Have you ever wondered what it would be like if chess and the Unreal engine had a baby? (No? Just me?) Well, Rooks Keep gives you precisely that. There’s even a game mode in which you just play chess. But the real game – the real Rooks Keep - is a medieval fantasy arena battle. Like many modern multiplayer games you can play team deathmatch, free-for-all, and last man standing. Unlike other multiplayer games, you can also play a mode called ‘conversion’, in which all players are basically mercenaries working for whatever kingdom killed them last.

There’s also a ‘combat chess’ mode, where your ability to capture another piece depends on your ability to duke it out in a small arena. It’s not just a little animation of one piece killing another, like in Interplay’s Battle Chess; it’s an actual fight– a deathmatch– mano a mano. If I use a pawn to try to take your bishop, I’d better be a darn good fighter because your bishop is much stronger. It takes a bit of the strategy out of chess and makes it more about who’s the better gamer. I thought it was a great idea until one stubborn bishop fried my knight, my queen, and a pawn.

Conversion is my favourite game mode. In this mode, when you die you join the team that killed you. When a team is down to one player he or she becomes something called “the warlord” and gets a huge power boost to make things fair. I played four rounds in a row, losing myself in the carnage.

I did have a couple of problems with conversion mode. The concept itself is really cool, but I don’t know how well it will translate to multiplayer. If I keep switching teams, which team do I want to win? Am I rooting for the team I started on? Couldn’t some players purposely die to get back to their original team?

Also, it took a long time before I could tell who was on my team and who wasn’t. You’re coloured differently, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. And the power ups that turn players all red make it near impossible to tell what team they’re on. I spent a good while chasing my own teammates and the AI spent a good while yelling at me.

My teammate has had enough of me.

But, after an hour or so of playing, I obviously got the hang of it.

Oh, word?

Rooks Keep mimics the basic rules of chess. The characters you choose from are equivalent to pawns, rooks, knights, and so on. You get skill points for playing well, and you can either spend those for upgrades on your current character (like more damage or health regeneration) or you can spend them on a better champion (for example, upgrading from a rook to a queen).

Like chess, it’s a game that can be simple enough for newcomers but has a steep learning curve and a lot of subtleties. The need to balance offense and defense is made clear right from the tutorial. Parrying saves lives. It also opens up opportunities to strike.

I’m interested to see what happens when clan matches come about. When I played, the AI’s teamwork was the equivalent of button mashing. And so was mine. We all just ran to the centre of the map and whacked at each other until somebody was declared the winner. I started getting the hang of the hit-and-run as I played more, but imagine the strategies that clans will use.

I do take issue with the anti-camping mechanic that teleports you to a new location if the game thinks you’re staying in one spot too long. The problem is it thinks that a lot. I was accused of camping while running into battle and I was accused of camping while running away from battle.

Honestly though, I was invested in every match I was in and I found myself pulling the old “just one more round” a couple times.

Rooks Keep is now available to buy at runestorm.com/rook/buy, and as long as it gets enough players it will be worth it. I only played with AI and I had a blast. This is going to a be a scream-at-your-screen-when-you-die kind of multiplayer.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Machines at War 3 is a real-time strategy game made by Isotope 244 in the vein of Command & Conquer. It’s a sequel to Isotope 244′s last game, Land Air Sea Warfare. You collect minerals and harvest power to build units and structures to crush your enemies. Unlike LASW, MaW3 comes with online multiplayer, a campaign mode, and infantry units.

The best thing about MaW3 is the size of the battles. There are over 130 different land, sea, and air units, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and you can command thousands at a time. I had a few battles that were absolute chaos. I can still hear their screams.

I didn’t find the tutorial very helpful. It didn’t explain hotkeys, which was really frustrating. It took me the whole tutorial and a few missions of the campaign before I figured out some essential controls like how to make a hotkey for a group of units and how to move them by clicking on the mini-map. The campaign could have had the tutorial built in, and still kind of feels like it does. The first few missions are nearly impossible to fail. It’s a good thing, too, because I was still reacting very slowly to enemies I came across.

I didn’t know there was a way to attack an enemy on sight until I looked it up on the Wiki page. That means my units would have to finish going to the exact spot I clicked before they started firing at enemies, giving the enemies a nice head start. That’s something that should be covered in the tutorial. Hotkeys should be displayed when you hover the mouse over actions, but they aren’t. I had to go out of my way to figure that stuff out.

The default controls are confusing. For some reason, instead of right-clicking to move, you left-click – unless you’re using the mini-map, then you have to right-click. Yeah. What’s brutal about having left-click as move is it’s also what you use to select units. So, if you accidentally click and drag when you’re trying to move units, you’ll deselect them. It happened to me several times. Thankfully, you can change the controls in the options menu. This didn’t fix my issue with clicking and dragging though.

I found structures were often more useful than units. Minerals are automatically generated, so units are disposable, and as such, they die quickly. Defensive turrets seemed like a much better investment. When I skirmished the computer (and lost), I noticed the AI would creep up on me with buildings, not just units. I lost a lot of good men and women just trying to command the area around my own base.

I would recommend learning the units before you get into multiplayer. There is a unit index, which is handy, but I find it’s best to just play and get a feel for it. You begin to learn how fast certain units move, how much damage they do, and what support they need. Pay attention to the speed of units. I lost so many wasps, because they’re so much faster than other units and they’d arrive at the battle well before their ground support. Oh, the humanity!

MaW3 was programmed by one person, James Bryant. His hard work pays off with some great details, like how terrain gets scorched during fights and it stays scorched throughout the game. Unfortunately, and perhaps unfairly, I couldn’t help comparing it to games like StarCraft, to which it can’t possibly hold up. It’s important to mention MaW3 isn’t supposed to hold up against StarCraft. It’s a throwback to games like C&C, but when I play a game that’s similar, like this one, I really notice how well done StarCraft is.

I played the Windows version of this game, and I can’t help but feel like it would be better on iOS (which it is due for release on later this year). It doesn’t give off that impression that every second counts, so I think it would be more suited to using your finger to click through options. It’s also worth mentioning that LASW was a huge success on the App Store.

You can buy MaW3 for Windows and Mac right now, right here!

Overall Rating: ★★★☆☆ 

What does this score mean?

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the developer for that purpose.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Games like Dys4ia, Actual Sunlight, and Depression Quest are personal works of depression and hardship. They are meant to tell a story and convey a message; being fun is not the objective. Of course, just because something isn’t ‘fun’ doesn’t mean it isn’t engaging. Like reading a book with upsetting subject matter, these games are still recreational, and often enlightening.

Games like these are becoming more prevalent, and they’ve sparked a heated debate over the definition of ‘video game.’ A line has been drawn between formalists and zinesters. Formalists try to describe games as a type of play intertwined with mechanics and systems. Zinesters try to push the boundaries of games, believing games are tied to identity. Formalists have argued games like Actual Sunlight aren’t games. Zinesters disagree.

Does it matter? What is at stake in this argument?

“At a conversational level there’s no harm at all (in a broader definition of games). As I see it, the issue arises more when you get into trying to explain how games work, what was successful or unsuccessful design, and what lessons might be learned,” says Tadhg Kelly, author of the What Games Are blog.

Kelly calls himself a formalist. His recent blog post suggests he feels formalists are demonized by the zine movement.

“I believe that unless the zine movement starts to engage with outsiders on outsider terms (rather than demonize outsiders for not getting it) then there is a strong danger that  it will become factional and invert on itself.”

Kelly’s been working with games for twenty years and he says movements like this pop up from time to time, but typically don’t last.

“These movements rarely change the baseline of games and what they are because they are generally about an internal conversation within their movement. They don’t, to borrow a phrase, cross the chasm very well.”

But having an internal conversation defeats the purpose of these games. They’re all made specifically to give the players a message. They are stories of pain and of hope.

If it is an internal conversation, a lot of people are listening. Dys4ia, Depression Quest, and Actual Sunlight are all covered extensively in games media. Actual Sunlight‘s creator Will O’Neill actually thinks the media attention for his game is disproportionate to the number of people who have actually played it.

O’Neill is “unbelievably proud” of his work, but considers Depression Quest to be more broadly appealing and a better representation of how games as art will break into the mainstream.

Of the three zinester game examples, Depression Quest gives the player the most control over the story. Dys4ia and Actual Sunlight are not meant to be ‘won.’ Being able to put players in a no-win scenario is one of the reasons O’Neill chose a game to tell his story. The medium is the message.

“I realized that allowing the player to actually experience the loss of agency over Evan as the game goes on was powerful in a way that a book could never express. To the extent that art is about the ability to empathize with something, I think gaming might be the most powerful artistic medium there is,” says O’Neill.

O’Neill considers Actual Sunlight both an interactive story and a game.

“I don’t really care what anyone calls it so long as they concede it is art. I think people failing to distinguish games in that way is what threatens and holds back the medium.”

Leigh Alexander, a widely published freelance games journalist and Gamasutra’s editor-at-large, has asked lots of developers whether they care what their game is called. She says a big issue is often these types of games are made by people who are historically under-represented. She sees their exclusion as a highly politicized act. Discussions that appear to be about systems and definitions are actually tied to identity.

“It’s hard to feel sympathetic toward the argument that ‘some things are Real Games and some things are not’ when we have wildly expressive and experimental work from women and the queer community — people who have been waiting a long time to feel wanted, welcome and included in the games space — and the traditional community, which is mostly white dudes, wants to add yet another form of exclusion in the form of the formalist definitions argument,” says Alexander.

People who have spent their whole lives struggling to belong are again being told they don’t belong.

Both Kelly and Alexander say this debate is nothing new. Alexander says it’s a hot topic right now because there’s a been a recent explosion of small, personal games due to the availability of free game-making tools. She thinks the political context has made the debate more heated this time around.

Alexander, herself, is very passionate on the subject. She believes formalists are shutting people out. They should be encouraging growth.

Kelly says formalists are not trying to put game makers in their place. Instead, they want to learn from games, see what worked, and translate it so others can use that information. Alexander doesn’t think formal definitions are as important as new game forms, new voices, and new ideas.

“I don’t know why you wouldn’t hear people getting upset about this and instead acknowledge that you might be in a position of privilege and that you can’t relate to how others might feel. What do you lose by seeing how the space evolves and unfolds rather than putting yourself into the position of legislator? Formalists don’t know everything — that’s why games are suffering extreme economic decline and arrested development,” says Alexander.

Are formalists holding games back? Are zinesters bringing in a new era of experimental games? Tell us what YOU think.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Game developer David S. Gallant has had lots of it since losing his job with the Canada Revenue Agency in January but he hasn’t found his situation one conducive to making games.

“I realized that this kind of free time is actually my worst enemy. I haven’t had a solid project to focus on that is immediate and demanding my attention the way I used to. And the concept of needing to make a game in order to make money and keep my head afloat is a very toxic one. It’s not a good environment to make games under,” says Gallant.

David was fired from the CRA after an article was published in the Toronto Star about his game, I Get This Call Every Day (IGTCED). The game is about a (sometimes) indignant customer at a call centre. It was Gallant’s way of expressing his frustrations at work. He was careful not to give away any confidential information. He doesn’t outright say where he works, but some of the questions in the game suggest it’s tax related.

When Gallant learned Star reporter Valerie Hauch brought the game to the attention of National Revenue Minister Gail Shea, he knew his fate.

“Unfortunately I was not made aware that the reporter would seek public comment from the Canada Revenue Agency. Had I known, I most likely would not have consented to the interview. When I first saw the article, I knew that consequences would be inevitable.”

There was an upside. Gallant got a lot of press and incredible support from the indie gaming community. His game’s sales sky-rocketed. Before he was fired, Gallant’s game had made $1300. Since then, it’s made about $12,000. As well, it gave Gallant an opportunity to focus on making games full-time. But as Gallant tweeted the day he was fired, that doesn’t necessarily pay the rent.

The boost for IGTCED is over. Sales have trickled down to an average of seven purchases per day. Gallant needs a new source of income.

“I need to find gainful employment within the next couple months if my wife and I are going to make ends meet in a continued manner.”

The fear of financial ruin is affecting his ability to create. The natural deadline of having no money isn’t inspiring Gallant to do good work.

“It’s almost the antithesis of what a deadline can do to a game development project. It’s leading to some very bad ideas and stuff that I’ve tossed out and things that I haven’t pursued.”

This is a problem lots of indies face. How, financially, do you switch  from part-time to full-time developing? And how do you stay motivated?

“Luck or rich parents, in my experience, account for 50 per cent of indie game devs making the jump,” says developer Michael Todd, adding that luck tends to strike hard-working people more often.

Before he made the jump, Todd was working for minimum wage in a crack shelter spending his free time making games in a cheap bachelor apartment. He spent a long, lonely year making a game that was eventually picked up by a Russian publisher. He lived moderately off the money that game made for the next five years. By that point, he had other profitable projects underway.

Todd says a big part of development is being able to push on even when it seems hopeless, but also knowing when to quit a project and move on.

Motivation is another problem for Gallant. Learning new skills has been more frustrating than he expected, and development is becoming a chore.

“When I had a job, I was motivated to make games because it was a productive thing I could focus on that wasn’t my job. Being freed from my day job has kind of left me with nothing to escape from, which makes game development the job,” says Gallant.

Developer David Maletz offers motivation advice on his blog. He says to avoid being overwhelmed, you need to set small, stepping-stone goals, and reward yourself when you reach them. Stay where you’re comfortable, and slowly introduce new platforms and algorithms.

Gallant says he’s not sure how to define a small goal within the context of what he’s building. Small goals often turn into big goals, fraught with challenges.

Currently, Gallant isn’t working on anything immediate. He has built a Pong prototype, made a Mac version of IGTCED, and even made a captioned version for the hearing impaired. His fans have told him to add more to IGTCED, but he’s not interested.

He still likes making games, but he’s struggling.

“There was this cushion where I could give the full-time games thing a go. It hasn’t really worked out. I’m not sure that returning to the workforce will help, but it might. It’s hard to tell until I’m actually there, you know?”

To buy a copy of I Get This Call Every Day, click here.

© 2013, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.