When I can drag myself away from a giant ankh building project (inevitable after seeing a tweet including the words “Minecraft” and “Populous”), I’ve been digging through a few other indie games, primarily through TIGSource. There was a rather interesting competition there a while back, Assemblee, in two parts. Firstly artists and musicians produced assets, then coders used those assets to make games.
Seeing “massively multiplayer fantasy” in the list of winners lead to Realm of the Mad God, a rather fun little Gauntlet-ish romp that makes splendid use of the winner of the first stage, a nifty set of 8×8 fantasy tiles and sprites. I haven’t found the titular Mad God yet, though, so can’t confirm if he says “wibble“.
Ah, the mention of Populous brings back many happy memories! I remember when I first had my Amiga 500, I’d spend many productive(?) hours building up EVERY SINGLE BLOCK OF LAND purely so that when I had the power I could FLOOD THE ENTIRE MAP AND DROWN MY ENEMIES BETWIXT MY DELUGE AND THE EARTH!
I’d then follow it up with a volcano or two, just because, you know, it was fun… I was generally a pleasant child, but Populous (and also the newly fangled 3D adventure, Dungeon Master (for which I had to buy a 500*K* expansion memory kit!)) definitely cemented my love of games…
I also spent many hours of my youth shovelling 10p after 10p into Gauntlet; the health amounts you got per coin varied on what the arcade owners had saet it at though, so myself and my brother used to visit every arcade in Margate to find the machine that gave the most… It didn’t change the fact I was still a bit rubbish at it, but I still can’t suppress a smile when another child of the 80’s era of gaming says ‘Warrior Needs Food, Badly!’ or ‘Your Shots Do Not Hurt Other Players – Yet…’
I will check out Realm of the Mad God, and thanks for the Saturday morning whimsy in memory lane…
You’re just faking. Get back out to the trenches.
Ahh, Populous; over here, my followers, no, don’t build there you fool, right click destroy your house, left click smooth the land again! Regimented lines of 3×3 castles, isn’t it, wasn’t it? Ankhs for goalposts, 10p coins for Gauntlet, two people on the machine but the Wizard is free, mind if I join in? Rush goalie, Ian Rush, oh no! It’s death! Use a potion! Marvellous.
@Ysh: Ma’am, yes ma’am!