New version of great strategy game Warring Nations released & other Insenic&Risk news
Do you like Risk and other round-based strategy games? Do you want to play them on your Pocket PC? Read on to find out how you can!
Insenic, developer of some, except for the lack of real sound effects and music, nice Pocket PC games like Creatonia, has just released version 1.2 of their high-quality strategy title Warring Nations.
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The title is available here and boasts a lot of improvements. Unfortunately, however much there is an “Enable music” checkbox in the Sound Settings Preferences as can be seen in this screenshot, there is still no in-game music. Still, if you’re into the genre (Risk-like strategy) and you still don't know it, check out the title - particularly if have a VGA device (it makes use of the high-resolution capabilities of VGA models).
Speaking of Risk clones, you may also want to read the Bible of Pocket PC Games Part I for some alternatives (look for Sean O'Connor's games in there). I also recommend Add-Venture by Qsoftz, which, lately (09/01/2006), has received a new (1.84) upgrade. Unfortunately, the latter still doesn’t support high resolution on VGA Pocket PC’s as can also be seen in this screenshot. This means the “VGA and Landscape devices supported from v1.84” in the blurb must be taken with a bit of salt. Also, it still lacks inter-PDA multiplayer options (see the Multiplayer Bible for more info), which would be essential for a Risk clone like this.
Still speaking of the games developed by Insenic, I’ve also tested the latest version (1.04) of the above-mentioned Creatonia. It has considerably more sound effects than previous versions; they are still definitely inferior to those of, say, Edge (the king of all RPG's available on Pocket PC's) or the three parts of Arvale (note that part three of the latter has just been released; see this PocketGamer thread for more info). For example, the sound of footsteps is really annoying, monotonous and doesn’t remind footsteps at all. The title has still no music at all, which is also a big letdown. This all means I still recommend this title only for die-hard RPG fans that don’t miss music (or, for example, fire up a media player playing, for example, Edge’s OGG music files in the background).
im still not impressed with Creatonia, there are a number of flaws in the game that just put me off. like you can read the spell books without buying them.
one RPG ive found to be quite addictive and good has been the Legacy the quest.
UPDATE (12/18/2006):
In the meantime, the Insenic folks have made available a separate music plug-in for Warring Nations. It’s downloadable here and should just be copied in the game folder. (Unfortunately, it’s (still?) not linked from the main game page. Note that there’re some downloadable add-on maps in there: Spain, England etc., which you may want to check out.)
The music track is good (“ear candy” and is played back in stereo) albeit a bit short (this especially applies to the menu sound effect – after some ten seconds, it ends) and, after a while, repetitive. Hope the Insenic folks add lengthier music some day.
Now, with (some) music in place, I highly recommend Warring Nations if you’re into the turn-based strategy genre.
The Insenic people have also promised to take my Creatonia-related remarks into consideration – hope this means it, at last, receives some really decent music. The title certainly deserves it.
Related
Unfortunately, except for Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral and Blitsoft’s Battle of the Generals (BoTG for short), there has been no Stratego clones for the Pocket PC. Fortunately, now, Inscenic, developers of well-known title Warring Nations and Creatonia has released a pretty cool implementation, Napoleonix.
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Availability, compatibility
The official homepage is here; the ClickGamer download here. The game costs $9.95 and there is an, unfortunately, pretty restricted trial version.
The title is compatible with all WM2003+ devices and I had no problems in running it on my various test Pocket PC’s.
Visuals
Very good – it supports high-resolution VGA.
Music, sounds
Yes, this is an area where Inscenic's games have traditionally been weak. It has no music / sound effects at all. Hope the developer will fix this problem. (Note that the two alternatives don't have in-game music either - except for a short menu tune in Connor's game. BoTG only has in-game beeps and a drum menu tune.)
Some remarks on the alternatives
(Also see the Bible of All Pocket PC Games Part I for more info!)
Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral is an old, but very good implementation of the game.
Blitsoft’s Battle of the Generals has recently beeen removed from the Net – from both the official homepage and that of all Pocket PC download sources (I’ve checked Handango, PocketGear and ClickGamer). I think this was done because the most recent version, 1.1 (released back in 2003; incidentally, it's the version that I've compared NapoleoniX to), doesn’t support WM5. I don’t know more about when it will be upgraded because the developer’s contact form and forum doesn’t work either. Also see this and this for reviews. Please also see the former on the rules of Stratego.
Note that according to sponge the developer of BoTG is out of business.
Multiplayer
The title also supports real multiplayer (not only plain hotseat - it's also supported here -, as was the case with Warring Nations!) capabilities, which is painfully missing from both BoTG and Connor's Pocket PC game (unlike his desktop Windows version).
The multiplayer uses the best approach, that is, full TCP/IP (see this screenshot) and not, say, LAN multicasting or native Bluetooth connections; that is, to be able to run it without an Internet connection you'll need either a Bluetooth PAN or a Wi-Fi P2P network to be run. Of course, it'll run over traditional Internet connections - as far as the server host isn't behind a firewall or a NAT'ed connection. That is, you'll be able to play even people on the other half of the planet.
Unfortunately, it has no in-game chatting, unlike many other multiplayer-enabled titles.
Note that the only problem in multiplayer mode is exiting on the other PPC when one party surrenders. Restarting the game, however, works in this case too.
Compared to the other two titles,
Pros
REAL TCP/IP MULTIPLAYER!!!!
Much more spectacular, particularly in (the otherwise pretty useless) 3D mode
Hi-Res on VGA devices
Costs the half of that of Connor’s game (Connor's games, while being pretty good, are rather overpriced.)
Shows possible move directions
Excellent built-in help, which can always be invoked. The game rules are explained very well.
Supports WM5, unlike BoTG 1.1
Has no speed problems on the Dell Axim x51v, unlike Sean O'Connor's game (the latter very slow on the A12 x51v; it seems it has no speed problems with other WM5 models)
As opposed to Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral, automatically rotates the screen to Portrait when you start the game in Landscape mode (and it has built-in portrait/landscape switching, which works even on WM2003 devices). Connor’s game, then, is unplayable and must be exit.
It’s available for purchase / download, unlike BoTG
Cons
“Only” supports WM2003+ (BOTG supports all ARM CPU’s and Sean O'Connor's PocketGeneral also supports very old MIPS / SH3 Pocket PC 2000 devices)
Verdict
Highly recommended for both Stratego fans and people that have never played the game but would like to have a decent, flexible multiplayer game. Give it a try - you'll like it.
Updated version posted.
Lately, I’ve had absolutely no time to test new games because I’ve spent all my time in real-world projects (yeah, I need to do some work to make both ends meet and to be able to purchase all the new gadgets), the Windows Mobile Web Browsing Bible and, of course, the Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine’s Annual Best Software Awards I’ve become the Nominations Manager of. So, let me quickly review two of the titles; first,
A REAL Prince of Persia-clone!
You must have heard of Prince of Persia, which, back in 1990 (in addition to Indianapolis 500 and Legend Entertainment’s Spellcasting 101), was one of my favorite games on the IBM PC.
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So far, there was no real Prince clone of the game on Windows Mobile. Up until now, that is; now, well-known (see the review of their Billiard Master 2 and Bowling Master review & comparison in the Windows Mobile Multiplayer Bible) Russian Windows Mobile & Palm OS games developer Mobirate has just started reimplementing the game on Windows Mobile.
The demo can be downloaded HERE and is WM2003+ compatible.
The project is really at the alpha stage and a lot of stuff doesn’t work. The Options screen is completely messed up (the labels are not visible at all and you can only guess what a particular checkbox does) on both VGA and QVGA devices, there’s no Button 1 (I’ve tested this on all my three Pocket PC’s (Dell Axim x51v A12, HP iPAQ 2210, HTC Wizard with AKU3.3 ROM) I’ve deployed the game on). The on-screen controls seem to be non-existent (albeit, after switching some “Off” checkboxes to “On” in Options, the game started to use them – but not the D-pad any more). Furthermore, there are absolutely no sound effects / music. Finally, the game may be pretty slow on some devices: it was barely playable (17-18 fps) on my iPAQ 2210. The HTC Wizard running at 240 MHz fared better (24 fps); finally, the x51v was the best (about 26 fps).
While the lack of for example button support may render the game completely useless (for example, you won’t be able to even do basic stuff like drinking potions), you may still want to give it a try, particularly because the developer is giving away free copies of the final version to the best, most productive betatesters (see the last sentence in readme.txt).
I really hope a (more) playable version follows very soon.
Note that the developer’s homepage doesn’t contain any real information on the game. For example, the image’s link takes you to their game compilation Brain Master. I’ve tried to supply different URL’s (by increasing the document ID referenced by the URL) to find out whether there is a page dedicated to the game; there (still) isn’t. That is, you won’t get any additional info on the game.
(News source: have run into the news upon routinely checking for a new, Microsoft Bluetooth stack-compliant version of Billiard Master 2 and Bowling Master on the developer’s homepage).
Many of you may know the color matching / Tetris clone Dr. Pocket from the author of for example Travel Collection (reviewed in the <code>Windows Mobile Multiplayer Bible</code>).
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While the previous version didn’t have much to write home about, the new one is MUCH better. First, it sports multiplayer capabilities and, second, no other than Jaybot7 (well-known musician; for example, most PDAMill games sport his music) himself has written some really cool music tracks for the game. (Note that, should you want to listen to Jaybot’s tracked music, it’s in the res/music subdirectory of the home directory of the game. Should you want to have a module player to play them, read my related roundup HERE)
Availability, price
It’s available here. Note that the new version is free for anyone who's ever purchased Dr. Pocket and only costs $9.95 if you want to purchase it.
Multiplayer
The multiplayer is lobby-based (screenshot). This means that, unlike with Travel Collection, it’s not possible to play Internet-less games (for example, over local Wi-Fi peer-to-peer or Bluetooth PAN connections). Hope the developer adds support for direct IP-based playing (it’s already there in Travel Collection), while, of course, keeping the central server (lobby)-based approach too. This would offer the advantages of both game types (lobby-based: no need for entering IP’s; works when both parties are behind firewalls / NAT’ed; easy to find opponents; direct: no Internet connection needed and works over even really local (pico)networks).
The game, when played in multiplayer, is simply parallel, as with the similar, comparable multiplayer Teris & color matching titles (for example, CanTris and Quartz 2). While you do see the other player’s current game on a minimap (in the lower right corner), along with his or her frags (three is needed to win the game), he has no direct effect on your playing – except for someone’s entirely filling in the entire playfield, that is.
A decent feature is that the two parties can agree upon the game type (there are three of them), the game speed (three), the number of colors (three or four) before starting the game using a GUI (screenshot). You can even select your favorite music in here.
There are, unfortunately, no in-game chatting features.
Compatibility
I’ve encountered no compatibility problems on any of my test Pocket PC’s (PPC2k2, WM2003, WM2003SE, WM5, WM6; some of them VGA). Note that the game is one of the VERY few titles that (still) support the Pocket PC 2002 OS; note that you may want to install GAPI before running the game (if it doesn’t find it, it’ll report so you don’t need to keep in mind whether it’s already installed). Note that, as can also be seen in the screenshots (taken on my VGA WM5 Dell Axim x51v), there is no hi-res mode.
Verdict
I really recommend the new game if you like Jaybot7’s music and/or just want to have a simple Tetris-alike game. As with Travel Collection, highly recommended if you don’t hate color matching titles.
The Redshift folks are back with an excellent title! Some months ago, they’ve announced they’d completely leave the Windows Mobile platform because of the rampant piracy. Now, they’ve returned with a remarkable action-puzzle mix, Dungeoned. If you like a combination of fast-paced action and puzzle games, you will really want to give it a try. It’s a bit similar to some maze games (for example, Astraware’s Mummy Maze, Monkeystone’s Hyperspace Delivery Boy! and AIM Productions’ TMax) quickly introduced in the Windows Mobile Bible of Games Part I, but is much more varied: in addition to having to find out Sokoban-like puzzles, you not only need to fight other (static) creatures, but, on some maps, also a second player, which is controlled by a pretty good AI (unlike the droid opponents in, say, the Commodore 64 classic Paradroid) and you must be very fast to attack him. This certainly makes a refreshing change to the gameplay.
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(more screenshots HERE; a mini-video HERE)
The title is Pocket PC-only; that is, as you MUST use the touchscreen, won’t work on touchscreen-less MS Smartphones.
The price has just been lowered to $9.95 (along with the release of a new build). The game is available HERE and is compatible with all Windows Mobile operating systems starting with WM2003. On VGA devices, it uses high-resolution sprites; in addition, as usual with Redshift’s all titles, it supports all the screen resolutions commonly used on Windows Mobile devices. What is more, it’s one of the VERY rare games that don’t use the CPU at 100%, resulting in the game quickly chewing through the battery. On my 624 MHz Marvel Xscale PXA-310-based VGA HP iPAQ 214, the CPU usage has never exceeded 35%, which is indeed very good news - few Windows Mobile game / emulator developers strive to lowering the CPU usage.
The problems of the title is the lack of in-game music (while the in-game sounds are without doubt good). There is only (very short and repetitive) music in the menus and the shop screen. Also, completely stylus-based control would be highly beneficial as in most, say, Bomberman clones; for example, PalmStorm’s excellent, free (!) Xplodus!. What I mean is tapping the close vicinity of your character to instruct it to go (attack) that way. This would really help players with devices with a, for gaming, sub-par (or plain non-existing – see the HTC Touch series, including the forthcoming Touch HD) D-pad. Yeah, the game does have on-screen arrows, but, in my opinion, they aren’t the best.
Verdict
Highly recommended, particularly now that the price has been dropped. Well worth at least a try.
eSoft Interactive (product list HERE) have released quite a few titles in the past, some of them (for example, Open TTD, Traffic Jam, Traffic Jam Extreme and Traffic Jam 2) being pretty famous. Let’s take a look at their three latest titles compatible with both Windows Mobile Pocket PC’s and touchscreen-less Smartphones.
Hot Pursuit is the latest title of eSoft interactive promising “[a game] that sets you on a thrilling chase of crime solving action right at the palm of your hand! Catch the most sinister thieves by travelling from one country to another and climb along the Interpol ranks by solving hot cases! Hot Pursuit will keep you glued to your device for hours of crime-solving fun and challenge!”
Personally, I didn’t really find this title worth paying 10 bucks for. It seems to be quite shallow. I think, should you need a detective game taking you all around the world, which, at the same time, also teaches you a lot on the different countries, go for for example Learning Company’s (ex-Brøderbund Software) Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I really think it’s a much better a choice, particularly if you run it under PocketDOS. (Under n0p’s DOSBox, even the just-released 0.72, it has mouse cursor control problems; see THIS for more info on this.) An example screeshot of it (running under PocketDOS):
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Some other in-game shots:
I didn’t find Totem, eSoft’s previous (released in October 2008) Windows Mobile release very interesting either (as opposed to the JAMM review). It’s just too expensive ($9.99) for what it offers (which is pretty shallow and, in my opinion, pointless). It has better feedback on the iPhone, where it only costs a buck ($0.99 – for that price, I would already consider purchasing it) and (of course) has better resolution (HVGA as opposed to QVGA). Neverthless, if you’re an iPhone / iPod Touch user, you might want to check out the best title in this category, Tower Bloxx™ Deluxe 3D instead, which takes advantage of the iPhone’s 3D hardware acceleration and looks very-very nice. It’s a bit more expensive than eSoft’s title ($4.99), though.
Yes, I know I’m a bit spoiled (when I want to play a quick game, I just take out my iPhone 3G with tons of cheap (!!) and great games) – anyone not having an iPhone or an iPod Touch might still enjoy this title.
Finally, Earth Day, an arcade game, which was released before Totem. Probably the best of the bunch: thanks to the weapon / rotation / clone / shield / rapid fire upgrades, it can become pretty much entertaining. Of course, if you also have an iPhone or an iPod Touch, you’ll want to go for that version (just like with Totem): the game is, technically, far superior (far better resolution) and far better playable. In addition, on these platforms, it only costs a buck (that is, one-tenth of the Windows Mobile price). Nevertheless, if you only have a WinMo phone, you might also want to give it a try. Also see THIS thread for more info. Note that the WinMo version was nominated in the 2008 Windows Mobile awards in the Classic Arcade category.