Day 5: Bubble Town: Party Plant Beta

Busy day today. I mostly want to spend some more time with Kodu (the game-making game on XBLA) tonight, but managed to get a little new gaming in today that's worth posting about.

In addition to a quick puzzle session or three on Professor Layton (my Day 4 game), I noticed a couple of line items about Bubble Town: Party Place Beta in my Facebook feed. I figured I should go check it out -- and once I loaded it up, I realized that I had installed it previously but mostly forgotten about it.

I dove deeper today and spent about 45 minutes with the game. All-in-all, it's a good free time-waster type of game. It's a variant on Match 3 games with a flick/pinball launcher type variant found in games like Peggle or Zuma. Basically you launch game pieces at clumps of similar-looking game pieces and try to make enough matches to clear the board.

Some of the cool things this incarnation has going for it:

• The different pieces ("Borbs") have personalities. This means they have custom "you got me" sounds when you wake them up or eliminate them.
• Elimination of Borbs isn't just via match-3. You can also eliminate anchor Borbs and all of their children Borbs will fall down to the ground and refill your Borb gun. This is super fun to do and adds elements of risk reward (do I play it safe or go for a trick shot?) and plays into the achievement system (can I figure out the most efficient way to eliminate all the Borbs).
• As much as it is a casual (and somewhat social) game, there is a reasonable amount of strategic depth to the game. If anything, I wonder whether the game is calibrated to be too difficult for beginning players (more on this below).

I'm definitely going to play a few more games to see whether a combination of mastering some of the strategy and figuring out some of the parts of the game that confused me (next section) helps me improve my score and progress further.

Quibbles:

• Aiming just never felt right. For this kind of game, this should have been a deal breaker, but there was enough going on that it ended up more of an annoyance. Part of it was not feeling like my mouse movement was linked 1:1 with an aiming reticle on the shooter. Part of it was that my mouse cursor was invisible -- which left me startled when it actually slid outside the game board hit zone and began to interact with other parts of the screen (power ups, friends list, achievements, etc). Interestingly, Peggle solves for this by always leaving the mouse pointer cursor on-screen so you have a sense of where you're leading the Peggle gun. Not ideal (and I actually prefer the console version better) but it does work better.
• Related to the aiming issue was the fact that aiming guides were not that helpful. First, side guides that seemed to indicate the angle of a ricochet would mysteriously appear and disappear for reasons I could never understand. This made the feature confusing and relatively useless. Second, there were aim guide powerups, but they were hard to use for a few reasons: Because you couldn't see the mouse pointer, you couldn't just pick a spot and have the gun aim where you needed it to "automagically" as you could with Peggle; moreover, the aim guide would go on ad infinitum until it intersected with an object which made it even harder to figure out how to aim for a specific object because you couldn't understand which line you were controlling with the mouse.
• Powerups were confusing to me for a few reasons: First, they generally were NOT introduced through gameplay, but needed to be purchased with BubbleBucks. The help text descriptions were vague and not that helpful which meant that the player needed to spend hard earned bucks before knowing the potential value of the powerup or how to use it. Second, I couldn't reliably use powerups. I moused over them several times -- sometimes I could click on one and have it activate. Other times, now matter where I clicked I couldn't activate a powerup. There was no feedback to let me know what I was doing wrong. [note: I was using Chrome as my browser, and it's possible that some sort of focus-bug was preventing me from using powerups]
• I felt like the challenge ramp was too steep for a casual game. Thinking back to the first time I played the game about a month ago, I'm pretty sure I failed pretty early on and had to restart. This time around I still felt like it was too easy to lose before feeling a sense of success at the game.
• I couldn't figure out the "click to adjust your performance" eye icon. It just switched back and forth between a hi-res and lo-res eye icon.
• I did like (once I discovered it) the 3 helpful mouseover demos. I wonder if these useful demos would have been more useful and discoverable if they just ran in a sequence from top to bottom without requiring the user to mouse over each button.
• A minor point: There were lots of typos. It's a Beta, so no big deal. But I seriously wanted to edit the typos and do some additional copy editing/writing for clarity.

A couple of "interesting" notes.

Interesting note #1: Social dynamics.

So, the game does provide a lot of achievements (which drives status updates in friends' news feeds), has leaderboards, and allows gifting amongst friends. But is that enough of a social tool set to really consider it a "social" game? Are the social aspects of the game compelling enough to drive other players to install the game, play it a bunch, and invite additional friends?

The game can take a long time to play once you get the basics down and I wonder if it might take too long to complete a game to have people play over and over again in an attempt to beat a friend's score (as compared to Farkle or Bejeweled Blitz where games take only a minute or two to play).

I was also left wondering what my incentive to give tokens and levelpacks to other friends would be. I receive no return on these investments (I don't get Bubble Bucks that I can then spend on powerups) or unlock new content for me. Moreover, I can't expect much in terms of reciprocation because I need to have something to give it away... And the "have nots" aren't likely to have anything that I might need in return. There needs to be some sort of reciprocation possible -- gift recipients need to be able to give me things I don't have and/or I need to get some sort of "reward" for being magnanimous in my giving behavior.

Interesting note #2: "Spare Change" currency.

One of my side interests in the games space that I developed while at Amazon.com is online payments. How do you convince people to put their cash into the system in order to engage in all these micro-transactions that biz types keep talking about.

I've tried out some of the "watch advertisements for credits" models with varying degrees of success in the past. One shortlived service provided me with credit towards my Gamefly account for watching targeted ads. I also tried one disasterous and shady example this via Facebook where I needed to click all sorts of ads and enter all sorts of personal information to get some in game currency (of course I refused).

If I'm actually going to shell out cool hard cash to play these games, then: (a) the game has to be compelling in a way that these games currently aren't right now; and (b) the payments system needs to be secure and low friction.

The Spare Change app is designed to try and address part (b). And I think it's getting a step closer. What it really seems like is a portal to a variety of existing payment sites (like Paypal) that people will likely have already heard of and trust. Specifically, I don't have to give my credit card to yet another internet service provider. I can even pay by phone if I have this service set up with a partner of Spare Change. This is definitely a step in the right direction -- and if I had some idea of what other games and apps currently supported Spare Change I might have added some cash via Paypal right then and there.

Update to Jewel Quest 2

So, I've been playing a bit more Jewel Quest 2 on my flight back to Seattle. I must say, that although I'm still enjoying the core mechanic (gem swapping), there are a couple of system design and usability issues that are annoying me.

First: Usability

• It's hard (especially in windowed mode) to see whether the background of a square is colored in or not. This makes it really hard to tell at the end game which are the last few squares that need solving. I live in constant fear that I'm going to be struggling to figure out which spot is still incomplete when time runs out. That kind of "challenge" is not fun. The fun challenge is knowing which spots you need to fill in and then racing against time to fill them.
• I dislike the fact that I can't click-drag to swap a gem or to cue up another swap as I wait for a cascade to complete. Bejeweled Blitz (and I believe other variants of it) have this feature and it's one of those things that makes the game feel less polished in comparison to its competitors.

Next: Systems

• I'm wondering why the cascades (when multiple columns and rows collapse) and > 3 gem matches are less exciting than in Bejeweled. I miss getting point multipliers when I have a large cascade and I miss getting special gems when I complete >3 gem matches. To me, this just reduces the depth of the game -- and makes completing larger cascades/matches less rewarding.
• I also wonder why I need to be double penalized when I use a bunch of Specials but fail to complete the level in time. This results in losing a bunch of specials AND a life. Seems to me like it would be more fair to the player to return specials that were used if the game ends in failure. This is compounded by the fact that there is no obvious "grind" mode (you need to dig into the options menu to find it) and is rendered absurd by the fact that if I actually want to "game" the system, I can quit/Alt-F4 to exit the game completely and restart at no penalty (other than the time it takes to close and re-open the game) as long as I do it before the clock runs out. No loss of life or Specials. Restarting the level costs me a life (after the first minute or so of play).

I'm guessing that these design choices resulted from the desire to have a leaderboard (have players grind in the tournament section instead of during the single player mode) and a sense that progression-based games are only challenging and fun if there are dire consequences for running out of lives and having to restart from the beginning.

What this means for me (someone looking for mental relaxation and flow) is that I need to find another variant that lets me do more free play grinding. I don't mind being entered into leaderboard contests (like Bejeweled Blitz) and like games part of the progression is unlocking new content (like Puzzle Quest).

Of course, to be completely fair to the makers of Jewel Quest 2, their game came out in 2007 -- well before either of the other competitors I mention in this review. Game development is an iterative process and I look forward to new variants in the future.

Questing for Jewels: Jewel Quest 2 (retail) and Jewel Quest Mysteries (30 min trial)

So, I don't think these are the most recent incarnations of the Jewel Quest games, but they were all I had installed on my laptop during my SEA->AUS flight. I did have the GotY edition of Galactic Civilizations 2 in my bag... but the bag was in checked baggage.

This isn't to say I dislike object matching games. Not at all. I love them. I just think that the bar is quite high in terms of nailing core game play, feel, and level of polish. I was hopelessly addicted to Puzzle Quest  on XBLA and I am hopelessly addicted to Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. 

I picked up JQ2 and Jewel Quest Mysteries on the Amazon.com/games site (I talked about the site and download/install process in a separate post).

For free games (one was free retail; the other was a free 30 minute trial) they were pretty decent. Some feedback on both follows.

Jewel Mysteries 30 minute trial:

This game included a bunch of different puzzle solving mini games, but was mostly a "find the object" pixel hunter game. I have been known to enjoy a good "find the object" game (I recently reviewed Nancy Drew Dossier: Lights, Camera, Curses) and enjoy games that have a variety of puzzles and challenges to mix it up a bit.

I did have a few quibbles with this game, though.

First question: Why the 30 minute trial? I wonder why any "mission" or "level" based games would use a time cutoff instead of a progression cutoff (e.g., you get the first 2 missions and a tutorial). I felt stressed out the whole time that the game was going to end before I really had a chance to explore the available content. 

The learn as you play hint system was a little overbearing. Modal popups that require a confirmation break up the flow of the game and are unnecessary except in the most dire failure cases. What this makes players do is click the "no more help" option box which means that they won't receive help when they actually do need it. Game mechanics should be discoverable through game play, game feedback, and UI element behavior. Even more frustating was the fact that the hints were not contextual: The "Find 3 Gold Coins  for an Extra Hint" prompt came up 2 minutes into the game and had nothing to do with the task I was working on. Why not wait for me to discover a Gold Coin and then give me the hint... Or just bubble up "1 of 3" to tease me to find out what 2 more get me.

The one example where a modal popup did make sense was when I made 3 clicks in a row in error. The game warned me that I was penalized every time I make three erroneous clicks. That said, this might have been done more gracefully via some sort of non-modal "bubble up" text "Strike 1..." accompanied with a punishment sound/visual. At "Strike 3...." there could be a nice animation and message that shows the time penalty deduction. The other problem was that the sound feedback for an invalid click was so subtle that I often didn't realize the click registered and thus clicked multiple times getting multiple strikes without realizing it. 

The initial "find the object" puzzle was too hard. It took forever to find the thermometer (which looked like a cell phone to me, see my note below) so, most of my trial version time was spent being frustrated. 

NOTE: It is puzzling to me why one would choose a non-stereotypical thermometer art asset in the game. Seems to me that you could easily test how recognizable certain art assets are via online survey and then use the most prototypical exemplars as game pieces.

Some other issues with the "find the object" game mode:

• I knew there was a hint mode and I could unlock it using coins. But I couldn't find the third coin required. On the plus side, while trying to figure out where it was, I somehow discovered that I could look at other maps to try and find coins and solve puzzles. However, once I got the coins, they seemed to disappear. I pressed the "empty lightbulb" on the top right of the screen (seems a likely "hint" icon, right?) and got a penalty strike assessed against me (whoops). I thought I wasted my coins. Then I noticed "Specials". Not "Hints" but "Specials". I pressed it and a spot glowed on the screen. I didn't see a thermometer there -- but I did see what I thought was a cell phone. I pressed Specials again (casting my second and final Special) and the same space glowed. I touched the "phone" thinking it must be a "special" item to pick up. Guess what. It was a thermometer. Only 6 "hint" coins wasted. Sigh.
• The jewel matching minigame was a little sub par compared to the great freely available versions. It felt a little flat in terms of visuals and sound effects and the actual swapping mechanic was not as slick and smooth as Bejeweled. The jewel matching minigame felt way too easy compared to the "find the object" game. I'm not sure how best to calibrate difficulty in these games, but I'm not sure they were set correctly (one was too hard; one was too easy). 
• The "upgrade screen" seemed pretty hard core to me. It included some second order unlocking rules that you needed to learn. The basic gist of the upgrades was to bolster your weaknesses (suck at object find, take extra hints; suck at jewel match, start with some squares already completed) so that if you get stuck/don't like a certain kind of puzzle you can cheat your way through it by grinding your way through other puzzles. I'm all in favor of having deep systems that improve user experience -- but there's only so much "under the hood" wrangling most players will want to do. 
• The puzzle assembly game (place different sized objects onto a puzzle board so that they fit together correctly) was a little hard core for the first time player. The mechanics were cool, but took a few moments to figure out. A more obvious first puzzle would have been less jarring.

I didn't get much further because -- BAM -- midway through clicking an item on my screen, the screen went black and I was kicked out and given an upsell option. It seems (to me) like it would be a better experience to give players a section of content (say 5-10% of the total game) that they could play however they liked for as long as they liked. If the game was fun enough, people would buy it for the additional content.

Jewel Quest 2 

I think I've already blogged a little about this game during my original Amazon.com/games post. Anyhow, I played a bit more of it when my Jewel Quest Mysteries demo expired. It's pretty good, but not quite state of the art in terms of gem matching games anymore.

 

I love the interesting rules and jewel variants that get layered on as the game progresses. However, the learning curve seems to be a bit steeper than necessary. I didn't expect to lose a life on the second board. I wonder if part of the difficulty of launching a sequel is that you don't want to bore your core audience who are ready for a steeper curve and more challenging puzzles off the bat. Seems to me like this would be a great opportunity to include old content as a "learn-to-play" mode to ease newbies -- or folks who want to start at a more leisurely pace -- into the game.

 

Also, I'll never understand why some of these kinds of games don't have a "free flow" jam mode where you can just play the basic mechanics over and over again and never die (if you just want to match gems) or include several different time attacks so that you can quickly jump in a game that fits the length of your gaming break.

The game did include a Tournament mode, but hid it behind scary descriptive text: "Challenge players from around the world". I only thought to try it after this review (to see if it included some sort of free low jam that I referred to in the previous comment). Note that I would NOT have just checked it out on my own -- too scary. I don't generally like playing games with strangers.

Turns out that this game play mode is completely asynchronous. You just complete puzzle modes and your score is compared head-to-head against the score of someone who has already played the game. It was actually kind of interesting.

More compelling (in my opinion) would be to have included some live leaderboard data in the game shell that would have let players know that they can compare against other players if they want to. Leaderboards (especially if they contain cool info like "top scores from France") are much more approachable than a "Tournament" or "Challenge Players" mode.

 

A couple of usability issues emerged with the game:

• The hover/mouseover feedback is too subtle, which resulted in me making swapping errors. This is super frustrating when you're operating in a challenging area of the puzzle and have spent a bunch of time lining up the jewels just right -- only to blow it by mistakenly clicking the wrong tile. I actually wasted a "special" by mistakenly targeting the wrong square. Adding a more noticeable (but still pleasant) sound, some gravitational pull, and a visual pulse/bulge would go a long way to prevent this issue from happening.
  
• The other frustrating part is the "final countdown alarm" that happens when your timer is almost at zero. It isn't apparent how many ticks/seconds there are left before Game Over once the alarm goes off. This makes it hard to decide whether to keep pushing forward to solve the last few spots or to spend your specials. I spent a special when the timer lit up as I didn't want to risk losing the game. But if I had 30 seconds before time ran out, I would have tried to complete the game myself for 25 or so seconds before resorting to my special.
  

One kind of "freaky user experience" note:

 

I was playing the game on the plane with my noise cancelling headset on. On one of the levels there is some tribal music and a bunch of voices chanting and arguing in the background. I kept turning my head to see what all the fuss was about before realizing it was just the game.

Freaky.

Bejeweled Blitz Sound Off. Why is BB harder to play without SFX?

I'm sure other folks have addressed the issue more thoroughly, but I've definitely noticed that I obtain much higher scores "sound FX on" than "mute" whilst playing Bejeweled Blitz.

Part of it must be that I'm getting additional information that I can somehow process in parallel to the visual stimuli I'm already paying attention to. I can tell a chain reaction is continuing while I scan for the next match; I know I need to speed up as the clock is about to run out.

But I also think that part of it has to do with the rythm and flow of the game. Successes are much more visceral and exciting when combined with the solid reinforcing crashing sound; matches made "to the beat" form chains that lead to greater points.

It's hard to believe that such a quick and simple matching game has captivated me... And though I am improving over time, I still feel like it has a lot more to teach me in terms of game design and gamer goals/expectations.

On a side note, it's interesting to consider the use of sound FX on websites. If I had been asked 5 years ago, I would have hastily concluded that sound FX on websites = bad. But I'm not sure this is a universal truth anymore.

Obviously some websites are dedicated to streaming media and require sound to be useful.

Well designed sound feedback could help give user interfaces a more solid "feel" when subtle (and well designed) cues are combined with mouseover and click events. We see this in games all the time.

The basic problem is that the bad apples spoil it for the well-intentioned sound designers. I need to mostly surf with the sound turned off because I hate annoying SFX, VO, and music. I wonder if there's a browser-based solution that defaults to "no sound please" but lets you permit specific sites to broadcast sound if they've earned your trust. It's kind of like the headset for Xbox Live. Great idea when I'm in a party with friends. Never going to use it otherwise.

And, on a completely unrelated note, I'll post some more on Sonic Chronicles in the next day or so. I forced myself to play some more -- with mixed results.

Just tell me why can't this be love? (by love, I mean a great demo)

After watching a really terrible movie on the 360, I decided to cruise some of the recent demos that I have downloaded. Some of them were trial versions of XBLA titles and others were demos of upcoming console releases.

I spent a few minutes in each and will have to return to some of them for deeper analysis. But the overwhelming sense I got from the demos was "meh". None of them sucked me in from moment one. None of them filtered me into an experience that left me wanting more. And certainly none of them made me want to purchase full retail versions.

The demos I tried were:

• On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness (ep. 2)
• Resident Evil 5
• Tom Clancy's HAWX
• Three on Three NHL Arcade

So, 2 sequels and 2 new IP (well, reasonably new IP). 2 XBLA trial versions and 2 retail demos. A variety of different genres.

Were there any unifying flaws of these try-before-you-buy experiences? Not really.

In some ways, it was unlikely that I would really get into the first 2 titles. I've played previous versions of the games and just can't get into the core mechanics. 

• RE5 is great in terms of mood and suspense, but like Condemned, I just can't get into the claustrophobic game play. In some ways, I'm still not sure how I managed to enjoy Dead Space so much (given it's another plodding/claustrophic action horror game), but I never did finish it so maybe the setting and zero-grav game play could only carry it so far.
  
• Precipice is just too UI and word-driven. I love the use of comic strips to tell story (which has been used to great effect in other games like Max Payne) but I feel like I'm constantly waiting for another UI element to load or to quit out of a dialog tree that goes on forever. I never even got to explore the core combat systems. Given that I didn't get very far in the original Steam download, maybe the game is mostly about dialog trees and reading -- which isn't really my kind of game. I also found the world hard to navigate, the UI difficult to parse, and the penalty for clicking the wrong item is severe (you play the waiting game for the next screen to load).

HAWX started out with a bold (but not obvious) premise: To get players flying around in co-op mode with other folks. I'm always skeptical of this kind of experience (I hate playing with strangers for all the usual reasons) and generally skip demos that are MP only. But, ever since I had a blast playing through the Army of Two demo with a stranger, I've been more open to this kind of experience.

The basic flaw with the HAWX demo was that it had no real quick start mode that dumped you into a sandbox "fly around" mode. Instead you needed to worry about decisions like "Starting" a game vs. "Joining" a game (and all sorts of other options). Once the game started you were presented with boring tutorials that were easy to fail or skip by accident which left you stuck, having to guess what the designers meant for you to do to trigger the next sequence.

Unfortunately the co-op experience wasn't a great teaching experience, either. Unlike in a "walking around" game where you are in constant contact with other players and can observe and mimic their behavior in order to figure out what's going on, in a flight combat game usually other players are merely blips on the radar screen. 

There were other critical failings as well: Knowing that 50% of users will probably want to invert their camera/yaw, there should be an easy way to adjust this. The feature is buried under an options submenu that has jargonistic working with no useful help text. Moreover, there is no UI feedback to let you know whether your change registered or not, so I exited out twice without actually changing the option as intended.

But, when it comes right down to it, there is one main reason why I probably won't play HAWX again. Flying the plane is not fun. It feels slow, sluggish, and weightless -- all at the same time. Yeah, there's some rumble when I launch a missile, but I don't really feel like I'm flying a top of the line jet fighter. I realize that it's hard to simulate the kind of speed that these jets are capable of in a way that makes for fun game play. But, still, there are things that could be done to make the plane feel more powerful and deadly. At the very least, using the afterburners should rock my world and make me feel like I've got several g's of force pushing back against me.

Three on Three never really had a chance, unfortunately. I'm too big a fan of NHL Hitz (with 2002 being my favorite version). For a simple arcade game, they managed to make the default controls pretty darn awkward. I think that they violated the basic conventions of most other hockey games which made it hard for me to tell what was going on for the first few minutes (I'd switch players instead of speed burst, for instance).

The awkward controls made the game feel random, the weak team AI made the game feel like an episode of "chase the puck around", and the fact that somehow I managed to "win" even though the score was 0-0 at the end of the game still confuses me.

Sometimes I do wonder about the state of the traditional and console game industry. I know that there will always be awesome games out there (and I've been playing a bunch recently), but when I want to have a guaranteed relaxing and fun time, more and more I'm just firing up Facebook and playing some Scramble, Bejeweled Blitz, or my newest interest: Backgammon (by Turnplay). 

I'm a swinger: Pandemic, FEAR 2 Demo, Left 4 Dead MP, Bejeweled 2

I've had a chance to do a bunch of "brief" gaming over the past couple of days. There were highs and lows and in-betweens. I dealt with my biggest "low" in a previous post re: Sonic Chronicles (the DS game by Bioware).

Some of the highs and interestings:

Pandemic is a great co-op board game. There are many things that this game does well, but I think that the key things it executes on are: 

• Vicissitude: The game plays like one imagines a real pandemic might play out -- lots of ups and downs, some randomness that never seems arbitrary or unfair, and a constant feeling of tension.
• Flow: Unlike many competitive turn based board games, the fact that players are constantly engaged and working together means that you're always "in the game".
• Accessibility: I can't remember a board game that had such instant appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. I still remember the first night of game play (over New Years) when I was listening to people play (a mix of gamers and non-gamers). The non-gamers were the first to chime in with "Can we play again?" after they'd watched the world succumb to pandemic.

The FEAR 2 demo had its ups and downs. On the plus side, I love the IP and the feel of the world. 

• The initial experience was very well polished: Creepy, engaging, and it taught me the game play basics in an engaging and entertaining way.
  
• Controls seemed a little overly complex. But I'd recently been playing Fallout 3 (as a small arms gunner) and Left 4 Dead, so I did expect a learning (and unlearning) curve.
• I also appreciated their Game Shell UI: It had a nice flow that only a few other games have used. First it helped me calibrate my display screen (it's a dark game, so it needs to be optimized based on display device -- CRT, Projector, LCD, TV, etc). Second, it had helpful descriptive labels for difficulty settings (self-reported behavior) to help players get into the right experience.
• My main dislike is that I don't like the way my character moves. I can't remember if there was the sense of gravity and inertia in the original (I played it a bit on the PC). But it's distracting and even slightly nauseating to me -- and I can't turn it off or reduce it. I like a little bit of loping/head bobbing (I think Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay got it right) or using some gravitational force/drag when my character is injured, but I think it was ratcheted up a little too high for default running around. Felt almost like Conker when he woke up hungover and unable to move. Frustrating.
• I'm torn re: health packs. I thought I never wanted to see them again after playing a bit of Call of Duty 3 (rest and recover model) and then trying Resistance: Fall of Man (old school med kits). However, games like Left 4 Dead remind me that health packs can add to the experience.

I then jumped into Left 4 Dead to play some MP. Basically I wanted to find out what it was like to play as a zombie. True to most Valve games, there was a ton of depth and a myriad of cool things to explore from the zombie side of things. The stats were detailed so as to make the scoring system transparent -- although I still never really grasped how team points really worked. 

One of the coolest parts of playing as a zombie (other than vomiting, strangling, and otherwise tormenting survivors) is that you get to see the game through several different sets of fresh eyes:

• As director: You get a glimpse of the "set" from behind the scenes. You see the "actors" (the survivors) doing their thing and fade more into the background. It's really quite surreal and often it is quite fun to just watch the action unfold while waiting to respawn.
• As a study in AI: You have goals (kill survivors, score points, retribution) and abilities (climbing, moving, attack, special). The level is seeded with various grippy UI (where undead can climb and go); closed doors are marked as "breakable"; and you can see silhouttes of your various conspirators and the survivors. I couldn't help but try to deconstruct how AI bots must "see" the level and pursue their "goals" because many of the in-game UI elements seemed like debug tools (albeit with a fine sheen of visual polish) to study and optimize AI behavior.

I kind of wish I could play as the zombies against an entire AI party of survivors. maybe the survivor AI hasn't been optimized for "leaderless" level progression, but still it would be cool to see (although I concede it may not be fun to play).

I finished the night off with some XBLA Bejeweled 2. I've written about my love-hate relationship with Bejeweled Blitz (Facebook) elsewhere, but I basically just wanted to check out the mechanics on the Xbox controller and see if I couldn't learn some more strategies by being able to take turns > 1 minute in length.

As it turns out, Bejeweled isn't very fun to play with the Xbox controller. It's hard to quickly move your selector to a place of interest and there are aiming issues (I often moved a gem the wrong direction by mistake) which makes the game very different, strategically speaking, from the tightly time-constrained FB version. 

I also think that playing on my projector made the game harder to play because I had to physically turn my head to see parts of the board instead of being able to take the whole board in at a glance on the PC monitor-sized version.

That said, it was still a relaxing game to play. I had fun trying to cheese out some Achievements even though I didn't really learn any new strats.

Some gaming updates: Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Conan, Bejeweled Blitz

First things, first.

I finally cracked 100,000 points on the Facebook app Bejeweled Blitz. I've been struggling for over a month to do so while some of my "less serious gamer" friends reached this mark with little or no struggle at all. 

I've been trying to figure out "what gives?" Many folks tell me "it's all luck". But I guarantee that I've played more rounds of BB than these friends, so that kind of rules chance out. What I'm left to believe that I was systematically pursuing strategies that were leading me to perform worse than chance.

As someone who spends his professional career breaking down core game play mechanics, this has been a very humbling experience. Now I need to see if I can replicate my success (as my other friends have done) and then analyze what I'm doing now that I wasn't doing before.

On another note, I just received a copy of Conan. I don't know much about the game, except that it's from THQ and I know one of the design leads who provided a lot of combat mechanics, balance, and pacing feedback to the development team. He wrote an article about it in Game Developer that was quite instructive. I'm curious to see how the "learn as you play" was structured and how the challenge ramp was built with the goal of applying some of those findings to other games I am working on.

And, just to take a completely different tangent, I also fired up Guitar Hero: World Tour and watched Liza play some Wii Fit. GH:WT has some interesting usability challenges associated with it. I only spent a few minutes with it, so haven't formed any complete impressions. It looks like the kind of game where the design intentions were noble (Quick Play mode; Tutorials; customer generated content sharing; "Beginner" difficulty level) but somehow along the way it crossed the fine line of "you're killing me with all this help". It's already a game about sensory overload (especially when you add band mates and beers), so the question becomes: How do you please everybody (and this is a game with a mass following of diverse gamers) without failing certain basic use cases (like easy to jump into party mode; co-op tutorial sessions; etc).

More thoughts to come.

The night ended with Liza demonstrating some of her new Wii Fit accomplishments and having a quick 27 minute workout. It's amazing how all of the sudden it hits you that you've done almost a half an hour of exercise. Yeah, there are problems with the trainers (they're creepy) and the challenge ramp (it seems like there should be at least one more step between Basic and Advanced for some exercises), this is one of those games that could probably change someone's life around. I'm excited about doing some of the stretching and balance exercises -- they'll be really helpful for hockey. And some of the strength exercises also look pretty darn useful.

New Year: Need new updates...

I'm sitting in between two vacations (one in Kamloops, BC; one in Maui, HI). I haven't made enough time to blog lately, but I have been gaming.

Here are some of the games I've been playing that I really need to write about soon:

• Fallout 3
• Bejeweled Blitz
• World of Goo (PC demo)
• Crayon Physics Deluxe (PC demo)
• Meteos (DS)

I've also been listening to groups of friends as they play Pandemic -- an immensely popular co-op board game.

And, of course, there are several "best of" lists that I've been paying attention to:

• Gamasutra's best of 2008
• IGF 2009 finalists
• Joystiq's meta-metareview of 2008 releases