Month: January 2016

Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter Q&A, with Wael Amr

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2016 is due to see the release of Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter, the next entry in Frogwares’ long-running series of Sherlock Holmes adventure games. As a fan of 2014’s Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments — which I called an “interesting, ambitious example” of thematic puzzle design — I reached out to Frogwares to find out more. Read on for my interview with Wael Amr, Frogwares CEO, in which we chat about The Devil’s Daughter and the broader adventure genre:

 

Hello, and welcome to the site!

Frogwares is perhaps best known for its Sherlock Holmes series of adventure games, most recently 2014’s Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments. How did you come to work on these games, and how has the series evolved?

We started to work on the series in 2001. Our first game was a very traditional adventure game at that time.

Every game we made since was different, in technology, scenarios, control scheme and gameplay.

The versatility of Sherlock Holmes allows to have more than one kind of gameplay or controls scheme.

Our last game, The Devil’s Daughter features probably the wider range of game mechanic we ever created.

 

The next Sherlock Holmes game will be The Devil’s Daughter, due for release in 2016. What can you tell us about its new features, and which do you consider the most significant?

I would say that the most significant is the rhythm of the game, that is rather dynamic. It is due to new mechanics of course, but not only, the new character controller, the removal of loading, make the overall pace more dynamic and active. Focus tests showed it was a very welcomed change. The heart of the game is cases investigation and it remains so.

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Clippings: Strategic Assessments

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Have you ever wished for more elegant, quicker-playing 4X games? One such title is Eclipse, a boardgame ported to iPad several years ago. It contains the traditional building blocks of the space 4X genre: research, colony ships, ancient treasure troves, and even ship design. Yet there are relatively few moving parts – no individual build queues, no planetary management, small fleets, and a limited number of actions that can be taken per turn (design decisions that, in the PC space, remind me of Armageddon Empires and Skulls of the Shogun). Individual decisions matter, a philosophy I’d like more PC developers to explore.

I also dusted off Order of Battle: Pacific, a well-regarded “Panzer General-like” that I briefly played last year. At the time, I was lukewarm on its naval battles; I put it on hold after seeing that a naval engagement, the Marshalls-Gilberts raid, was next in the campaign. Now that I’ve played several carrier battles, I quite like them. While they appear fairly simple – use recon planes to find the enemy fleet, torpedo bombers against capital ships, and dive bombers against small ships or to finish off damaged capitals – it’s still a thrill to watch my strike package approach the Japanese carriers at Midway. Next up: Guadalcanal.

This week’s top link is Quantic Foundry’s map of the strategy genre, broken down along two dimensions: Excitement and Strategy. Europa Universalis is high strategy and low excitement; MOBAs are the other way around. Total War is similar to EU, slightly lower on strategy and higher on excitement. Relaxed, “free-form” titles such as Cities: Skylines and tycoon games are low-strategy and low-excitement. It’s an interesting and, I think, useful classification system for what is a broad genre.

In other news:

Clippings

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Inspired by this episode of the Three Moves Ahead podcast, I recently revisited Star Wars: Rebellion and Empire at War, two grand strategy games released almost a decade apart.

Rebellion is… interesting. After playing for several hours, I was still getting a feel for it, and I don’t know yet whether it’s good or bad. Playing as the Rebels, I experimented with massing guerrillas in an attempt to incite uprisings on Imperial-controlled worlds. When that failed, I launched a conventional offensive with the Rebel fleet, took out an Imperial garrison that had its boot on the neck of the Corellian Sector, and was rewarded when multiple planets flipped to my control. My main complaint so far is the UI – not as bad as I’d feared, but still, it can be a hassle managing the galaxy.

Rebellion does intrigue me, and that’s more than I can say about EaW. I last wrote about EaW about a year ago, noting that I vastly preferred its skirmish mode to its campaign. I gave EaW‘s campaign a second chance and unfortunately, it’s still bad.

In other news:

  • This week’s notable release is the PC port of Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen, to a favourable reception. I remember the original Dragon’s Dogma on PS3 as pretty difficult – I didn’t make it very far in.
  • USGamer reviews the cleverly named Aviary Attorney, which may appeal to adventure game (and Phoenix Wright) fans.
  • Next month will be big for strategy gamers, with the release of XCOM 2 in early February!

My games (and memorable moments) of 2015

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This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Gaming year in review / Game of the Year Awards

Welcome back to my Games of the Year list. This year, I’ve highlighted notable achievements, as well as favourite moments from games old and new.

Favourite aesthetics: Several games deserve a mention: Apotheon, for sheer uniqueness (below); the vibrant, colourful Tales from the Borderlands; and Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence, with its evocative art. Nobunaga’s Ambition also has great ambient music — I still listen to it on loop.

Apotheon - graphicsFavourite characters: Rhys and Fiona, the heroes of Tales from the Borderlands. Fiona is sharp and capable and funny; Rhys is a loveable bumbler, dreaming nebulous dreams of wealth and power. When his ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme collides with Fiona’s, the plot is set in motion. Throughout the game, I did my best to play them as decent people — loyal to their friends and, where possible, respectful of human life — and was rewarded with satisfying, sympathetic leads. They gave me many laughs, several moments that resonated with me, and a triumphant scene where Rhys demonstrates his character growth.

TFTB - Rhys Fiona reaching

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Nobunaga’s Ambition: late-game observations (and reflections on AI automation)

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This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series Nobunaga's Ambition: Sphere of Influence

Nobunaga's Ambition - VictorySurprisingly satisfying. Now that I’ve finished my campaign, I thought I’d comment on the late game of Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence, a topic on which I initially reserved judgment. Strategy endgames are plagued with two problems, (1) snowballing and (2) micromanagement, and NA illustrates how AI automation can help with the second.

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Kim Q&A, with Jeremy Hogan

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Rudyard Kipling’s Kim is one of my favourite classic novels, a picaresque set in nineteenth-century India. When the Secret Games Company launched a Kickstarter for a video game adaptation, I was keen to find out more. Read on for my interview with developer Jeremy Hogan:

 

Hello, and welcome to the site! Please introduce yourself and The Secret Games Company.

Hi, I’m Jeremy Hogan, I’m a game designer from London, where I’ve worked in the games industry for the last 8 years. I founded The Secret Games Company to release two indie projects, board game Dreaming Spires and video game Rise: Battle Lines. A year ago, I left my job to work on indie projects full-time so I could start the development of our latest game, Kim, which has been Greenlit on Steam and is now on Kickstarter.

 

 

Please tell us about your adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Kim. Based on the gameplay trailer, it looks like you’re translating Kim’s adventures into an open-world game reminiscent of Sid Meier’s Pirates or Space Rangers 2. Is this a fair reflection of what players can expect?

Yes those are fair comparisons; it’s a mix of genres so get ready for a long description… An RPG with branching dialogues, simple survival mechanics and light combat and stealth action in pause-able real time. I loved reading Kim and learning about colonial India and when I found out that Kipling’s work was in the public domain, I thought it was a unique opportunity to put such great writing into a game. Our gameplay was inspired by Expeditions Conquistador, FTL and Don’t Starve, another game it has a lot in common with is Sunless Sea.

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Shining in the darkness: playing the Eastern Romans in Attila

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This entry is part 4 of 4 in the series Total War: Attila

Attila - ERE at nightThe East endures. I closed out 2015 by returning to the grand campaign of Total War: Attila, this time as the Eastern Roman Empire. Like its Western sibling, the ERE is beset with enemies. Unlike my WRE game, I’ve been able to fight them off, a journey both exciting and memorable.

When the Visigoths rampaged through Thrace, and wiped out (at great cost) the first army I sent against them, I hunkered down, raised a new army under the Emperor’s personal command, and caught their weakened force in a night battle, depicted in the screenshot above. The survivors paid an indemnity for peace.

When a column of Huns razed a town along the Danube, I mustered an army four times their size, tracked them north, and brought them to ground.

Since then, I’ve fought off an invasion of North Africa. I’ve maintained an uneasy peace with Sassanid Persia, plying them with gifts while keeping a legion close to hand. I’ve built farms, aqueducts, and barracks; encouraged religious tolerance; and kept the Empire mostly in one piece.

Ahead, I see danger — and opportunity. With the Goths on the march again, and my WRE allies collapsing, I’m preparing a new campaign in the west. Against that, I’ve unlocked higher-tier units, my economy has stabilised, and to the east, the Sassanids are distracted by enemies of their own. If the situation can hold a little longer, I should be well-placed for the midgame. And all this has taken just 28 turns.

Attila - ERE map turn 28Below, I have a few more thoughts:

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The site in 2015

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Happy New Year!

2015 was a quiet gaming year for me, reflected in the site. In terms of writing, it was a year of two halves. I opened with a Let’s Play of Total War: Shogun 2, followed by coverage of Total War: Attila, Cities: Skylines, and a second look at Endless Legend and Age of Wonders III following the release of their expansions. I also wrote most of a Europa Universalis IV custom nation LP.

During the second half of the year, real-life obligations kept me busy. I did write about adventure games, Nobunaga’s Ambition: Sphere of Influence, the Crisis of the Confederation mod for Crusader Kings 2, and over the holidays, the Age of Charlemagne expansion for Attila.

Over the year, I posted three interviews: one about China-themed 4X Oriental Empires, a follow-up with the developers of Guns of Icarus Online, and in my first modder interview, a discussion about Crisis of the Confederation.

Traffic was largely unchanged during 2015 — the site received around 80,000 page views, versus 77,000 the previous year. The most popular posts remained fairly constant; the top post was my guide to the Wargame series, while another three related to Paradox games (including Crisis of the Confederation) and one was an old post about Tactics Ogre.

In the next week or so, keep an eye out for my 2015 honours list, plus more posts about Nobunaga’s Ambition and Attila. Over 2016, I plan to cover Hearts of Iron IV (pushed back from 2015) and Stellaris; I’ll also observe XCOM 2, Sherlock Holmes: The Devil’s Daughter, The Last Guardian, No Man’s Sky, Total War: Warhammer, Dishonored 2 and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. And I may well write some retrospectives and Let’s Plays of older games – Valkyrie Profile, Final Fantasy Tactics, Alpha Centauri, and Emperor of the Fading Suns (as a narrative LP) have been on my to-do list for years.

Thank you for reading. I look forward to seeing you around.