Sword & Sworcery

Sword & Sworcery is a very simple iPhone / iPad adventure-action game based on Apple’s touch screen technology. like an old school video game, you are an intrepid adventurer sent on a mission, whatever it is i haven’t really figured out yet.

A man with a cigar introduces you to the game and sends you on your mission without much of an explanation.

The graphics are complex yet simplistic. It’s like walking through 8-bit land. you manouever your way by tapping across the landscape, guided by your barking dog friend, and the odd game tips if you pause for too long.

The game is filled with a mix of tooting video game sounds and lush cinematic orchestra music, which the game prepares you for by testing the stereo sound of your system and suggesting that you put your headphones on, which I did. The music is pretty amazing. With very little dialogue, the game sometimes drops little text boxes which go from the mundane to the slightly sarcastic. The game also encourages you to tweet your adventures, of which purpose i haven’t figured out yet either.

Simplistic yet action-packed punching of the screen allows you to fight demons and shades along the way.

It can get quite pretty in here.

USD2.99 from the iTunes store.

Games this week

I’ve been a little tardy in blog posts as I’ve been busy tapping away on my iPhone. typically the iPhone games I go for are either time management games or universe building sort. Yea I know, which sort of person enjoys time management games which involves a lot of multi-tasking and micromanagement right? My homie Linda’s boyfriend asks the same question of her while he watches her frantically ordering her iPhone minion around.

Ranch Rush $1.99

When Bryan saw me playing this game, he said I was turning into a farmer. In this game you play this farmer girl who runs around plating tomatoes and cloves. It goes from really simple crops to higher grade stuff like making cheese, which requires putting 2 bottles of milk into the cheese machine, which requires getting milk from a cow, which requires feeding the cow cloves as it constantly moos for it.  40 levels and I finished it in a couple of hours. I also didn’t talk to boyfriend during that time but it’s okay. he had Call of Duty Black Ops to keep him occupied. Loads of fun!

Wedding Dash $2.99

Another time management game Wedding Dash. this game is moderately fun as you sit guests at preferred tables and away from not so welcomed relatives. the game would have been loads of fun if it weren’t laggy as hell. I’m really good with time management games and I tend to play ahead of the game, queuing the next few moves before the avatar moves to complete it. but of course when the game lags, whatever you tap doesn’t register and you end up running around for naught. not worth the money.

Hotel Dash $2.99

from the same makers of Wedding Dash, you have HOTEL DASH! as you run around trying to get your guests comfortable in their rooms. moderately fun and easy to play. a slight twist as you have ghouls and vampires living in your hotel, bothering your guests.

We Rule Quests Free

Moving away from time management games is a series of build your world games. We Rule is part of a We whatever series. I picked We Rule coz AuntyAdele was playing it. You have a kingdom, you build villages and farms and you collect crops and taxes. that’s it. it’s so boring my crops have sad faces on them.

Godfinger All Stars Free

okay i have to admit, i’m a little slow with this one. When people were playing it, I poohed poohed it as who would ever want to play such a silly game. I actually tried the first release and got bored within minutes. But with All-Stars, I decided to give it another go and boy am I hooked. it’s not hard considering the graphics and animation are really colourful and cute. and the noises they make to get your attention? my favourite is when I throw them into the pond and they struggle to stay afloat. Here you get to play God (if you haven’t figured it out already) and collect a bunch of followers as you grow your world. Of course you get to name your followers. Most people would name them after their friend. Eugene Goh named them after Man U players (to which someone asks, does this mean he only has 11 followers?) and after awhile I ended up not naming them coz I realised I don’t have that many friends and I don’t wanna start naming my colleagues on my world. Sad eh?

The other sad part is I realised they gave out a Maniac Mansion (dracula looking castle) on Halloween’s and since I’m a late bloomer which got hooked AFTER Halloween, guess who doesn’t have a dracula on her Godfinger

Seen above, I named one of the followers after my Bryan and put him next to a grog cask.

Smurfs’ Village Free

Someone was squealing about this online so I decided to try it. Here you grow a smurfs village, where each mushroom house represents one additional smurf in your growing tribe of smurfs (so is that how Papa Smurf grows smurfs in his village if there is no other female smurf in the village other than Smurfette? Coz seriously the idea of Papa Smurf banging Smurfette is a little incestuous). Apart from that, you grow crops and you play little games like mix Papa Smurf’s potions and stupid things like that. Again like We Rule, I soon lost interest coz it’s not very challenging. As you can tell, my smurfs are going to die of starvation from the withered crops.

 

What I spent all afternoon doing: Plants vs Zombies

sometimes I wonder if I should rename my blog as Girl with an Obsession. I discovered, rather belatedly, this iphone game called Plants vs Zombies. it’s been on the top 50 apps list for some time but I’ve never tried it as I was rather tired by the spate of zombie infestation that has entered our society recently; from zombie games to zombie movies (although I must admit I rather like Zombieland, and it isn’t just because Bill Murray is in it. Yes I am going to buy the DVD to add to my Bill Murray collection), zombies are the latest in thing, because vampires are too fangirlish.

Plants vs zombies is a rather simple game of using each plant’s unique ability to fend off waves of zombies that go “BRAAAAINS”. it’s like any other strategy game, you build up your wall of sunflowers that give energy that will allow you to create more defensive or offensive plants, a strategy much like that in Starcraft. As I was playing this game, it got me thinking about the game’s simple mechanics that sucks its players so. I once read an article on how to make a good iphone game (or any other simple game) and one of it is the need for minor rewards along the game. this probably motivates the player to go on playing, until he reaches the point where he’s playing the game not just for rewards but he cannot stop thinking how best to outwit them zombies.

Bryan, having switched to a Samsung Galaxy phone, was watching me play this game. When I wouldn’t let him take over my iphone, he dug out his iBrick, downloaded the game and started playing it himself. so there we were, the picture of couplehood bliss, lying in bed on a Saturday afternoon playing a game that goes BRAAAAAINNS every so often. it looked like it was going to be a stay-in Saturday when our friend Aaron called us out for dinner. When we popped by Overeasy for a birthday party, while everyone was busy being sociable, I was busy lopping peas and corn at the neverending tide of Zombies.

The creators of this game really fine tuned this game to an art. you make repetitive moves for a few rounds before they turn things around and introduce a new map. so we went from fronyard to backyard with pool to night scene. Now i’m struggling through the roof scene where instead of shooting peas, I’m lobbing cabbages at zombies. yesterday while having a late night supper at Al-Ameen, I whipped out my phone and continued playing plants vs zombies. Kelvin, a newly made acquaintance, leaned over and started giving me tips on how to beat the zombies, which totally made things easier. I love how simple games like these can actually be a common topic for 2 almost strangers. I also love how some games have become pop culture topics, such as Angry Birds, that even though I barely touched that game, I understood enough of the gameplay to understand this joke about it.

GAH!! you got that right!

I took this shot coz I love how the zombies on the top right corner were made to mimic that movie Cool Runnings about the African team sent to take part in bobsledding in the Olympics.

I’ve always wondered, why do zombies eat brains? because of their lack thereof? so what happens after they eat brains? do they become unzombified?