This week we’re taking a look at physics puzzler Bob Came in Pieces, finding out what games you think need some multiplayer love, and baking apple turnovers.
One of those things is a lie. And it is not the turnovers.
RADAR: Bob Came in Pieces
This week we review the best physics puzzle game about an alien call center employee that’s been released so far this year.
Windows, Puzzle, Ludosity, $9.99 – LINK
Free Indie Countdown
#3: Where We Remain – Flash, RPG, Twofold Secret – LINK
#2: Guardian Rock – Flash, Puzzle, Torpedolab -LINK
#1: Level Up! – Flash, Action RPG, Nifty Hat – LINK
Feedback: Games That Should Have Multiplayer
Some games are just so good, it seems almost like a crime that you can only play them single player. We take a look at the games you think need some co-op love.
Next week’s Feedback question: What’s your favorite strategy game? Weigh in with a video or audio comment on www.Bytejacker.com, a video response on YouTube, or a message on our hotline: (530) 675-GAME
Free Indie Rapid Fire
Pax Britannica – PC, RTS, No Fun Games – LINK
Cream Wolf – Flash, Arcade, Messhof/Pixeljam -LINK
Suggested by Harrison
Rocket Ninja CyborgLINK
Suggested by Scattle
This Week’s Music:
All tracks by EvilWezil, from the album “Chronophobe.”
http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2009/12/evilwezil-chronophobe
Stalking people is fun!
Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bytejacker
Become a fan on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bytejacker
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Grappling hook games. Never get old, do they? Or ninjas for that matter……..or cyborgs.
And I hate you New Yorkers for getting snow. It just gets windy and rainy here. D:
Are we really going to discuss the weather?
Sucks out here in Utah. The weather looks like it’s gonna get nice, starts to warm up ‘n stuff, thinking I’m gonna break out the bike over the weekend and take a ride, then just as the weekend get here it turns to snow and cold and miserable, every week for the past month.
For what it’s worth, New York is flippin’ gross today. I reallllly don’t want to go outside in all the sleet and sludge, but I know eventually I’ll have to.
Edinburgh seems to be the only place in the UK without snow, I wanna go sledging dammit!! :(
Hi Anthony and Jon
I must say that StarCraft is my all time favorite RTS but since a couple of years back I have grown in love with another strategy genre, namely the strategy FPS multi-player games. My first encounter with the genre was command and conquers renegade but that never hit the sweet spot. One game that did hit the sweet spot was Natural Selection, a mod for HalfLife where aliens battle humans and the human side had an RTS strategy interface for the commander. The game I play right now is MAG, excellent strategy FPS and incredibly enjoyable matches when playing 128 vs 128 matches.
PS: I was going to record a video but the service you are using on the site did not work. I will be very sad if my input did not show up on the show because this is the first time I have given it, who knows a panda might die.
Thanks for a great show! :D
STARCRAFT!!! :DD Now if they just released the next game a little QUICKER, maybe I could have some sort of release of all this Starcraft tension, since my brother lost the CD.
I don’t know, the fact that they’re splitting the content of one game into three games doesn’t sit well with me….
Thanks for your comment sedrik, let us know what issues were with Viddler so we can try and help you out. We can’t afford to lose another panda.
Or Viddler?
PS, my video comments are being marked spam today. Well, at least one of them must have been.
There was some error while signing up, so I did not receive an account.
Try signing up to Viddler on their site then sign in with your new username in the window that pops up when you record a video comment below, and it should work. It’s kind of a pain but you’ll only need to do it once, then you’re golden. We wanna hear what you have to say!
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Free Indie Rundown:
Robot Ninja < Cream Wolf (shudder) < Pax Brittinaca (AWESOME!).
Best Strategy Game: Star Control 1.
Best Strategy Game I can recommend because SC1 is dated: XCom 2.
Anyone else disappointed by what they're seeing come out of the Starcraft 2 beta reports? I know I am.
PS. Jon, the editing job you do is nothing short of awesome. The jump cuts you did on the last word there to make my stammering foolishness sound coherent but keeping it fresh by changing the view so that you didn't just have your average jump cuts… well played Mr. Editor man. Well played.
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Look me up on the PSN if you want to play some multi-player Eye of Judgement: Hatori1181
Congrats on the bun in the oven.
thanks, Joe. It’s a strange juxtaposition for me: On one hand, I’m geeking out over a video game like a 14 year old, on the other, I’m going to be raising a child. Makes me wonder if I should be reproducing at all. LOL
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Tender moment with old man Joe. Not my best story telling, I was multi-tasking, but I think you get the picture.
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I’m sorry for all of my stumbling, it’s 7:50 AM, and I haven’t finished my coffee yet. I just had to respond to your video as soon as I could. Again, thanks for the wonderful story, it means a lot to me.
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Yeah, totally not staged there.
Whoa!! I didn’t realise all this paternal bonding happening here!! if I had seen this I wouldn’t have left the comment I had below. :X
Mind you if this “spreads” Byte jacker won’t be able to feature any more “baby puncher” games :P
I was gonna make a tasteless joke here, but considering how unfunny my last attempt at humor up there was I decided I’d better not.
Did I get marked for spam or did I forget to hit send? Here’s my video response:
http://www.viddler.com/explore/cymonsgames/videos/24/ (Feel free to edit to embed it you guys)
o Free Indie Rapid Fire rundown: Robot Ninja < Cream Wolf (shudder) < Pax Britannica (AWESOME!).
o Best Strategy Game: Star Control 1.
o Best Strategy Game You Might Actually Want to Play Because Star Control 1 is Admittedly a Little Dated: X-Com 2 – Terror from the Deep.
And was anyone else disappointed by the reports coming out of Star Control 2? I know I am.
PS. Jon, fantastic job editing. I love the way you handled the jump cuts at the end so that they didn't look like jump cuts but you were able to make my stammering comment into something coherent. Well played, Mr. Editor Man, well played.
Hi, for some reason this video won’t embed properly. I will try again tomorrow. In the mean time this text comment will have to suffice. Anyway, I think Command and Conquer 3 is the best strategy game I have ever played, although Total Annihilation was also very good.
Cream Wolf for free indie rapid fire also, just for the creepiness factor.
Anyway, I posted my game for free indie rapid fire and I think it would be a great choice for next week on account of it being an RTS/shooter. (although it does require a moderately good computer, something which most freeware games don’t need). Please check it out if you have time. Thankyou.
http://dwwilson.info
Sorry about that Dave, Spam filters been having a field day this week. We’ll try to stay on top of it and make sure your comments get posted.
As for Viddler, sorry for the issues. We found that signing up for the free acct. on Viddler’s site works better, then sign into it via the video comment button below and it should work. Let us know if you have any other issues. Also you’re free to leave it via youtube or you can email it to me at Jon@bytejacker.com
Great episode, however I feel a strong need to write the following comment on the Bob came in pieces.
Considering the fact that Anthony likes it, there probably may be few points of view on that one, however my impression was that “It is so bad I wish I could have a refund”, I bought it the first day it was out, back then it was more than 9.99 I think. The biggest disappointment about the Bob is the fact that the game is tragically purely done. Starting from level design to details and puzzles everything seemed and felt very clumsy and created without any bits of warmth and soul that should be putted into the game, now I should say that I am very forgiving and may understand many things but this was BAD even for a complete freeware, while for a commercial release at least an interface could be done in a more elegant manner, I played it for quite long hoping for better and kept giving second chances, and yet the thing miserably failed, I don’t know how and why Anthony managed to give it a “Buy it” I on the other hand would say grab the demo and see for yourself first, frankly saying this was one of the most disappointing titles of the last 2 years… And while I can be terribly wrong the whole game just feels as a rush for some fast cash.
Click to play this video.
Many thanks for replay and open mindedness, I think I may have been a bit unclear, again may be this can be more helpful to those who look into getting it – on UI I was referring to visuals and style not comfort of usage – I mean it is ugly and looks like they didn’t spend time on it at all.
Soundtrack I love too, great job on that one.
Puzzles – first I found them boring, and brute force – I was playing the game first day of its availability – may be it was buggy back them but I have stuck quite too many times with a need to get back to check point and all thanks to my attempts to solve things my way.Also quite often the ship would stuck or perform strange.
Design and atmosphere is not bad and I am a big fan of cartoonishess but things like fire (burning bushes or whatever), were lame, again this is Unity right, so it should be fair to compare with say BLURST works.
I would love to hear what other people think who played it.
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My feedback response is a little on the long side, but it’s all about connections.
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I guess Heavy Rain is somewhat strategy, but since your not planning anything, your not really having a strategy to it, just deciding. But it is awesome, hands down.
Yeah, you don’t really plan anything. You’re right, but I’m totally weighing every decision and somewhat intentionally unintentionally creating drama. Great amazing game. Sadly couldn’t play it tonight after dinner since the damn PSN is down and it can’t load Trophy Information! ARG! Such an amazing game though. Been borrowing my friends PS3 to play it. I get to play all the best games that way.
Yeah, I beat it a day before the PSN was down, sooo awesome, one of the best games of the year, hands down.
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TOM.
BOOT CAMP.
JUST FUCKING MAN UP ALREADY.
Dood, you’re right. I should totally do that. I’ve been thinking about it for months now and every time I get close I get cold feet and don’t do it. I’ll do it so I can stop copping out every week.
I will share the one scary bit of Boot Camping that usually trips people up/stops it from installing.
During installation, when you choose the partition to put XP on, you need to not just choose your “BOOTCAMP” partition, but also FORMAT it as NTFS – don’t try to install directly to it or “convert” it. It feels like a weird/bad/scary choice to make, because you think that the Boot Camp Assistant set the partition up for you, but you definitely need to format.
Other than that one spooky decision, the whole thing is cake.
So, do I do that in disk utility or does bootcamp help me with that?
Click to play this video.
I couldn’t help myself. This here is a much more thorough feedback explanation of why Pikmin is my favorite strategy game. I know it’s another 5+ minutes but I just wanted to give you some beefier reasons so you get an idea why a game like this could be so addicting and satisfying.
Thanks guys for including Pax Britannica in this week’s Free Indie Rapid Fire, we really appreciate it :)
@Tom: we’re getting ready to release for other platforms soon, but I can’t say it’s going to be in the next few days… We’re sympathetic, we have both Mac OSX and Linux programmers on the team :)
Thanks for letting me know! The game looks amazing! I’m going to hijack a friends computer just to play it. I can be patient for the mac version and such.
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@Jon
Thanks man for fixing that up for me, I’ll post the video on youtube I think.
My God, if I could enter myself into an ugly contest, I would.
This is ridiculous.
Note to self: Don’t wake up and do a Bytejacker video comment 2 minutes afterwards.
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► Free Indie Rapid Fire: Rocket Ninja Cyborg < Cream Wolf < Pax Britannica.
► Why? Because it was so… simple, yet innovative. And, it gave my dad no reason to not play. He pulls the "They're-too-many-buttons-I'm-an-old-fart" routine daily.
► Best Strategy Game: ADVANCE WARS: DUAL STRIKE!!
► Why? Because it's ADVANCE WARS and every possible gameplay mode in existence (with the exception of Wi-Fi 'cause it came out later) is there. DS Wireless? Yep. Single-Cart? Yep. PASS AND PLAY? Hell yeah.
Peace.
Raylin, I wanted to say welcome to Bytejacker! I didn’t get to say it before. And also, Advance Wars is sick! The only one I had was Black hole rising or something. I didn’t beat it, but I loved playing it on my red gameboy SP. Such a great handheld system and game.
Oh, and you could totally sell “Cream Wolf” with your deep bass voice. It made me want one of those orange cream ice cream pops.
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o Advanced Wars – Win.
o Check out Super Robot Taisen (links below)
o Fire Emblem had a good idea that you might like a little more than I did.
Good video of the gameplay of Super Robot Taisen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6qiu4cFS58 Gets real about 1:08.
Voltron in Super Robot Wars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfrgoenvQJ4
No wonder no one’s replied to this. My comment is awaiting moderation. Moderate guys!
I have a really sick sense of humor, Cream wolf gets my pick this week
Click to play this video.
Links to accompany the above video (posting separately in case this gets marked for spam)
Me talking about Hostile waters in my first video comment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcKW1sPH_Uc#t=05m26s
Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe (in case none of you saw it from the facebook posting – part 1 of 5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KppgKU73bg
And that Episode of controversial British satire Brass Eye (part 1 of 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7jVnrfoZD8
And google “sickipedia” … If you dare ( not for the easily offended )
Did i miss something? does “strategy game” include “real time strategy”? in that case I was wide of the mark with repeating hostile waters this wee =/
How so? In the show the question was left pretty broad. I mean, someone could suggest stratego and not been amiss. So long as there’s an element of strategy in the game I say it’s fair.
The engineer in TF2 I think would also qualify.
Laurence, you just totally thought what I thought. It’s like a grim fairy tale.
Links to what I’m talking about are awaiting moderation above ^ ^
Sorry Anthony, no webcam! Or phone currently so please consider this a voice/video message… but anyways Starcraft is absolutely amazing. The sequel looks promising, but the first has stood the test of time. Over 10 years later, it is still one of the most balanced, well thought out RTS’s ever made. Have you seen the kind of stuff that goes on in Korea? The Super Bowl for us is what Starcraft is for them. It’s televised and they have HUGE audiences come to see them play on huge screens on a stage. I still play it today, albeit horribly. But it’s such a fun game that you feel like you get better and better at each time you play that it doesn’t matter if the other guy Zergling rushes you or beats your army of firebats down with a fleet of carriers. Everytime you play it’s fun. Also, it’s one of the few games I’ve encountered that still has a respectable online community. After every game there is a GG and it makes you feel like even though you lost horribly. It’s ok because you had fun. Oh, and because it was released in 1998, my crappy computer can run it perfectly. That’s why I pick Starcraft as my favorite RTS of all time (well, until Starcraft 2 releases).
Click to play this video.
The Advanced Wars series for the Game Boy advanced is my favorite. A lot of cool unit, characters, and missions to choose from.
-David
http://www.davidrab.com
Fallout + X-Com+ random BioWare RPG = JAGGED ALLIANCE 2
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Andrew Says:
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Pax Britannica for the win.
(What is going on with my hair?)
Thank you so much for posting this, I’ve now got a smile permanently stuck to my face ^_^.
I’ve linked it on my blog [link], as long as you don’t mind.
[ my last post got stuck in the spam net when I edited it :x ]
Thanks a lot for posting this, I’ve now got a smile permanently attached to my face :)
I’ve linked the video on my blog (click my name to get there), let me know if that bothers you.
Awwww! So cute Joe! I am beginning to totally love one button games. Pax Britannica looks amazing. How can it lose this week! I know I’m going to love it when I actually get to play it, so I’m going to vote anyways.
Pax Britannica for the win!
(WHILE I FORGOT TO VOTE… SHIT)
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Pax Britanica’s littlest fan.
It’s amazing that he can play the game so well for a six year old. He have a good balance of units, using mostly frigates and fighters and then just a few bombers. It’s interesting to see how accessible such a complex game becomes when you reduce the input to a single button.
re: pictures
that. is. awesome! thanks for sharing :)
[...] positive feedback we’ve gotten! Pax Britannica has been picked up by the Indie Games Weblog, Bytejacker, PlayThisThing, and GayGamer. Furthermore, Darius Kazemi made this awesome video [...]
[...] amount of depth, and we’ve gotten praise to that effect. Pax Britannica was shown on Bytejacker, my favourite video podcast ever, where it’s currently a contender for Free Indie of the [...]
I got my laptop connected to my 32″ LCD TV, got 2 PS2 controllers connected to my laptop and a friend to share my couch with. We can easily play Pax Britannica 1-2 hours nonstop like this. Man is this game addictive. It’s so fast and fun so it’s like “I got to go, but just one more game…” and 5 min later it’s “aaaaargh this is the last one…” and so on and before you know it, half an hour have passed. You don’t realize is the first 10-20 games how incredible deep this game is, an it’s just ONE BUTTON! There’s so much timing involved and there are so many tactics, and how and when do you do your first move. Do you attack first or do you wait and react? Should you upgrade, when? Balance is important but in the end it usually comes down to frigate superiority, if you have 3 frigates more then your opponent it’s usually means the end. There’s only one thing this game is missing, a score counter so we can track how many more victories I have, and maybe a streak counter would be fun :) This is just a must play game!
FLOTILLA!
In this video:
Free Indy Pick
Where’s Jon? (Camera Guy)
Heavy Rain is awesome, but the PSN is down!!!!
Click to play this video.
Also: I haven’t seen Brent in a while. Wonder where he is. Hope he gets back to video commenting. Miss that guy.
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I’m really into board games and there is a lot more talk about strategy among board gamers. Most people don’t know the difference between tactics and strategy but it’s really simple. Tactics involve short term decisions while strategy deals with long term decisions. Taking tower defense games as an example you use clever tactics to build the best best tower for the current wave but you also need a strategy so you shape your tactics around a plan on how to defeat future waves with the towers you build now.
Plants vs Zombies is definitely the best TD game I’ve ever played. Defense Grid get a strong 2nd place.
As for good RTS games I would say Warcraft 3, that’s the only RTS game I’ve played through on single player. It really builds things up so you get used to playing and the story is really good. Many levels are also more like RPGs where you have a hero and a few units to complete missions. For multiplayer I really loved Age of Empires 2 with the expansion. This has to be enjoyed with at least 3 friends so you can make teams and send traders to each other and attack each other’s trade routes.
BTW, Myth – The fallen lords and the sequel Myth 2 – Soulblighter are really good strategy games too. Don’t know why I didn’t enjoy Myth 3 as much but it wasn’t developed by Bungie. One aspect that sets Myth apart from other RTS games is that you never build any buildings or train units. In single player you get what the map gives you while in multiplayer you get to buy the units you want. Formations are really important as the battles takes place on beautiful 3D landscapes, you want your archers lined up on a hill behind your knights so they can fire over the heads of your soldiers, some undead units can walk under water completely hidden while some will float on top and throw spears at their pursuers. It got dwarfs throwing molotov coctails at zombies with huge axes so it must be good :D
Click to play this video.
Free Indie of The week: Rocket Ninja Cyborg. While the speed that the lava rose at was so fast it sucked a lot of the fun out of the game, RNC still wins out over Pax Britanica. I was able to beat the logic engine in about two minutes and lost interest after another 5.
Answering this weeks feedback questions: For the best strategy game I have to go old school with “The Ancient Art of War At Sea”. WAS was a game on the PC in the CGA days and had three levels of play. You sent battle groups out to attack the enemy on a big map. You zoomed in to direct cannon battles between ships. And you zoomed in again to take charge of the boarding party when two ships met up. It even had a level editor. I would love to see a modern “Sim City-esk” version of this with some online multiplayer.
Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umpY5HW7xQk
Pax Britannica is at least 10 times better on two then just playing against the computer, the computer sucks.
Pax Britannica wouldn’t hurt from a better AI, the current one is good enough for a beginner setting. Beating the AI with nothing but fighters or nothing but frigates is really easy, it shouldn’t be. I just discovered that it is also possible to beat it with nothing but bombers if you conserve resources at the beginning. I’m also now good enough to beat the AI even if I start with an upgrade, something that is suicidal in a two-player game. Yeah, it’s hard to satisfy my PB cravings alone :)
PS. A friend of mine is playing it alone on his lunch break at work.
No argument there. As a result of the above video Andrew wanted to play Pax Britannica and I just watched him decimate a computer opponent, swarmed him to death.
Click to play this video.
Now he’s beat me 3 times in a row. The boy is impossible to get the upper-hand on. If this game had online multiplayer I’d let him pound on all yawl.
The game also needs the ability to play multiple computer opponents at once.
LMAO, great video response :D
I estimate the resources required for an upgrade equals 2.5-3 frigates, that’s a huge lead and in the beginning you are so toast. Usually in this case you really need to gather a bunch of resources so you can release multiple bombers at the same time, so they don’t die as soon as they get out. 2.5-3 bombers costs about the same as a frigate and they can quickly take them out. But if the frigates have fighter backup to deal with your bombers you don’t stand a chance. You need frigates to take out the fighters but if your opponent then launchers a bomber or two your frigate will likely blow up before it can launch missiles. You can try to send out fighters between missile bursts to hunt the bombers but it’s really hard at this point. There’s just incredible depth to the game once you get the hang of it all.
sweet video, but at the same time, tread cautiously joe. if this goes to his head too much it could be him that’s blurting out insults about “your mother’s sexuality” over this and other games in future :P ;)
Just to be sure to share my shame with as many people as possible:
http://youtu.be/elyDozF0hzA?a
Took a photo of my Pax Britannica settup at home: http://twitpic.com/1625i4
That’s badass!
VGA inputs rule ;) …
this was one of the first things i did when I moved down to Edinburgh….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgFhd-aVPU8
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So my picks were Ninja>Pax> Wolf, just because with Pax, I just didn’t like that type of game, but it was awesome for what it was.
As for my feedback question. Disgaea. Best. Game. Ever.
hands down. Amazing amazing amazing.
I gotta fix my mike on my desktop, cause this laptop one is goofy, but thanks for bearing with it.
Glad I got this comment in in time, busssy week!
Yeah…….I know I didn’t comment on the games. Comp’s been screwy. No worries though! Here’s my feedback answer:
Click to play this video.
@Joe Larson
I couldn’t reply to your post with the video for some reason so I’ll start a new thread instead. I could give you three tips on how to beat your son but I don’t know if I want to spoil his fun :) Let me just say that this isn’t a game where you can catch up by doing the same thing your opponent does, he is always going to have a frigate more then you until yours start breaking up before his do due to the difference is firepower and then you’re dead.
Popcap made $1 million on Plants vs. Zombies O.o
look: http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comment/plants-vs-zombies-iphone-game-makes-over-1-million/
MertenNor
Heads-up: The game reviewed on this episode, Bob Came in Pieces is on sale on Steam for only $2. I’m not sure how long it lasts so now seems like a great time to pick it up! There are also a few other indie games on sale on steam.
Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/evilprimate/bytejacker.com/wp-content/plugins/the-viddler-wordpress-plugin/phpviddler/phpviddler.php on line 443 error
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FFS, I’ve been trying to upload that for days. Damn Viddler…
[...] for both “the best and worst in downloadable and independent games”. Watch episode 77 here and judge for yourself which category my game belongs to [...]