Thursday, May 20, 2010

It's missing an X

Over the past couple of weeks, Sandy and I have been looking for an online free web game for both of us to play. After dabbling with a couple of capitalism types, we finally settled on Heroes of Gaia, a Hreroes of Might and Magic lookalike put into the MMO mould.

After playing for a couple of weeks, the game started to become a bit repetitive. Even though there was lots of different missions to do, they generally devolved into 'search for target, attack'. Tehre were other things that seemed amiss, but I couldn't really put my finger on it.

One morning I asked Sandy what she thought of the game. "Yeah, it's all right, but it's missing an X". I thought about it and laughed. "It's missing an X". What a unique sentence. I'm not sure how many other wives out there would have been able to say that. Firstly because it requires a deep understanding of 4X games, but also because it was a very efficient sentence to convey the exact problem with the game. She knew I'd understand what it meant. There is no longer any eXploration.

I don't think we played it after that. The problem was now exposed and the search restarted to find an interesting web game for the both of us. Currently our hopes lie in Neptune's Pride, a Masters of Orion type game with world time elements of play. It has a pretty clean interface and simple combat mechanics and tech tree, with an interesting mix of public and hidden information. The design would seem to be more like a board game than a computer game.

Yes, It has the eXplore. Time will tell if the other X's are there too, but it's looking good.