There are things in life I love, such as fiddle music, comics by Kate Beaton, and pineapple pizza. And, also, more topically, doom, cats, gems, and dragondots! This week's Link Dump Friday has all three, and then some! What it doesn't have is the bon-bon baskets I wanted to hand out to you as a token of my fleeting affections. Those were Jay's responsibility this week and he totally dropped the ball. Way to go, Boss.
>:(
Tower of Doom - This defense title/evil overlord spell-casting simulator would be great if it weren't so easy to forget you were playing it. Hold off the understandably upset populace by building your defenses so that you can survive long enough to cast the "ultimate destruction spell". Unfortunately, there's no way to speed up gameplay, so you'll spend a lot of time just letting it run in the background, and the game basically plays itself. Also, the game immediately lost a million points with me for not actually letting you cast/showing you cast the destruction spell when the timer runs out. You're uninvited from my birthday party, Tower of Doom! And I want my Backstreet Boys CDs back, too!
Ejector - Remember when we were kids and we used to play King of the Hill? This shooter/avoider is sort of like that, only without any teachers for you to run crying to when you get knocked down, Scotty White from second grade. Yeah, I remember you, you little tattle-tale. Avoid enemy fire while trying to knock your opponents off of the platform. Just try not to be a wuss about it when it happens to you. Scott.
Catnarok - Longcat Rampage - As far as internet trends go, LOLcats may be fairly ridiculous, but nowhere near as frightening as what truly lies at the murky depths of the World Wide Web, and thus are comparatively harmless. (For the not so harmless, you need to speak to Chris Hardwick, I believe.) This shooter features one of the more notorious examples of that sordid subculture; Longcat. Click on enemies to make them explode, gain exp to upgrade, and see how long you can last before being destroyed/getting bored/the sound effects make your teeth grind down to a fine powder/your fingers fall off.
Gem Grab - This is a puzzle game about grabbing gems. Also, rocks! Well, you grab the rocks, so you can fling the rocks, and grab the gems, to fling the gems through the space left by the flung rocks to get to the exit. Get it? Good! If the physics were a bit less zippy, this might be more entertaining. Or maybe less entertaining. I'm not sure. There are certainly times when I've wanted to send a massive, perfectly rectangular boulder zipping across the room, but people never stand still.
Dragondot's Sky - [Note: Please be patient, game may take a while to load.] Following the adventures of everyone's favourite Dragondot, this time in the sky! It's actually a bit more well-rounded than the first, which I loved a whole huggy bunch, but the controls feel as if they leave a bit to be desired. Soar around the sky to rockin' tunes (!), defeating all manner of distinct baddies to win the adulation of your kobold followers. Actually... it probably doesn't matter if they adore you or not. Just eat the renegades and the rest will follow out of fear. That's worked for me for years.
Huh, Ejector is basically N3wton with fancier graphics.
Dragondot's sky looks extremely promising to me, seeing as to how I liked the first one.
Tower of Dhoom was a fun game.
Up until I realized that I did not need any tower but the magic tower.
Drop 2 or 3, upgrade the tower 2 or 3 times, toss, Season to taste, and serve. guarenteed to please your tastes, and slaughter everything.
True, you may not go 'unscathed'... Curse you Catapults, but you will rarely drop below 85.
Kate Beaton ROCKS!!!
Jay: Where is my bon-bon basket?
@Hyrda
I thought the EXACT same thing.
Also,
CASTLE CRASHER MUSIC! Now I can't stop playing D:
I was really looking forward to Dragondot's Sky and then I played it.
I found the controls near impossible to work with. Rather disappointing.
Longcat's buggy. it freezes up the main attack after the upgrade. upgrade screen also does not pause for a confirmation screen, which leads to mistake clicks.
I liked Gem Grab. The graphics and the patience required reminded me a lot of Perfect Balance.
Will: I asked the clerk for a load of bon-bon baskets, and they thought I said vuvuzelas :O
I had the same problem as Shudog with Longcat - unless the attack is supposed to stop working for a while after you upgrade, but I don't think so. Sometimes using the keyboard failed too.
Tower of Doom has the bizarre feature/design flaw that all of the towers of a type upgrade for the same price as one. So it's so much of a better deal that you should only build one type of tower (magic is the superior one). Not bad for a Friday LD, but it really does need something other than "you managed to cast the huge spell of destruction that ruined the land. It was really cool, too, with all sorts of explosions and volcanoes and the ground turning charred and black and everybody died but oh sorry we can't show you what it looked like".
In dragondot-sky I have killed all boss'es except one. Does anyone know how to kill the pterodactyle - the orange dot in top right corner?
Okay, I found out myself.
I liked dragondot. Not as much as the original, but the controls - even a bit difficult - were quite original. Once you get it, you can use it pretty smoothly.
Tips:
When you load up a fireball, let it go just as it finishes, and you will have an extra powerfull fireball.
I used this to kill 3 of the bosses: Fly a bit away from the boss and turn around. Now fly slowly towards the boss and load up a big fireball and send it towards the enemy.
For the orange dot enemy: Load up a dash and wait for him to load up his dash. Now crash towards him at the same time as he lungs for you. I also sent fireballs each time, but I dont think that's necessary.
LOL Longcat! AWESOME ending!
And so, being foolish enough to stand against the awesomeness of Longcat, manking itself triggered Catnarok by attempting to destroy him, and the world ended in a giant catpocalyptic explosion.
Just as the acient prophecy of the internet foretold...
Yeah, I know, its a lie. But it's just cooler that way.
Cat: You're made of fail, narrator.
On Catnrok, you can get an infinite score of you use Shoot Da Woop when firing eye lazer, you can't shoot anything and wont get any exp and your health will go down to zero, but you wont die and the score will keep going up.
@Bandycoot - Yeah, I found the same thing to be a problem. It seems like a poorly developed game. But I lol'd when the WRYYY bulldozer came in. :P
Grrr... can't get Gem Grab to load. Actually, can't get Armor Games to load... at all...
Update: The Gem Grab page loads, but there's no game there. Searching the site returns "game not found."
[Try it again (reload the page). I know Armor Games was having server troubles on Friday, perhaps what you experienced was part of that. I just tried and the game came right up for me. -Jay]
so i'm not the only one suffering the fact i can't load ag. btw, dragondot sky sucked like crazy,and long cat was half-way decent, but could do better.
I spent my first "link dump friday" hour reading Kate Beaton comics. Great stuff, thanks for the tip, Dora!
Yeah, Dragondot Sky was pretty awful. I didn't really get anything out of it, like I did with Loved (which I finally beat today-- that was a great feeling.)
I love Gem Grab, though, even if I did have to use a walkthrough for 2 or 3 levels, the rest was really great.
A bit to be desired? A BIT? Dragondot's Sky was beyond screwed up. With that control scheme, I would have had a hard time even going through a maze - much less trying to chase and shoot moving enemies. You're controlling a circle - and it's not as simple as "Holding the right arrow key makes you rotate clockwise?" And how could a game with such sparse graphics, terrible AI, terrible music, and terrible EVERYTHING take that long to load?
@Apo and the rest: I have done my best to address your concerns.
I couldn't get a handle on Dragondot. Even after getting past the weird controls (why wasn't this top-down??), I couldn't figure out how to keep the enemy from just Zerg Rushing all the kobolds. Am I supposed to just do a mad dash to all the bosses? Because that's sort of counter-intuitive, you know? I preferred the original, where enemies in each square stayed in their square. They didn't just infinitely stack as the game went on.
The Longcat game was amusing.
...and it looks like you guys already featured "Heir" here. Doh!
On the other hand, I really think you should have published the newgrounds link instead of the armorgames link, since the newgrounds one CLEARLY STATES in the description that the game is a tribute to SoC. When I saw all the replies in your comments thread saying it was a rip off, I was about to post a big angry rant about how the commenters were all blind, until I realized you had a different link posted which didn't give any indication that it was a tribute at all. :\
From this bunch I enjoyed Gem Grab most. A nice puzzle game, and the physics are mostly intuative. This is normally the often the problem with physics based puzzles, that you have to figure out how the engine works, as its often enough not how you expect real things would behave. The only exception are the big red blocks, somehow I can move them around with pushing and turning light blocks, not completly intuative. However, one can finish the whole game without having to so once. Only level where I needed help was 28th.
Tower of Doom comes second. It was nice, but short. And yes, the problem that one type/strategy beats it all. But for short games this is IMHO okay, you have to figure out what works best, and then its over already.
Ejector - Quite okay puzzler, nothing to complain about. Kind of seen it already. Didn't fascinate me enough to finish it.
CatnarokSweet graphics, also some enjoyable minutes. Unfortunally that hanging bug of eyes while mouth shout also happened to me. Not too much replay value.
Dragondot's Sky I didn't get it. The overview screen seems chaotic, I don't know my controls or my goal. The sky fights, okay I figured out these, but also strange interface and kind of boring. Also wondering why the heaven/web _this_ takes so long to load.
Update