Twisted found itself a nice warm little crevice in my otherwise cold and wrinkly heart because it was built from the ground up using C++. Ironically, the games that choose this route are usually a lot more stable than the games built with the aid of third party engines (*cough* zero engine *cough*). When a game is made entirely of C++, it gets a special kind of admiration from me because my knowledge of coding stops at if-else statements.
Let it never be said that I'm biased, though. I know I have to judge a game on its merits as a game and nothing else; and as a game, Twisted is like oreo creme smushed between two dirty rocks. Sure, the meat of the game is well crafted, but good luck enjoying it through the broken teeth and worms. What I'm talking about, really, is loading screens. It's a little ridiculous how much loading the game has to do from the start, but at least the pace picks up once the tutorial ends.
But then we're greeted with the ever-wonderful color-switching mechanic. you can only land on certain colored platforms depending on what color you are...you're all familiar with this, I'm sure. You use "J" "K" and "L" to cycle through three of these colors, but the game is NOT designed to complement such a mechanic. It's simply too fast. You fall like a rock, so unless your sense of timing is absolutely impeccable, you're going to take a few headers into lava pits and have to start all the way from the beginning of the level.
In all honesty, though, I appreciate a game that's not afraid to beat you to a pulp, and I might even come back to thins game to test my reflexes some time in the future. I just think that the challenge could have been presented without such self-contradictory mechanics. Remember, kids, a hard game is not always a good game. Tell that to anyone who claims to like Battletoads or I Want to Be the Guy.../minirant
Next up we have Unfolding Tale, and I wish I had a more interesting review for you, but literally all this game is is...well...and unfolding tale. A tale of what? I'm not sure. It has something to do with fish...and birds...and maybe the sun?
In terms of challenge, there is none. You just click in the direction you want to go and, eventually, you will get there. Now, let me just say that the gaming medium SEVERELY needs a game that eliminates the idea of death being the only consequence or punishment, so I think it's great that Unfolding Tale tried to present everything it needed to without any threat to the player. But the problem with that is that a game still needs some kind of challenge. There's a reason experiments like this never work (unless I'm missing some brilliant example, which I probably am): if the player is never punished, the game swiftly becomes a movie that occasionally solicits input from its viewer.
So yeah, I think it's safe to say that this game is centered around the narrative, rather than the gameplay. Now, I want you to read that sentence over again. Then do it again. Has your tongue caught fire yet? Has it slithered out of your mouth and started beating you over the head until you promise to stop saying such filthy and blasphemous things? Well it should have, because narrative and gameplay should be inextricable in a game. No, just adding a few collectible fish to follow you around after you pass them does not count as gameplay.
I think what bothers me more than anything is that the mechanics the game does have are actually pretty fun. Flying and swimming around these big open worlds feels good...liberating, even. If only there was something to do with those mechanics...
Last up, we have Untitled Stealth Action, which is one of those top-down FOV avoidance games that I refuse to call stealth games. It's a lot like Subsonic but without those cool sound mechanics. Instead, you can sprint right by an enemy so long as you don't cross their field of view. And if you do, it's instant game over. No exclamation point accompanied by shrill scraping of a violin's strings here, just instant dissatisfaction.
Honestly the game wouldn't even be too bad if it controlled worth a damn. You character tends to keep walking for some indeterminate amount of time between 753 and 896 milliseconds (yes, those numbers came straight from my rear). This can be a real problem when planning your route around mines and spotlights that kill you instantly if you go anywhere near them. Also, speaking of mines, having the player press 3 random keys on the keyboard to disarm mines when they were otherwise using the arrow keys and the occasional "shift" is just not nice.
That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay prolific
Twist and Shout: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26729
Uninteresting tale: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26708
A name so lazy it doesn't even exist: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26020
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Turnstyle (kinda) and Twin Gates
I only wanted to do one game today, but I would feel terrible about leaving you with an "it's broken" review after my little hiatus. So, I downloaded Twin Gates.
The biggest problem Twin Gates had is that it's not very good at grabbing the player's interest from the beginning. My first instinct when starting the game up was to alt+f4 away from it, because I was greeted by nothing but an empty board and cryptic descriptions on each of the cards in my hands. "Inverts mother, protects friend?" What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Through a bit of patient play, I figured out what's up. You try to fill up the board with tiles of your color before your opponent can. It's kind of like Go in that respect, but not nearly as strategic. There are 2 types of tiles: archetypes and spells. I might be getting those names wrong, but whatever. Archetypes take up 2 spaces and can "invert" certain adjacent enemy archetypes. If you've played Yu-Gi-Oh, imagine an monster with "change of heart" as its effect. In addition, archetypes can protect friendly archetypes from inversion. Spell tiles take up one space and have various effects.
This is a two-player only game, so again, I'm not going to be able to say much. I will say, though that my experience playing against myself and learning the mechanics was quite relaxing. It's an interesting game, and I certainly appreciate a design team trying to innovate in terms of mechanics rather than just in terms of aesthetic or narrative. Check this one out. It gets my seal of approval, but with a slap on the wrist for bad conveyance and for reminding me of my time learning Latin.
Links
The one that didn't work: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1421
The one that did: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26133
PS- it's been a while since I've edited a review after I'd published it, but I thought of a new criticism for Twin Gates. You know how if you construct your Yu-Gi-Oh deck poorly you never draw the card you need? This usually happens because you bog down your deck with too many cards so that the effects specific to other cards can never be triggered? Well this is a feeling that comes up a lot in Twin Gates, and it's not a good one.
PPS- I was wrong: there are 3 types of tiles, not 2...but it's like spell cards and trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh. Yeah, they're different, but not really...
Well...now that I've enraged any Yu-Gi-Oh player worth their salt, I'll say good-bye for now.
The biggest problem Twin Gates had is that it's not very good at grabbing the player's interest from the beginning. My first instinct when starting the game up was to alt+f4 away from it, because I was greeted by nothing but an empty board and cryptic descriptions on each of the cards in my hands. "Inverts mother, protects friend?" What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Through a bit of patient play, I figured out what's up. You try to fill up the board with tiles of your color before your opponent can. It's kind of like Go in that respect, but not nearly as strategic. There are 2 types of tiles: archetypes and spells. I might be getting those names wrong, but whatever. Archetypes take up 2 spaces and can "invert" certain adjacent enemy archetypes. If you've played Yu-Gi-Oh, imagine an monster with "change of heart" as its effect. In addition, archetypes can protect friendly archetypes from inversion. Spell tiles take up one space and have various effects.
This is a two-player only game, so again, I'm not going to be able to say much. I will say, though that my experience playing against myself and learning the mechanics was quite relaxing. It's an interesting game, and I certainly appreciate a design team trying to innovate in terms of mechanics rather than just in terms of aesthetic or narrative. Check this one out. It gets my seal of approval, but with a slap on the wrist for bad conveyance and for reminding me of my time learning Latin.
Links
The one that didn't work: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=1421
The one that did: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26133
PS- it's been a while since I've edited a review after I'd published it, but I thought of a new criticism for Twin Gates. You know how if you construct your Yu-Gi-Oh deck poorly you never draw the card you need? This usually happens because you bog down your deck with too many cards so that the effects specific to other cards can never be triggered? Well this is a feeling that comes up a lot in Twin Gates, and it's not a good one.
PPS- I was wrong: there are 3 types of tiles, not 2...but it's like spell cards and trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh. Yeah, they're different, but not really...
Well...now that I've enraged any Yu-Gi-Oh player worth their salt, I'll say good-bye for now.
Saturday, November 9, 2013
a brief hiatus
I'll keep this short, since it's nothing you haven't heard before. I just got through one of the most stressful school weeks of my life and I have a lot of work to do over the weekend; I'd also like some time to decompress. So, I'm taking the day off. I'll return on Monday.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Truth
Truth started off promisingly enough with a menu screen that played a melancholic single piano note when I moused over one of its options, setting me up for one of them 2D side-scrolling poetic experience, or as I like to call em, Braid-em-ups. Sounds good enough, right?
Well then I started playing, and the first thing I noticed was that the framerate was god awful. The game looks great when it's still, but the movement is choppy, and your eyes are going to need to get used to it...that's putting it as politely as possible.
When I said the game looks great when it's still, though, I wasn't exaggerating. The visual style is actually very impressive. But, of course, the visual style is only truly good when it complements the gameplay. I'll be blunt: the visual style that truly complements Truth's gameplay would be something along these lines:
The first level was riddled with invisible walls, and it only got worse from there. Mechanics were unexplained, sprites stayed when they should have moved, the only cutscene I experienced was a schizophrenic mess...
I'm not going to call this game bad. That would be inaccurate. The game isn't really bad as much as it is "unfinished." If I were a teacher and a student handed this to me, I wouldn't fail it, I would hand it back to the student and say "give it back to me when it's done."
Games are tricky because they can look passable even when they aren't finished. There are plenty of examples out there, but Sonic '06 is probably the most famous. This kind of thing doesn't really happen to such a great extent in other forms of media? I mean, think of how this blog would look if I
Well then I started playing, and the first thing I noticed was that the framerate was god awful. The game looks great when it's still, but the movement is choppy, and your eyes are going to need to get used to it...that's putting it as politely as possible.
When I said the game looks great when it's still, though, I wasn't exaggerating. The visual style is actually very impressive. But, of course, the visual style is only truly good when it complements the gameplay. I'll be blunt: the visual style that truly complements Truth's gameplay would be something along these lines:
The first level was riddled with invisible walls, and it only got worse from there. Mechanics were unexplained, sprites stayed when they should have moved, the only cutscene I experienced was a schizophrenic mess...
I'm not going to call this game bad. That would be inaccurate. The game isn't really bad as much as it is "unfinished." If I were a teacher and a student handed this to me, I wouldn't fail it, I would hand it back to the student and say "give it back to me when it's done."
Games are tricky because they can look passable even when they aren't finished. There are plenty of examples out there, but Sonic '06 is probably the most famous. This kind of thing doesn't really happen to such a great extent in other forms of media? I mean, think of how this blog would look if I
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Trifflin Slamtastrophe (kinda) and TROP
Again with the not real exe? *sigh*
Well at least I can talk about TROP. I'm assuming this stands for "Tetris...Righteously...um...Oppressing...Pandas?" What I'm getting at is that this game is like Tetris. But at the same time, it's totally not. Imagine Tetris and Donkey Kong drunkenly making out on a love seat. Your job is to, as soon as you get that image out of your head, ascend to the top of the level, get a key, and go to the next level, but there are no platforms for you to initially jump on, so you have to place Tertis blocks in such a way that you can climb on them before you get eaten by a lava.
One thing was made clear within the first few minutes of playing: This is a game that likes to push my buttons. The first thing that happened in level 1 was that I built a wall between me and a shiny collectible. I climbed that wall and then dropped down to get the shiny, only to be greeted by a lava death pit that totally wasn't there before. Then, after that, the game snarkily displays, "Too Hard? Problem?"
As much as this may come as a surprise to any of you who have seen me gripe vehemently about minor frustrations in the past, I'm actually not opposed to a game getting under my skin. the occasional "na na na na na you can't get me" can actually provide an incentive to keep playing, just to prove the snide SOB wrong. It's a dangerous tightrope to walk, but I think TROP pulls it off relatively well.
The graphics, sound, level design (or lack thereof), etc are all kind of underwhelming, but the concept is unique and very fun to play with. The moving lava thing puts just enough pressure on you to keep the game challenging. If you're into retro-style and experimental games, hit this one up. I had fun with it and I bet you will too.
Links
Trifle of Shlomichel: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=607
Trip Trap Trup: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25989
Well at least I can talk about TROP. I'm assuming this stands for "Tetris...Righteously...um...Oppressing...Pandas?" What I'm getting at is that this game is like Tetris. But at the same time, it's totally not. Imagine Tetris and Donkey Kong drunkenly making out on a love seat. Your job is to, as soon as you get that image out of your head, ascend to the top of the level, get a key, and go to the next level, but there are no platforms for you to initially jump on, so you have to place Tertis blocks in such a way that you can climb on them before you get eaten by a lava.
One thing was made clear within the first few minutes of playing: This is a game that likes to push my buttons. The first thing that happened in level 1 was that I built a wall between me and a shiny collectible. I climbed that wall and then dropped down to get the shiny, only to be greeted by a lava death pit that totally wasn't there before. Then, after that, the game snarkily displays, "Too Hard? Problem?"
As much as this may come as a surprise to any of you who have seen me gripe vehemently about minor frustrations in the past, I'm actually not opposed to a game getting under my skin. the occasional "na na na na na you can't get me" can actually provide an incentive to keep playing, just to prove the snide SOB wrong. It's a dangerous tightrope to walk, but I think TROP pulls it off relatively well.
The graphics, sound, level design (or lack thereof), etc are all kind of underwhelming, but the concept is unique and very fun to play with. The moving lava thing puts just enough pressure on you to keep the game challenging. If you're into retro-style and experimental games, hit this one up. I had fun with it and I bet you will too.
Links
Trifle of Shlomichel: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=607
Trip Trap Trup: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25989
Monday, November 4, 2013
Tradewind, Tribe Tactics and Trick Shot Golf
Sometimes you forget to blog...When you forget to blog, it's usually because some other things in your life are driving you crazy. Don't worry, I'm not going to fish for sympathy. I'm in the same position as every other high scholar out there, I get it. Just do try and understand that the mood I'm in as of late is definitely not conducive to writing, so I'm just going to give you the bare essentials of these three games today.
Tradewind is probably the best example on this entire list of "good foundation, poor execution." The entire game is built around the movement mechanics; basically, you hold the left mouse button down to rocket in the direction you're pointing. When you get it down, it's insanely fun to zip around this Bioshock Infinite-esque world like a peregrine falcon on speed.
The way the game chooses to put those mechanics to use, however, is lackluster. To be fair, the game does its best to keep the segments varied, but pretty much only the last mission doesn't seem out of place. Otherwise, you're pushing cabbages, fetching sandwiches, or literally rescuing cats from trees. Maybe that was a deliberate attempt to say "yeah, these missions are about as dull as you can get, but you're still having fun, so that must say a lot about the mechanics, eh?"
In short, this is a game I would love to see expanded on, because I think I could have had a lot more fun with it if I had any more motivation than "well this is fun" to keep playing. Maybe that sounds nonsensical, but still. Play the game for yourself. You'll see what I mean; it's very well crafted but shows a lot of potential for expansion. Not improvement, so much...expansion.
Short note on Tribe Tactics before I begin actually reviewing it: this game is very similar to Steamalot: Epoch's Journey, a game made by Indie developer Risen Phoenix Studios, who you should all totally check out on the facebooks. I was planning on reviewing Steamalot once it game out (I had the privilege of playing an early build at New York Comic Con last month), as well as their debut title Go Go Galago, but they're not DigiPen games, so I'll probably have to get around to them sometime in early 2014. Before you accuse, no I was not paid by Risen Phoenix to say this. I simply saw them at Comic Con and think they deserve lots more attention, and reviewing such a similar game to the one they're working on now presented me an ideal opportunity to help that happen.
Anyway, onto the review...
Tribe Tactics is a multiplayer card-based digital board game. Whoa...wrap your head around that one for a second. The way you win is by either killing you opponent's general or by taking out his/her two stationery crystals. The general can spawn warriors as well as effect cards and if I explain it any further it's going to get really confusing really fast. This is the hallmark of a well designed game, I think; the mechanics are confusing enough to be difficult to explain in words, but if you just play the game, you'll know exactly how to play it.
Since this is a multiplayer game, I was only able to pit myself against my own wit, which doesn't make for a very interesting battle. I can only assume that playing against someone else is fun. It seems like it would be, though. The game looks good, sounds good, and feels good, so what could go wrong? Check this out if you need some way to entertain both you and a friend at your next debate tournament or similar event.
Finally, Trick Shot Golf. All I can really say about it is...it's golf. You've got your standard holes: the straight shot, the troll curve, the sadistic ocean with patches of dry land...The game plays like any other golf game you'd find in the shadiest corner of your local pool hall. I assume the main uniqueness of the game stems from "fantasy mode," but my game crashed whenever I tried to load it.
I do have one major criticism of this game, though: the music. One question: Who on god's green earth thought it would be a good idea to put THIS much base in a soundtrack. It hurts! I mean that literally. This game is physically painful to play because of the ridiculous amount of base in the background. I feel like my intestines are being dissolved or something...
All-in-all, we've got three strong titles today. Maybe I'm only being lenient because I recently started programming again (This time in C++), so I have a whole new appreciation for how hellish getting a game to work can be, but I had fun with these games, especially the first two, since they didn't make my ears bleed. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay resonant.
Links:
My Cabbages!!!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25893
Chess without the Chess: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26911
Golf: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=536
Tradewind is probably the best example on this entire list of "good foundation, poor execution." The entire game is built around the movement mechanics; basically, you hold the left mouse button down to rocket in the direction you're pointing. When you get it down, it's insanely fun to zip around this Bioshock Infinite-esque world like a peregrine falcon on speed.
The way the game chooses to put those mechanics to use, however, is lackluster. To be fair, the game does its best to keep the segments varied, but pretty much only the last mission doesn't seem out of place. Otherwise, you're pushing cabbages, fetching sandwiches, or literally rescuing cats from trees. Maybe that was a deliberate attempt to say "yeah, these missions are about as dull as you can get, but you're still having fun, so that must say a lot about the mechanics, eh?"
In short, this is a game I would love to see expanded on, because I think I could have had a lot more fun with it if I had any more motivation than "well this is fun" to keep playing. Maybe that sounds nonsensical, but still. Play the game for yourself. You'll see what I mean; it's very well crafted but shows a lot of potential for expansion. Not improvement, so much...expansion.
Short note on Tribe Tactics before I begin actually reviewing it: this game is very similar to Steamalot: Epoch's Journey, a game made by Indie developer Risen Phoenix Studios, who you should all totally check out on the facebooks. I was planning on reviewing Steamalot once it game out (I had the privilege of playing an early build at New York Comic Con last month), as well as their debut title Go Go Galago, but they're not DigiPen games, so I'll probably have to get around to them sometime in early 2014. Before you accuse, no I was not paid by Risen Phoenix to say this. I simply saw them at Comic Con and think they deserve lots more attention, and reviewing such a similar game to the one they're working on now presented me an ideal opportunity to help that happen.
Anyway, onto the review...
Tribe Tactics is a multiplayer card-based digital board game. Whoa...wrap your head around that one for a second. The way you win is by either killing you opponent's general or by taking out his/her two stationery crystals. The general can spawn warriors as well as effect cards and if I explain it any further it's going to get really confusing really fast. This is the hallmark of a well designed game, I think; the mechanics are confusing enough to be difficult to explain in words, but if you just play the game, you'll know exactly how to play it.
Since this is a multiplayer game, I was only able to pit myself against my own wit, which doesn't make for a very interesting battle. I can only assume that playing against someone else is fun. It seems like it would be, though. The game looks good, sounds good, and feels good, so what could go wrong? Check this out if you need some way to entertain both you and a friend at your next debate tournament or similar event.
Finally, Trick Shot Golf. All I can really say about it is...it's golf. You've got your standard holes: the straight shot, the troll curve, the sadistic ocean with patches of dry land...The game plays like any other golf game you'd find in the shadiest corner of your local pool hall. I assume the main uniqueness of the game stems from "fantasy mode," but my game crashed whenever I tried to load it.
I do have one major criticism of this game, though: the music. One question: Who on god's green earth thought it would be a good idea to put THIS much base in a soundtrack. It hurts! I mean that literally. This game is physically painful to play because of the ridiculous amount of base in the background. I feel like my intestines are being dissolved or something...
All-in-all, we've got three strong titles today. Maybe I'm only being lenient because I recently started programming again (This time in C++), so I have a whole new appreciation for how hellish getting a game to work can be, but I had fun with these games, especially the first two, since they didn't make my ears bleed. That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay resonant.
Links:
My Cabbages!!!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25893
Chess without the Chess: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26911
Golf: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=536
Saturday, November 2, 2013
Toons n Tactics (kinda) and Trade Tides
My goodness there have been a lot of broken links lately...I guess there's not much I can do other than review the ones that work, right? Sorry, Toons n Tactics
It's okay, though, because Trade Tides filled me with enough anger for like 3 reviews. My first thought when playing this was "boy, this loading screen sure is taking a while." My second thought was "come on, why does this list have to have so many RTS games...and why do they all have to be so terrible at conveying the game's controls?!" So then I clicked the menu button and was immediately greeted by a loading screen.
...WHAT?!
Are you serious? The game needs to go through a loading screen just to bring up the in-game menu?! And then, guess what happened when I clicked "how to play." go on, guess! Have you guessed? Another loading screen! And another one appears when you finally learn the controls (oh, and believe me, I'll get to those in a second), so that makes THREE SEPARATE LOADING SCREENS, none of them especially quick, that you have to sit through just to learn how to play the game! How the hell do you get a game this wrong? I can understand making poor choices when programming a game, or trying new ideas that don't end up working, but THIS?! WHAT IS THIS?!
Oh, but it's my fault for not picking up on the controls, isn't it? Nobody forced me to open up the menu, right? Well guess how the (pretty much) only function in the game is performed? You have to left click on your castle, and then RIGHT CLICK on a surrounding neighborhood to link the two. WELKRJWWHAT?!
How on God's green Earth does that make any sense? Why would you switch up the buttons in the middle of performing a command? Left clicking on both the castle and the town does nothing, so why the hell did anybody think it was a good idea to require the player to first left click and then right click?
And once you've done that...well, you wait until time runs out. No, I'm not kidding. The objective of the game is to link all your territories and then "hold out for 5 minutes." Now, let me go on record saying that the "don't die until x time passes" game mechanic is very rarely pulled off well. I can think of maybe one game that did it right, and it's kind of a stretch (the game is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and if you played it, you know what scene I'm talking about, and you know how big a stretch it is). Regardless, though, I don't think anyone would deny that one thing you need to make that game mechanic even remotely successful is some sort of threat. In Trade Tides, every now and again some pirates will appear on the screen, but they are so few and far between that by the time the next batch appears, you have enough money to basically flood the map with depth charges. Add onto that the fact that you can quick-plant charges by right clicking wherever you want them to go (ie- right on top of the pirate ships), and you've essentially been given a god hand that makes quick work of anything that might try to stand in your way.
I can only recommend this game to the kind of person who is addicted to winning, because I've never played an easier game that actually claims to have a challenge. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay seaworthy.
Links
Nothing Works!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25906
Trade Tirade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24661
It's okay, though, because Trade Tides filled me with enough anger for like 3 reviews. My first thought when playing this was "boy, this loading screen sure is taking a while." My second thought was "come on, why does this list have to have so many RTS games...and why do they all have to be so terrible at conveying the game's controls?!" So then I clicked the menu button and was immediately greeted by a loading screen.
...WHAT?!
Are you serious? The game needs to go through a loading screen just to bring up the in-game menu?! And then, guess what happened when I clicked "how to play." go on, guess! Have you guessed? Another loading screen! And another one appears when you finally learn the controls (oh, and believe me, I'll get to those in a second), so that makes THREE SEPARATE LOADING SCREENS, none of them especially quick, that you have to sit through just to learn how to play the game! How the hell do you get a game this wrong? I can understand making poor choices when programming a game, or trying new ideas that don't end up working, but THIS?! WHAT IS THIS?!
Oh, but it's my fault for not picking up on the controls, isn't it? Nobody forced me to open up the menu, right? Well guess how the (pretty much) only function in the game is performed? You have to left click on your castle, and then RIGHT CLICK on a surrounding neighborhood to link the two. WELKRJWWHAT?!
How on God's green Earth does that make any sense? Why would you switch up the buttons in the middle of performing a command? Left clicking on both the castle and the town does nothing, so why the hell did anybody think it was a good idea to require the player to first left click and then right click?
And once you've done that...well, you wait until time runs out. No, I'm not kidding. The objective of the game is to link all your territories and then "hold out for 5 minutes." Now, let me go on record saying that the "don't die until x time passes" game mechanic is very rarely pulled off well. I can think of maybe one game that did it right, and it's kind of a stretch (the game is Deus Ex: Human Revolution, and if you played it, you know what scene I'm talking about, and you know how big a stretch it is). Regardless, though, I don't think anyone would deny that one thing you need to make that game mechanic even remotely successful is some sort of threat. In Trade Tides, every now and again some pirates will appear on the screen, but they are so few and far between that by the time the next batch appears, you have enough money to basically flood the map with depth charges. Add onto that the fact that you can quick-plant charges by right clicking wherever you want them to go (ie- right on top of the pirate ships), and you've essentially been given a god hand that makes quick work of anything that might try to stand in your way.
I can only recommend this game to the kind of person who is addicted to winning, because I've never played an easier game that actually claims to have a challenge. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay seaworthy.
Links
Nothing Works!: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25906
Trade Tirade: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=24661
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