I’ve read a bit over the last couple years about casual games, and I’ve been trying to find good ones. The ones I remember are:
Monster’s Den
Desktop TD Pro
Popcap games like – I went to their site and couldn’t find the games I liked any more.
Oasis
Plus I played some real obscure ones that might qualify as casual games, like DoomRL. I figure that even the full roguelikes count as casual games because the system requirements are so low, but that’s only once you get past the learning curve.
OK, so I probably just geeked past any casual gamers, but the other day I downloaded the demo for a game called Artists Colony. For X amount of money you could play the rest, and the production values were good. Some of the game values were, too, kept me going for 90 minutes. But I thought it would get to be too railroad or one track or so, events happened regardless where the pieces were.
Seemed like on the site I found that game on there were heaps of games. My question is which of this pay to download generation of games are worth playing?
I’ve already wrote this once, this software is a pain in the ass.
I generally don’t get into casual games because they’re generally short on content, highly repetitive, and not that much more than you could get from many java games available for free online. But… some have gotten me interested:
Rogue-like games are not casual. There is no precise definition, but the further you get from something your gradma might play, the less casual it is. Unless your grandma is Nanny Nerdlinger from Nerdvania, Geekistan, she isn’t going to ascend in Nethack.
I can’t see any of my elderly female relatives playing Desktop TD Pro or Monster’s Den, either. I think I must be looking for something other than a casual game.
What I’d like is a management, strategy, or dungeon crawl game that’s quick to play. Something like Settlers of Catan, but I haven’t played it a hundred times.
I checked out Dice Wars at the onemorelevel site, and it was OK. I’d played Shopping Street before and will try to remember Onslaught, thanks Sateryn76.
Is Plants vs Zombies really that much better than other tower defence games? Seems like there’s a billion of those. I mentioned TD Pro, but I’ve also played Protector and Bloons, various versions.
Are there any builder casual games? I know Shopping Street sorta is, anything closer to the old Impressions games like Pharaoh and Zeus?
I can’t speak to any other tower defense games, but I downloaded the demo to Plants vs. Zombies, and played through it three times. Suddenly I found myself, mirabile dictu, paying money for a Pop Cap game. And since they give you a license to install it on five computers, my wife has also been playing it and we’ve had a lot of esoteric conversations about garlic placement and zombies with pickaxes. So, I’d say we’ve gotten $20 worth of enjoyment out of it. I’m thinking I might actually pay for Bookworm Adventures next. After all, Mass Effect 2 isn’t coming out for forever, and Puzzle Quest: Galactrix turned out to be stupid easy while it isn’t crashing.
I never even downloaded the demo for Plants vs. Zombies. I have not yet played a tower defense game that I enjoyed or wasn’t bored with, so I know I’m going to hate this one.