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Monstrosity

XI-ART has made some unusual games that have typically fallen under the radar of most gamers. MonstroCity is their newest game (a fantasy racing title), and it’s a strange one. The goal is to get from Point A to Point B within the allotted time limit ahead of your competition (tracks consist of various stages). Where it gets odd is that the game is less about taking corners and accelerating through straightaways and more about picking up bonuses through strategic driving. To survive you’ll need to dodge traffic and the other cars while picking up power-ups to repair your car, boost your speed, and temporarily stop the other cars. Since all the cars take damage and have little speed, power-ups aren’t just helpful in the game—they’re critical. But the blue power-ups will slow you down, so keeping alert and planning ahead are essential in order to win the race.

You get the usual tournament and single-race modes across three tracks (tournament mode saves your last race, so you needn’t start over if you quit), and eight well-rendered cars from which to choose. I have to admit that it has its charm and is a little more innovative in terms of game design than most of the gas-brake-steer racing games I’ve seen so far. The game doesn’t run quite as smoothly as I’d like it to, and there seems to be a delay of half a second or so with the steering controls. I also had a problem where my car appeared to “jump” to the finish line midway through a race and I wasn’t able to resume. This didn’t come up very often, though. MonstroCity, like Xi-Art’s other titles, is a good concept but doesn’t quite measure up. However, it’s unique enough and has just enough good qualities to it to make it worth a look if you’re a serious race fan.

Concentric Circles

I usually don’t mention betas too much in this newsletter since, hey, most people can’t even play them. However, this one’s an open beta, so there’s no reason any of you can’t download the game and play it. Open betas are a good thing because they allow as many people as possible to check out an upcoming title and comment on it so the end product is as good as possible. Anyway, Concentrix is what I would call “Tetris along the outer edges.” As you might guess, the game screen is basically a circle, and game pieces enter from the middle and work their way outward. Your goal is to form concentric circles to remove the lines before they start piling up. The game includes six different game modes with pieces of different styles and colors (I haven’t figured out all the different modes yet, but they’re all different enough to make them worthwhile.) The game looks good visually, with great use of color and shading. On-screen controls are adequate, but the game works best with the d-pad. Fortunately, you can remap the keys for your particular device. Sound effects and music are also appropriate for this type of title. Although the betas only let you play the first few levels, I haven’t noticed any major bugs so far and have been impressed with the design and game play of this one. If they can get it out at a low price point ($14.99 or less), I really think this will be a worthy addition to the Tetris genre. Remember that if you choose to download the beta, leave the developer some feedback if you have any significant comments to make.

Post of the Week

Remember that I’m still soliciting choices for the games I’ll include in my ten best games article for the magazine. As I said earlier, I’m shooting to make this article mostly based on reader choices, so this is your chance to sound off on the games you enjoy most on your handheld and maybe get quoted in the magazine. If you haven’t yet, you can post your choices on this thread in the discussion forum.

News: XNA

As announced in late March, Microsoft has created a set of cross-platform development tools called XNA. XNA should make it easier for developers to create products:

March 24, 2004 — Microsoft Corp. today announced XNA, a powerful next-generation software development platform. XNA empowers developers to deliver breakthrough games while combating rising production costs and ever-increasing hardware complexity. Games for future iterations of all Microsoft game platforms—including Windows, Xbox, and Windows Mobile-based devices—will be unleashed by tools and technologies from the XNA development platform.
XNA is the catalyst for a new ecosystem of interchangeable, interoperable software tools and technologies from Microsoft, middleware and game development companies. By integrating software innovations across Microsoft platforms and across the industry, XNA forms a common environment that liberates developers from spending too much time writing mundane, repetitive boilerplate code. Instead, XNA frees game creators to spend their time where it matters most—on the creativity that differentiates their games.

"Software will be the single most important force in digital entertainment over the next decade," said Bill Gates, founder and chief software architect of Microsoft.

"XNA underscores Microsoft's commitment to the game industry and our desire to work with partners to take the industry to the next level."

XNA appears to be targeted primarily at the Xbox and the PC, with the goal of allowing more consistency and portability between the two platforms. The press release (available here) doesn’t have much to say about Windows Mobile, but hopefully it’ll remove some of the barriers to development and get more companies involved in creating games. At the least, perhaps it will lead to more consistent control mapping across different devices (Remember the Tomb Raider for Pocket PC fiasco?)

Allen Gall’s The Week in Games is a free service of POCKET PC magazine and POCKET PC magazine ONLINE: in-depth articles, tips, an Encyclopedia of Software and Accessories, and links to the best Windows Mobile PDA and Smartphone Web sites

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Allen Gall’s The Week in Games  Copyright © 2004 by Thaddeus Computing Inc.