Egoboo

Egoboo : Sure, I'm pulling out a lot of oldies this week, but there's a method behind my madness which you will figure out when you get to the entry below. But the good news is that this role-playing game is still under development, despite a very long period of inactivity. For those not in the know, Egoboo is a wonderful 3D roguelike created by Aaron Bishop. After Bishop moved on to other things, the community continued to develop it and change it. While Egoboo still feels unfinished, it one of the most interesting open sourced projects (next to Exult) out there. It is a shame that there has been so little progress in the last few years on the project; the modules (which have been tidied up a bit) still feel thrown together; there's still no back story to speak; the controls remain awkward; and there still isn't a viable solution for creating a solid adventure because the tools available are hard to master.. All that aside, there is still a lot of fun to be had in this action focused RPG.

SoulFu

While looking up the status of Egoboo over the weekend I stumbled across Aaron Bishop's latest project, and I have to say it is pretty impressive. The new game, which feels like the spiritual successor to Egoboo, is yet another roguelike 3D game with a more refined art style and feel. Unlike Egoboo, SoulFu (Ultimate Legendary Fantasy Unleashed) isn't a freebie but the author offers a lot of options for lowering the price, like when users help him promote the game to gaming websites or to other players. Unfortunately, SoulFu suffers from a lot of the problems that Egoboo still suffers from and a lot of features have yet to be implemented. Fans that don't like Roguelikes might be charmed by the game's excellent graphics but the non-existent save system may just make them give up after a couple of outings. Still, Aaron Bishop's games have some sort of weird appeal that I can't put my finger on. I just wish he'd deliver a project that felt finished. Still the game is highly playable even with those shortcomings. A playable trial version is available from www.aaronbishopgames.com .

Welcome to a new segment called Bonus Round, where I roll up my sleeves and spend some quality time with an indie game of my choosing. In this very first segment I put Mat Dickie's Hard Time through the paces to see if this action-incarceration simulation has what it takes to serve a full sentence on your PC. You can check out the full blown review below:

Hard Time Review

Finito.

And that's all for this week. Thanks for reading - catch it again in soon. As always, questions or comments are welcomed - send them along to jamesbfudge@gmail.com - James Fudge

Previous Issues:

The Indies Issue #1

(Jim of the Jungle art provided by Dorothy Martell, used with permission. all rights reserved.)