Lagoonia - a Sims like game from InnoGames

I got about a week ago an email from InnoGames about a new game they just released: Lagoonia. I talked about InnoGames in previous posts: they're the guys that made The West, Tribal Wars and Grepolis.

It's been a week now since I've been playing Lagoonia and I can't help compare it to EA Games' Sims. I haven't played Sims in a while and I can't say I was a great fan when I did play it, but the two games are very similar. Lagoonia of course is played online, in a browser.

The story of Lagoonia

But let's talk about it a little. At first you are starting out with one player or character, stranded on a deserted island after the plane you were in crashed. You are, from what you can tell, the sole survivor and you need to make everything in your power to make life better for yourself.

You start collecting different items from around the island and from the wreck of the plane, you build a fire, a stack of woods and a hammock. You find a box with chocolate bars and instant coffee that give you some extra energy. And that's how you get by for the first 5-10 minutes of the game.

The plot thickens

You find a bottle with a message inside in the lagoon. After reading the message you realize that there were other survivors of the plane crash. You start building more things that will help you get by and make your life easier. As time passes you consider the chance that you could somehow get together with the other survivors.

After reading a new message from another bottle, you find out the that a survivor stranded on a small island close to yours is going to try to swim to yours, but he/she needs some sort of a heading. So you light a beacon (constructed by you) and then have a companion.

The mechanism of the game

In Lagoonia the game is mainly base on actions you take. You can perform certain actions as long as you have the necessary energy to spend. Energy can be received from different buildings you already have or you will construct.

You start off at level 1 and as time passes and you perform more actions and fulfill the tasks the game sets for you, you gain experience and reach higher levels. Upon reaching a new level you can research and build new structures. These will open up new possibilities, and so on.

I'm not sure how much importance this has, but Lagoonia also introduces a "relationship" function that takes care of the social relationship between your survivors. Later on you will notice that babies will start coming along (from a stork's nest of course).

The items needed for different buildings can be obtained either by searching the island or by making them using the different buildings you have. Some items can be planted, others need to be manufactured from other raw materials. The further you advance in level, newer and more complex items and buildings will appear.

Also, as your level increases, you can explore new sections of your island and find newer and more interesting items around it.

Some tips and tricks

In Lagoonia some buildings can be moved, others can not. In the beginning your fists building will be a small campfire and it can not be moved. You can build 3 of these and you should because they provide you with energy. Make sure you build all three very close to each other so that you won't have to build more than one of the structures that provide them with a bonus in energy: stack of wood (29%) and hammock(14%).

You will begin with a bonus of 200 pearls (the premium currency in Lagoonia - you can get energy, resources and time reductions with pearls). Even if it is tempting to use them to perform certain actions faster, don't. You will receive a task later in the game where you need to spend 200 pearls and those are perfect.

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This is my little info on the game Lagoonia from InnoGames. I hope you find it useful and you enjoy the game. If it's anything as complex as the Sims series, I'm sure Lagoonia will become a very addictive occupation.

Die2Nite - a cool zombie game with a twist

I've been playing quite a few games lately since I don't have a lot of activity. And I'm also waiting for the Christmas holidays and I have very little productivity.

So I've been playing DinoRPG for quite a while now, I guess about a year or so, on and off. This week a new announcement came up from the developers saying that they've launched a new game: a zombie game. I guess they planned to launch it before Halloween, but didn't make it. The game is made by MotionTwin, the guys that also have great and popular web games like MyBrute (La Brute in French), Dinoparc and AlphaBounce.

The game is called Die2Nite (pretty cool considering it's zombie game) and here's how it works. You are a simple citizen stuck in a town with a lot of other Die2Nite citizens and each night a large number of zombies will attack your town. You need to gather the required materials to upgrade your town and survive the night.

The thing is there are a lot of items that you can find walking around the Die2Nite map and many of these can be used in different ways by either combining them with something else or transforming them in something else, more useful. The number of items is impressive and so is the number of combination that can be achieved. The Wiki's really come in handy here (Die2NiteWiki.com and on Wikia).

Each day you get 6AP (Action Points) to use for your daily activities like exploring, building at the Construction Site or carrying out the dead bodies of your dead comrades (citizens that died in town because of the previous zombie attack).

Of course other things can be done with your AP, but once they're consumed you can have a refill by drinking water from the town's well, eating something, taking drugs or drinking some alcohol (the last two have some funny side effects).

The twist in the game is that the whole town needs to work together to survive the night. If people don't communicate and collaborate the town will be overrun and everyone will be dead.

Death is something relative in Die2Nite, because once you die you can start all over again in a new town with new citizens. And the fun starts all over again. You gain points to your soul (the only thing you can't lose) from these experiences in various towns. I guess there's a ranking someone, but I couldn't find it.

If you want to give Die2Nite a try, go right ahead. And let me know if you like it or not. It looks really fun so far and I see it as a game I'll keep playing for a while.

QWOP Game - running is pretty hard

Most of you have probably already heard about the QWOP Game. It' all over the Internet. That's how I found out about it. But for those of you that don't know it yet, here's what it's about.

The QWOP Game is a running simulation game in which the aim is to run as far as possible. You control the legs of your character (named Qwop) and try to synchronize the movement as best as possible. It's apparently pretty hard to achieve a good running distance. All I got so far are 6.8 meters and that after a lot of practice.

The game is controlled using just 4 keys. Go ahead, guess which keys... That's right: Q, W, O and P. The Q and W are used to control the thighs while O and P control the calves. The way you use these keys should mimic the human body movement in running as accurately as possible if you want to run the 100 meters.

A few tips the game developers give us is to start leaning the body forward at the beginning, tapping the O key. Also there seems to be a surprise at 50m and another one at 100m. Has anyone found what these are?

In any case, go ahead and give it a try. You could experience small problems accessing the game page, probably caused by the huge popularity the game is enjoying lately. More information about the game can be found on foddy.net.

If I find some really good tutorials on how to get a better distance I'll update this post. If you find any, please let me know. Also I would like to hear what other people have scored on this game. Leave a comment below. I'll keep practicing a little longer but it's king of frustrating.

Oh, I almost forgot. The link to the QWOP game is below:

Play the QWOP game

KingsAge - fully upgraded city

Today I had some more spare time. I tend to have a lot of that lately. So I decided to find something to do. Being at work, I couldn't exactly play Starcraft, so I began browsing the web in search for a nice little browser game. I came across KingsAge so I gave it a try.

The first thing that stood out was the fact that the map overview resembles the one from TribalWars so I thought that this one is made by the guys at InnoGames. But it's actually made by Gameforge Productions GmbH, the creators of Ikariam.

Now here's the funny part: Grepolis (from InnoGames) looks like Ikariam (from Gameforge) and KingsAge (from Gameforge) looks like TribalWars (from InnoGames). It's like these guys just copy each other :). I'm kidding of course.

But back to KingsAge. I always find it more exciting if I know what I'm going at. In other words, when it comes to browser based games, I want to know what my village/town/polis or whatever it's called, will look like. I want to know how a fully developed city will look like. And since I already made a few mock-ups with Grepolis in the past, I thought I'll give this one a go too.

And here it is, a KingsAge fully developed or upgraded city. And I must say that it looks pretty nice. I don't know why but it reminds me of Age of Empires. As almost any strategy browser game, most buildings have 3 different images that show their level of development. So there are 3 images below, each showing the buildings in the 3 different stages. Some buildings (like the Memorial or the Hideout) have only one image no matter the level and that's why they look the same in all images. The Residence has two images.

I can't really form an opinion on whether I like the game or not. I'll have to play it for a few days. But so far I'm not really impressed with anything in particular. It looks like it's just one more browser game.

PS: These are mock-ups, manufactured images, don't think I've reached that level and that my city is fully upgraded. I might even quit playing in a day or two. Please don't ask me any questions regarding the game also. I'm a newbie too. Check the Help pages and the Forum. You'll find all the information you need there.

StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty - you shall be mine

The release of StarCraft 2 has to be one of the greatest gaming events of the year. For me anyway. This is the one game I never tire of waiting for. Ever since I've discovered StarCraft, and later on Brood War, I have waited for a new and hopefully improved version.

There was nothing wrong with the old Starcraft, but you get the urge for something new once in a while. There are what, more that 12 years, since the release of the original StarCraft, and people are still playing it. I doubts any other game in history has had that kind of success.

The very balanced units and abilities of the three races (Terran, Protoss, Zerg), the great resource management, the different technologies available and the ability to play multiplayer games over LAN makes this one of the greatest strategy games of all time. I remember this was the number one game we all wanted to play the moment we installed the local area network in our apartment building. We were hooked.

The rush of killing the Ghost at the very last second before being able to plant the nuke, the frustration of not being able to take down those Siege Tanks while they're clearing your base or the amusement of bringing down a dozen Carriers with a pack of cheap kamikaze Scourge. The long wait against a huge attack or the speed at which a well placed drop can render you useless. I also remember those damn High Templar and their Psionic Storm or the accursed Arbiter with that Stasis Field and Recall, the Battlecruiser's devastating Yamato Gun or the Gurdian's incredibly long atack range. I remember them all. Those were my days of glory in StarCraft.

And now, after so much time waiting and hoping for the release of a new version, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty makes that dream come true. Damn you Blizzard for making me wait that long. All you did was mess around with that blasted WoW and did nothing for the rest of your players. Even more, you created a first person shooter. Who the hell cares about a first person shooter related to a strategy game? But now it's finally our time. Finally I can carry on interstellar battles against my enemies. I will bring them pain and despair and maybe I'll even live long enough to tell the tale.

This has got to be the only thing I have waited for this long. Just a few more days until July 27th and StarCraft 2: Wings of Liberty will be in my grasp. We shall meet again dear friends: Terran, Protoss, even you Zerg. Again we shall battle 'til the last man. And glory shall be ours!

Grepolis - fully upgraded city

Because I had a little spare time on my hands I started playing Grepolis, the latest game from InnoGames. I enjoy this kind of strategy games but they can be very time consuming and you get really frustrated when you lose everything you've worked for over night. That's the reason why I quit playing by the time my city is fully developed. But this time I decided I would have a look at how a fully developed city would look like. And If anyone else is interested, here's a sneak peak.

The first one show the Grepolis city with all the building at the level 1 and with the Oracle and Thermal Baths built. Some of them will change appearance as they level up but some will remain the same. The second image shows the Grepolis building at intermediary levels and the last three show the city with the buildings at their top level. Also the Olympic Games and the Triumph are in full display and all the buildings that have animation have been activated, as if they're working. Sadly, I don't have the patience to make an animated version of the town so you'll have to settle for the static ones.

Because certain building in Grepolis city view share the same spot in town, the last three images show the various buildings in this order:

1. Library and Tower
2. Theater and Trade Office
3. Thermal Baths and Oracle

One thing I didn't manage to display is the Statue. I'm not even sure how it's supposed to look like, but it should occupy the same place as the Oracle, Tower and Trade Office.

And after all the trouble I went through, I found this little app that would have made everything extremely easy. It even shows the Grepolis statues. Bummer! Oh well, that's life. At least my pictures have the Olympic and Triumph in town :-)

Oh, oh, and if you find the pictures helpfull and would like to give the game a go, please use this link: Sign up to Grepolis. Thanks.