Games Review: Spirit of Wandering - The Legend

Alright! Continuing the blog-o-posting of Saturday - I originally meant Sunday but my class ended earlier than I thought - I giving out a game review to one of the new games in the Reflexive market.

Actually, I didn’t pay for anything but it’s a better courtesy for the company that I try to promote and give reviews.

There, my conscience is cleared. Almost.

No it’s not.
Yes it is.
It’ll be clearer if you’ll admit who gave you that game crack program.
Ooo, secret tool versus dirty conscience. Gee, such a difficult choice.

*whacks Brainy and Baddie selves*

ANYWAY...

I suppose it was the play of fickle fate when I played this game with a ridiculously long name called Spirit of Wandering - The Legend (let’s refer to it as SoWTL). I say fickle fate because I downloaded this on Valentine’s Day and this game turns out to be some kind of mushy romance quest (complete with a kissing couple in the starting menu).

Not that I’m complaining. I like romance as much as the next sorry-girl but I was hoping there’ll be more to this than meets the heart.

The game portrays the pirate ship Spirit of Wandering - hence game title - and you as the captain’s tragically separated bride of the pirate captain. On the eve of your wedding, the ship called the Flying Dutchman came and pretty much crashed the seas.

The spirits of your crew is connected with earthly items which you must find.

As the remaining survivor, you must rescue all your trapped friends and your love from the reality of limbo. The story didn’t say why the Flying Dutchman has a vendetta against your ship or why that captain has a grudge against your captain.

But the crew did have some mysterious background story you can only guess about. Apparently, SoWTL is the first is a trilogy.

I think after Hidden Secret - The Nightmare, this game has the best visual in any hidden-objects game. Most games in this genre were painfully bad to look at; just a bunch of photograph cut-outs jumbled into one 800 by 600 pixels image.

SoWTL tastefully recreated a 3D environment and thankfully avoided photographic cut-outs, allowing you to be able to seek the intended objects better. Unfortunately, that’s the best I can say about SoWTL.


As you rescue your crew, the seas become more visible to you.

The gameplay doesn’t stand-out much from the current systems, maybe because of the lack of more challenging puzzle quests. It’s just a short seek-and-find game with really nice visuals and a compelling story. Music and sound effects don’t stand out either (the same music over and over again).

Replay value is not much in my estimate. But I really like it for its style of visuals, almost to the par of Dream Chronicles. Would that other hidden objects games learn from this art style.

If you want a really good seek-and-find game, I still recommended Dream Chronicles. However, as SoWTL is the first of a series of games, it may yet deliver a surprise.


The advance mode offer a bit more of a challenge.

PS: Downloads for this game can be found in Reflexive Arcade. If you want the cracked version, ask me nicely.

Book Project: Myths of Suvon

I wrote earlier today about a book project I’ve been working on for several years. That one’s just for fun and (hopefully!) for this year’s NaNoWriMo.

Suvon Reality is my really serious book project.

This baby of mine was the pinnacle of those entire fantasy books I’ve indulged in, much to my folks’ horror (they are, if not, my least-determined support). It was from trying to create a historical society that I looked through Victorian England as an example and ended up being immersed in Europe’s mid-1800s.

So what is Suvon Reality project anyway?

I can’t describe it in a few words without comparing it to current fantasy bigwigs; but I do hope not to be sidelined against them or influenced by them. This project is my own and for me to keep it as my idea.

It’s an entire world really, complete with histories, politics, natural disasters... and magic. Yes, I’m working on a fantasy series.

I’m taking up common fantasy themes (like dragon, wizards, towers, etc) and making up my own ideas. I’m borrowing snippets of what’s around me, what I’ve read and real human issues to fuse them in a sequence of events around one female character.

The story spans millenniums, an age of ages, but the book starts when 16-year-old Zakia Azhara brought home a wounded crow to her Damansara Utama home. She thought she would help him heal or at least, die peacefully, but instead, she was catapult into a parallel world beyond anything she had ever dreamed of.

Or had nightmares about.

But because of her actions in that parallel world called Suvon, she became entangled in a twisted fate that followed her back to her Earth life. She became from a refugee outcast to a caster of hope to martyred queen to a tool of rebellion to a broken spirit of survival.

Most of all, it is a story of a changing world on the brink of doomsday, from the life of a living catalyst.

I’ve always wanted something about mystery on the backdrop of fantasy or science-fantasy. Call it Final Fantasy disease. But unlike fantasy, the events that drive the story would be very real issues currently facing this world, like slavery, discrimination, corrupt judicial bar, caste levels, and everything else coming out of Pandora’s box.

And I’ve even created a native language for that world.
Neqi areasaiiy irione areuqanu
Asnut isnot saiya arealaas, esanasta.
I got the alphanumeric right but I’m working on proper pronunciations. This is a translation from a chorus on a Linkin Park song (heh...).

I don’t know how long this project will take, only that I won’t die without completing it first. I’m working on the background origins and histories, intelligent social species and the technical aspects of magic (from source to link to effect).

But mostly, I need to graduate and get a job to support myself first. No matter how big a world I can create, nothing beats the real thing...

Especially when the real thing wants your big fees due for this semester or you can’t enter the exams hall (Ack! To the bank! Get a check!).

PS: My monthly fiction writing, Ireulun’s Travels or Something-Like-It, is set in the world of Suvon, many years after the end of the book project. It helps to give me an idea or an outline of how I want my plot and the stories to be or not to be.

Image: Charging Kudu by Bill Melvin

Shucks.

I wish I had some time management skills or something. There’s a course about it in Basic Business Skills class I had in my foundation year and I aced it. I think somewhere between foundation and final year, all them learnings must have leaked out of my head while I was asleep.

Bah, I was looking forward to the movie Jumper coming out in theaters on last Thursday. Wouldn’t it be cool to travel as fast as the speed of thought? Your Ferrari is nothing to my smokescreen.

It’ll cut down on a lot of traveling time too. No more queues, no more petrol money. Hey, I could sleep-in on Saturday and still be in time for class. I’ll just have to remember to change out of my pajamas first (don’t think Lec-Xercise would appreciate baggy pants with tiny printed blue flowers).

If you’re wondering what the heck the movie Jumper have anything to do with this week’s image critique... it doesn’t. I’m just filling up blabbing space.

It’s just that Jumper is a noun from a verb becoming an adjective, I found one image from CGSociety.org that fascinates me as a ‘jumper’.

Definitely something for the desktop - that is, if your computer is fast enough.

This is an artwork of a charging kudu by Bill Melvin, an award-inflated artist with his website at http://billmelvinart.com. He made it as part of a mini art contest in the CGS forums, and then later decided that it would look great in a stormy African setting.

I got to say that this is a really cool rendition of a beast in running flight. I liked how he drew the accurate proportions of the deer to the real thing. However, I did not like the expression on the deer is too flat (one would have thought he would be panting, then it’ll look more real).

Oooh, yeah. Speaking of jumping and running, it’s my hour with Lec-Xercise now. Must learn VR theory. I wonder if Jumper did any VR scenes or they just used a dummy and burned it in speedy ash?

Book Project: Marigold’s Masquerade

I like to read romance. I’ll admit that.

What I won’t admit is that I’m working on a romance book myself.

Oh.
I just did.

Well, actually I’m quite shy of confessing of writing something like this. My biggest dream since I was 9 - when I managed to spell ‘insignificant’ correctly all by myself (also a word that would haunt me for too long) - was to become a fiction author.

Call it whatever you think I’m inflicted with. Singles awareness, bluestocking-loner, never-been-kissed, overly-sensitive-biological-clock, day-dream-addict, always-the-bridesmaid-never-the-bride status.

Just don’t you dare call it post-Valentine’s blues.

This is a serious project I had been working on for some years. It’s been put on hold due to my approaching final year. Another problem is that the market for fiction books in Malaysia is pretty darn small, so agents won’t take a pile of printed dust from an IT undergraduate,

Hahaha, enough crap. I’m finally admitting it because I don’t want to forget this venture of my heart. Kind of like a second stowaway compartment from my under-used PC folder in my hard-drive.

This story is a mystery-cum-romance set in the era of Victorian London in 1855 AD. It was also the same year that the British Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen, stepped down because of poor management of the Crimean War.

It was not the overseas war against the Russians that Nate, Lord Evans, had in his mind recently. After his farms in Ireland had been struck by a potato famine, he was the secret owner of a domestic employment agency that had a dual-purpose; helping to replenish his income and find new positions for his Irish tenants.

But something was trying to bring down his small business enterprise. First it was just devious rumors. Then some near-fatal accidents. It was not long before those accidents were no longer so near-fatal...

Then came Marigold, a young girl of the London slums, desperate to find a maid’s job and keep herself and her sister off the streets. Nate knew it was fate in a flash of light - right at the moment when Marigold delivered a stinging right hook to his eye.

Annie Bright was torn between finding the murderer of her elder sister and securing safety for her younger sister from the darker denizens of London. When Lord Evans offered her a job, as a maid-of-work in his household - even after she blacken his eye - Annie knew it was fate brought with dread. For Lord Evans was her chief suspect...

Between the backgrounds of London, countryside Norfolk and gardens of Kent, both individuals danced a game of intrigue and danger while trying to hide both motives and secrets. Neither knew that their destinies were intertwined in one conclusion.

Cheap, it ain’t.

I have a lot of fascinations about England’s industrial revolution and the era of society during Queen Victoria. I’ve made a lot of research about how they lived, how they worked, what enlightens, what shames, etc. I just couldn’t help making up a story in a certain situation.

I plan to write Marigold’s Masquerade as the first of a series called The Wildflowers. The continuing tales looks at the many changes as England progresses, like the last of France’s Napoleonic dynasty, the pirates’ activity in the East Indies and the rise that triggered the American civil war.

Like I said, it ain’t cheap.

I’m working on the second chapter of this book and currently I’ve got 5/6 of the series plot outlined. My plan is to put it as an entry in 2008’s NaNoWriMo and the rest of the series as private collection (no, I won’t publish it until I’m more sure of the local market). I hope this doesn’t count as cheating.

DIY Shadow Puppets Play (with Hands!)

Quickening presents...

DIY Shadow Puppets Play (with Hands!)

Once upon a time in a village far, far away...


... there was a Duck who felt very bored because his owners went overseas for the holidays.



So he decided to pay a visit to his good friend, Mr. Dog.
“Mr. Dog, are you bored?” asked the Duck.
“Yes, I am,” said Mr. Dog. “How about we take a road trip?”
“That sounds like a great idea,” said the Duck. “But how shall we travel? We can’t go very far just by foot.”

“I know!” exclaimed Mr. Dog. “Let’s take ...”



“... the car!”
“Very good!” cried the Duck happily.

Together, the two of them hopped into the car and went on a road trip.

They took the highway and opened all the windows as they drove. Mr. Dog was very happy as he drooled with the wind. It wasn’t long before they reached the zoo.



In the zoo they saw some elephants...



... and many cute rabbits. But what caught their utmost attention was a poor, neglected...



... helicopter.

“Oh no!” exclaimed the Duck. “We must rescue this poor, neglected helicopter.”
“Of course,” Mr. Dog agreed, “A helicopter should not be locked up in a zoo.”
So the two of them snuck into the helicopter’s cage and escaped to the air.

What fun! The Duck and Mr. Dog and sure not bored anymore. The helicopter flew very nicely alongside a flock of birds.



“Let’s follow the flock of birds,” said Mr. Dog. “Let’s see where they are going.”
And so the Duck and Mr. Dog followed the birds in their rescued helicopter.

They soon found out that the birds were migratory birds and soon they reached the far away land of...



…Italy.

“Wow,” said the Duck.
“Yes, it’s all very exciting, isn’t it?” said Mr. Dog.
The two of them were sight-seeing the marvels of Italy when they spotted another animal. The animal introduced himself as Big Bull.



“Hello Duck. Hello Mr. Dog,” said Big Bull.
“Hello, Big Bull,” said the Duck and Mr. Dog together. “How can we help you?”
“Well, I would like to run out of Italy for a while. My owner wants to eat steak tonight and I don’t know how to cook steak.”
“Oh, are you a chef?” asked the Duck.
“Yes,” said Big Bull, “I specialize in Peking duck and exotic canine cuisine.”
“Alright then,” said Mr. Dog. “You can come with us to Malaysia.”
“Yes,” said the Duck. “You can ride in our helicopter.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” said Big Bull.

And so the three of them flew back to Malaysia where they had a nice dinner of eating each other in a Chinese restaurant...

...

...

Ooi hands! Chinese dinner-lah!

...

Hello?

...



*exhausted hands*

Heh, oh well.

And they all lived happily ever after. The End.

The Single Girl and Her Valentine’s Day

Thanks to Kav and SewJin, their views on love and Valentine’s Day had infected me with the oozy wussy day-dreams of What-I’ll-Do-On-Valentine’s-Day-If-I-Had-A-Man.

I thought I had outgrew all this V-Day stuff since I supplied myself with romantic fiction as a boyfriend substitute but I guess sometimes, one does wonders how does the real thing thinks about February 14.

Bah, humbug.

St Valentine never said that his b-day was a celebration of nyah-nyah-you’re-all-alone. There’s a great virtue in being still single and you don’t have to look hard to find it.

So you’re single and at home. All your girlfriends are out with their guys and your guyfriends are out with their girls and don’t even think about calling on your overly-concerned-too-inquisitive-but-well-meaning family.

To the Mall!

Aha! What better way to forget you’re all alone than to interact with strangers. Get your butt off that chair and take some fresh air... in a shopping area! Take out a little bit of cash with your and take a hike down your favourite departmental stores.

While other couples are busy doing their hair, checking their wardrobe and having trouble reserving a place in their overly-priced Valentine’s dinner, just strut along clothing boutiques and maybe try out the latest fashion design.

You don’t have to wait for anyone and there’s no one around you to be shocked about your eating habits when you devoured that double cheeseburger and large soda. Yup, to the Mall on Valentine’s for your ‘Me-Time’.


Cook Something Special.

Remember when all your mom, aunties, cousins and distant relation by 3rd degrees kept taking you on the “Why are you still single?” inquisition. Well, as much as you want to forget those painful hours, they do have something of a point. As a girl’s role in a married life is to cook and clean, maybe it’s a good time to brush up your cooking skills.

Only this time, you cook what YOU want to eat! Eyeing that chocolate cheese cake? Hm-mmm, how about some chicken steak with honey-lemon sauce? Better yet, take some mince meat and some taco spice seasoning, some burger buns and build a mound of Sloppy Joes! Yum!


Take the Day Off.

Of course, after that hard day’s play of window shopping and new food skills, you do need to relax. Remember, while other girls are screaming into that dress two sizes too small, you’ve just have a nice long bath, wearing your baggy pants and sipping hot Milo drink.

Oh what’s a home girl to do? Make a playlist of soothing songs, snuggle in the couch with a tub of ice-cream and pour into that romance book you’ve always wanted to read (I plan to be immersed in a Julie Garwood). Turn off your phone and lock your door. This is your quiet afternoon and to hell with anybody stopping you.


Be a Fairy Godmother!

Of course, there are some of us who cannot help but be really, REALLY conscious about Valentine’s Day. Well, if you don’t have a date for the evening doesn’t mean the rest of your girlfriends should suffer a night they might want to forget.

Make this night as special for them as you have imagined yours would be. Help them in their small dress, check their hair, make sure their plan of romance is secured (“Should I hold his hand? Should I leave the bouquet of roses in the car while we have dinner?”).

And always remember the emergency Bad-Date cell-phone call. Plan together on making a phone call in the middle of that dinner. If she’s having a bad time, it’s the emergency to I-sorry-but-I-have-to-go action plan and rescue her from the restaurant. If she’s having a great time, you’ll be the very first person to know about it (ooo, start to gossip chain!)


Blog Your Ideal Boyfriend.

Of course, you can’t say that your lack of a better half is the fault of the opposite gender. Just as some folks have a Things-To-Do-Before-I-Die list, make up a Perfect-Guy-For-Me list. Most ladies couldn’t secure a man because they wavered in their decision. Afterall, unlike securing a job, securing a partner takes more consideration (and mostly likely, he’s as undecided as you are).

So make a list and be affirm on who your man should have. Good health. Taller than me. Strong familial bonds. Taller than me. Have religious faith. Taller than me. Secured occupation. Taller than me. Loves kids. And taller than me so I may have a pair of shoulders I can lean back against.


Well, can’t say Valentine isn’t a fun and special day for the single girl. There are many way a sister can celebrate love itself and be thankful that she doesn’t have to put up with the wrong sort of guy.

Me? What am I doing on Valentine’s Day? Well, actually, I have a date with 2 guys on February 14, both at the same time. Yeah, a Java programming course. There’s the lecturer and bus full of 20+ people too. It might even take a whole day.

Well, at least I’ve got 2 guys to get busy with.