Category: Games

Prison Architect

From the minds that bought you Uplink and Darwinia comes a currently in Alpha, kind of being Kickstarted game: Prison Architect.

When I first came across it I had left it open in a tab or some time and I finally got around to watching the introductory video. And from that point on I decided to back the project!

Intro Video

Here’s the introductory video. It is quite hilarious in places, and it got me hooked!

Or Jump to YouTube

PRISONERS WITH DRILLS FOR NO REASON!!

They are running a Kickstarter style campaign to allow people to back the game but they have built the backing process to run on their own site. And using a third party provider to secure downloads. Which is quite clever as it give them full branding control. But does mean they miss out of the relevant sites promotional routes, but like them it still relying on backers to help promote the game.

The Game

The aim of the game is to design, build, and run a prison, using gaming themes and ideas from such games as Theme Hospital and others.

It’s currently reached its alpha 7 release and improvement on alpha 6. Largely adding in the Name in the Game backers, and the crimes they have committed (biographies), heres mine.

Barry Barry Barry

It’s quite a good laugh. I’ve had plenty of Prisoners escape, Guards die, and Workers building but not managed to start a big enough riot to burn it down (yet), but if it did happen, you can call the Fire Brigade in and direct them to put the fire out. In the future they are adding more “disasters” and relevant services to deal with them, bit like Sim City I suppose.

Backing

They have several levels of backing available and even if you do go for the lowest level where you just get access to the game, you can always upgrade later via a PayPal donation. And due to recent milestones being reached you can get a “discount” on the name in the game level.

I myself am on the picture in the game level. Which gets your name in the game and your Prisoner designed to match your likeness. (And of course all the previous tiers including copies of existing Introversion Software games, and some nice physical bonuses!

Where

Check the game out over on Prison-Architect.com and on Twitter @IVSoftware! I think it’s worth backing even at just the $30 level to get a copy of the game!

LinkDAQ

Photo credit - petrick : http://www.flickr.com/photos/petrick/70924598/sizes/z/in/photostream/

From the Desk of Dom “The Hodge” Hodgson comes something he built in a day, LinkDAQ.

Like the old BBC Celebdaq, its a “Stock” Trading Game, but instead of trading stocks and shares, you are trading links.

In this case the Cost to invest in a link is linked to the number of other sites that link to that site.
So a site such as Facebook.com and Twitter.com, which are linked to from lots of other sites, rank highly and cost more, in comparison to other sites, such as my own.

It’s using data provided by Majestic SEO. To quote the site:

We use the top 50,000 websites from the MajesticSEO Million dataset, this lists the top sites as ordered by links from unique i.p. addresses, we take this information and use a simple formula to give each domain a daily price.

Going to play it for a couple of days to see where it goes, and how things pan out, come and join me if you fancy it! So far I’m down about $600 on my initial investments, but we shall see what happens tomorrow!

For something built in a mere 24 hours its rather good, and it uses Twitter Bootstrap for it’s Framework, and it has a legitimate use of the good old HTML Marquee tag! And Dom should be pushing out updates and things to the site, and tweaking the algorithm.

You can also follow the developments on Twitter @linkDAQ and @TheHodge

There is also a TimeLapse video of the code being written:

Kerbal Space Program

Randomly follow a @Notch Tweet on Twitter about a game he was being shown, called Kerbal Space Program. I followed the link, downloaded the demo, and about 10 minutes later my money was sent on its way….

It’s rather good fun. The general aim of the game is to build a space rocket and launch it.
Heres an introductory video:

[SWF]http://www.youtube.com/v/l5OhFnq_iKw, 560, 315[/SWF]

And with just a few stock parts you can build some clever, silly and just explosive rockets.

Fun times have been had, my best so far was one that the moment it was placed on the Launch pad and launched, decided to fall apart leaving just a single engine attached to my rocket. (And a small explosion). My Kerbanauts survived to launch the next time.

Anywho, this morning I decided to restart my entire Space Center (after successfully retrieving all my Kerbanauts from their epic intrepid 29 day mission), so nuked and redownloaded KSP, and so far I’ve accidentally launched into a Sun Orbit, and crashed into the Mun. All from sunny Kerbol. Took some screenshots this time around.

This time around I was trying for a Mun shot, but I wasn’t paying attention to how the orbit was changing, and ended up sending them out and away into a Escape Trajectory for Sun Orbit (they are also out of Fuel).
Pretty much the same deal with the second group, but instead of attaining a useful Mun orbit. ended up have to wait 9 days for the Mun to come into alignment with their orbit.

The Mun’s gravity then dutifully caught them and I didn’t have enough fuel to slow down. And Boom Crashed 🙁
This means adding another stage to my rocket so more fuel in orbit/space me thinks.

Anyway onwards and upwards. Hopefully will make a successful Mun landing and return my Kerbanauts, more likely more explosions…. and very very silly rockets….

You can check out more about Kerbal Space Program, over at their Website their Twitter: @KerbalSpaceP or Tumblr, its in active development so expect more features soon! (Including docking YAY SPACE STATIONS) checkout the KSP Forums too, as KSP fully supports Plugins and Mods.

Its available both on Mac and PC, and you can download the Free Demo, locked at Version 13.3 current release is Version 14 (which includes persistence, the ability to have multiple craft up at once HURRAH!)