Category Archives: Casual Game

Communities

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My brain has surfaced from the depths of family life. At least long enough for me to compose thoughts into words and sentences! I’ve been dabbling in phone games a lot for the past two years because I love having hopes shattered by bad freemium models. But in that time I’ve played two games that ran into the concept of community in interesting ways. Game the first is Tap Titans 2. This is a clicker or incremental game. You “fight” titans, and can unlock heroes and artifcats that either improve your performance or automatically attack on your behalf. It is a perfect skinner box of the prestige-based clicker loop. The first game was an entire single player affair. Even the tournaments are really just single player races against the clock to see if you can hit an arbitrary stage cap. The second game is also single player, except the devs added Clans. You join a clan, and can contribute to Clan Quest fights. These run for a limited time and each player gets one “free” 30 second attack every hour. Killing the CQ Boss increases your CLan’s “Clan Ship” bonus. The clan ship fires a large hit into your personal Continue Reading →

Hero Siege: Non Sequitur Fun

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I’ve been playing this on a lark lately.  I must have gotten it during a Steam sale or a Humble Bundle.  At the core, Hero Siege is kind of a SmashTV meets Zelda-styled art rogue-like, with a side of Diablo.  It is quite fun, if not the most sophisticated rogue-like I have played. The game has 10 or so classes of heroes to choose from, and then you enter the world and face waves of enemies until you die.  You gain experience towards levels.  At each level you gain a skill point for the basic skill tree each hero posses, and a few attribute points.  Think Diablo-light attributes and a single four tier skill tree.  After death skills, attributes, and one item carry forward.  Every 6 waves you fight a boss then move on to a new map.  During play, various events like dungeons, statues, random potions and monster spawners appear.  Play sessions start out brutally short, and become progressively longer as your skills and attributes increase. The fun of the game comes from the quirky classes and odd events that combine in non sequitur fashion to amuse, kill, or empower you.   The classes include a sand flinging nomad, tower Continue Reading →