The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Tomb Chess is essentially similiar to the Half Chess (banqi) variant of Chinese Chess (xiangqi), albeit with wonderfully drawn undead and demonic pieces on a 6×6 chessboard / graveyard. Found this over at JayIsGames as usual

Tomb Chess can be played against the AI or hotseat against another human or even as a spectator sport while two AIs battle it out (of course, not to the dead since half of these guys are already dead in the first place )

© FreeWorldGroup.com.

The two players take turns to either unearth tombstones to reveal an undead creature which might belong to you (highlighted in red) or your opponent (in green) or move any existing creature already uncovered. In Tomb Chess (and similiarly in Half Chess), all pieces move the same way - one square in any of the four cardinal directions unlike in standard chess.

Tomb Chess is therefore much easier to pick up and less time-consuming to play but requires a bigger pinch of luck as opposed to the standard rules of chess due to the random locations of your pieces. There’s is still some strategy involved in selecting the most favourable tombstone to uncover as well as the need for improvisation of tactics to deal with the current situation at hand.

© FreeWorldGroup.com.

There are 6 different ghoulish creatures (or pieces in chess) in Tomb Chess arranged in ascending order of power.

Ghostly Pawn (Strength 1 : 8 pieces) - Essentially Pacman’s iconic ghosts. Although they get butchered by every other piece, guard them well since they are able to kill Demon Kings with a single headbutt

© Touchstone Pictures. Image from Cherry Lane Keepsakes

Rook of Doom (Strength 2 : 4 pieces) - A dagger-wielding ghoul on a drawcart. Reminds me of wheelchair-bound Doctor Finklestein from Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Dark Knight (Strength 3 : 2 pieces) - Armed with a vicious mace to give Rooks of Doom and Ghostly Pawns a nasty bonk on their heads.

Satanic Bishop (Strength 4 : 2 pieces) - A mummified bishop to be exact.

Hellfire Queen (Strength 5 : 1 piece) - Inspired by the mythical Nagi, the Hellfire Queen that conquers all with a single swipe of her tail except for the Demon King.

Demon King (Strength 6 : 1 piece) - Bearing a slight resemblance to Demitri from Capcom’s Darkstalkers with extra pins on his head (probably as a conduit for the electricity he uses for frying his foes), the Demon King trumps everyone except for the lowly Ghostly Pawn.

Play Tomb Chess @ FreeWorldGroup.com.

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A couple of educational flash games from BBC History Channel presenting two important battles from English history - the Battle of Hastings between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons under King Harold II and the Battle of Waterloo pitting the forces the Duke of Wellington against Napoleon Bonaparte. Both games allow you to exprience the battles from either side and the possible outcomes if either side had fought differently at critical points during each battle.

The Battle of Hastings : The Normans have infantry, archers and cavalry whereas the Anglo-Saxons is primarily a infantry based army.

© BBC

© BBC

A Norman victory (top) and an Anglo-Saxon victory (bottom)

The Battle of Waterloo : The heavily outnumbered French army has powerful artillery and better cavalry than the more numerous Seventh Coalition army comprising Belgian, Dutch, Hanoverian, Brunswick and British troops under the Duke of Wellington.

© BBC

© BBC

A Seventh Coalition victory (top) and a French victory (bottom)

Below, I present some of my findings after playing both games several times to discover all possible choices and outcomes.

While both battles took place in different eras, the same basic principle of preserving a mobile reserve to reinforce a successful breakthrough of enemy lines or to bolster a faltering defence or seal critical gaps in defensive lines is readily apparent.

Tactics of course vary according to the prevalent weapons of day. In the Battle of Hastings, the bristling spearpoints of the English shield wall provide an effective counter to Norman cavalry charges whereas infantry of the Napoleonic era form into equally immobile squares with their musket bayonets to deter enemy cavalry.

© Osprey Publishing

Above is Wayne Reynold’s illustration of the effectiveness of a solid shieldwall from the 11th December edition of Osprey Publishing’s “Advent Calendar”. Another shield wall is depicted by late Angus McBride on the 1st December edition.

These two battles still involve armies arrayed in formation against each other before the actual commencement of battle since massed infantry did not possess accurate ranged weapons to inflict substantial damage to their opponents during those times. This probably explains why the artillery were emplaced in front of the French infantry in the battle of Waterloo and the resulting disaster during the early days of WWI when armies attempted to use similar Napoleonic tactics in the face of vastly improved ranged weapons like rifles and machineguns.

The same lack of accurate long-ranged weapons could also make a heroic charge by leaders and their heavily-armored and armed bodyguards exemplified in the Battle of Hastings as a viable way of transforming a crisis into sure victory. A similiar valiant attempt would be pure suicide in today’s wars.

It’s apparent that tactical units have become smaller through the ages probably due to advancements in communication and signalling methods as well as the increased tempo of battle. The increased accuracy and destructiveness of artillery as it evolved over time was possibly a important factor too.

Play The Battle of Hastings and The Battle of Waterloo at BBC History Channel.

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Another electronic music toy, Tony-B is the brainchild of a French flash developer with the same name.

You get synthesized melodies, bass and percussion (snares, hi-hats, kickdrums) with some early 90’s techno/electro soundbites (try pressing R for that classic C+C Music Factory’s Everybody Dance Now sample) as well as some nifty EFX which you can activate via Street Fighter like controls (Down,Right,Left,Up) for the Thunder Break snare roll or (Up,Down,Up,Down) for Extreme Danger sirens.

© www.tony-b.org

The Tony-B machine boasts a very well-designed and intuitive interface where everything can be accessed either via the keyboard or the mouse (or both for optimal effect). Switch the instruments on and off by pressing the number keys, play the keyboard via the ASDFGHJKL; keys for the standard QWERTY keyboard layout (it also supports the AZERTY keyboards used in France and Belgium) and trigger the sound samples with the QWERTYUIOP keys.

© www.tony-b.org

Check out my 3 minutes track (2.90 MB) recorded with Audacity. It doesn’t exactly show off the full power of the Tony-B machine since my reflexes suck when attempting to control all the instruments, samples and the EFX simultaneously but it should give you an good idea of the style of audio generated by this marvellous little Flash toy.

Start creating your own track with the Tony-B Machine. You might want to read what each of the sound samples correspond to over at the official site before playing around with it.

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thoo2’s free Bejewelled Deluxe from last year’s Popcap Mother Day giveaway has somehow expired and I have to find a similar clone to fuel her matching puzzle game addiction. And thanks to her, I’m now hooked on Zookeeper that I found for her.

© Kiteretsu
Even the title screen is so cute

Created by Japanese developer(s) Kiteretsu, Zookeeper is a cuter Flash variant of Bejewelled with brightly coloured cartoon animal faces instead of the classic gems. Personally, I find the graphics in Zookeeper much more appealing and a refreshing change over Bejewelled’s boring gems.

Gameplay is akin to that of Bejewelled with a slight twist to the level up process. Instead of matching a set number of gems in Bejewelled, you need to clear a specific number of each animal in the playing field in order to advance to the next level.

© Kiteretsu

While this variation in gameplay makes the levelling up process much faster if the position of the pieces is favourable, you sometimes find yourself continually clearing animals of already completed sets in the hope that new animals of uncompleted sets come into play. Due to the inherently random nature of not being able to forecast or control the type of new animals entering the playfield, a player not only needs to be pretty quick on matching pieces but suffficiently lucky to advance to the higher levels.

© Kiteretsu

There’s also a quest mode, but I’m stuck at Quest 4 (above) where I’m supposed to clear exactly one set of each animal which is nigh-impossible all thanks to the entry of random animals into the playing area. The instructions for the 10 quest levels have been helpfully translated from Japanese by the wonderful guys at JayIsGames.

While occassionally frustrating due to the randomness, I still recommend it as a game for quick breaks due to the cuteness and the funky background music and sound effects

I originally learnt about Zookeeper from 4 color rebellion’s list of 33 cool games but only the version linked to by JayIsGames has the Quest mode.

Play Zookeeper.

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Discovered this cool Flash version of Leading Edge Games’ Aliens : The Board Game from the quite excellent Games for Gamers site which regularly features free games as well as other game-related software (game engines & the like).

After playing the easiest mission The Reactor, the first impression I get is that it’s much easier than to get into the computerized Aliens : The Board Game than the fanmade SpaceHulk-SP for Games Workshop’s similar Space Hulk. While I much prefer the Space Marine Terminators and Genestealers over the Colonial Marines and alien Xenomorphs, the gameplay in Aliens : The Boardgame is much faster-paced and definitely easier to learn and play.

Before beginning any of the three missions (The Reactor, Operations and Rescue Newt), you have to first set the team order for the Colonial Marines in your squad to decide which marine gets his turn first. Criteria for setting this order includes the type of weapon carried by each marine and the action points of each individual marine. I usually assign the pistol wielding marines to start their turns first since relying on them to kill any remaining alien after your heavy weapons marines have all completed their actions is usually a fatal mistake.

Your marines are equipped with an assortment of weapons - pistols, flame units, shotguns, machineguns and pulse carbines - the shotgun and flame units having impressive stopping power at close range. However, the flame unit quickly becomes a liability when your fellow marines become locked in melee combat with the ferocious xenomorphs as a single blast from the flame unit quickly immolates both combatants. The pulse carbine available in Operations and Rescue Newt comes with a powerful grenade launcher for clearing packs of Xenomorphs but is equally capable of wounding or killing your own marines if used improperly or the grenade falls short of the intended target. Thankfully, each alien will succumb to a successful hit while marines are slightly tougher and can withstand 2 hits before incapacitation.

Last man standing running

To achieve your objectives, each marine has either 2 or 3 action points which he/she can use to move and/or shoot in any sequence with each action taking up a single action point. There’s also an option of expending one or more action points to aim your shot for a higher hit probability.

Being a computerised remake of the board game, line of sight is automatically calculated of course and all targets which can be hit from the current position are marked with a red crosshair which makes it easy to choose your options for the current marine. Unfortunately it’s sometimes quite hard to pick out those xenomorphs spotted by other squad members due to the dark environments.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to continue to the next mission with only one survivor

As mentioned earlier, there are three missions which can be played singly or if you’re hardcore enough, start with the first mission The Reactor and continue to Operations with any survivors from the first onslaught and finally culminating in a confrontation with the Alien Queen in Rescue Newt.

The Reactor is a straightforward mission whereby you have to move as many marines as possible to the waiting APC at the other end of the corridor while continually being assailed by Xenomorphs from all sides.

Operations (top) and Rescue Newt (bottom)

Operations and Rescue Newt are much more complex missions with multiple objectives. You’ll want to read the tutorial to understand what you have to achieve in these two missions since there’s no instructions available once you’re dropped into a mission.

All in all, Aliens : The Board Game is a wonderful choice for a short tactical game. The Reactor can definitely be completed in 5 to 10 mins but I haven’t remotely gotten anywhere in the other two missions to calculate the time needed

Play Aliens : The Board Game.

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