More of the same (part 5)

Sonny - Kong posted I had played Sonny, which I did for about a second (loaded up my old save to get a contest checkmark) so first lets cover what I remember of that. Sonny is actually a pretty good game, it has a very high rating on Kongregate (the very highest?) The play is simple enough, you have several 'classes' to choose from which effect your stat growth and equipable items (if I remember right.) The plot part of the game is quite good, but the bonus 4th zone drags with some very tricky battles which often require reseting your ability points each battle. It's one of the odd features of Sonny that although you spend points on skills and stats, your decisions are extremely temporary. This has the advantage from the designer that if there is any way to arrange the points you might be expected to have in order to win a battle, then that battle is winable. You won't ever be stuck because of the way you spend exp. This is actually kind of common now, which is a bit annoying really because it trivializes player choice and thus on a larger scale, decreases Investiture, the sense their interaction matters, definately a bad thing (see The Hallford Player Pyramid - Swords & Circuitry) The strategy elements in combat (and the preparation for combat in equiping your skill circle) is probably the strongest feature in Sonny, which is what makes the core gameplay itself interesting.

Kongai - Kongai is the Kongregate Collectable Card Game - You choose some cards as starters, and the rest are available to be earned in the occasional (roughly weekly?) card challenges on Kongregate, which require some level of achievement in a game in order to be earned. The game itself is pretty well designed, but it suffers from occasional odd combat circumstances and odd bugs, or otherwise just unexpected effects from combination of the various items and abilities. Kongregate also opened up cards for purchase with kreds(Kongregate's paid currency) once it implemented them, but if you stop by to do the challenges every week, it becomes increasingly less important. The strategy of using the cards in battle is quite challenging, but because of the multiplayer aspects and the switching of characters, there is often a lot of guesswork, and therefore luck during the actual play itself.

Majesty of Colors - This game is an art game of sorts. You interact with the environment as a sea monster of sorts, your actions determining how you are seen by the people around you. In the end it's a collect-the-endings style game. There's no real difficulty in accomplishing what you can do, just a matter of exploring your choices and their consequences. It has some real artistic merit, mostly in the plotting. The graphics actually hurts it a little, doing a poor job conveying the plot and emotion in comparison to the written story.