Sol Survivor review – tower defense done right

solsurvivor

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the carpet bomb.

Sol Survivor is a tower defense game.

For those not familiar with tower defense (since you’re reading this, I’m not sure how that’s actually possible), the mighty Wikipedia proclaims: The goal of tower defense games is to try to stop enemies from crossing a map by building towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities, costs, and ability costs. When an enemy is defeated, the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers, or upgrade the number of money or points that are earned, or even upgrade the rate at which they upgrade.   …  this cycle often causes the player to enter a state of rapturous addiction, ignoring bathing, spouses, food and sleep.

Okay, that last addition was mine, I admit it.

It possibly flew under your radar, and if so, that is a shame – one that needs to be rectified. To be clear, it’s not just any tower defense game. It is one that offers variety, challenge, and achievements galore. It isn’t necessarily a complete break from the genre, but the sheer number of ways you can succeed at this game begs you to play it, over and over and over again.

It is also perhaps the most polished tower defense game I’ve ever played – the graphics, sound, effects, and UI are all top-notch. The obvious comparison here would be to Defense Grid which is in all respects, its equal.

So let me tell you about Sol Survivor.

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the top 10 great decisions game designers make

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Okay, if you read my last article about game design mistakes, you probably saw this one coming. But as a point to my own counterpoint, I thought this article necessary. I’m not all about the negative, I admire great design just like every gamer. Sometimes the little things that are actually huge advances get overlooked because before long, all games have implemented that same great idea. Eventually it becomes an expected design decision, at which point, its unthinkable that any game would do it differently.

Let’s celebrate those decisions.

Once again, these are not in any particular order. So let’s get on with it:

the top 10 great decisions game designers make

Great decision 1: tooltips and other great user interface innovations

This could be an article all on its own, no problem. You have to go pretty far back to be able to see just how far we’ve come with respect to games’ user interfaces. I’ll give some examples, but first, let’s talk about tooltips.

Tooltips are those floaty things that pop up a description when you’re trying to figure out what the heck some icon means. This is a fabulous innovation, and in many games, I can’t live without them. As stated in the previous article, I’m a bit of a loot whore. So if I have 45 different kinds of armor that I’ve picked up, I really don’t want to try each and every piece on to see which one is better. Tooltips make my life easier, and your game more fun. Torchlight did a great job on this, though they’re by no means the first – I’m just pointing the finger their way because they simply did it so well. In World of Warcraft (and probably every MMO since), they provide tooltips for the loot, then they auto-compared it to what you’ve got equipped, along with an easy system for determining which stats are better or worse than your currently-equipped gear. Smart. (green is better, red is worse) Do you know who did this first? read more

the top 10 mistakes that game designers still make

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Check out my follow-up article on great game design decisions here.

Since the dawn of home video gaming, circa 1980, games have offered exploration and adventure. They give everyone the ability to feel like a hero, to explore dangerous and uncharted lands. And since the very beginning, game designers have made huge blunders in creating those worlds. That’s not to say that they don’t get a ton of stuff right – they do. We wouldn’t keep playing games if they weren’t fun. But as the medium has evolved, some game design blunders have inexplicably remained consistent.

Perhaps this is due to the mass-marketing of games to all, perhaps it’s just laziness. No matter what the reason is, these aren’t acceptable any more. Gamers should demand more. I demand more.

So without further ado, I bring you (in no particular significant order) …

the top 10 mistakes that game designers still make

Mistake 1: Non-moving NPCs

This mistake is as old as some of the first Ultima games. Probably older, but that’s where I first saw it. Heck, it was in Zork I. That damn Grue was always in any dark area. Nowadays, we’ve got quest markers, minimaps, area maps, world maps, all nicely marked with quest givers, quest locations, sometimes even with quest objectives right on the map. So why on earth can’t we find NPCs that move around a bit? I know, game design 101 right? Make sure that there are landmarks for gamers to attach to and recognize. I get that. But having Johnny Questgiver walk to his house or down to the fountain isn’t a grievous error – especially not if I can read a note on his door saying where he went, or if he’s wearing clothes that are unique.

Heck, knowing most designers, he’s likely got a giant grey exclamation point floating over his head anyway, so he shouldn’t be too hard to spot.

noticeable exceptions: The Gothic series tries really hard to mix this up, and those titles succeed, for the most part. read more

I’m currently playing…

Hydrophobia-Prophecy

Or about to play, rather, after having just bought the following on Steam’s enormo-sale:

Two Worlds II ($17!)
Hydrophobia: Prophecy ($4!)
Massive Assault: Phantom Renaissance ($5!)
Anomaly: Warzone Earth ($5!)
Twin Sector ($1.70!) -> This probably isn’t even worth that. The audio statics like mad and after trying to ignore that for about an hour, I finally uninstalled it. Hopefully it won’t do that on my new system, but what are the chances?

What did you buy?

and the Summer Steam Sale keeps on chugging….

Steam-Logo

Wow, there’s some good deals on there. 2 in particular caught my eye. If you’re in the mood for adding a dollop of chocolaty strategy to your dull vanilla fantasy, you may want to check these out.

Paradox Fantasy Pack – $7.99

Paradox Fantasy Pack on Steam

Comes with all the Elven Legacy games and addons (great turn-based strategy) as well as all the Majesty games and addons (great real-time strategy games).  That’s really a no-brainer for 8 bucks.

King’s Bounty Pack – $6.99

King's Bounty on Steam

If you missed this great mashup of real-time adventuring and turn-based strategy meets lightweight RPG, then it’s time for you to plop down $7 in cold hard cash. You’ll get hours out of this and if somehow you don’t like it, ooooOO pretty graphics!

Click on the images to spend your hard-earned money.

Farewell to Village Instruments and my ViDock 4. Hello (tiny) desktop gaming!

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What is a ViDock? Who the heck are Village Instruments? They are good folks who tried really hard to bring desktop-class video cards to lowly laptops that have ExpressCard 34 slots.

ExpressCard slot for external graphics dockNow you may be asking… what the heck is an ExpressCard slot? Do I have one? Why should I care. All good questions. It looks like that image over to the left there, and for a while, lots of laptops had them, including MacBook Pros as you can tell. Nowadays they seem to be going the way of the dodo, what with laptops either getting too skinny for them or having somewhat decent onboard video. Now if you’re into gaming, you really need a decent video card, even if you just want to do casual gaming – everything is in 3D these days, heck even Minecraft.
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