Apr 302011
 

Hi All,

Decided to go and check out World Of Goo for you all.
The aim of the game is to build a tower out of little balls of Goo to reach this little pipe that sucks up all the Goo Balls.

Installation was a breeze, downloaded the .deb file and installed via dpkg.
Clicking on the icon to start it up brought me to this screen.

Clicking through to this screen lets me select the level.

With a fancy little cursor whizzing around, I select the first level to get started.

Building up and up…

And then there’s a finish screen which I neglected to take a screenshot of as I was dancing around shouting out to the fact that I finished the first level.

And then onto the second level !

All in all another entertaining game from another great Indie developer.
Cartoony graphics make for some great dynamics with the balls flailing around while I try to build a tower that won’t topple.
I look forward to going through more levels in World Of Goo, but for now onto other games !

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Apr 292011
 

So I had a quick test of Shadowgrounds on a different computer and it worked perfectly.
Seems like it’s just my strange setup causing issues with Shadowgrounds.

Only got a few minutes of gameplay on Shadowgrounds before I had to get off the other computer but on first glance, the graphics look great. The first few minutes of me wandering around the start room with the flashlight was immersive, full of atmosphere on the 17″ CRT screen that I was playing on.

I was unable to gauge the feel of the game due to lack of time, but when I can get Shadowgrounds working on my main machine, I will continue this review.
At the moment I’m suspecting it’s something to do with my multiscreen setup 🙁

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Apr 222011
 

Hi All,

I got Shadowgrounds last night via the Frozenbyte Bundle.
First try at installing :

Yep. Let’s click “Start”

Ok, I accept.

Looking good…

Oh Bugger.

So off I go trawling the net, apparently Shadowgrounds needs glade, so I install glade on my machine
apt-get install libglade2-0
But I still get the error !
It would seem that more is needed, so I use the ldd command to find out what libs are linked to the executable file.

$ ldd ShadowgroundsBeta12.run
linux-gate.so.1 => (0xb789d000)
libglade-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglade-2.0.so.0 (0xb786a000)
libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb7486000)
libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 (0xb7469000)
libgio-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgio-2.0.so.0 (0xb7363000)
libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0xb731a000)
libglib-2.0.so.0 => /lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0xb7241000)
libz.so.1 => /usr/lib/libz.so.1 (0xb722d000)
libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 (0xb713e000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb7121000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/cmov/libpthread.so.0 (0xb7108000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/cmov/libc.so.6 (0xb6fc2000)
libxml2.so.2 => /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 (0xb6e97000)
libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 (0xb6dfc000)
libatk-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 (0xb6ddf000)
libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangoft2-1.0.so.0 (0xb6db7000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/i686/cmov/libm.so.6 (0xb6d91000)
libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpangocairo-1.0.so.0 (0xb6d86000)
libcairo.so.2 => /usr/lib/libcairo.so.2 (0xb6cd0000)
libpango-1.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 (0xb6c8b000)
libfreetype.so.6 => /usr/lib/libfreetype.so.6 (0xb6c04000)
libfontconfig.so.1 => /usr/lib/libfontconfig.so.1 (0xb6bd5000)
libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0xb6bd1000)
libX11.so.6 => /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 (0xb6ab1000)
libXcomposite.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcomposite.so.1 (0xb6aad000)
libXdamage.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXdamage.so.1 (0xb6aaa000)
libXfixes.so.3 => /usr/lib/libXfixes.so.3 (0xb6aa5000)
libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0xb6aa0000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/i686/cmov/librt.so.1 (0xb6a97000)
libresolv.so.2 => /lib/i686/cmov/libresolv.so.2 (0xb6a82000)
libselinux.so.1 => /lib/libselinux.so.1 (0xb6a67000)
libpcre.so.3 => /lib/libpcre.so.3 (0xb6a2a000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb789e000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/i686/cmov/libdl.so.2 (0xb6a26000)
libXext.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXext.so.6 (0xb6a17000)
libXrender.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1 (0xb6a0d000)
libXinerama.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXinerama.so.1 (0xb6a0a000)
libXi.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXi.so.6 (0xb69fd000)
libXrandr.so.2 => /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2 (0xb69f6000)
libXcursor.so.1 => /usr/lib/libXcursor.so.1 (0xb69ed000)
libpixman-1.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpixman-1.so.0 (0xb6979000)
libpng12.so.0 => /lib/libpng12.so.0 (0xb6955000)
libxcb-shm.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-shm.so.0 (0xb6952000)
libxcb-render.so.0 => /usr/lib/libxcb-render.so.0 (0xb694b000)
libxcb.so.1 => /usr/lib/libxcb.so.1 (0xb6932000)
libexpat.so.1 => /usr/lib/libexpat.so.1 (0xb690b000)
libXau.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXau.so.6 (0xb6908000)
libXdmcp.so.6 => /usr/lib/libXdmcp.so.6 (0xb6903000)

Nope, that looks all good.
Then it occurred to me to to check the file size…532 MBs. Eep ! It should be somewhere in the 780 MB region.
Looks like the download was corrupted, time to redownload !

Well that was a fast download, now when I try to install I get :

That’s better.

So that’s what the finish screen looks like.
And off I go to have a merry little gaming session.

And I’m not.
Shadowgrounds won’t start properly for some reason, the mouse seems to be stuck to the right hand side of the screen.
Time for some more investigation !
Continued here in Part 2 !

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Apr 222011
 

Hi All,

Just purchased the Humble Frozenbyte Bundle, so expect to see some quick reviews on those games too.
The last 2 were only quick quick ones, which will be updated and completed later on when it’s not 2am in the morning.

Shadowgrounds will be the first game I’m going to review so we’ll see how it goes once it’s finished downloading 🙂

In other news, I think it might be time to add a ‘Gaming’ category to my blog as I might be taking this in a few new directions. Thoughts anyone ? (if I even have any readers :P)

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Apr 212011
 

Hi All,

I’m on a roll tonight !
Just had a play around with Revenge Of The Titans from the second Humble Indie Bundle.
First impression from the menu was pretty good, until I tried to fullscreen it and then it wouldn’t show up for me again.
Ended up having to modify the config files to get it back again, but after that bump in the road, I managed to get a few good games in the campaign mode.

The game is like a tower defense game with added bonuses / upgrades to choose from as you progress.
You can upgrade towers with other towers and build refineries to increase your money quicker.
I only got through a few levels tonight, might try and get a few more in tomorrow.

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