Earth Invaders

I forgot to post an ad for my newest game, Earth Invaders, a while ago, so check it out.

Earth Invaders has been circulating the MochiAds Leaderboard network of game portals for a couple months now, and I have yet to see any money from it, so that has really made me stay away from Flash game development for a while, but I'm working on a new game now. You can see all my complete Flash games (games worth playing) at www.fantasyjam.net/flash/games

FJBall v1.2.0

Game is here: http://www.fantasyjam.net/flash/games/fjball

Features:
basic physics, velocity and gravity
fully animated FJGamer sprite
highscores!!

Game can be played at: http://www.fantasyjam.net/flash/games/fjball

FJBall

I thought I'd just promote a game of my own: http://www.fantasyjam.net/flash/games/fjball

It really is a fun (but short) arcade game.

Free SimCity? Free Civilization?

The best SimCity knock-off is LinCity-NG. It has a tendency to crash in Linux, but it runs fairly smooth in WinXP. It's free and open source. The project is abandoned, though.

I'm not sure if C-evo is open source, but it's the best freeware alternative to Civilization for Windows. It's free, it looks great, and it has a map editor! It even has an extremely low filesize of 2.4mb! What more do you need?

I'm keeping a look out for better sandbox games. There's a decent Portal clone in development, but it doesn't seem to be worth posting about yet. I'll keep you in the loop.

My Collection of Linux Games

I'll just separate them into their genres for easy access...

First-Person Shooter
Sauerbraten - Cube dazzled me with its level editing prowless, so I played Sauerbraten, essentially Cube 2, and I was amazed. Furthermore, this is the must-have game for level editing, but its online play is severely hindered by hackers and know-it-all newb haters.

Tremulus - This is one of those proof-of-concept games. They thought to combine two totally different gameplay aspects into one game. The two genres this can fall under are FPS and RTS. This game is a bit like Team Fortress in the sense that you can choose a character class, and it has a familiar building feature to build turrets and similar objects. I really like this game. Click here to learn more about it.

Warsow - I just like the graphical style of this game. The actual gameplay isn't impressive, but it is still entertaining if you like first-person shooting. My advice is to find something else, though. Also, the only way to get the Linux version of the game is to get the full package, which includes the Windows binary.

Platformer (you know, the jump-and-collect stuff)
N - This was made in Flash, but there's a Linux binary available for those who're still anti-Flash. It's one of the best platform-jumping games I know of, and I hope you enjoy it. This game has a level editor.

Rhythm (like Guitar Hero)
Frets On Fire - I shouldn't be the voice for the rhythm genre, because I'm not a big fan of that stuff, but I loved PaRappa the Rapper and its sequels, and Frets is not like PaRappa the Rapper.

Strategy (anything that requires thinking)
FreeCol - The screenshot in this blog post is of this game. FreeCol is a pretty neat game of colonization. Your mission is to colonize territories. This game is far from done at a development standpoint, but there's enough to keep you busy for a while.

Gate88 - This is one weird game. By weird, I just mean unorthadox, and, by unorthadox, I mean weird. Anyway, I like this game, and I think you will, too. It has a blend of action-packed and strategic gameplay, and it looks good to boot.

Glest - This is my favorite strategic battle game. I don't play it often, though, because I can't save my progress and feel the satisfaction of leveling up like in Diablo or some other dungeon-crawling game.

UFO:AI - The AI is for Alien Invasion; not Artificial Intelligence. However, it's a futuristic strategy game that doesn't give you the build-to-do gameplay mechanic. Instead, you just send in troops to kill aliens.

Wesnoth - Rather "the Battle for Wesnoth," as the site says, this is one of the games I ended up playing on Windows first. I like it, but it's not quite as addictive as Glest.

Graphic Novels (not-so-interactive stories)
Narcissu - This game is like reading doujinshi (Japanese comics) but requires electricity. The payoff is that it's free. There's a sequel as well, so try Narcissu 2 if you like number 1.

Obviously, you can play Flash-powered games in Linux, too, so I suggest a game called N.

Graal is back again!?

For those of you who never became associated with the awesomeness that was Graal Online, it was a late '90s MMORPG, in which you and the other players controlled the game content. In essence, it was Second Life but two-dimensional. Those interested in making world were able; those only wanting to play were given all the opportunities to do so.

The community was stabbed in the back when the game became pay-to-play. Over time, those still devoted to the game kept it alive in the form of private servers, and I know of only one place left to relive the glory days, and that's here: http://www.graal2001.org

Perfect World

A few posts ago, I mentioned a free MMORPG called Perfect World. I said I'd give you more information after I played the game for a while, and I played it, so here's my opinion of the Perfect World:

OMG! This game rocks! O_O Seriously, I love it. It's like playing Oblivion online with the wing mod. I was attracted to the game by a video of people playing in the air, but I expected to have to level up a lot to fly. That's not the case.

Over time, as you level up, you gain more flying energy, which allows you to fly faster and for more time. I've noticed the speed of flight is considerably slower than running, but it all depends on your agility level.

Also, some buffs can speed you up or give you extremely fast health regeneration. This is when character classes come into play. Priests are the only class with spells to buff other players, and they can cast some pretty helpful buffs to enhance your combat ability. Therefore, if you party with one, he/she could stand away from the battle and just rapidly heal you or make you stronger, and the experience would be divided between you.

Of course, I'm not a priest; I'm an archer. I can spoot magically enhanced arrows from long distances to damage enemies before they can damage me. This is very helpful at later levels, because the enemies can hurt you when you're flying, however, if you're new, you're never hurt very badly, unless you attack something at a higher level than you.

This game is more than combat, though, and you will notice right off the bat that you'll have opportunities to race against a clock to fly somewhere or even mine iron ore... though I haven't found any iron yet. (I'm looking!) To mine ore, you need a shovel, and I believe you can use the same shovel to dig up plants, but I'm not sure.

Overall, I love this game, and I can only hope the developers add microphone support. If you're looking for a fast-paced MMORPG to play whenever you like (for free), Perfect World is for you.