Anawiki Blog

More and more christmas trees or decorations shows up in stores. It’s an obvious sign that Christmas is coming. Time to think about presents. While I am still not decided what I’ll get for my wife or kids I already have a list in my mind of things that I would like to get That’s quite surprising to me. Last year I realized that I don’t feel like I want or need to get any material thing for Christmas to feel happy (ain’t that odd).

But this year I become nostalgic about older games and would love to play them. Games like Curse of the Monkey Island or Prince of Persia. Or newer ones like Secret Files: Tunguska. Does Santa Claus read emails?

What onions have in common with game development? Not much, but listen to the story.

I come down with strep throat for the second time within a month. This is no good. My body resistance seems to be very weak and that’s no wonder. I work?way too much. I took last antibiotic on Saturday and didn’t feel quite healthy. My doctor says it’s normal and that I’ll be healthy pretty soon. But I was not so sure… I had to cook a dinner for my?family and?rediscovered onion. I decided to eat raw onion to increase my resistance. It wasn’t a?pleasure, although I like to do some crazy things from time to time.?Next day I did the?same. OK, I haven’t eat whole onion, just a half (but of a big one). What?counts is that I?feel much better (healthier) today. Better than I felt any day within last?month. Now that’s?the power of onion.

To make this post game related - because of strep throat I missed Game Conference - one of two conferences in Poland that I care about. And of course our games release has delayed.

Recently we received two similar games (gameplay): Luxor 2 and Atlantis Sky Patrol (pc download). Both hitted top10 charts on many sites. Both are great games. Luxor has better roots, you can say it’s a classic game. Sequel is very?polished, has great art, but… somehow it’s not as fun as Atlantis is to me (of course ASP is very polished too). It’s hard to define, but Atlantis seems to be more consistent in presented theme. I am really irritated by the bug that pushes balls in Luxor. It doesn’t suit that game.

Power-ups are so hard to catch in Luxor (and are hardly visible). It often irritates me when I get them (and miss another time). That doesn’t happen in Atlantis - all power-ups are well designed and visible. And their not that hard to catch. This is very important - you want to blast that balls, not to be irritated by missed bonuses.

Luxor 2 has a nice feature, very unique in casual games, resolution selection/ You can choose resolution you want to play with, so you’re not forced to play in 800×600 mode. That’s very important for all LCD monitor users. Still, some graphics are strechted, but game overall looks much better.

To sum it up: try both games, their great, but my vote goes to Atlantis.

Please read Atlantis Sky Patrol review here.

Atlantis Sky Patrol: PC Download
Luxor 2: download not available yet
Luxor: PC Download
Luxor - Amun Rising: PC Download

Do you love games? Do you want to play newest ANAWIKI GAMES releases before anyone else can even think about them? And you know how to use email, right? Then we might be looking for you!

We look for beta testers for our upcoming games (Runes of Avalon, the Ponys, etc.). If you want to become one, please do not hasitate to write to feedback@anawiki.com. Every time we do a beta test we will pick 10 people to win full version of tested game and another 10 people to win 50% discount coupon on any ANAWIKI game.

I am getting more and more excited. We’re just a couple of days of releasing Runes of Avalon (previously known as Runique). The game looks and sounds awesome (and playes even better). But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. While we are busy polishing Runes of Avalon, one of our artists is working on graphics to our next game. It’s too early to talk about details, but I can show you one of the background images. The game has two sources of inspiration: a book and a game. Try to name the book Here are the screens:

I’ve downloaded some new levels for Prof. Fizzwizzle game (did you know that there are more that 550 of them?). Some of them are really impressive. To be honest - some of them are designed by insane or genious people. Let’s take for example level called Feeling blue. It looks difficult just by looking at it. But guess what - this one is so hard that you’ll probably have to watch it hundred times to learn full solution. It’s not just puzzles - you need excelent timing also. I strongly recommend to download this one and turn on show solution feature. Very soon you’ll start asking yourself - you have to be either genious or insane to solve it on your own

But don’t be afraid - each custom level has rating that say whether it’s good or not, how difficult and so on. And in game levels are well designed with superb difficulty progress.

Recently I’ve been playing with old games concepts. Games like tic-tac-toe or checkers. I’m an academic teacher and do classes about game design. So I put those two concepts in front of my class and forced their brains into creative mode. And you know what? I was really surprised what you can get from such an old and simple concepts. Actually, I really fall in love with our checkers remake. You add up bonuses, power-ups, new types of pawns, new grounds… and you end up with new cool strategy game. I’ll have to do this one in 2007.