Don't know where, don't know when...

...but I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

Yes, I'm bowing to the inevitable and putting up the shutters. I won't delete this blog, and I don't rule out coming back sometime, but there are now so few GP2X fans about that it doesn't really seem worth it any more. Thank you to everyone who read my wafflings!

Gone all quiet again

Not me this time, but the GP2X scene in general. We're having another new stuff drought, and rapidly approaching two months since the last games were uploaded to OHH. Let's hope that changes soon!

Game review: Bunny Traps

Bunny Traps
Genre: Puzzle
Author: Guyfawkes and Rik Nicol
OHH download: v1.1 (28/12/05)
Size: 3.9 MB
Licence: Freeware

Description
Bunny Traps is essentially a version of the age-old Hangman pencil and paper game. You must guess letters that make up a hidden word, and for each you get wrong your bunny moves closer to his untimely demise. There are two game modes: Challenge, which is a ten-stage progression, and Arcade, in which you play until you die (well, until the bunny does). Only dangers which have been unlocked in Challenge mode are available in Arcade mode. Arcade has three difficulty levels, and even the ability to use a custom word list by editing a text file, though each of these must be between six and 14 characters inclusive. You score in a slightly convoluted fashion: you gain points for correct guesses, lose them for incorrect guesses, and can win bonus points for "chains", in other words multiple correct guesses with no incorrect letters intervening.

Bunny Traps has an odd clause in its licensing, as follows: "This game may not be distributed as a means of making profit, for example advertising or selling a GP2X with Bunny Traps being mentioned or being included on a compilation CD/DVD which is sold for profit. Bunny Traps is a freely available game and it should stay that way!" Taken literally, this would mean that selling your GP2X on eBay with the phrase "You can play a great word game called Bunny Traps on this console!" would not be allowed. Very strange...

Addictiveness: 5
I really like Hangman, and was expecting Bunny Traps to be just as addictive. Unfortunately, it isn't. The reason for this is its difficulty. On Challenge mode, you are allowed only five incorrect guesses before your bunny is doomed, and when on the very first level you are confronted with words like "piazza", this really is too little. I could see many people giving up on the game quite quickly because of this.

Depth: 6
I have a bit of a prejudice against games where you have to unlock levels, going right back to Lemmings days. Maybe this stems from my background in the Grand Prix Legends racing sim, which gave you all the tracks and all the cars straight away. Still, the Challenge mode is okay for what it is, and the three difficulty levels in Arcade are useful enough as a means of holding the player's interest.

Controls: 4
Odd. In the main menu, you're told to press Start to choose an option. This is strange in itself given that B is more usual, but actually it's not Start you need! The instructions are incorrect: in fact, X takes you to a submenu, while B is the cancel button. Once you manage to display the actual on-screen help this is given correctly, but still... in the game itself, yo use the stick to choose letters, L and R (not left and right on the stick, for some reason) to skip five letters back and forth, X to select a letter and Start to pause, and potentially quit.

Graphics: 7
The presentation in Bunny Traps is generally very well done. There's a distinctly cartoonish feel, starting with the opening screen with the bunny yelling, "_ELP/_E" (HELP ME) in true Hangman style. This mark would probably have been an 8 had it not been for the rather squint-inducing high score entry screen -- larger text here would have made a considerable difference.

Sound: 6
Much too loud for headphones as usual... a rather odd, speeded-up, bouncy tune to start with. You can choose in the game menu whether to have the music and/or the sound effects switched on. I suspect the music will drive most people mad after a while. The crowd cheers when you get a word correct are cute, though, it has to be said.

Documentation: 8
I was impressed to see a "How To Play" option in the menu, and this seems to explain the game in plenty of detail. I can't imagine there are too many people out there who don't know Hangman, but even if there are they should know what they're doing after reading this. There's also a readme file with the package, which you'll need to read if you want to know how to set up a custom words file.

Completeness: 9
The game is basically done: the core works, there are a decent number of levels, there's a good help screen and nothing seems to crash.

Overall: 6
Bunny Traps is an early GP2X game, from late 2005, and in truth sometimes it shows. The somewhat bizarre choices for the controls, the overly difficult Challenge level (eg on level one, "filial" -- five wrong guesses is simply not enough) and the eventually maddening music are examples. On the other hand, the cartoonish visuals are very well and amusingly done, and the ability to add your own word list in Arcade mode is most welcome. It's another game that would probably have been wonderful with another few weeks' work, but which as it stands has a few too many rough edges.

Yep, still here

This time my absence is not because of boredom or annoyance, but just because life is very hectic at the moment. I have a game I very much want to try, and so with luck that will be reviewed in the next few days.

Game review: Escapa!

Escapa!
Genre: Arcade
Author: Guyfawkes
OHH download: vGBAX2007 (12/07/07)
Size: 3.6 MB
Licence: Freeware

Description
Based on a Java game of the same name, Escapa is a reflex/concentration-centric arcade game. The mechanics are very simple: you control a red block (with the stick) and four blue blocks of differing rectangular shapes move around the board. If your block touches any of them, or the edge of the playing area, then it's game over. Every ten seconds, the game speed increases. The time you've stayed alive is shown (in seconds) and there is only one object: keep going as long as possible!

Addictiveness: 5
Frustratingly hard to start with, and then just very hard. That stops you wanting to go back more than a few times -- but for those few times you will get a feeling of achievement if you happen to beat your previous high score. (These are ordered simply by the time you lasted, in seconds.) I doubt you'll keep this game around for all that long, as there's no real reason to return after a while.

Depth: 2
Given that you're doing well if you last more than 20 seconds, there isn't a lot of this! Only the one level, and no options to change anything.

Controls: 7
The basic controls are simple enough: you just use the stick to move your red block around. Selecting from the main menu is also easy (see Graphics, below). The high score entry is a little unnecessarily complicated, though, and does make Escapa! feel slightly less wieldy than it might. If you have the appropriate hardware you can also play with a USB mouse, but as I don't I can't test that.

Graphics: 5
Very simple indeed: a white playfield, the red and blue blocks, and score and "Game Over" messages in a virulent light green (that last one wasn't a great choice, in my view). Excellent, smooth animation. The high score entry page is white on black, but unfortunately uses a "show-off font", by which I mean one that looks all fancy and in theory sounds impressive, but in practice is too hard to read. I do like, though, the menu screen, which apes the game mechanics: you move a red block to one of four blue blocks representing Play, Highscores, Credits or Quit.

Sound: 7
This is reasonably impressive. The background music is (again) a repetitive techno-style piece, but it has a vaguely eerie feel that somehow fits quite well. Mind you, it's likely to drive you mad if you play for more than a few minutes at a time! There is also some decent speech, which makes up for the absence of any other sound effects. (The tune plays continuously.)

Documentation: 6
Surprisingly for a three-hour contest entry, there's an adequate readme, containing the basic controls and aims (of what is admittedly a simple game) and contact details for the author. It's not exactly "The Dark Wheel" (the novella that came with the original Elite) but it does a job.

Completeness: 6
The credits state that Guyfawkes (and musician Donskeeto) finished the game in two hours and 45 minutes, so it's a little churlish to complain too much. There certainly are things that could be added, such as sound effects (and the option to turn off that damn music) and an easier difficulty level. Perhaps also there could be custom levelsets with different types of block design and/or movement. But the core game is there, and it works.

Overall: 5
An average rating for an average game. Escapa! is an interesting challenge for a little while, but most people will find that interest palls after that. It's well presented (with particular points for the smoothness of the animation) but few people will go "wow!" upon seeing it. One of those "play for a bit then delete" games.

Gah

I thought this would happen sooner or later: I've lost the little bit of rubber that covers the power socket. Not a big deal, but mildly annoying as it was so obviously flimsy.

Game review: Vektar

Vektar
Genre: Shooter
Author: GBAX
OHH download: v? (09/04/09)
Size: 69.1 MB
Licence: Freeware (ex-commercial)

Description
Vektar is a shoot-em-up game based loosely on that old classic, Asteroids. You fly a ship around a screen populated by rocks, ships and so on and blast them to bits. There's a time limit in certain levels, and you have a limited amount of shields to give you brief protection against damage. When you beat a set of waves (there are bosses, of course) another and more extensive level set will be unlocked.

Addictiveness: 8
Pretty good. It is a little bit frustrating at first if (like me) you're not particularly adept at games like this. (Memories of the original Defender, and its BBC Micro clone Planetoid, still haunt me.) However, Vektar is so well made that once you do get into it, the game grows on you greatly. It's not particularly difficult to make it onto at least the lower reaches of the high score table, which helps here.

Depth: 6
The game isn't astoundingly deep, but a reasonable amount of thought seems to have gone into the level design, and it doesn't suffer from having level after level that's nothing more than a simple rectangle. There's also an element of depth in learning how to use the power-ups, some of which are more obvious than others. You also need to judge your shooting, since (in what I think is a very nice touch) these too can be destroyed by your zapping!

Controls: 7
As with Asteroids itself, it can take a little time to get used to controlling your ship in Vektar. Stick left and right rotates you, up and down control thrust and braking, while holding down Y raises your shields. Pressing Select and Start together brings up a pause menu that allows you to continue, quit entirely or begin a new game. In the menus, you can use X to bring up the quit menu, though here you get slightly insulting messages if you leave. (Remember Quake doing that?) I wasn't entirely thrilled with the high-score entry, which worked in the usual "three initials" way but seemed a little imprecise.

Graphics: 9
These really are excellent. If you've ever played a Vectrex console (or at least an emulated one) then imagine the graphics from that, brought into the 21st century and given a beautiful colour-filled makeover. There are explosions everywhere, but even with heaps of things happening at once the animation remains decently -- if not quite perfectly -- fluid, something so important in a fast-moving arcade game. Little touches such as the angular font used for the high score list, and the "fuzzy" look in what you might call "attract mode" are welcome too.

Sound: 7
As usual, the default volume perforates your eardrums if you're using the official GP2X earphones, so you'll want to turn it right down. The music is provided by means of .ogg files, and if you do a bit of fiddling about (which will require a little internet research) you can replace the rather predictable techno-y tunes with whatever you prefer. Still, there's nothing wrong with the default ones.

Documentation: 3
Surprisingly little; really, a game that takes up almost 60 MB of your SD card ought to do a bit better than this. You have to work out a number of things, not least what the power-ups actually do, by trial and error, and while I'm all for a bit of mystery and surprise in a game I think this goes too far. Possibly the boxed commercial version had a manual, but even if it did, that's no use here!

Completeness: 9
Loses a point for not having proper documentation, but otherwise it's all here, and as it's the "registered" copy you're not going to find yourself booted out halfway with a demand to buy the full game -- since this is it!

Overall: 8
Vektar is a very good game. I might have rated it 9 had it had in-game help, and I could imagine some people marking it as a perfect 10. For me, it's a little too difficult to score quite that highly, and it does take up an awful lot of card space (though over a quarter of this comes from two thinly-disguised and mildly annoying videos). Still, it ends as a very creditable 8, and those who like their old-school arcade shooters will lap this up.