I recently started playing Aquaria. In a word, I'm love'n it. If you haven't heard of it yet, then go check it out, it is very much worth a look. There are parts that are truly inspired. There are also parts that I notice and go “hrm. I wish they'd done that a little differently.” After about an hour or two of playing, it occurred to me that it might be useful to write these down, as a virgin first-playthrough, in case Alec and Derek are curious for [still more] first impressions of the game. (Although I suspect that they've gotten quite a few of them by now.) Happily, through the magic of the internet, I can add my own account to the pile, with minimal cost to myself, and preserve the precious, precious illusion that someone cares what I think. Hooray internet! On to my long-winded impressions!
But first, a brief warning:
I'll probably write things here that are spoilers. If you haven't played through the game yet and care, you might want to not read this.
My very first impression of it was actually somewhat sketchy. I saw it at last year's GDC at the indy games festival. It had looked kind of neat, but it wasn't really clear what the goal was, and it wasn't really obvious what was going on. The fact that it had been left in some random state by whatever the last person to play it had left it in didn't help. So I was confronted by a screen of some sea-elf-girl floating by some rocks. I clicked a little, and she swam around a bit. I think I right clicked, and some indecipherable icons showed up. I wandered off towards more obvious eye candy. Later that night, they won some very impressive prizes and I decided I should probably look at it some more later when I got the chance.
Well, they went and released it before I got that chance, but being in the possession of a laptop, and internet connection, and several weeks off for the holidays, I figured now was as good a time as any.
First off: The title screen is neat. I like the fish that chase the cursor.
Starting a new game, the first cut scene is also nice, if inscrutable. Some kid, in his magical flying city, painting pictures of fish. Then... Cataclysm! It's raining red rocks! So much for your city, kid.
Cut to Naija waking up in her underwater layer. It's very pretty, and the voice-over is surprisingly non-annoying. I like whoever they got to act for Naija. There was a little bit of early panic of “should I know how to do something?” but the beginning tutorial script did a good job of giving me the basics. I like the Loom-style “music makes magic” motif, and the interface for it is great. It's also fun to swim around with the jellyfish. (I really like their long squiggly-things code, as seen in Naija's cape, the jellyfish, and many of the game's eels.) The map is very appreciated, since I am possessed with that special kind of neurosis that haunts gamers, a compulsion to make sure I visit ever area on a map for fear of missing some speck of precious, precious content.
Saving the game seems to require being near a giant red crystal. Since the rest of the game is so aqua-themed in color, they seem a little out of place, but I'm sure they have some meaning. (I find myself wondering if they have any connection to the red rocks that fell out of the sky in the intro.)
The first real moment of magic comes when I get to the area near Naija's house. The background is gorgeous, and there are so many fish swimming around, it really feels magical. Kudos to whoever made the design decision to include a lot of entities whose only purpose is to swim around and enhance the mood. I spent a good 10 minutes playing with the eel below Naija's cave.
Early on there is also a weird scene involving an odd shadowy figure who flies at you, and gives you an odd flashback(?) of a weird, evil-looking sea-elf-thing with glowing hands, swimming in a cave full of things that are shooting at it. Since you can control the evil thing, (which apparently shoots mind-bullets instead of singing, when you click the right mouse button) I ran around and blasted a few things, but shortly thereafter was brought down by the sheer number of things shooting me. Oh well. It is the purpose of early-game cut-scenes to be cryptic. I wonder if it's “winnable”. After I finish the game I may go back and try.
Speaking of cryptic, there are a few other parts of the game that are equally confusing. For example, I found some strange machine (which Naija promptly moved to her cave) but I have no idea what it does. It shows up on the map as little green figure-8 sort of thing, and sometimes while exploring, other things will end up on the map with a similar icon, but I have no clue what they're for yet.
Before too long I got the “lift rocks and stuff” spell, and had some fun dragging giant boulders around, but they're fairly difficult to control. Jumping ahead a bit, there is a cut-scene involving some fish-person attacking people with boulders, which actually looked kind of cool, but if there is any way for me to do that personally, I haven't found it. The best I can manage is to sort of slowly drag it into them, or (if they're fairly immobile) dragging it above them and letting it go, to slowly sink and crush them. Of course, it seldom seems to actually do enough damage to kill anything, so if I want to use it, I have to go back down and pick it up again, drag it back up above them, and repeat the process, in what feels like some strange, sea-elf version of Chinese water torture.
Further exploring, I found a giant turtle who, (from one of the few pieces of promotional art I've glimpsed) I imagine to be some sort of sub-marine mass-transit system, but was disappointed when it informed me that it would have nothing to do with me until I talked to some other (presumably more important) turtle first. I also found some giant pearl, which I dutifully dragged into the giant, pearl-shaped open mouth of a (relatively) nearby statue, and was vaguely disappointed when the door next to it didn't immediately open and reveal new and amazing discoveries. Oh well.
Shortly thereafter, I found a place which the game informed me was the “energy temple”. After a brief, but entertaining boss fight in which I sang a giant statue to death, I learned a new song. Yay! And it.... it... turns me into the evil-looking thing from my flashback. Huh. Mind-bullets and all.
The only problem is... they do such a great job of making me not WANT to use the new “energy form”, while also providing a number of situations where it's obvious that I'm supposed to use it. I managed to get through most of the rooms full of enemies with the help of my shield-song, but since the trigger-switches require you to use it, (and there are some gates you can only swim through while “energized”) you can't really get through the temple without it.
But that doesn't help me from feeling a little bit more icky every time I use it. And the demented, nasty-sounding giggles that Naija occasionally gives, while melting sea-life with her brain, don't do anything to reassure me.
(Minor technical nit-pick – The energy bolts seem to fly from one of her glowing hands, but since she doesn't actually bother to point, or move it in any way, it just ends up looking sort of weird. I find myself wishing that they were spawned from her head or something (especially since the cut-scene talks about her making energy with her thoughts) instead of from one of her hands, lazily by her side, as she swims along.)
The energy form brings an interesting decision for the player also – (moral issues aside.) Do you want to be able to attack, or do you want to be nearly impervious to damage? The shield spell does a great job of making you not get hurt, since at this point, there are very few enemies that attack directly – most of them shoot glowing bullets. But of course you can't really hurt them without energy form, where you have no shield. (Well, hurt them without resorting to sea-elf water-torture, at least.)
Which brings us to the boss. Of course the temple had a boss! Who ever heard of a forgotten temple without something huge and horrible lurking at the depths? The Energy Temple is happily no exception to this rule, and its guardian is no disappointment.
Given my aforementioned feelings of distaste towards the energy form, it is only natural that I spent a fair amount of time trying to see if I could best the boss without using it. I discovered that with some careful placement, I could bounce its own projectiles back at it, and that after several of them, it would roar in a satisfactory manor, letting me know that I had [presumably] done something right. Unfortunately, here, the feedback was misplaced. After about 5 minutes of this, I began to suspect that I wasn't actually hurting him any, even though he was flashing when hit, with the standard “boss-hurt-flash” that all video-game players are so familiar with.
I liked what happened next though. I eventually went all energy on him, and blasted him a bunch. And found a pearl! And dragged it back to the statue, figuring I was done. (Neat trick, switching back and trying to grab it as fast as possible to make your escape.) But then I realized that all the pearl did was let you shoot a laser-beam-thing. Ok, lure the boss to the beam. Standard stuff. But then was when the really neat part happened. Since after two or three shots, the boss got smart and didn't actually come into the beam zone any more. The moment when I realized what I had to do (and then did it) was a great one for me. (My solution was to goad him into taking a swipe at me, and fire the laser on his outstretched arm as he swung.) Nice moment, that one.
After a bit more exploring, (with my newfound mind-bullets) I found the “open waters”, which were marvelous (again, more swimming around with fish, somehow extremely fun) and soon after, a ruined city. (Mithala, I think it was called?)
The city was interesting for me, because it had one of my favorite things I've seen so far, coupled with one of my least favorite. Least favorite first: The moray eels that hide in broken houses. These are neat, but... come on. I've seen such awesome, awesome eels by now, gliding around smoothly, without seams or segments. So seeing the 8-bit throwback segmented snakes just felt disappointing, since the game has already demonstrated elsewhere that it can do eels better.
Most favorite thing: The giant, blurry, jelly-fish in the background. Those things are inspired. I mean, the rest of the game has already been extremely lush and beautiful, and showed off Derek's artistry very well, but those jellies were a stroke of genius. It's possible that I'm just a sucker for giant blurry things in the background, but those things were great.
One other comment about the city: It took me a VERY long time to realize that you could swim inside any of the houses. I didn't realize those were even openings, and when I did figure it out at last was by accident, when I swam into one expecting a wall. I wish they had been better defined, especially since the city is so big, and I had to swim back around through it looking for open houses after I finally realized I could go inside them. (The flashback was neat though. Naija's memory recovered!)
One complaint – At this point, it is starting to get difficult to survive without using energy-form to blow stuff up. But they've done such a good job of making me dislike and mistrust the energy form, that I haven't been able to convince myself to do so yet. It kind of caught me by surprise, really. There are so many nice, fun animals around that are harmless, but pretty, that I was kind of caught unawares when I realized that everything around me now wanted to kill me. (I realized it in fact, after being nibbled to death by a school of horseshoe crab, which I had previously supposed to be friendly and just wanting to play.)
I eventually found a throne-room with a save-crystal in it, and went to bed. 2+ hours in. I'll write more as I get further.
Sunday, December 30, 2007
Aquaria Playthrough Diary, Part 1
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
What is to be expected
An informal cross between "mission statement" and "fair warning about what is likely to be found in these pages."
Things that are likely to be found here:
The intended audiences for this drivel are:
There. Now that I've got that out of the way, I can commence with the driveling, while having something to point back at, and say "I told you so!" should anyone see fit to send me churlish emails decrying the quality of my posts.
Playing with CSS
Trying out a new format option. "Below the Fold" text. So I can have my massively long posts, without having them destroy everything else on the front page. They are neat! Observe:
This text cannot be seen from the front page! It requires effort to view! Effort in the form of mouse clicks! Click click click!
I found this page to be both extremely helpful for setting it up, and extremely hurtful to my layout sensibilities. (On my browser at least, it ends up being very large text, in seemingly arbitrarily narrow columns, with various garish colors and animations assaulting my delicate senses at all times. Heavens!
I'm not sure if this is the best way to achieve the effect I want, but it seems to be working, so who am I to complain? No doubt, sooner or later a friend who actually, you know, knows CSS will wander by and gape silently in abject horror at the solution I cut-and-pasted from the internet. But until then, yay! It works! And the page did a good job of making it fairly straightforward to put together, and I even managed a minor tweak on my own. (Making things clicked not spawn new windows/tabs by default.)
Hooray! It works!
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Tetris... with TIME
I've been trying to figure out why the skill training in Eve-Online works. Not works in a general technical sense. That part is pretty trivial. But works as a game mechanic. That part is harder to pin down. Longish post. Read more below the fold.
On the surface, it actually looks not too far from the inestimable Progress Quest. You select the skill you want to learn. Say, “Missile Launchers, level 4”. The computer tells you how long this will take, and then sets about it. “2 days, 13 hours, 35 minutes”. And then does it. No further user input required.
No pressure either. If you get half way through, and say “Man, I wish I was learning Cybernetics 2 instead”, you just select Cybernetics. Your progress towards Missle Launchers 4 is saved. There is no penalty for switching as frequently or infrequently as you like. You lose nothing.
And thus are skills learned. No user further interaction required. Heck, you don't even have to be online as it trains. Players can (and often do) set up some complicated skill training, and then go on vacation, secure in the knowledge that it will be done when they get back.
For CCP, (the company behind Eve) this makes a lot of business sense. Since one of the costs of running a MMO is the bandwidth required to allow some crazy number of people to connect to your servers, if you can figure out a way where they can still feel like they're progressing, without actually using up bandwidth, then hooray! You've cut a cost!
The one seeming oversight in this is that you can't queue up skills. You can't pick a skill to train, and then another one to train when you're done. And while you can log in to their web page and see various stats about your characters (including what they're currently learning, and how long until they're done) you can't actually set new skills to learn from the web.
In fact, the only way to set a new skill to learn is to log into the game and set it. Of course, you can then log right back out again, but for changing skills, you have to be in the game, however briefly.
On the surface, this doesn't seem like much of a game. More like a minor mechanic in a larger game. And that's partly true. Skills feed in directly to the rest of the game of Eve, and underly almost everything you do. Without the appropriate skills, you can't fly ships, equip equipment, or manufacture goods. Nearly every action in the game proper has a tree of skill requirements behind it. In addition, many give passive bonuses to all manor of things, ranging from the strength of your shields, to the prices you get for selling things.
It's easy to see the game in flying your ship around and USING the skills you've learned. But what I've gradually come to realize is that, as passive as it seems, the act of learning skills is a game in and of itself. It's just harder to see because the game board isn't on the computer; the computer is just keeping score.
The revelation I've had recently is that the game the “skill game” resembles the most is actually Tetris. Except, the blocks are made out of TIME:
The optimizing part of my mind wants to be training skills as much as possible. In a very real way, the number of skills you've trained represents how “advanced” your character is. So it makes sense to try to always have a skill training at all times. And the optimum strategy then seems fairly straightforward: Whenever you finish a skill, you want to be there, ready to switch over to a new skill right away, since any time between when the first skill finishes, and the second begins, is “dead” time, that you're not getting anything for. (Which offends the part of my brain that loves to optimize, very much indeed.)
The problem, of course, is that the blocks of time necessary to learn skills don't align with the parts of my life when I'm around and available or willing to log in and change a skill over.
So I find myself with an interesting optimization problem. I have a number of skills in the game I can learn, each with an associated block of time. I might have some that take one hour, some that take 5 hours, some that take 9 hours, etc. And then I have to figure out (HAVE to figure out, the optimizing part of my brain demands it, in no uncertain terms!) how to align those in such a way as to line up with the rest of my life.
Like any person (who hasn't been consumed by the game utterly) there are certain boundaries that are inviolate.. I have to go to work most days. Sometimes I have to stay late. Sometimes I know I'll go out and hang out with friends afterwards. Sometimes I DON'T know I'll hang out with friends afterwards, but I suspect it might happen, I require 8-9 hours of sleep every night.
These things aren't changing. They are requirements that I'm not willing to sacrifice for the sake of a game. And they form a game board, of sorts.
“Ok,” my brain says. “We can work with this... So you know you won't be hanging with friends tonight because you want to work on your programming? Ok. Train the 9 hour skill, and change it when you get back. What? You're working late tomorrow? Set something that takes 22 hours before you go to bed tonight.”
And so on.
It really is rather Tetris-like when you think about in those terms. I'm given an irregular shaped board. I get an every-changing sequence of pieces of varying size. I'm rewarded for packing them together as tightly as possible. Except... the irregularly shaped board is my social life, and the game is played on a time scale that takes days or weeks.
It really is aimed squarely at whatever part of my brain loves tetris and games like it.
It makes me wonder, too. What other games could you build, that use something personal to the player as a sort of game board? I've heard about games that use the contents of your hard drive, or of random CDs, to generate levels or monsters. But this one feels unique because it's using things that aren't even directly connected to the computer. What other games could someone come up with that blur the line of “how far can a computer game reach?”
Neat stuff to think about at least, even if I haven't come up with any great ideas in that direction yet. It's still kind of inspiring to see how they managed to pull it off. I wonder if it was intentional.
Read more!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
First Post!
It is an unspoken tradition that the first post for any online undertaking automatically suck. There are occasionally happy exceptions, but this is the general pattern. There are a number of reasons for this. Common ones include lack of defined direction, resources that are not yet lined up, or on-line, and enthusiasm that far exceeds actual content. It's usually not until a bit later that online offerings start to hit their stride, find their direction, and provide something of actual interest.
Keeping that in mind then - marvel at how closely I follow the conventions of the medium!