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I just started playing Bookworm on iPhone/iPod Touch. This is the famous and successful online PC game that was launched many years ago by Pop Cap. This is a word game like Scrabble but differs in the way of making words and has different gameplay mechanics that are simply not relevant to Scrabble.

When I saw this game many years ago, I wasn't too interested to try it simply because I wasn't a fan of word games. Even today I don't consider myself a fan but I like unique games, even word games and Bookworm offers this unique experience. Besides being a fan or not, word games are good when you want to play a relaxing game that doesn't raise your stress level during play time, like Majhong for instance.

So, to summarize the game, it consists of forming chains of letters to create words. The chains can be created with any adjacent letters. The more your word is long, the more you gain points. The same goes for letters; rare ones like W are worth more points. But that's the whole story, indeed you have to deals with some dangers. The game throws on the board letters in fire from time to time. These go down after each created word. When one of them touch the ground, fire is propagated to the library, which makes the game over. So you're better using these letters to form words before it's too late. Other gameplay includes levels, bonus for proposed words and other bonuses for words that are part of a collection.

So this game is definitely worth bying. And even at 3$, it's not a high risk!

According to spokesman Harald Ebert interviewed at Gamescon, the Nintendo 3DS design is not final. No information was revealed from Ebert but we know that there has been rumblings from Capcom that the D-pad is not final, and will be tweaked accordingly before its launch. Keep in mind that such statements are not from Nintendo and should be taken with a grain of salt.

What does "not final design" mean? Does it imply hardware changes, look and feel or both? What seems pretty sure though is that those design changes couldn't be major since that would have too important impacts on game developers. Changes such as screen resolution or important GPU design changes would be too risky for developers at this time since the 3DS release date will be out by March 2011.

What are your predictions? We should know much more on September 29th when Nintendo will announce the 3DS release date and price with apparently surprises! 

Hi,

I'm playing zelda for a while. What a hot game one more time! This is the second game on the DS and I can say that it's even hotter than the first one. And I'm happy that the game no longer has this design issue: in the first game, you were forced to replay over and over again the same levels to reach newer ones. Another issue was the pacing; sailing was fun in the beginning but it quickly became repetitive. While there was variants, it wasn't enough to be really enjoyable. Spirit Tracks still has some pacing issues when traveling by train but this time the gameplay aspects are much more fun.

What's more, Spirit Tracks provide the player with lots of new and fresh gameplay. You come up with this ascertainment: wow, they managed to find that much new gameplay! And I must confess, driving a train is really new and therefore adds to it.

Definitely a must buy for any RPG like fans!

Hey, I'm going to enter the Java4K contest this year. This is going to be my first participation. If you don't already know the contest I suggest you to consult and play a a lot of very cool games at java4k.com. It's truly amazing what can be done in a game with only 4kb (4096 bytes) of size! Believe me, I browsed all the games for this year and past years and I was simply stunned by the quality, playability and fun factor of a lot of them. But, yes there's a but, don't expect full fledged games there of course. Some have multiple levels (many here means different content and not just increased difficulty in levels) and you can play those ones for up to 1 or more hours. Again, you know that these games can't be compared to normal PC games and not even casual online games, even those crappy-marketing purpose games. The comparison doesn't stand here because of the limit of size of 4k games.

Talking about size, since 4k is a very small size (that wasn't the case in the vic-20 era), the typical developer makes every possible attempts to save space. This makes room for more content, better graphics, etc. To save space, many compression techniques can be used such as pack200, lzma and gzip. An obfuscator can also be used to further compress the code. But before applying these techniques, the developer must take great care about how he codes his game to try saving space. Such code design or style I should say implies for instance having only one class, which is named with only 1 character. Other guidelines are:

• avoid creating methods
• avoid instance variables
• instance variables should be named with 1 character
• and more

I'm going to start coding my first 4k game very very soon (since the contest ends in about a month or so). The game concept is based on the snake game. In a summary, you - the snake, have to eat the highest number of eggs before time is over and by competing with other snakes. Your snake never stops moving. He must avoid walls, blocks and his rival snake otherwise his life decreases.

My last point I wanted to cover about 4k games is how fantastic it is as an exercise of prototyping game concepts/ideas. Because of the size limitation, you're forced to focus on gameplay to achieve a complete game. Having less emphasize on graphics and sound keeps you concentrated on the most important thing in a game, the gameplay. Sure you have to spend time on byte saving but I guess it's a question of getting used to.

So stay tuned about my 4k game I'm starting developing. Before leaving you, here is a small list of impressive and great 4k games this year:

Assassins 4k

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=284

Don't Reach The Square

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=271

Falcon4k

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=268

GTA4K

http://www.java4k.com/index.php?action=games&method=view&gid=280

Hi All,

I'm playing the latest Mario & Luigi game. I wanted to take the time to write about this wonderful game. I played the 2 previous ones and enjoyed them a lot, a bit less concerning the second, but the last is completely amazing! It's the story of Mario and Luigi that have been aspirated by Bowser in his body. Once inside him, Mario and Luigi visit his body parts fighthing various enemies trying to find the exit for the sake of saving the Toad kingdom, among other missions.

The game plays not only as the brothers but also as Bowser a lot of the time. The main adventure is in 2D, like a traditional platformer, which makes it different compared to the previous games in the series. Once outside Bowser, the game plays in an isometric view. Bowser is also played in isometric view.

What is so fantastic about this game is not only the ever new brother attacks and the inventive game play, but also how you play as Bowser. For the first time in the series, you make attacks using the stylus! It's not the first stylus game of course but it's so well exploited and uniquely used that the game is incredibly fun and addictive. The stylus is also used in boss fights but by holding the DS in the vertical way.

The game also gives a lot concerning the RPG aspect. There's so much to buy and try that the game play can last a lot more if you wish.

I'm going to leave you there because I'm too eager to continue the game. :D

Go buy it, you won't regret it!

Nintendo announced a new revision of the DSi which will offer bigger screens of 4.2'' with a better viewing angle. Apparently this new revision will target the older demographic, which according to Nintendo has a weaker sight. While this may be a valid reason, Nintendo is again giving lower priority to hard core gamers. They released the DSi and now a new DSi revision but all in all the DSi provides gadget features like the cameras and the sound tools. Yes DSiWare is a very good idea but take a look at the quality of games and you'll quickly figure out that are very few of high quality. Even for 5 dolloars, a lot of them are not worth the money at all. Compare this to the Apple App Store, this is even worse! A lot of 5 dollars games are good or better. Speaking of cameras on DSi, where are the games really using them?

To date nothing convince me to buy a DSi. I'll wait for the next DS generation which apparently will be announced in the 2010 autumn. If Nintendo release games that use the cameras for great and innovative use then I may change my mind.

Nintendo announces a remake of exite bike on Wii Ware! That's really cool! :) I can't wait to play it. And as an added bonus online play will be supported.

Exite Bike is one of the great games I remember when I played it with friends when I was young. I downloaded it on the VC last winter and it was still as fun as I can remember. And there is this amusing aspect that others laugh at you when your motorcycle crash forever. Also we can see that this very old game proves that it's mostly all about game play. Sure graphics help immerse you but that's not the most important point for sure.