I'm quite enjoying this teaching thing; partly because of the content, but more because of the reaction we're getting from the students.

Today we played with the level editing suite that comes with Knytt Stories. I had each of them come up with a premise and sketches for a few levels, then showed them the basics. An hour later, well, the results were interesting - a lot of enthusiasm and some very odd designs. One, comparatively simple, illustrated futility - a complicated maze of invisible walls in which even victory was rewarded with death.

For me, the best thing is their enthusiasm - it's a good bolster when mine is flagging.

Next week, we're going to start talking about board games. That is, we're going to play one, then bitch about it.

The Spore Creature Creator's been out for a few weeks now, and people have been posting their creations throughout the blogosphere. So, like a sheep, I downloaded it and followed suit.

Here I present the Zerglenarg, a semi-deranged creature resembling a cross between an umber hulk, a dalmatian, and a soldier ant. Conceptually, it's not meant meant to be a real creature, but rather a manifestation of psychic emanations produced by people who, having taken too many psychedelic drugs, are convinced that there's a monster under their bed.

Edit: I should have mentioned - the spherical things sticking out from its shoulders are pom poms.

I just got back from running our Gary Gygax Memorial D&D game. We played B3: Keep of the Borderlands, using the classic red box rules.

Casualties were high:

• javelin_nz: 4 characters dead; 2 to kobolds, 1 to hobgoblins, the last to a gray ooze landing on his head.
• confusiontempst: 3 characters dead; 1 to kobolds, 1 to hobgoblins, the last to the other gray ooze.
• rhinocrow: Unkillable halfling of DOOM!.
• k2vsate: Late arrival. Despite severe craziness and only 3 hit points, he somehow survived.
• At least two NPCs - I lose count.

It was a really different experience to modern D&D. Serious role playing, particularly at low levels, must be quite difficult, as the rules have a real sudden death feel to them, and the different character types seem more an excuse for different ability sets. I liken it more to a board game with lots of paper than to a modern RPG. We still had a lot of fun, but it just wasn't something to be taken seriously.

One interesting facet was that rhinocrow played from Wellington over Skype. 5monkeys also joined in via Skype as a spectator and heckler.

I was really surprised with how well this worked - rhinocrow was able to participate readily in pretty much all aspects of the game, and for part of it, acted as the group's leader. Communication was mostly clear and unimpeded, with the exception of a few Max Headroom impressions. As the evening wore on, though, things became a little more difficult, particularly as the group got larger. I think remote play is probably better when everyone has the same limitations; as it was, rhinocrow had a tendency to become drowned out when the players present in the room got loud. However, the experience boded well for remote gaming - I'm hoping to try this more when I'm overseas..

I haven't said much about games recently.. Here's what I've found cool over the last few months and felt I should review:

• Aquaria - probably the best indie game I saw in '07; it's an arcade adventure game with a lot of depth, as well as a lot of breadth. That is, its game play elements provide for diverse and interesting experiences, and there's a lot of them. You play a Naija, a water nymph lost in an underwater cave system, full of placid scenic schools of fish, great crabs, forgotten temples full of strange magic, monsters in the hidden depths, and back again. It's very well constructed - the music, graphics, and game play fit together seamlessly to create moods ranging from calm relaxation to rampant fear, all strung together into a non-linear game of exploration. An absolute delight - I thoroughly recommend it. Windows only, unfortunately.
• Battle for Wesnoth - fantasy turn based strategy game with a whole pile of user-created campaigns, some brilliant, others not. Feels a lot like Fantasy General (1996). Units gain experience and skills as they go. Nice, deep, interaction between different types of weapon, terrain, armour and unit. Pretty well-balanced, and fairly addictive. Worth a look, even if you're not into strategy games, simply as it's provides an example of a user-expandable game design done well. Available on most desktop platforms
• Chromadrome 2 - simple, mouse based game of skill. You control a marble, racing along a track covered in traps and obstacles with variable speed, attempting to finish in the shortest time possible. Slick, flashy visual design. Surprisingly deep play, despite its simplicity. Highly addictive. There's a lot of game play packed into the demo, so it's well worth a download.
• Chocolatier 2 - a thoroughly addictive blend of management, recipe construction, and light weight adventuring. You start as a young entrepreneur hoping to challenge the great Baumeister chocolate empire in San Francisco of 1925 or so. After learning to manage the supply of ingredients and completed chocolates, you slowly move into wider markets, with new ingredients ranging from six types of varietal cacao, exotic spices and so forth. Essentially a classic production management games, but with sufficient diversity of factors and supply chains to manage that it becomes challenging without declining into furious mouse clicking. Simple, well implemented, distraction. Addictive, but not too long - the core game has about 15 hours of gameplay - long enough to suck me in, but not long enough to drive me mad with boredom.
• Darwinia - not a new game, but one I've only recently gotten into, Darwinia is from Introspective, a three man game development studio in London, also famous for Uplink (a surprisingly realistic hacking game), and Defcon (a game of Mutually Assured Destruction). To some extent it's a real time strategy game, in others it's more a tactical shooter with a top down camera view. You are a programmer who has intruded into Darwinia - a simulated world in which a researcher, Dr Sepulveda, has been experimenting with artificial life. However, many of his creations, the Darwinians, have been corrupted by some sort of viral infection that turns them violent and unpredictable, destroying most of his research, as well as the simple, placid life of the uninfected 'green' Darwinians. Game play consists of creating and controlling squad processes with which you eliminate viral infections, engineer processes which harvest the souls (resource allocation units) of lost Darwinians, and various other units that allow you to affect the otherwise independent Darwinians such that you can lead them to freedom. Though there's only about 8 game levels and the basic premise of play is laid out clearly in the first, there's quite a lot of depth and diversity. In many cases, your enemies can only be defeated by carefully prising open their defenses with skillful use of your squads, then pressing your advantage with legions of Darwinians. Unfortunately, the Darwinians have minds of their own, and often require substantial cajoling before they'll willingly enter battle on your behalf. Lots of fun; the real time strategy formula is present but subverted by indirect control and a focus on tactics rather than economics.

via Jay is Games, I've encountered an awesome remake of Wizball; probably the best game I played in 1989.

Fundamentally, it's a shooter, but with some great twists. Basically, you're a wizard transformed into a bouncy sphere whose goal is to restore colour to the world. You do this by killing aliens and collecting their blood, which comes in three colours: red, green or blue. The actual collecting process is done by your cat, who is in turn transformed into a sphere called the 'Catellite'. Levels are bidirectional horizontal scrollers with various obstacles and decoration, initially coloured in a drab grey.

Initially, you move around by bouncing, though you get all sorts of upgrades as you play that change this. Probably the coolest part of this game is that while it _can_ be played single player, it's best played as a cooperative two player with one player as the wizard, the other as the cat.

It's really impressive as far as remakes go - the gameplay's exactly right, and while the graphics and sound are all improved with GL and FMOD, they're perfectly in synch with the spirit of the original.

It seems that the makers have done quite a few other remakes, including Cybernoid 2, Quazatron, Meta Galactic Llamas Battle at the Edge of Time, and an upcoming remake of I, Ball 2, another favourite of mine. As an aside, don't you just love the kitschy 80s titles?

The Wizball remake is currently available for PC and Mac, though it looks to be available for Linux eventually. It's probably readily emulable, as it's just GL and sound; no annoying DirectX or anything like that. They've released the source for several of their other titles - I'm hoping they'll do the same for this.

Anyway, I thoroughly recommend this, though, as mentioned, you really need a second player to make it work.

Actually, pretty much all of the guys in this weekend's second roundup are worth a look..