Forces a delightful shooter game with a twist

Posted on February 8, 2007

Force is extremely colorful. If you get your purple circle to cooperate with you, that is. The game play isn’t very intuitive; it’s keyboard and mouse based.The beauty of the game comes from the fact that no two screens ever look alike.

Your bullets are not so much bullets. Actually, they are called “sparkles” and they don’t shoot in the interesting color patterns that you see on the left just on a whim.

That’s where the game play controls come in. Clicking on the left mouse button will cause the sparkles to repel away from you. When they hit the enemies (they usually aren’t colored in), some energy is drained from them. Sounds pretty simple. Until you realize that repelling is not the only way to shoot the sparkles. No, you can also attract them to you by pressing the “S” button, or the middle button on a mouse. Which leads to various sorts of strategies that you will, eventually have to utilize.

However, you do need to use the keyboard to change the special powers that your circle has at his disposal. These make some pretty interesting patterns on the screen. Oh, right. They also kill the enemies pretty well. Of course, these special powers can’t be used too often because they drain the power bar associated with them.

Perhaps the most impressive part of Force is the fact that it was completely developed by a high school student. He says the idea is based on eletromagnetic fields: repulsion and attraction. The idea is well-conveyed, and kudos should be given there, too. Who knew that electromagnetic fields could be so pretty?

This game is fun to look at and enjoyable to play. It’s worth the download and is quite addicting. However, it would have been better if controls were limited to just the mouse. It’s a little hard to remember to press the “alt” key when needing to change the special power.

Interview with Deirdra Kiai: Adventure Game Programmer

Posted on February 5, 2007

Deirdra Kiai, a junior in college (somewhere in Canada, has her personal website states), has accomplished much more than other college students. Or anyone, for that matter. She has two freeware adventure games on her website, Cubert Badbone, P.I. and The Game that Takes Place on a Cruise Ship. Both were made completely by her–everything from writing to art to programming.

I Eat Games: Can you give me a little background about your adventure game projects? Read more

Pile it up

Posted on January 25, 2007

Highpiled is an interesting looking physics-engine type game that basically lets you play Jenga with green cubes. It’s interesting to play, and the engine seems accurate. All you have to do is guide the cubes with your mouse onto each other. I only say “seems” because my graphics engine is not quite up to standard as to what this game should be able to do, so I leave the judgments up to all of you. I mean, there’s nothing to lose, the game is free.

(I learned about this from Binary Joy.)

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