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sunshinej wrote:
I did the beta on Vermillion Watch and thought it was pretty good, so I am glad to see that you really liked it, stusue. I should have gotten it on the July 4th BOGO, but didn't. I'll wait for the next BOGO.
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Sunshine, I'm halfway through the game I got in the sale that I wasn't sure if I should get or not - Darkness and Flame: Born of Fire CE by FIVE-BN Games - but just went with my gut at 11:30 pm on Tuesday Seattle time (8:30 am on Wednesday Oldenburg time, as soon as I woke up) and WOW! I think it's even better than Vermillion!!!! It's amazing and really hard. There are only a handful of HOPs, which are all progressive silhouettes in an entire room where everything is where it should be (no junkpiles in this game) and with a few little puzzles. And they sure ain't easy! This game is more like adventure light with a few HOPs thrown in for good measure and some quite difficult minigames, but not as many as other recent games. But the adventure part is really challenging (at least for my poor, feeble, little brain). But the graphics and animation are both amazing! The animation is a little blurry but the movement of everything, especially any water (which looks real) and the people and their actions is fantastic. You should see the graphics when you're underwater!
And there's a morphing object and a collectible in every scene, with capsules that give you info about the valley in some zoom scenes. There are also feathers to collect but I haven't come across any of those yet - maybe in the bonus chapter. Oh, and the morphing objects are hard! I stared at one screen for maybe 20 mins while I was watching something on the TV, trying to find the little bugger, and jumped for joy when I finally found the tiny little thing! Some are minuscule in the middle of something in the far, far distant background, at least one is hidden by a moving object and you can only see it when that object moves away and before it comes back, and most of them are so subtle that you really have to pay attention! And they're all totally different objects (or engravings, etc). The collectibles, on the other hand, are quite easy to spot but there are 5 different ones and you never know which one is going to be in any scene. But the good thing about all the collectibles is, if you collect them all, you get an extra 7 puzzles to play in the extras! I think maybe 5 jigsaw puzzles and then 2 minigames, one of which is one of my favs!
I am SO happy that I listened to my gut and got it in the sale. And even happier that I chose that game to play today! Now back to it after I go down and get my dinner...
ETA: I'm back and was just wandering around and around aimlessly, trying to work out what the heck I could do with the gumboots in my inventory (the only things in there) but couldn't for the life of me see anything that needed gumboots. So I was going around to every scene, clicking on everything, trying to find something I'd missed, when I thought, what the heck, I'll just click on that tiny little puddle of water on the floor of the submarine that fell down when I entered it underwater. And guess what ... part of that puddle was a single shard of glass, exactly the same shade of blue as the water!
Now I just have to work out where the heck I can use that glass shard ...
Last edited by stusue (July 8, 2016 12:19 pm)
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TiramaSue wrote:
sunshine - Lesta Studios made the 2 Nightmare Realm games.
Thanks Tirama. I already have the 2 Nightmare Realm games and played them both. I remembered them being really good too. I didn't realize that they were made by Lesta Studios when I played them because didn't pay attention back then. So, Fright must be the last game that they did.
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stusue wrote:
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sunshinej wrote:
I did the beta on Vermillion Watch and thought it was pretty good, so I am glad to see that you really liked it, stusue. I should have gotten it on the July 4th BOGO, but didn't. I'll wait for the next BOGO.
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Sunshine, I'm halfway through the game I got in the sale that I wasn't sure if I should get or not - Darkness and Flame: Born of Fire CE by FIVE-BN Games -
Thanks stusue...Now I know what to get with my other half of a BOGO Darkness and Flame: Born of Fire.
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Hmm, GameHouse has been around longer than 10 years. In 2004, RealNetworks bought GameHouse. Download games were sold at both the GH and the Real Arcade websites and then with no warning, the Real Arcade site closed down, and customers were directed to the GH site. Many games disappeared from customers' purchase history. GH said they would issue coupons for the 'no longer available' games, but it was like pulling teeth to get them. Many people just cut their loses and went elsewhere.
Paul Thelen (Mr Big Fish) worked at Real Arcade before starting his own company. He took many of the complaints of RA's customers into account when he structured BF (the biggie being that your game club credits could accumulate until there was a game you wanted to buy vs RA/GH policy of use it in 30 days or kiss it goodby.)
You said: As for GH and games that are no longer offered by them because the developers have pulled the plug on those games, if it's a game that you got from GH itself, not the previous company, you can still download it, you just can't buy it. You just have to let GH know and you can still download it.
I think that's worse than what GamersGate did. At least GG is giving you a way to access what you paid for. GH agrees to sell a developer's game for a limited period of time (okay with that) but also agrees that once the time period is up people who paid for the game can no longer access it??????? Did they tell people that before they bought the games????? Don't see anything about that in the TOS.
When I buy a downloadable game, I expect it to remain in my purchase history. I don't want to have to tell GH I want to download it and wait for them to grant me access to something that I supposedly own. Nor do I want to be fobbed off with a coupon to get something else that may do a disappearing act when the developer and GH part ways.
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stusue wrote:
Tirama, thanks for all that info!
GH has been 10 years "in the biz" as they say, so a few years younger than BFG. And they also have 3 locations around the world - Seattle like BFG (I wonder how close they are to each other...), São Paulo in Brazil and Eindhoven in the Netherlands (I'd love to go and visit them there and see how it all works).
But do you know how many employees BFG has? GH has a total of 146 workers in the 3 locations, with a combined height of 791'7" (their page is really funny). They have cartoon faces of a group of people with several saying hello in different languages, titled "The GameHouse Crew", and underneath the title it says, "(Not actual photographs.)".
According to google maps, they are within 2.8 miles of each other. A 10- minute drive (without traffic).
According to this article published Nov 12, 2014:
Big Fish grew into one of the world’s largest casual game companies, with around 500 employees at its headquarters on Seattle’s waterfront and around 600 worldwide.
The other big casual games company in Seattle was PopCap, which was sold in 2011 in a deal with Electronic Arts.
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Interesting. If you go to BoomZap's Facebook page, Cathy's Crafts links to iwin.
Seems like nothing has changed at BoomZap. Look at these reviews:
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Tirama -- I had to laugh when you said GH and BFG was a 10 minute drive without traffic. There's ALWAYS traffic in Seattle!
Yikes! That's another good reason for me to not go to GH. (the limited time to be able to access a game you've purchased). Since the only thing I can see that's beneficial about GH is the Fun Pass, and I don't play nearly enough games to make it a deal for me, I'll stick to BFG.
stusue -- I'm glad you're enjoying Darkness and Flame: Born of Fire.
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Thank you Tirama for giving me a couple of laughs today. You dropped some great witty lines.
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Yes, I think I have a couple of games lined up for the next BOGO. I refrained from this one.
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lilyr wrote:
Tirama -- I had to laugh when you said GH and BFG was a 10 minute drive without traffic. There's ALWAYS traffic in Seattle!
I'm just repeating what Google Maps said.