Puzzled

[rowyn]

Lut found a new game.

The two betas he'd been playing in early August (World of Warcraft and the new Warhammer 40,000 RTS) were broken by the patches applied while we were in Vegas, so he'd quit playing them. For a couple of weeks, he tried Sony's "Planetside", but got disgusted with the imbalances in it and gave it up.

His newest game: Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

It's a massively multiplayer roleplaying game based on .... puzzle games. You know. Like Tetris and Snood and all those games you find on Yahoo and similar places.

I am a puzzle game addict. When I find one I like, I can play it for entire days without break. I played Tetris and its variants for years, and Snood by itself kept me entertained for a few months.

And I played Everquest for three years.

Now, I managed to break my leveling-game addiction (even City of Heroes couldn't hold me more than a month.) But a game that combined MMORPG and puzzle games?

I watched him play "Puzzle Pirates", and I said, "I'm not sure I want to try this game."

"Why not?"

"Because if I do, I'm never going to stop."

I was supposed to go to the Bahamas this weekend, but telnar and I decide we didn't want to visit on the same weekend Frances was. So we rescheduled, leaving me with an unexpectedly free weekend at home. On Friday night, I gave in and tried the game.

...

No, I haven't done much else since then.

Comments

[caffeinewabbit.livejournal.com]

I keep on seeing ads for that on Penny Arcade. I'm curious how you tie puzzle games and MMPOGs together.

[ltwarhound.livejournal.com]

You need to pump the water out of the ship (because we've taken damage, and are taking on water, which slows us down, making us an easier target)?

Then you play the Bilge puzzle game, and by scoring well, you 'pump' the bilge out faster.

Want to sail faster? Get a few of your crew playing the 'sails'. Quick, get a man playing the Gunnery game, so we reload and fire those cannons!

Oops, they grappled us. Grab your sword of choice, and engage in a tetris like game, where clearing out blocks and rows sends them onto your opponent's screen, where he has to try to clear them out (sending them back to you) or lose. And in a brawl, you might have the bad fortune to have 2 or 3 opponents ganging up on you.

As an MMO, its not overly massive. About the size of Planetside, playerwise. But it has a surprising amount of depth to the meta-game that the puzzle games are just the front for.

[rowyn]

Pretty much what Lut said. Where, say, EverQuest has you craft items by putting ingrediants together in a box and pressing a "combine" button (booooooring!) in Puzzle Pirates, you'd play a puzzle game. The better you do at playing the puzzle game, the better your chances of success at whatever you're trying to do: pump out the bilge, repair damage to the ship, fight combats, etc.

Gah, now I want to play .... *whimper*