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.

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.

Arcade Style Games You Must Play!

Grid Wars isn't the only free game to challenge the ranks of Geometry Wars games. A small company titled Binary Zoo has released a demo of a pretty impressive game titled Mono. They have other games, though, and the games are all free.

Geometry Wars clone or greatest freeware ever?

I bought Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved for my PC. Since I loved it so much, I went searching for Geometry Wars clones and found a freeware game I thought was much better than Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. The game I speak of is Grid Wars 2.

Surprisingly, Grid Wars also has the same initials as Geometry Wars, so I can't just use short terms for the games or we'll all get confused. Anyway, Grid Wars 2 is only 3MB, so pretty much anyone can download it. If you don't have internet access at home, you can easily fit this game on your measly 32MB flash drive.

About the only thing I get from Geometry Wars that I don't get from Grid Wars is music, but that means I can play my own music with WinAmp!

Grid Wars official site (as far as I know): http://gridwars.marune.de
Programmer's other work: http://www.incitti.com/Blitz
Awesome Grid Wars 2 review with download: http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/wars.htm
Direct link to download: http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/grid/GridWars54.zip

Syboard Ghostbuster

I'm moving away from Flash when making games from now on. I'm now using two programming suites, Construct and DarkGDK. I'm also looking into XNA and whatever else I can find for 3D game development, but for now, I'm using Construct for 2D games and experimenting with DarkGDK for 3D purposes.

Anyway, I've made my first game in Construct, but I used a tutorial, so it's far from original. Check out Ghostbuster. I'll update it over time to include a few extra features, including the most requested high scores table. You may request something in the topic by clicking here.

Free PC Game - Pteroglider

Pteroglider is a 4-year-old game, but it didn't do well in stores, so the developers, Codeminion, are giving the game away. Codeminion is also offering a tech demo of their first game project, Spellscape, which was a dungeon crawling game in the style of Diablo or Darkstone.

I have not tried these games out, so I can't give you a review of either game, but they're free, so try them. If you're interested in keeping an eye on Codeminion to see when new free games are available, just keep checking the blog.

BlockCAD: Lego Buildings

I found this very interesting program called BlockCAD. I haven't tried it out, and I don't plan to, but it'll be great for anyone who likes Lego.

I found it while I was browsing a list of 3D modeling tools.

More Kid Friendly Games

I found a really awesome racing game for kids. It has the simplest of controls, just the arrow keys. There isn't a lot to it, either. You start the race, zoom past the other racers and try to collect little crystals to gain max speed. The game's called LudoRace, and you can download it from Graphit-X.

I also found a nice sandbox game (well, sort of) for the younger crowds. The game's called Freeride Earth, and, as the the name suggests, you ride all over the world in a sort of free-roaming environment. Really, you're on a hoverboard in a snowy area, and that's all there is to it. Even though the game is insanely simple, I enjoy its endless environment, and I suspect a young child would stay interested longer than I. The latest version can be found here.

If you have a fairly powerful video card, you could also try "That Cloud Game," an insanely popular internet phenomenon which allows you to fly through the air, collecting healthy clouds to dispatch them near unhealthy coulds to make more healthy clouds and collect those. The point of the game is to clear the sky of clouds, but I just have fun zooming through the sky as I listen to the beautiful soundtrack.

If you're feeling adventurous, you could also try out some of the nice-looking RPGs at Tomoshibi, but it's a Korean site, so you may have trouble finding your way around.

Kid Friendly Games

This is my first kid-friendly post. I understand the need for non-violent games, and I did some extensive searching, but most of the games I found were obviously Flash-powered puzzle games. I decided not to bother reviewing those. If you think I should start posting good puzzle games, say so.

The first MMORPG that turned up when I searched for "kid friendly mmorpg" on Google was Toontown. Don't resort to playing that garbage. I have better options for you.

If you have to aim low, a browser-based game is your best bet. You could let your child fall victim to Runescape, and that's a very family-friendly game, but there are some alternatives. If your child wants a pet, NeoPets is probably the game you're looking for, but I would look at some NeoPets clones like PetNebula or KiroPets first, because the real NeoPets is too popular for its own good. One alternative I was actually creating as an offline game was Mythical Creature. If you like that game, say so, and I might start working on it again.

If you have a fairly powerful computer with a nice video card, you could give FlyFF a try. I actually played that game for about a week, when I was growing tired of Runescape. I quit playing only because my computer had problems playing it. I would play it again, but I really prefer the dungeon crawling games. If FlyFF works well for you, play it, because it really is a decent game.

On that note, you could also try Eudemons. One of my teenage cousins is currently addicted to that game, just like any MMORPG player. I don't get to try Eudemons, because it requires a somewhat powerful video card, but really, I suggest Runescape for low-end computers.