Howdy friend! We'd like to thank you for taking the time to come on down and visit us here at Crazy Jay's Link Dump Friday extrrrrrrrrrrravaganza!... what? You're only here to use the bathroom? Look, pal, you're underestimating just how complete your life would be with one of these things!... possibly. No, forget about the stupid bathroom, okay? Let me take you on a guided tour of some of our great deals, you won't regret it! Just... sign this waiver?
Cave of Wonders - Friend, we can tell you're one smart customer. That's why we're offering you this exclusive vacation package to the fabulous Cave of Wonders! Guaranteed to be mostly angry giant free! Probably. Act now and we'll throw in this one-of-a-kind wooden sword and a double jump ability, just in case of a climactic titan battle!
My Pet Protector - Speaking of things that don't pee on the floor (well, I'm sure you were thinking of that, right?), we're going to offer you a special deal, today only! Your very own surly RPG antagonist, to raise into either hero of the realm or (more likely) unknown schlub! No, don't try to comb his hair. He hates that, and you'll only break the comb in his unnaturally coloured, spiky hair. Sure you might have to grind your fingers to the bone for him, but it'll all be worth it when he rewards you with cold indifference!
Expedition Africa - I hope you don't mind me saying, friend, but you're pretty rugged looking! C'mon, give us a flex! Grrrrr! Yeah, you'd be perfectly suited for one of our African safaris! Well, okay, maybe it's not a safari so much as it is an Oregon Trail-inspired exercise in angry animals, diseases, and bad luck, but hey! You can take it! Lemme sign you up. Just fill in this bit about your next-of-kin... oh, no reason, the lawyers make us do it.
Diepix Arena - Okay okay okay! Chill out, pal, the bathroom is right through this door!... on the other side of this barely used arena shooter full of hardcore pixel-whippin' blasting action that the other gaming sites don't want you to know about! Upgrades, coins, boss fights! All yours for the low, low price of... of.... buddy?... hey, where'd you go?... too much?
Aww, poo. I clicked the link to play Hotel Suburba and I got a page that said "Hacked Oops !!!"
Yeah, it looked exciting, but no dice :(
We'll try again next week with it if the problem is cleared up. Sorry!
I really like Expedition Africa. Since you tend to have to play a few times before you win, I do wish you could skip the short cut scenes (even though they are quite snazzy).
"Hotel Subura" , I found it short and easy. Then again I play lots of these games.
I can't believe the site was hacked since I wrote this article yesterday afternoon. I'm sorry, guys. People fail.
So... who else has noticed that My Pet Protector is really a Princess Maker 2 clone? I mean, yes, there's a male child instead of a female one and there are flavor differences, but the way the game operates, most of the stats, etc. are right out of Princess Maker 2.
Pet Protector is Princess Maker for dudes, but with a lot of the character and charm stripped out. It's not bad, it's just very grind-y. Would have been much better if they'd gone with the inclusion of other characters to interact with.
Expedition Africa reminds me of those "King Solomon's Mines" type movies, in which some poor porter would plunge to his death and Stewart Grainger would say "Damn! There go the medical supplies!". Even worse, in this game you can even plot the doom of your surplus porters (they eat the food you know) by including a "surprise" lion or alligator attack in the dice you keep. That's if you don't shoot it first!
Great fun bit not exactly the most politically corrent gamein recent emory.
Expedition Africa was more fun than I expected it to be. It strikes me as a very nifty combination of Mille Bornes and Yahtzee, with some very colorful set dressing. Nice game!
Money seems to be almost useless in Expedition Africa, while food is far too scarce. It should let you buy food at waypoints.
Actually, it lets you buy food at some waypoints. And money can help in other ways, and counts for final score.
As for porters, I'm on a game in which I have too many of them (eight!) and I just rolled plenty of hazards, so I could easily get rid of some, that would be a perfectly valid tactical move, in terms of gameplay... but in terms of roleplay, I can't put myself to do it! I prefer to fail eventually than to perform such a vicious thing.
So, to answer MickCG's remark: I understand what you mean, but ultimately, it's up to the player.
And indeed I predictably failed, but with my sense of self-worth safe.
My final result in My Pet Protector:
And so on the date of his 18th birthday the hero's apprentice sets forth to forge his own destiny. Only the hero himself appears to send him on his way. The hero stands firm, determined not to show his emotion as he sends his apprentice into the world.
When Jack Green thinks back to his childhood he will always remember that righteous feeling he had protecting the town at night. He didn't do all that much work really and feels this helped him focus on other passions.
Reminiscing over his school days, Jack Green is amazed at the effort his master went in order to give him an education. Above all else he will value the time he spent studying magic.
It's clear to everyone that eventually he will become...
COMPLETELY UNKNOWN
(This is a Tier 12 result)
...Did I do well or badly? Or a mixture of both? The game isn't really clear.
SonicLover,
I think that is a bad result. I've had a tier 5 and a tier 6, although my tier 6 seemed really bad. (Basically complaining about all the forced labor he did) Your 12 doesn't seem all that bad compared to my 6, but my tier 5 sounded good.
Darn... Expedition Africa doesn't like me. On my first turn I rolled +1 porter, $300, crocodile, lion, mosquito, fever, and I promptly failed. :( Oh well, its still a fun game.
My Pet Protector: Yes, I did notice that this was a horrible Princess Maker clone. However, I hope these kinds of games go into fashion so that others will try to make better clones.
By the last week, I had picked up all these cool swords, it is a shame that all the cool stuff is withheld until the endgame.
Expedition Africa: I had fun.
Yay, I finally managed to finish Expedition Africa in under 120 days! I ended with four porters, four crates of food, four vials of medicine, four rounds of ammo, and $200, for a score of 1870. This is a pitiful score, I know, but it's a high score for me.
@MickGJ: If you look at the main Expedition Africa website, you'll see that it's an advertisement for a History Channel program. Four explorers are retracing the steps of Stanley on his expedition to find Dr. Livingstone, and the game itself is a recreation of that expedition. So it kind of makes sense that it's not that politically correct.
As for the porters, I have no problem sending a few of them off to be trampled like elephants. But I'm cold and calculating like that. :)
I played My Pet Protector for hours, My Protector got Completely Unknown... I suck.
But I still played after words. Too much fun XD.
I kept on trying to keep his Compatibility up.
Finished EA in 98 days for a score of 2050.
Man, this is addicting. I need to stop now.
(Although I'm still trying to figure out how people get scores in the 4000s. I guess you just have to be really lucky.)
I think I figured out the key to higher scores in Expedition: money. While you get 10 points each for porters, food, and days early, you get 100 points for each dollar sign you have. In my last game I got a total of 220 points combined for porters, food, and speed, but managed to accumulate 11 dollar signs and so got an 1100 point bonus and 2890 points total. Still not high score material, but good.
In retrospect, I suppose it's obvious.
Suho1004 I'm pretty sure you get bonuses for each milestone you roll exactly rather than over.
Stacey: Actually, you don't--you get a 100 point bonus for each milestone that you reach, whether you hit it exactly or not. So if you finish the game, you automatically get 600 points for the milestones, plus 970 points for the miles traveled. You do get penalized at the end for any extra miles on the last leg, though.
And just to show that it really is money that makes all the difference... on my last game, I finished with one porter, one crate of food, and one day ahead of schedule, for a total bonus of 30 points--but I had $1700, so I ended up with 3300 points and 4th place on the daily high score list, for now.
But that's it for me. It's becoming a bit of an obsession trying to get higher scores and thus not as much fun, so I'm going to stop and do something productive. :)
I love raising sims, and there's not enough of them in English/for Mac. So overall I enjoyed My Pet Protector.
What MPP lacks, compared to Cute Knight and Princess Maker 2, is anything resembling a storyline. It's just "level up stats, see what you get."
Speaking of which- the end results seem a little, um, nonsensical? My apprentice had: level 4 in combat and theology, level 3 poetry, (level 1 all other classes), 100 in church work, a combat reputation of 100, and I got Tier 4 result- a Brilliant Poet.
Also, the combat is grinderiffic- nothing to do but keep clicking attack or magic over and over. Wish they'd included an auto-combat button.
Cave of Wonders was kinda strange - another one of those "Newgrounds/other game sites' users"-based games. I died once and didn't feel like playing anymore.
My Pet Protector was kinda boring for me - lots of grinding, but, more frustratingly, I missed about half or more of my attacks. My apprentice-dude is now at some point in his last year, but I stopped playing for the time being.
Expedition Africa was challenging and thus addictive - I didn't really care about the political correctness; really, once you're getting ridiculously low on food, you're willing to sacrifice a few of your eleven porters (seriously, I went from 6 to 11 porters in one of my turns). Never really focused on money, but I guess that's where the points are. Apparently my best score (presumably on the third and final playthrough, in which I actually finished) was 1850.
In my pet protector...canyone figure out how to greet the lady mage? It gives my character too much stress not to.
Al R, in My Pet Protector, it said you need
refinement to greet her correctly. I had 39.9 when I met her.
It was very annoying that the Flee! Button didn't work at all.
Does anyone know what "The Gent?" at the Deep Dark Cave does if you aren't "too young"? I was playing after 18, so that's probably what he was talking about.
Got through Expedition Africa on my first try, but with a (presumably low) score of 1190.
Had something odd happen at one of the milestones about halfway along, where I rolled triple snake and for some reason the game forgot I had a machete, so I lost four porters.
There's a sequel to Cute Knight coming out soon, and the actual Princess Maker games keep being produced (but sadly not in English) ... not many of these games for boys though. clearly you should get to work.
There is actually a Prince Maker game, I think, but it's not in English either.
I'm not sure why I leave comments so long after the games have featured and everyone has had their say, but here I am again.
Really liked Expedition Africa, a kind of twist on the ol' Zilch. Had to keep playing until I completed the expedition, and I too sacrificed porters when food stocks were running low. I mean, they were only pictures of little men on the dice. I wouldn't do that if I really truly was on an expedition... no, I wouldn't.
Update