Gameplay Tutorials
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics: The Last Word
11 Feb: In English, words end most commonly with a certain subset of letters; for instance there are many words ending in an E. Because the Pym's Daily Word Square Puzzle dictionary contains plural nouns and past tense verbs, you'll also see many S and D endings. On the other hand, there are letters which rarely end English words. V, Q and J endings are nonexistent, and you'll rarely see a U or a Z. Because the last word - ... (read more...)
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics: Letter Sequences
4 Feb: When placing a guess on the grid, especially when you're not certain it's right, check the words that your guess crosses. Sometimes you can eliminate a guess pretty quickly if it creates unlikely letter sequences in the words that cross it. So the top word in the illustration is not going to be "FRIES", as that would mean the second word would have to start with "RV", which to the best of my knowledge no English word does. ... (read more...)
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics: Letter Substitution
28 Jan: Sometimes the puzzle grid in Pym's Daily Word Square Puzzle contains a clue for which you can't think of any solution. Often you'll know a word that fits, but the clue isn't enough to jog your memory. There's a tactic to get past this mental block, however. Dr. Pym offers a solution. "One could consider each letter of the alphabet in turn, and imagine that letter in place of a particular blank cell in the word. For any ... (read more...)
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics: Common Words
21 Jan: From uncommon letters, we move on to common words. Not common in the sense that they are often used in speech and writing, but common in the sense that they appear often in word squares. This could be because they contain common letters that fit well into the word square format. You'll see them crop up often in puzzles, and learn to recognise the clues that lead to them. Dr. Pym wrote on the matter, "It has come ... (read more...)
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics: Rare Letters
14 Jan: In scrabble, letters like J, Q, X and Z are rare, and difficult to place, but are also very valuable. In Pym's Daily Word Square Puzzle , these letters are also rare and valuable, but they make the puzzle easier. Because there are fewer words containing them than, say, letters like E, T and A, the possible solutions are narrowed down. As Dr. Pym says, "The more obscure letters in our alphabet, when appearing as clues in a ... (read more...)
Pym's Daily Word Square Tactics
7 Jan: Over the years that Dr. Algernon Pym was publishing his Pym's Daily Word Square Puzzle books, he often gave helpful advice in the Preface for those struggling with a day's puzzle. These might still help players today, so I'll be paraphrasing his advice over a number of forthcoming blog articles. With the computer edition of the puzzles, there is extra feedback to the player that the books could not offer, such as confirmation of which words are correct ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: The End Game
2 Feb: As you approach the end of the game you'll get a good idea of how things are going for your barony. If you're lucky, you'll be at the top holding your own against attackers. Or you might be unlucky, languishing in 8th place struggling to keep things together. Most likely you'll be somewhere in the middle, and as time wears on you'll be wondering how to effect a breakthrough. If you're in the middle of the pack, October ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: Attack Strategies
26 Jan: We've already looked at the merits of how many baronies to attack in a turn: none, one or multiple. But after the first turn, the baronies are no longer identical in size and resources, and the choice of who to attack becomes more interesting. If attacking a single barony, there are three strategies I can think of. Attack the biggest barony, attack those just ahead of you in the rankings, or punch down and attack those who are ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: Reading the News
19 Jan: The first thing you'll notice when the next month rolls around is that your barony has grown or shrunk. You'll want to know how and why, and the way to do this is to look the the news report, accessed with the "Report" option. This is generally the first thing you'll do every turn. The good news comes first. The first reports will be the result of your attacks on other baronies. These reports will remind you who ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Level Tiles and Thinking Ahead
17 Jan: When instructing your robot, you'll naturally be thinking ahead, since the robot doesn't move until you've given it all the actions for the next turn and selected Go! from the menu. When sending it in a straight line across a clear floor, it's easy to predict where the robot will end up. Once you introduce turns and other actions into your programming, things become slightly more difficult. Then you'll need to "dry run" your program (because the list ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: Recruitment
12 Jan: On each turn apart from December, you will need to spend some of your money to recruit forces for your next turn. It's inevitable that you'll lose some knights and footmen that you send out on attack, and that you'll lose some castles and footmen to incursions by the enemy. You will also do better if you can increase the size of your military. Make sure you're looking at your own barony, and select the "Spend" option (which ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Multiple Robots
10 Jan: Spoiler alert: the last level in the Jam Levels pack has not one, not two, but three Robot Spawners. I believe the level has no solution with just a single robot. It can be solved with two, but is designed to be solved with three. I believe the three-robot solution is probably the quickest. In the Double Trouble level pack, ever level has two Data Cards, two Card Readers and two Robot Spawners. Today's article will describe how these ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Dealing with the Guards
3 Jan: Some levels have guards. These are the dark, spherical robots that move around on their own each turn. Sometimes they shoot, and sometimes they don't. But contact with them is always fatal to your robot. And if they do shoot, putting an item in their path can be an invitation to them to destroy it. The most tempting way to deal with the guards is to shoot them. With the guards out of the way, any challenge that ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Inventory Management
27 Dec: This is a rather grandiose term for robots that have at the most one inventory slot. But sometimes isn't not possible to pick up or put down items when you need to. And there are tips to help with this. The most obvious tip is to choose Carrier as your robot. This means that you can always pick up an item if your inventory is empty. It still leaves you with the difficulty of putting the item down ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Getting the Robots Moving
20 Dec: In principle, moving the robots is simple. Tell them during the programming phase what actions you want them to follow, and then select Go! from the menu. The steps and missteps will all be played out in front of you, then you get another turn, and so on. In practice, things are not so straightforward, and this is where the game's challenge lies. Of the twelve possible actions in the game, only six are available at any one ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: Your First Attack
15 Dec: One important thing to note about The Anarchic Kingdom is that all the action in the game takes place simulaneously at the end of each turn. What you're doing during your turn is giving orders. Those orders will be carried out at the end of the turn, at the same time as all the other players' orders. Another thing to note is that the game is entirely deterministic. When a player is attacked, the amount of land taken ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Choosing Your Robot
13 Dec: You might choose your robot at random. For most levels, but not all, you will still be able to successfully complete the level. But you will do much better if you examine the level and choose the robot accordingly. Levels with a labyrinthine set of twists and turns might favour Strider. Strider can always step forward, but also has the equipment to step left and right if the corresponding actions are available. This makes Strider a good choice ... (read more...)
The Anarchic Kingdom: Getting Started
8 Dec: The Anarchic Kingdom was released in 2021 as a jam game. It takes the simple gameplay concepts of the Hammurabi game of the 1960s, adds a combat element, and introduces competition by having multiple "kingdoms" trying to outdo one another. The text user interface of Hammurabi is swapped for a graphical one, but the numeric core of the game is still on display. Getting into the game is relatively easy, but understanding why you lose takes a bit ... (read more...)
Team Droid: Some Tips to Help You Out
6 Dec: In 2022 I released the game Team Droid for a game jam. Since then it has achieved a modest success, being the second most downloaded game after Ossuary. But like the board game that inspired it, Robo Rally, its appeal seems to be largely limited to those comfortable with programming. So I've decided to put together some tips for players. For this future article series I'll concentrate on the actual process of programming robots and the interface, which ... (read more...)
Ossuary: The End Game
20 Mar: As you appropach Ossuary 's end game, things become a lot more difficult, and the ways of dealing with them depend upon the type of character you are playing. As a melee character with your blade and shield, you'll have had a relatively easy ride until the spectres appear. But now you have to make a choice: if your intelligence is above average, you can switch to using the wand and amulet to take on the new enemies ... (read more...)
Ossuary: Becoming a Bad-Ass Dual-Wielding Barbarian
13 Mar: One of the most fun combinations of stats in Ossuary is an average attack strength and a high defence skill. This will always be offset by a lack of intelligence, but it has a real benefit in the mid-game: dual wielding becomes viable. When you wield dual blades, the bonuses are added together. So if you have a high enough defence skill to forego a shield, you can keep hold of that +2 dagger when you find the ... (read more...)
Ossuary: the Role of Magic
6 Mar: As an intelligent hero trying to make a living using magic, it's easy to feel hard done by down in the Ossuary . After the dagger, you see swords and battleaxes giving +4 and +6 bonuses to brainless fighter characters, where your wand stays stubbornly at +2. While the iron shield gives the figher a +4 bonus, your amulet again is stuck at +2. But there is a more subtle bonus offered by magic, and being an intelligent ... (read more...)
Ossuary: Your First Descent
27 Feb: Some games encourage you to go into them with an attitude like "I wanna be a WIZARD !" and let you choose what you are. Ossuary isn't like that. In real life we have to make sensible choices, and Ossuary is a bit like that. Your player starts out the game with a set of statistics, or natural abilities, and you probably want to look at those to decide how you'll play. There are no formal "character classes", ... (read more...)
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