Thursday, February 13, 2014

Doctor Who Legacy

Like most people with any interest in casual games, I have dabbled in Candy Crush (CC). My wife is so ensnared in its sugar-spun web, that she has decided that she needs to give it up for lent this year. I like the game, though the cutesy graphics annoy me. When playing CC I keep going until I fail a level, then I usually log off and find something else to do. The map showing your progress along the path to social isolation is cunning, but the game still doesn't keep me wanting one more go. I haven't downloaded it to my tablet, and if I get a decent slot of time on the family PC then I use it for other games or projects.

A few years ago I did develop a significant Chuzzle habit. I liked the graphics and loved the sound. The trophy room kept me coming back, and I won every single trophy apart from the 'pop a million Chuzzles' one. I learned how to hack into the files to see how far away I was, and I still had another 450,000 or so to go. That would have taken far too many hours so I retired.

Since then no casual game has sunk its hooks into me. If there was a good looking, funky sounding puzzle game that provided challenge and progression, then I'd probably take it on. If it was also based on one of my favourite shows then I'd be in real trouble.

Well somebody help me, because I've discovered Doctor Who Legacy (DWL). This has been out for a while, but I resisted investigating until a week or two back. Now there's no going back.

Ha! Gotcha! Pity I won't remember it
Like Candy Crush (CC) and Chuzzle, DWL is a 'match 3' game, meaning that you must arrange objects around a grid to get 3 or more in a row. However this isn't just a case of dressing up CC in a Whovian skin.

In DWL you play on the side of the good Doctor himself, with a team of companions taken straight from the show. You battle against Daleks, Cybermen, The Silence, and other less well known villains. If you match the gems in the grid then your foes take damage. For every round they survive, they blast your team, reducing their total Hit Points (HP). So far, so so so. However, each companion has a special power. For example Rory can heal your team, regaining lost HP. Madame Vastra delivers a riposte, effectively free damage to your opponents. Even better, as you progress through the game the companions gain experience, getting tougher and increasing their powers.

Time fragments are dropped, which unlock higher levels for your team. These are regular and predictable, but there are also rare drops of new companions, different incarnations of the Doctor, and different outfits for them all to wear. There's even a storyline to work through, though so far I don't think Neil Gaiman will be looking over his shoulder. Still, it isn't a role playing game so that's a little unfair.

Porridge gets an upgrade
The artwork has a very nice comic strip style, and the Doctor Who theme playing away in the background means that I actually plug in the headphones rather than just turn the sound down. I found a good article on the development of the game on www.computerandvideogames.com which explains that it is partially inspired by 'Puzzle & Dragons' which I've never come across, though I can see it after watching the trailer. 

The game has a good web site and fan community, that has some excellent tutorial videos here by The Adipose TV. Adipose makes my Pirate Galaxy blog look very amateur. His YouTube channel looks like a key resource for gamers and I'll be checking it out. So far the game is also free from heavy handed monetisation, so if you don't want to pay then you can enjoy it still and progress at a pleasing rate. 

At first DWL is easy enough, but soon gets tough enough to make you work. Spotting the best combinations and working out how to thread them together is harder than I thought. Good brain exercise.

DWL obviously works for me, but what if you're not a Doctor Who fan? Well you don't need any knowledge of the show so that's not a problem. However if you have a pathological hatred of all things Whovian then I doubt if you'll have read very far into this post. 

Doctor Who Legacy is a great game and well worth a try. Just be prepared to sacrifice a few hours to it.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Getting Your Book Online

If you have any interest in publishing your own ebook, then may I direct you to ‘how to publish an ebook’ on C|Net. Not an imaginative name but an accurate one. It is largely thanks to this article that I managed to get Hiding out there. It is a great ‘how to’ and ‘who with’ article, and the author David Carnoy has updated it a few times, most recently in June 2012.

The article gives an overview of the various options you have, covering Amazon Kindle, Scribd, Lulu and several others. It gives hints and tips, contrasts and compares, and from what I can see is even handed. I have this permanently bookmarked and it is a constant reference.

With my book I chose to start off with Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and I have to say it turned out to be easier than I thought. I downloaded a free ebook ‘Building Your Book for Kindle’ which was a big help. If you know how to format a Word document then you’ve nothing to fear. I enrolled in KDP Select for the first three months of publication as this provides significant perks. Once that period expired I decided to come out of it, so that I could then go with Smashwords. KDP Select has an exclusivity clause.

The benefit of Smashwords is that once you publish on their site, you can then have them distribute your masterpiece to most of the major ebook sellers, including Apple’s iBooks, Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s etc. When I first published Hiding and spread the word amongst my friends and family, there were a significant number of people who were asking if they could get it on their Nook or whatever. I decided to make my book as widely available as I could.

Smashwords has its own free guide to turning your manuscript into an ebook, called the Smashwords Style Guide. This is a bit more comprehensive than the Kindle equivalent, and at first looks a bit more intimidating. However I read through it once, and then used it to get my Word file into their required format and uploaded in less than two hours. You can now buy Hiding direct from Smashwords here.

The book passed review for their Premium Status, and so has been distributed to the other ebook sellers. Smashwords themselves have made it available in all the formats that I’m aware of, so it is possible for people to buy books for almost any device direct from them.

I am computer literate, and comfortable with word processing programmes, the internet etc. so will have found the process with KDP and Smashwords easier than some. However I am not an IT consultant or publishing magnate. If you’ve managed to write a book, and have mustered the required faith in it, then you’ve done the hard part. Getting the little blighter on line is easy.

Give it a go and let me know how you get on. Good luck.