The Final Death Wish
>> Saturday, July 17, 2010
LineBall
Alchemia
>> Thursday, July 15, 2010
For a lonely shepherd in a normal world, seeing a mechanical bird seemingly preying on your flock must be a terrifying experience. It certainly was for the hero in Alchemia, which is why he killed it. But it turns out that even mechanical birds have souls. And so the hero and the bird set out on a quest to find a new body for its soul to inhabit in the wonderful web-based adventure Alchemia. For the most part, Alchemia plays out like any other point'n'click adventure on the market. If you're familiar with the genre in the least, there's very little in the gameplay to surprise you here. What will fill you with wonder and awe, however, is the slick presentation and tender ideas that fill the story. There's nothing wacky or off the wall in this adventure. No rubber chickens on pulleys. No maniacal purple tentacles. Alchemia values simplicity and beauty over the silliness or suspense that most adventures are built on. Take the calendar wheel puzzle, for example. You'll set a calendar wheel in motion. As it spins, a tree in the room will go through its annual life cycle. It will grow leaves, bear fruit, lose leaves, die, and then bloom once more. Little touches like these weren't only aesthetically pleasing and humbling in concept, but they served as central elements to the puzzling. With the tree, for example, you'll need to stop the calendar when the fruit falls off to collect it for your inventory.
Hetherdale
Tiny Castle
Monkey Go Happy 2
Social City
>> Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I don’t know about where you live, but my city is a mess. Potholes dot every major thoroughfare, water costs are twice as high as in neighboring cities, and metered parking downtown is outrageous. I’ve always said that if I were mayor I could turn this place around. And while I may not have had the chance in the real world, Social City is letting me be the mayor I’ve always dreamed of.
Just like a real city, Social City is all about maintaining a delicate balance between jobs, services, and residents. Jobs in Social City are all about manufacturing. You’ll build factories and then issue different contracts to these factories to build new items. You might tell one factory to produce fertilizer, for example, while another bottles cola. Each contract takes a different amount of time to complete and comes with a different financial reward. So while you can make more money off the cola, it’ll also take you twice as long as the fertilizer to produce.
Growing Diary
Retail Therapy
Nob War: The Elves
Chisel
Combining elements of Qix, Dig Dug and Super Mario Galaxy is no easy feat, yet that’s exactly what Nitrome’s latest game Chisel accomplishes with finesse. We take command of a drill-headed robot named Chiseller as he drills planets in half over and over again and love every minute of it. Chisel is an action arcade puzzler that tasks players to shrink planets to a certain size. To do this, Chiseller will hop on his head and drill in a straight line from one side of the planet to another, taking out some of the mass and causing the two bisected pieces to come together. Players will do this over and over until the planet is tiny enough to progress to the next level. The game wouldn’t be much of a challenge if all you had to do was cut a planet in half. Thankfully in typical Nitrome-fashion a healthy combination of brilliant level design and new gameplay twists throughout manage to keep players on their toes.
Breaking Bad: The Interrogation
Interactive fiction isn’t something we cover a lot of here on Gamezebo, and there’s a good reason for that. It’s often boring, dry, and excruciating to play through. ...and then there’s Breaking Bad. Focussing on a character from the popular TV show of the same name, Breaking Bad: The Interrogation plays out like the Serpico equivalent to Choose Your Own Adventure. It’s gruff, it’s gritty, and it’s incredibly fun. Players take up the role of DEA Agent Hank Schrader. Hank is investigating a fire in a church, and the only lead is a weasly little bookworm named Hadley Berkitz. Hadley volunteers at the church and does their bookkeeping. He may be good at math, but as far as Hank’s concerned something doesn’t add up.
Race to Rome
The road to Rome is paved with the thunder of horse's hooves in Race to Rome, a free-to-play chariot racing game from Shockwave and the Article 19 Group about a man seeking revenge against the Roman Emperor Caligula. The game's Roman revenge story, which echoes that of Ridley Scott's Gladiator movie, focuses on a former Centurion named Marcus. The Emperor Caligula is not happy when Marcus decides to leave the army and return to his home on the island of Crete. As punishment, Caligula sends soldiers to invade Marcus' home, assault his wife, and kidnap his son. Marcus sets off for Rome with vengeance on his mind.









