zen posts

We've followed the game Dyson all the way from its origins as an entry in the TIGsource procedural generation competition. It stole our hearts, and later went on to make itself into a freeware game with some added features. Finally, a year later, it has been released under the new title Eufloria. While the title has changed and the gameplay has been tweaked, this is still the Dyson we know and love from so long ago. It's just received a facelift and the trappings of commercial, retail release. While it may appear to be a strategy game on the surface, it's actually something much different, and sets itself apart through its liberal use of procedural generation and an incredibly unique atmosphere.

Technical diagrams are incredibly interesting to those that can read them. They speak a wealth of information about both the designer and the object that was actually designed. Fig. 8 is a game based entirely around this technical diagrams, and it's gentle gameplay and peaceful music will no doubt help you enter a state of zen. After all, it's the relaxing games that calm you after a long day at work, not the pulse-pounding ones.

You ride a bike through technical diagrams of a neighborhood. You get points simply by surviving, but also by "grinding" nearby lines (getting close the them). The scoring system is based on if your wheels are together, as the longer they are on the same path, the higher your multiplier gets. You can turn slowly to stay on the same path, or quickly to get around obstacles.

Some games are hard, and some games are impossible. Games like I Wanna Be The Guy. Tower of Heaven is a wonderful addition to this catalog of absolutely impossible, mind-destroying games, and it certainly doesn't suffer for it. In fact, you can speedrun the game in less than three minutes, if you are particularly good! Just don't expect to get anywhere close to that time on your first try.

Tower of Heaven is completely peaceful in that there is no fighting of any kind. Just zen-like paltforming. However, it is incredibly hard and you will most certainly die a lot from a lot of seemingly unfair things. Keep faith, though, as the game is definitely finishable and quite excellent all the way through. There are minor issues with memory leaks and improper graphics rendering, so it would be wise to read the information in this forum thread.

Orisinal: Morning Sunshine is a website devoted to the very core of the principles behind casual gaming. With 59 tiny Flash-based games, there is something to please every palate, from the light shmup action of V-Force to the puzzle play of Bauns to the coordination challenges of Floats. Additionally, every game is illustrated with style, using subtle gradations and washes of color not typically seen in Flash titles, making each experience feel more rich and elegant.

Boiled down, the underlying gameplay element of each game is wonderfully simple and thoroughly addictive. And each can be imagined as having been the result of following a random idea, a "what if" scenario. It would seem, then, that there is no such thing as a bad idea for a casual game. How, then, does one determine when to expand an idea into something more complex?