ancient Greece, and Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom (2002) set in ancient China. They all share the same structure, gameplay, building basics and structuring assignments and campaigns with some differences aside the setting. They all focus on city planning, building and managing, although there is some military and war going on.

Of the city building series’ 10 games so far, I’ve only played a few. Two of them I really enjoyed when I was younger; Caesar III and Pharaoh (including its expansion), the third and fourth game in the series. The other games worth mentioning in here are Settlers III, Age of Empires II and finally Civilization IV (which is a newer game I’ve sneaked in here).

Caesar III

Caesar III was released in 1998, published by Sierra and developed by Impressions Games, the third game of their city building series. It’s a real-time strategy game set in ancient Rome. The game features fixed isometric graphics, but you can turn the map in four directions.

The residents’ dwellings develop from tents and shacks up to luxurious villas, depending on your structuring and services, food, trade goods and desirability. All buildings except residents produce a citizen walking the streets, offering their service to whom they pass; which you can right click and read their opinion of the city. You’ll have to manage residents wishes in order for them to develop, religion, entertainment such as theater, colosseum with actor colonies and gladiator schools etc, health care, education, structure care to prevent fire and collapse, law and taxes, market goods, workshops and raw materials, military if your city are being invaded by others, trading routes with other cities, the Caesar’s liking to you by answering his occasionally call of gifts or military help, and the citizens overall mood by providing them safety, entertainment in order of festivals and blessings from the gods.

Caesar III was the game when I was younger, the one I really played the most in the beginning of my teens. Not only because my German father only allowed me to play “somewhat sensible” games and didn’t allow any even-close-to violent games. (I didn’t tell him about the military part) But still, I guess I’ve inherited the love of order and structure from my my father’s German family, and Caesar III rewarded just that. All cities had to be somewhat sensibly structured; residents, food, trading, buildings and even roads had to be carefully placed if the city was to function well. And I loved it.

My screenshots of Caesar III:

Pharaoh

Pharaoh is the fourth game of the city building series, right after Caesar III. It was released in 1999, published by Sierra and developed by Impressions Games. Pharaoh, and its expansion Cleopatra (2000), are real-time strategy games set in ancient Egypt. The graphics are, as Caesar III, fixed isometric, and has, in my opinion, slightly better graphics than Caesar III. If you have played Caesar III, you will find Pharaoh easily understandable and very similar. There are somewhat similar buildings, requirements for the city to run smoothly, and the residents are as demanding as in Caesar III. You trade (different goods though), organize your city and protect or go to war just like in Caesar III.

I like Pharaoh less than Caesar III mostly because of poorer (and more difficult to plan) road and building structuring; all entertainment venues must be built over an intersection, thus making it more difficult to get it all nice and compact. But the game has improved and added many functions and features I missed in Caesar III. So that kinda makes up for it, I guess. In addition, Pharaoh includes monument building – in some scenarios you are required to build mastabas or pyramids of different sizes.

My screenshots of Pharaoh (including Cleopatra):

Settlers III

Settlers III is actually a German (yes, of course it comes in English) real-time strategy game released in 1998. The game was published by Blue Byte, developed by Phenomic Game Development and features isometric graphics, but, unlike Caesar III or Pharaoh, you can’t turn the map in any other directions.

To begin with you need to build wood cutters, sawmills and stone cutters in order to achieve materials needed to build structures. Then you can build several different food production structures that provide each other with necessary goods, mines that produce iron, gold or coal but need food to function, resident buildings that produce more settlers and workers, iron or gold melters and tool- and weaponsmiths to provide your settlement with tools needed to occupy certain structures and weapons to train soldiers. To expand your land you build watch towers that need to be occupied by a certain military swordsman. Eventually you will explore the world and find other settlements with their own land defined by their watch towers. When you have trained enough soldiers, you go to war by taking over the enemy’s watchtowers. When capturing such an enemy watch tower, the land ownership is transferred, and all enemy buildings in the newly owned land are destroyed.

As opposed to Caesar III and Pharaoh, you can’t plan roads for workers to use in Settlers III, you can only place the structures. As enough workers walk roughly the same way, some kind of path appear. I never find the carriers efficient enough, neither in getting their asses off and go carry something nor the actual walking there and carrying between buildings. It takes time for a free settler to realize ‘oh, there is something needed done over there’, and when they do, they walk slowly. You can’t select nor move carriers or settlers and make them do stuff, you can only sit and wait, and get frustrated whenever a settler actually is too far away to find work to do.

My screenshots of Settlers III:

Age of Empires II

Age of Empires II (for PC) from 1999 is developed by Ensemble Studios and published by Microsoft. The expansion The Conquerors came in 2000. The game is a real-time strategy game and features isometric graphics.

You manage villagers to collect resources such as lumber (chop down trees), food (farms, sheeps or hunting), stone and gold. When you have resources for it, you can build structures that create a selection of different military units, monasteries to create priests, watch towers, resource buildings, houses and buildings which upgrade technologies. At the same time you should explore the map for more resources and locate the enemies. In this game, as opposed to Settlers III and Civilization IV (mentioned next), there is no defined borders of your own land. Instead all units are free to walk anywhere as long as there is a passage through and it doesn’t get killed by wild animals or enemy units. You may build walls to confine yourself behind with gates that only open for you and watch towers to protect you from your enemies, but the more walls you build, the more stone you need.

Sadly the AI of enemies find it clever to periodically send in one or a few enemies into your building centre and try to make havoc (in case I don’t have military units to kill them). I have made it a habit to quickly advance in ages, send workers everywhere on the map to collect all resources before the enemies; especially stone. Already in the beginning I start to create walls with watch towers behind so the enemy units are killed before they even reach the wall and try to destroy it. When I have walled myself in completely, I no longer have to worry about the random, periodically enemy attacks. That’s when I can focus of developing military units, create a huge army of horse-units, siege units and petards (units that explode themselves next to enemy units and buildings).

Screenshots of Age of Empires II (thanks to Google):

Civilization IV

The series of Civilization from Sid Meier is well-known among (turn-based) strategy-gamers, starting with the first Civilization-game already in 1991. Their last game, Civilization IV was released in 2005, published by 2K Games and developed by Firaxis. It also has two expansions; Warlords in 2007 and Beyond the Sword in 2008. The Civilization games are, as opposed to all of the previously mentioned games, turn-based strategy games. Because Civilization IV is quite a few years more recent than the above mentioned games, the graphics are in 3D instead of isometric.

Basically in this game you found cities to take over land, and have to take care to include important resources spread around the map such as food (rice, pigs, bananas, etc), materials (iron, copper, uranium, oil, aluminium etc), goods (gems, spices, ebony, etc). You can construct a large selection of buildings (or wonders) inside your cities which takes a certain amount of turns depending on the city’s population and access to resources around it. The cities can also construct units such as workers who improve the land by adding farms, roads (later on railroads), mines, windmills etc; settlers who are used to found a new city and a large selection of military units. The game slowly progresses in centuries as the turns go by, providing newer technologies and units. A Civilization-game will normally include a number of enemies with their own cities, conquered land and religions, and you can trade, make military deals or go to war against them. You take over a enemy’s city by marching your military units to it and overpower their defense and military force within that city.

My screenshots of Civilization IV:

Screenshot from
Broken Sword 2.5

When Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (PC) was published in 1997, some german fans of the Broken Sword game series got the idea of making an unofficial sequel. They named themselves mindFactory and it took them no less than 8 years to develop and finish the game. Their unofficial sequel was released for free on September 28th and is called Broken Sword 2.5 (downloadable at their site). The game is a classic 2D point-and-click adventure game, following the steps of the first two Broken Sword games. The game has german voices, but luckily comes with english subtitles. The story takes place between The Smoking mirror and before the next official game, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, which was released in 2003.

Being interested in game development and game design I found it interesting to see what some “just some fans” could come up with. They have developed a complete game with great graphics (similar to the earliest Broken Sword games) and a great functional story. Definitely worth a try if you enjoy traditional point-and-click adventure games and don’t mind listening to german voices.

Pong, gamemaking at the University of Oslo

This semester, to my joy, Ping (Program, Information- and Networks-technological Group), a student union at the faculty of Informatics at the University of Oslo decided they wanted to gather students to create computer games. Cleverly, they named this group Pong. (It’s clever because Ping Pong is recognized as the very first (successfull) computer game ever created).

Some of Pong’s members.
Can you find me?

We gather once in the week at Ping’s premises, are randomly split into groups and have three weeks to come up with a game concept and create a computer game out of it. After three weeks, we are randomly split into new groups for another game. The games are programmed using the library Allegro in the programming language C. Most of us are informatics students, with expertise in different areas; programming, artmaking and sound engineering. I signed up for artmaking.

Obviously our games are very simple, because all of us are full-time students, and we only have three weeks per game. The program page at Pong’s website is somewhat updated with .exe’s of our finished games. We even have a forum, but it’s not very active (as only a few of us have registered ourselves there).

Game #1: Rima Training Program (download game)

Screenshot from
“Rima Training Program”

The idea is based on bottle/can sorting machines. You control a ninja with the mouse and the customer on the left are inserting cans and bottles which comes out on the conveyor in front of you. Click (ninja punch) on the bottles at the right time so they fall into the corresponding boxes (green, red, blue). As you advance in the game, the conveyor belt will increase in speed. If you successfully sort bottles correctly, the bar below starts to fill up and you will get a power move (removes all bottles at the belt). If you loose or miss too many bottles, you lose a life point. When there are no more lives left, the customer gets furious, start hitting the machine and it’s game over. In this game I made most of the artwork except the customer, the bottles and life points.

Game #2: Ninja Juggler: Castle Defense

Screenshot from
“Ninja Juggler: Castle Defense”

Control the ninja juggler with the left and right arrow keys, and press Space to throw bombs. Try to hit all the witches, dragons and vampires that passes your castle. The ducks in the pond below you are your lives, and if you hit an enemy more than once, you get an extra bonus. All artwork were made by me.

Game #3:

.. Coming ..

The original
monochrome Oxyd

The gameplay of Oxyd is simple. You control a marble with your mouse, and to solve a level you need to “open” boxes (touch them) and match all pairs of matching patterns. It’s like Memory. When you touch a specific type of box with your marble, the eventually previously opened box are closed if the pattern doesn’t match. If you successfully make a matching pair, they stay there until you have matched all pairs on the level. When you advance in level, there are different obstacles (some of them you can move around), larger landscapes, enemies, different kind of floors and puzzles you need to solve. Since the entire game is based on using only your mouse, you’ll need a steady hand and a good mouse!

Because I had the shareware-version, only the first 10 levels were playable. At level 11 and further you would get a annoying box in a crucial place so you couldn’t complete the level and advance in the game. I seriously don’t remember what I did, but it was not paying for the game and a code to unlock it. Sometimes the box was just gone! Hundred of levels were free to me to explore, and I keenly solved each puzzle getting more fascinated by every passing minute.

Unfortunately at some time when I got older and between computers I lost the game data and eventually forgot about it. During my teenages I explored the internet looking for the game again. I discovered that Oxyd was such a successfull game that several sequels and clones of it was made. The original was made by Dongleware in 1990, but they no longer maintain the Oxyd series. A more detailed overview over the different clones of the Oxyd games are found here (further down the page). On that site you can also download the original DOS Oxyd, among others clones. “Oxyd extra v2.0″ is an official freeware clone of Oxyd made by MadData with permission from Dongleware, and is downloadable at www.oxyd-game.com.

I found a page which holds a complete overview over all versions of Oxyd, but because of bandwith reasons you have to request the downloads by e-mail. At the same site another page describes how to solve the 10 first levels, and loads of good tips for playing Oxyd.

Screenshot from one of Enigma’s landscapes

Not until recently I discovered Enigma, a fairly new game based on Oxyd. Playing it really brings back the joy I experienced when I first played the original Oxyd. It’s free and downloadable at Enigma’s page. It can even be played under Windows Vista and Windows 7 (the other clones requires Windows XP which I don’t run anymore) and contains lots of levels free for exploration and pondering.

Screenshot from Winterbells

Go play Winterbells online.

Control a (cute) bunny and get as high as you can by jumping upwards on falling winter bells! Great time killer while winter approaches.

The game tells the story about Kaim, an immortal who’d lived in a thousand years but yet has no memory of his past. During the game several characters (some also immortals) join him in his journey to reveal their memories and discover who they are. Their world is ruled by another immortal with evil intentions of taking over the world (of course). As our heroes are trying to take him down, the story behind our immortals is revealed.

Digital drawing of mine; some of Lost Odyssey’s main characters

After completing the game at a total of 98 hours of playtime, I’m still a little baffled over the complexity of the game, great graphics and designs, good gameplay and especially good storyline. I may not be an expert on games nor have I played a lot of (typically japanese) role-playing games, but I’m very satisfied with Lost Odyssey which has earned its place in my top favourite games.

Among other things I was pleased with the game design. You are not forced to follow the main storyline at all times; you have hundreds of side-quests and a world free to explore on your own. In addition you have several types of different treasure hunts and minigames. Video clips (often humorous) are triggered when you progress in the game and they often tell you what you should do next. One aspect I especially enjoyed, was the “One Thousand Dreams”, where you can trigger memories in form of dreams. The dreams are beautifully presented with text (some falling down) on a pale background and beautiful background music. The stories are written by the awarded japanese writer Kiyoshi Shigematsu, and ever one of the 1000 stories leaves you with watery eyes. Seriously.

Screenshot from a battle in Lost Odyssey

The game does however have its irritating moments. Such as random fights that just. won’t. stop. coming. The random battles seem to multiply and jump right at you especially when you’re just there to get something, or are lost and trying to get out of there. Fortunately there is an option to flee the battle. The battles usually don’t take long, it depends on what level your characters and the enemies are. As expected, bosses and semi-bosses have tricks up their sleeves. But there was one battle, a boss in Backyard (one of the minigames/sidequests), that actually lasted 2 1/2 hours straight before he finally died. Yes, one battle, two hours and a half of game-time!

Screenshot featuring the main character Kaim.

Nevertheless, take your time to explore every aspect in the game. I was especially amazed by the looks and design of everything, such as cities, objects and buildings. The Pipots (bunny-like creatures living in urns) made me just go aaaw. But I had to snortlaugh at e.g. some of the design of the character’s clothes which were, (in my opinion) horrible. Or maybe I’m just not used to japanese designs^^.

Good guides and walkthroughs

As all great complex games, some guidance and help along the way may be useful. The site twobrothersandasister.com’s pages about Lost Odyssey proved to be useful – especially for us who like to explore and complete the game to the fullest. If you’re stuck or don’t know what to do or where to go next, lost-odyssey.net provides a good walkthrough throughout the whole game. If you just need an overview of the areas to explore, this world map may be just what you needed.

So you’ve completed Lost Odyssey, now what?

Just when I started to notice the small, black hole Lost Odyssey left me in my heart, I tumbled over the Xbox360 game Blue Dragon (released aug 2007) made by the same people who created Lost Odyssey. Sadly, the story is very different as it’s aimed for children, only the game design is similar to Lost Odyssey. I guess I just have to wait for Fable 2.