Thursday, September 9, 2010

Mozilla Launched Gaming Project to Enhance Browser Games

Mozilla had launched a set of new open web technologies, specifically for browser game development, so that web developers can use this new set of new technologies, namely Open Video, audio, WebGL, touch events, device orientation, geolocation, and fast JavaScript engines to build complex browser games.

Mozilla had also announced the Game_On_2010 browser game contest.

With this effort from Mozilla, I think there will be some great changes in browser games in the next few years. Browser games can be more complex, probably with better graphics, and thus can arouse more interests from gamers. I am really looking forward to that.

Reference:
Mozilla: Now is the time for browser games
Mozilla Labs Gaming

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Tycoon World

Formerly Industrial Tycoon, now called Tycoon World is a German-based business simulation game, having an English translation.

In this game, you are a business owner, who build shops, factories, raw material plants, and earn money. There is a public market place where you can sell and buy products from and to other players in the game. The money you have earned, can be used to build even more shops and factories, or can be used to research new products and higher qualities of products. With new research, you can make even higher turnover in the game.

Shops are main source of income, where you sell your final products to customers. For the products to be sold in the shops, they can be either be bought from the market place from other players, or can be produced in your own factory chain. For the raw materials used to product your product, can be either bought from other players, or be extracted from your own raw material fields. So to get started easily, you usually will build business chain , like logs -> lumber -> wooden table etc.

There are 14 kinds of industries in this game, with nearly a hundred kinds of products. The price of these products can be fluctuate with the demand-supply trend in the game world. With higher demand and fewer players producing the products, the price can be set higher. Therefore the main way to be successful in the game is to choose the correct industry by watching the demand-supply trend closely.

There are several kinds of decision to be made in order to success: like when and whether to upgrade your production plant and when and whether to have product and quality research. There is a limit of 100 building to be built, and therefore when and what to build is a very important decision.

This is an interesting game, as although simple, it has a very complete business ecosystem in the game, and what other players do in the game is closely related to how you will success.

Overall I rate 4 out of 5 for this game.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Terra Militaris Announced

Terra Militaris, an empire-building strategy game, is announced and will be launched at the end of 2010. This will be available at the gpotato.eu browser game portal.

From the announcement, looks like this game will have a hero system. An interesting idea which is not available in all the empire-building game is the idea of trade route and the spreading of religion to increase political influence. This idea has come from Civilization IV. It is interesting to see how these ideas are implemented in an browser-based online game.

Reference:
http://www.pcgamersworld.com/2010/08/browser-based-strategy-game-terra-militaris-announced/

Game site:
http://terra-militaris.gpotato.eu/