Mortloch's game

2009 has been dubbed the international Darwin-year. Charles Darwin was born exactly 200 years ago, and 150 years ago the book was published that would revolutionize the way we look at and think about life. And since this little space is so generously given to me to talk about games, I want to talk about a game that shows evolution really does work.

“Oh, he’s going to talk about Spore, that new evolution-sim by that guy who did the Sims” you probably think. But no. I want to tell you about Spore’s primitive ancestor, back in the analogue age, when it was still a humble board game called “Ursuppe” or “Primordial Soup”.

“Primordial Soup” (1997) is a hard to come by boardgame by German game designers Frank and Doris. In it, up to 6 players grab strains of amoebes by their DNA and force them up the ladder of life.

The soup is divided in a grid, and each sector contains little wooden cubes, representing foodstuff. Each turn an amoebe is in a sector, it has to eat a certain amount of cubes, and excrete waste. Hopefully the overall current of the soup will take your amoebes out of it’s sector before it runs out of food and is just swimming in… well… you know, its own poop.

Because the distribtion of foodstuff is always changing, and there is never enough to go around, there is a real struggle for survival. Now, just like in real life, there are two ways to take on that struggle: multiply or specialize. Each turn, the player is given a certain amount of points which they can spend on either cell division or buying new genes. Having many primitive amoebes makes it unlikely that they’ll all be wiped out, but they won’t be very flexible. Having a few specialized amoebes makes them potentially very succesful, but low numbers make them more likely to go extinct if they run into some bad luck.

The key is balance. Just dividing and dividing and letting your amoebes float powerlessly through the soup won’t win you the game in the end. Neither will overloading on powerful genes, since the thickness of the ozone layer will vary throughout the game and the UV will burn away excess DNA. The trick is to select the right genes at the right time. Being able to at least excert some influence in the direction your amoebes are going is a very powerful gene: at least you have a chance to swim towards the rich feeding grounds and away from the latrine. Or you can select the frugality-gene, so your amoebes can do with less food per turn. Or evolve a tentacle so you can steal foodcubes from adjacent squares. Hell, you can even give you amoebes a Ph.D. It’s completely useless, but your amoebes will be the brainiest thing around for at least 2 billion years.

Somewhere halfway through, the game really comes into its element. There’ll always be a player who decides it’s time to step it up a notch: fed up with simple wooden foodcubes, she’ll equip her amoebes with specialized genes and intelligently design the world’s first predators. Her prey: the other amoebes! And here is where you’ll see evolution really works. In just a few turns, all the other players will have evolved some sort of defense, wether it is armour, spikes, or just the gene that allows an amoebe to swim away when attacked. A amoebe that can’t defend itself will be eaten into extinction. The game will be a real weapons’ race for a few turns; the carnivore evolving new abilities and the prey developing new ways to stay safe. If the threat is removed, because intense UV-light destroyed the hunter’s gene pool, all the defensive genes are shed too in favour of others since they no longer serve a purpose. Until the threat arises anew.

In the end, the size of your gene pool combined with the amount of surviving amoebes is calculated into the end-score. I most admit I can’t recall any spectacular end games. The game peaks at the moments the evolutionairy arms race is on and peeters out towards the end. Still, it is a vey fun game to play – even if only for the sheer amount of poop-related jokes you’re allowed to make – and it even teaches us an important lesson, namely: Grow big, sharp teeth, and grow them quickly!

Next week a double bill: Kremlin and RoboRally.

Ohh flock it (Mortlach's game review)

Two weeks ago, I saw this trailer for an upcoming game called “Flock” and the first thing I thought was: I know this game already! After some digging in the old archives, I came up with Sheep, a game from the year 2000. So at the start of the new millenium, I was herding sheep through lethal obstacle courses, and in 2009, I’m still herding sheep past probably just as lethal obstacle courses – only with better graphics.

It did start me thinking about other games that have recently been recycled. Prince of Persia for PS3 was released in 2008; its predecessor, the Sands of Time saw the light of day in ’03 and of course it’s all directly related to the classic Prince of Persia from ’89. So three generations of Princes in 19 years; that does average out to about 9 years.

Looking back to further prove my point I found the game of GoldenAxe (X360 in 2008 and original in 1990) which, like some hereditary diseases, blessedly seems to have skipped a generation.

Some games are on a faster cycle. Sim City got released in 1989, then in 1993, 1998, 2003 and finally in 2007, by which time it had mutated into an unrecognizable and uncrontrolable freak.

Researching this did make me look back on the games I played when I was young – currently 30, so back in the day of the original Prince of Persia and SimCity, I was 11. Oh, the wondrous days of 1-colour screens (mine was orange, not green), floppy discs, bleeps and whistles for the internal PC-speaker and clock speeds that went up as far as a whopping 15 MegaHertz.

I even found a site with so-called “abandonware”. That’s software of which the copyright has been voided, so it’s free ánd legal to download. I’m not much for nostalgia, but playing Sierra’s adventure game Goldrush from 1988 – using a DOS-emulator and extremely reigned in computer - did take me back when life was simple. “Look around” You see a photo album on the table! “Open album”, “Take photo”, “Exit”

According to the theory of a 9-year generation cycle, Gold Rush3 should be released any moment now, but I’m afraid the entire branch of adventure games went extint somewhere in the 1990’s and all that’s left are the fossil remains, treasured by the people who were there when the adventure game ruled supreme.

Back to Flock. If it’s half as good as it’s precursor Sheep was, you’ll still have a ton of fun. And if it isn’t any good, well, you’ll probably will be able to find the original Sheep at the bottom of the toy store’s bargain-bin.

Next week: not sure yet!

Blood Bowl

Blood Bowl is a soon-to-be video game released on various platforms such as PC, Xbox360, nintendo DS and PSP. It is an adaptation of a board game by Warhammer that first say the light of day back in 1987. Watching the trailer for the video game made me dust of my old coaches trenchcoat and the game has grabbed me again, like it did when I first started playing it, over 10 years ago.

Blood Bowl is a board game version of American football, only the teams do not consist of just humans. There are orcs, several flavours of elves, mutants, undead, dwarves, and many more. Sometime even a hobbit team loses their way and ends up on the pitch.

The game is fast-paced and tactical, revolves around getting the right player in the right position for offense or defense. Oh, and it is quite violent. It ís called BLOOD Bowl for a reason. Teeth are rattled, skulls are cracked, and promising carreers are cut terminally short on the line of scrimmage.

A good coach plays a team for their strengths and tries to make up for their weaknesses. Elves, for instance, are masters of ball handling. They can run in, swipe the ball from under the opponents noses, pass it halfway down the pitch and make a mad dash for the opponents’ end zone. The trick is to get a big enough lead before the team is inevitably mown down and you’re left with too few players to mount any kind of defense.

Orcs and dwarves, on the other hand, grab the ball, turtle up, and fight their way towards the goal inches at a time, ideally scoring just before time runs out. All the while they are pelted by goblins being flung at them by the Troll on the opposing team – as long as the Troll doesn’t get confused and decides to eat his team mates slash ammunition.

Ganging up and kicking a player who is down is officially frowned upon, but it is in every coach’s playbook. Some teams even employ specialists just for the job; players who know every dirty trick in the book. They probably wrote the book, or ate it. Steel capped boots, knuckledusters, even the odd chainsaw is smuggled onto the pitch. Don’t get too attached to your star player!

Blood Bowl’s a game of skill and cunning. Playing to your strengths and minimizing risks. But sometimes, you have to throw caution to the wind and just go for it. Amazing plays are pulled off in the last seconds of the game to get that winning touchdown. Light and agile receivers go head to head with quarterbacks that put the NFL to shame in a sheer desperate attempt to recover the ball and score. Or a small group of stalwart defenders try to hold the line against insurmountable odds. A charging Minotaur will put a strain on even the best laid plans, to put it mildly. Sometimes the only thing your players can do is brace themselves and pray the Gods of Improbable Statistics haven’t left them.The greatest thing is that you’ll often find that BOTH coaches are cheering the players on who are resorting to heroic last ditch efforts.

It’s about as much fun as you can have with cardboard and pewter figurines. It’s a two player game (excluding spectators) and a match takes about 2 hours. The original board game, including playing field, rule book, dice and two teams – Orc and Human, will set you back about 50 euro’s, but it’s worth every cent. Or play over the internet with tailor made free software in one of the many online leagues. I coach several teams at Fumbbl.com, a great site with coaches from all over the world, with perfect training grounds for new coaches who need to learn the game until they are ready to guide their team onwards, to victory or death!

Let’s play ball!

Next week: Flock and the time it takes for a game to become retro.

Call of Duty 5, World at War

It is the end of my first blogging week so tomorrow means a new Guest Blogger and we do things all over again but with different people. So what do you usually do at the end of the week? I love to play games and so do many other people I know.
Every Wednesday we will be having the han dsome "Mortlach" writing a little something about games so here is his first entry.

Call of Duty 5, World at War

I like first person shooter games. Granted, I’m exceptionally good at them, but most of the time, I really enjoy them. Not so with CoD5, WaW. The multiplayer part is excellent, no argument there. People give it demerits for being CoD4 in a WOII setting, but I don’t see why that’s a problem. No, my beef with CoD5, WaW is that the single player campaign is just too damn hard. Even on the mediocre difficulty setting, it turns down to running into a field and dying over and over again until you’ve memorized where all the enemies will pop up. A few days ago, it took me over an hour to fight my way into the Reichstag. It got so bad that I actually felt I got angry at the game for making me go through all that crap over and over again. And now, I have the Concorde-syndrome: I’m nearly at the end so I don’t want to do it all again on Easy-difficulty, but I can’t go on because the bloody game won’t let me.

It did make me realize just why those WWII invasions always took so many soldiers. It takes about 500+ soldiers to get to the end of a corridor defended by enemies, just to be greeted by a room filled with more enemies. Only now it takes one soldier 500+ tries.

It is a good game. Buy it for the multiplayer alone. And start playing the singleplayer campaign when sticking needles under your fingernails has lost its charm.

next week: Blood Bowl