02.27.08
Iron Dukes
Our instruments indicate that at some point this map contained readable and fairly important treasural information.
Unfortunately pirates store things underwater so the deal is blown.
I don’t play enough indie games. To be honest I almost never play them. I should because it’s looking like my most likely route into the industry and I’ve collected quite a few ideas by now (Larry keeps poking me about sharing but I’m still working on writing them all down in a good format).
My newspaper, Politiken, recently started reviewing games in their culture section, and the first batch of games to receive this honour were the winners of the IGF. I already knew the winner of the Audience Award Audiosurf from having played the beta - I didn’t enjoy it that much, it was fun enough in the beginning but after about half an hour I lost interest. The tech is cool but I don’t enjoy the gameplay. A game that caught my interest, however, was the winner of Best Web Browser Game, Iron Dukes.
I checked out the demo today and it was great. Being a preview, it doesn’t offer a lot of content, so I only played it for half an hour - but it kept me entertained that long, not least thanks to its outstanding sense of fun. Ever read Calvin & Hobbes? Remember the naïve, playfully nonsensical feeling of Calvin’s games? Iron Dukes replicates that perfectly - it truly seems like an illustration of a universe some kids have come up with to pass the time until their parents pick them up from kindergarten. Especially the item descriptions are laugh-out-loud funny. It’s wonderous. And since the demo is free and currently all there is, I think you should give it a try. I can’t guarantee that it won’t get repetitive after a few hours, but as far as the preview goes, it’s worth your time. You can play the Iron Dukes demo here, right in your browser!
EER said,
February 27, 2008 at 22:19
Quite fun, Iron Dukes, I’d recommend it
Jonas said,
February 27, 2008 at 22:31
Yeah but I totally beat you to it.
I’m not sure it’s worth a purchase once it’s made available though. I can see those 3 minigames getting pretty tedious in the long run, eh?
EER said,
February 27, 2008 at 22:36
I don’t think I would spend any money on it, I mean what is it really … a good idea, but other than that …. True, it looks like it will get boring after a few hours, but I haven’t played the hours so I can’t be sure yet.
Jonas said,
February 27, 2008 at 23:10
The balance is also kinda off. On my first treasure run I earned 13,000 gold pieces for which I bought the best equipment I could get, then I went back out and suddenly the difficulty was completely stupid. Maybe they’ll fix that in the final version though.
Morten S. Clausen said,
February 28, 2008 at 22:29
What game is this? Is it like a miniclip game or something?
Jonas said,
February 29, 2008 at 01:38
Something like that. It’s a Flash-based casual/indie game. More indie than casual, I think, because the difficulty seems to rise pretty steeply if you’re not careful. Again, this may change in the actual game, this is just a preview.
EER said,
February 29, 2008 at 22:22
Just completed the challenge by killing the dolphin thing - by accident. Too easy, imho, I hope they’ll fix that before release.