No, its not an existential discussion, its a new computer game.
I haven’t been buying much lately, on account of me being broke as hell for various reasons. But I found myself in a Best Buy, and well, I gotta leave with SOMETHING.
I saw it sitting there, it didn’t look all that impressive, it wasn’t made by a studio I trusted, and I never heard of it. Not exactly three factors that normally draw me to a game. But it sat there with its $19.99 price tag, with a tagline on the back, “casual yet immersive play allow the game to be played for fifteen minutes or hours on end.” (I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t remember the exact quote)
Usually, that’s how I play games that aren’t World of Warcraft, in shorter bits when Zai isn’t available to play, so I figured what the hell, I’d give it a shot. I bought it and took it home, where it sat dormant on my desk for a couple days while I ignored it, watched television, and played World of Warcraft.
Monday rolled around and Zai didn’t have her laptop, so I’d be gaming alone. I took it out of the box and was surprised that the only thing in the box was a CD in a sleeve. No fancy manual, no jewel case, not even a little brochure advertising other games. Just a single CD, not even a DVD. I installed Fate and braced myself for the suck-fest I was sure would follow.
I was surprised to find levels of suck at an all-time low for a new game. The interface was a simple point and click (think Diablo), and easy to use. The graphics, while cartoony, were pretty well done. I found out why the game could be both casual and immersive, because it made no pretensions.
Lot’s of RPG’s dress up a hack and slash dungeon-crawler with layers of convoluted plot, time-consuming quests, and levels that can take hours on end.
Not Fate.
The plot can be summed up as such:
You’re an adventurer, you’re in this town, this town is at the entrance to a dungeon. Go in there and fight things, and find cool stuff.
That’s pretty much it. The dungeon is divided into floors, and each floor takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete. Its an easy thing to say, “Hmm, twenty minutes until dinner,” and then load up the game, play one level, and leave.
Its also easy to say, “Hmm, nothing much to do right now,” and play though five or six floors.
The levelling system is simple, you earn points to increase stats. And from a little experimenting, I’m finding that levelling up magic skills is equally fun to powering through with swords. And as a kicker, you have a dog that follows you around helping you fight. And by feeding him different things, you can transform him into various creatures both temporarily and permanently.
I gotta say, after a couple days of playing this, I’m still pretty impressed. The studio also has another game, Mythos, in production. If they put the same kinda work into making it, then I’d happily give it a shot.
Zel-kun out.
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