Category: Video Games (Page 7 of 8)

I managed to get into the beta for the new Quick Draw game for iPhone. It’s an online Pictionary or Win-Lose-or-Draw sort of game. While not the first online game for the iPhone, it’s definitely one of the first to have a very compelling design. It’s incredibly simple. You launch the app, create a name to play under, and log in. You can change the name by quitting and reopening the app, but it remembers your last used name so you don’t have to put it in every time.

Once you get into the game, you can either play offline or join one of the “category rooms”. Playing offline is okay if you just want to have a couple people look over your shoulder to draw and pass the iPhone around after each guess. But the real money comes from playing online.

The online rooms are broken up into categories like Animals, Characters, Food and Drink, and Landmarks. Animals was pretty easy (except for goose) and Landmarks was hit or miss on difficulty (Statue of Liberty is no problem, but Easter Island required the artist to actually spell out the word). Near as I can tell, there is no penalty for simply writing out the word that you need people to guess, but it makes the game less fun, so I doubt it’ll happen very often. Although, the one time someone did spell it out for me, the game crashed, so maybe that’s their anti-cheat system.

The game is not unstable by any means, and played very, very well, even over EDGE. There was, however, some lag over EDGE that I didn’t experience on 3G or Wi-Fi, but that is to be expected from time to time. One of the nicest features of the game is the ability to choose multiple colors and even an eraser so that you can really get into making your artwork stand out. Color makes a big difference on how easy your drawing can be perceived, though sometimes even color can’t help you (as you’ll see in my gallery below).

All in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable game and one that will really stand out when it is finished. There are only about 40 words in the beta, but when the full game is released, expect a lot more with new words added via updates. To check out some images of the game, you can visit the game’s homepage, or just check out my gallery below.

UPDATE: One of the developers left me a comment to explain a couple of points above.

First of all, on the subject of cheating:

“When someone spells out a word, other play[er]s have the option to click the ‘whistle’ icon in on their screen to says [sic] the drawer is cheating. If enough people press that button, the round is ended, no scores are kept for the round, and the drawer is told off!”

And on the subject of new words (which I had hoped would be the case, but did not want to speak out of turn):

“Updates will not be required to add new words to the game, we have made it so all words are on our servers, so we can add new words and new categories at any time without changing the application!”

Thanks, Rich!

I did much better in a different category. Honest.

Seriously?! How do you draw that on an iPhone?

I tried to draw Antonio Banderas with cat ears, but this worked better.

I got this one as soon as he drew a circle with a lightning bolt in it.

UPDATE: Parallel Kingdoms has received several updates since the writing of this post. Many (if not all) of the issues listed below have been resolved.

I’ve been playing with PK the last couple days and have to admit I like the idea, though I am unable to do much with it so far. I thought I’d give you a list of things that might make it more accessible to more people. All of these suggestions are based on my experience playing the game on an iPhone 3G. Mileage will, of course, vary on an iPod touch, original iPhone, or Android OS.

1. Don’t drop all items upon death. Perhaps have 3-5 items that can be equipped or stored in a backpack so that they are not lost on death. This is especially frustrating due to sometimes respawning nowhere near your last location.
2. Use location services to find the player initially, then allow them to walk around a section or “cell” of the game world by tapping. This will resolve issues where a player is in the middle of a fight, receives a phone call, goes back to the game and is now too far from their original location to fight the same enemy as before. This will also allow them to go back to pick up stuff they may have dropped on accident or due to death, but were respawned a great distance away. This could also be used as a method of balance by making the respawn rate of enemies in a given cell great enough that players would still be encouraged to travel to play the game if they wish to continue fighting. Perhaps an area of 3 city blocks would be sufficient. This would be especially helpful to those that do not live in an area where public transportation is a viable option and cannot play while driving to and from work/school/etc. Furthermore, the respawn rate for their cell could be increased if they log in located in a different cell than before, indicating that they are indeed traveling to new locations, and not just spawn-camping a specific cell.
3. If 2 is not an option, then (more accurate) auto-updating of players location as they move around the real world, so that they can run away from enemies in bad situations. Currently, the only viable alternative is to return to the Home screen and reload the app, hopefully far enough from an enemy not to die. Most frustrating because death results in number 1. This would also allow a player that spawns too far from anything useful to quickly and easily travel to something on the map without reloading the app and hoping for a beneficial change in location.
4. Always using GPS to locate, if possible, for more accurate placement. As it stands, the player bounces around the map if they leave the game and come back unless they re-locate using Google Maps every time they reopen the game.
5. Auto-attacking currently appears buggy, or not supported, making the game very frustrating as monsters will continue to attack the player, but the player only intermittently seems to continue attacking the monsters unless the Attack button is spammed. This can get very tiring very quickly, and requires a great deal more concentration than is necessary for a game with MMORPG sensibilities.
6. The ability to purchase healing spells, items, potions, etc. from anywhere on the map via the menu would be very helpful. Also, being able to either pause the game by bringing up the Menu, or quickly selecting healing items by storing one or two on the map screen in the corners would reduce the chances of being killed while attempting to heal a character (thus resulting in losing all your items and often respawning too far from them to recover them). Another alternative would be a two-finger tap, a double tap, or a two-finger swipe across the screen to activate an item (healing, magic spell, weapon) designated using the Inventory screen as a “quick use” item.

That is all I have for now. I hope that some of these are interesting enough to you that they make it in some fashion into the game. I know that some day this game may require purchasing in order to play it, but as it stands, it is too limited for those that live in rural or sprawling metropolitan areas with poor public transportation to be worth purchasing, as well as very difficult in the early stages of the game due to the excessively high death-rate and loss of inventory items with very small chances of recovery. I look forward to seeing updates that improve the accessibility of this game for everyone soon!

Thanks for your time,

Jared

UPDATE: Parallel Kingdoms has received several updates since the writing of this post. Many (if not all) of the issues listed below have been resolved.

Seriously.

It doesn’t follow your movements using live GPS updates yet.

Enemies auto-attack you and are clustered together, which means if you open the game in the wrong spot you’re screwed, especially because the GPS doesn’t auto-update.

You have to physically move around the real world to find stuff to do, which is fine if you could a) do certain game activities from anywhere, b) fight any enemy onscreen, not just those right next to you (only could fight one thing the first time I played), and c) be chauffered around everywhere you go.

Crashes all the time. Also gets an error saying the network is too slow or something like that, even with full 3G bars.

Maybe if I lived in a densely populous city with quality public transportation, but I don’t. I’ll give the next version a shot to see if the stability improves, but for now, this game is only out there as a beta test and I’m not getting paid to test it.

The new location-aware MMO for iPhone, Parallel Kingdom, became available in the iTunes Store late last night. For those that don’t already know, this app is designed to allow you to play a large-scale RPG based on where you currently are. Further, the game was simultaneously released for the iPhone and the Android OS, so the number of potential players will only grow as time passes. Allowing you to attack nearby players and gather treasure, and even talk to other people, it’s the first MMO that allows you to actively interact with the world, because you’re already standing in it.

Anyway, it’s almost impossible to explain, but it’s free to download, so check it out and have fun. Hope to see you out there.

 

And then kill you.