Back from HK

Finally back from HK. Sunny everyday until quite chao tah.


Played a game on my PSP during the flight. PuzzleQuest!






It's a very interesting game. The game is a twist on the swap 1 tile to form a row of 3 puzzle. How they manage to merge RPG elements into that puzzle is a feat in itself.


You battle among different opponents trying to reduce the lifepoints to zero.

You can choose among 4 classes: knight, warrior, druid, wizard. Each will give different skills. There are 7 types of tiles on the board. Coloured tiles are red, blue, yellow, green and will give you mana to use your skill. Linking skull tiles will do damage to your opponent. Gold tiles will give you gold to purchase items. Experience (star) tiles will give you experience for levelling.







A main story links the main quests together but as like any other self respecting RPG, side quests are available for bonus items, party members, exp, and gold.


Battles are usually slow because damage dealt isn't very high. However, as you level up, your damage per turn is higher and there is higher chance for extra turns as you link up tiles.

It's a very good casual game because it's turn based and you can turn your PSP to standby mode and continue whenever you feel like it. You won't lose any momemtum when resuming.

Maybe someone can come up with a RPG mahjong game soon =p

And finally, a comic from penny arcade!

First Post

First lesson in POGD course.

Lecturer is a lady from a former Game Studio.

I am currently posting this from NYP.

Apparently, blogging is part of the course. So... here goes nothing ^.^"

First up! Blog TODO list:

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1.favourite game
2.define fun
3.munchkins
4.history of video games
5.story vs gameplay
6.assignment 3: munchkins expansion cards
7.mmog issues

The above list of blogs is the minimum, you are more than welcome to put down your 2 cents about the games you have played recently or games design articles you have read.

Learning takes place unconsciously, when your ideas are being put into words and part of the process of learning is to formalise games design into a discipline.

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1. Favourite Game:-------------------------------------

Not so much as a favourite game but a series of games: Super Robot Taisen. There's just a lot of gratification from having big iron mecha duking it out.

Physics and logic are non issues in this game. No one questions why that 100 tonne, 100km tall robot is able to hover in mid-air and is still able to dodge bullets.

The main attraction of the series is the ability to see robots from different animes (it's a japanese game) in the same game. I remember when I was secondary 4 and I saw this game having Gundams from Gundam W and Mazinga Z in the same battlefield. I went "I SO gotta get this game". Since then, every game from the series became a "I SOOOOOO gotta get this game"

That aside, the voice acting is top notch too. Banpresto (now Bandai-Namco) will try as much as possible to get the original Voice Actors to reprise their roles from the anime. However, even if they are not able to do so (this is especially so for older anime where the original Voice Actor as passed away), they'll get a replacement which sounds like the original. It's amazing how much lung power goes into "SHINING~~~~ FINGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~~". Pretty good lungs.

The game genre falls into a turn-based strategy RPG. You field your team of 10+ robots and off you go. As you off enemies, you gain experience for the pilots, and gold for upgrading of stats and weapons. The strategy comes from how you allocate the exp and upgrades. For the truly masochistic, one can play a no upgrade game. I truly admire these people.

2.define fun-----------------------------------------------

Fun. Something fun incites feelings of excitement, happiness, desire, frustration.

PAUSE...... Playing flOw. =p