TerraGenesis is not the new console from SEGA, it’s a space sim where you terraform planets in order to build human colonies. The game uses actual NASA data (in case of the planets of the solar system only) in order to make the game more immersive and real.

The game is free to play, you can either buy individual planet or buy all the planet of each system in bulk. If you don’t want to pay a dime you can unlock other planet when you successfully colonize one. You start with the choice of colonizing either the moon or Mars. Successfully colonizing them will unlock the other inner planet Mercury (the Moon) and Venus (Mars)

Once you chose your planet to colonize your need to setup a small colony and start mining to get some cash, which will help you pay for research, add module to your colony and build satellite.

The module part is where you build module to slowly terraform your planet. You’re on Mars and need to start having an atmosphere, you need to build a thermal dust plant to increase pressure, you’re on Venus and want it to go down build a bunch of hydrogen processor to drop that pressure to earth level.

Once you start modifying your planet don’t forget to check it once in an awhile or you end up like me and going waterworld on Venus (Kevin Costner would not be happy)

This is where I was a bit annoyed, I went to sleep while I was terraforming Mars and ended up putting to much o2 in it because I left it a +100 for the night. Same thing happen on Venus, but with the temperature. I’ve built the Soletta, a satellite that helps you adjust the temperature on your planet surface, but when it was built I had so much water build up in the atmosphere that it’s flooded the planet. Also, known has “the great flood” in the Venusian Holy Text.

So after that, I went all Tamagochi on my Venus, checking every time making sure everything was rising carefully, turning them down or up as needed. It’s like a feeding a little monster instead it’s a planet and it needs to be feed differently depending how it’s going.

I have some nitpicking on that flood thing, it’s weird that your colony can support the initial Venus atmosphere, but add a little water on the ground and everything falls apart. We (NASA) have (like today) base underwater so building cities underwater is probably feasible with current technology, but with our current tech we cannot build anything on Venus surface. So why the hell the whole colony get destroyed when the 1m of water above sea level when the damn dome can support about 90x earth pressure and a temperature that f**king melt lead.

Other than that TerraGenesis is a great game, I’ve managed to terraform the moon, Mars and Venus (twice), but the Tamagochi nature of the game got me and annoyed a bit my wife too. Constantly checking if your little planet is doing fine get tiring at the end. Another thing I didn’t like it’s how mining work. However, you can make it less annoying by building satellite that detects the concentration of each mineral on the ground. On the Android version there seem to have some bugs. Some of them seem to have been fixed since I last played, the game is still slow when you start having many late stage world to handle.

Give it a try and let me know if you like it.

FreeCol

FreeCol is a 2d open source remake of the original Sid Meier game Colonization on dos. You manage the colonist in the name of the Crown of your country of choice (England, France, The Netherlands, or Spain). Your goal is  to colonize the new world, America or a randomly generated landmass. You home country send you colonist when you amass enough religious support (cross production), you can get Indian to join your colony has well and recruit colonist in your motherland with cold hard cash. The main aspect of the game is managing your colonist inside the various cities of your colonies to establish relations or war with other colony and native.

The graphic are inspired by the second installment of the series civilization.

They recently Released a new version if you want to give it a try. 

Related : FreeCol 0.11 (Indieretronews)

It been awhile since I haven’t wrote a blog post and they’re actually good reason for that. It actually because I recently joined a game company has a programmer lasts august, note that it’s not koram by the way but I still like what they do and love TKO and CoK.

I still waiting for legal approval to see if I can still write here, however I might be a little biased now that in a game company but since they do mostly console it should be safe.  I just want to say I’m still surprised that there still a lot of regular visitor that come each days even If I haven’t updated for a while.

There the other thing that I kind of regret the name of the blog, I should have try something less generic or more three kingdom or mmo rts specific, I’ll try to find something cooler and easy to remember,

What I’ve been playing a lot of new game recently, there a lot of web and social game that I want to reviews.

A good load of them are on Facebook but other are an unique niche (web hockey) that I wanted to build a similar game like them but now I can’t because of legal engagement so that great for you, you get to read my analysis.

Here the list of web game I played recently (note I play console and pc game too but that not for here)

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CivWorld: I like the idea they did but it feel too much like a farmville with boring minigame.

(actually it mabrute.fr but the english version is mybrute) you send you brute to fight other brute, you can recruit other poeple and gain xp from them. the fighting, specially against your friend but got bored pretty quickly after that

A my brute clone made by Koram with boost and stuff you can buy.

I was a sim fan and my wife too when I was younger so we joined and played together. My wife actually got bored first.

Cafe World (zynga) & Restaurant City (playfish) : I had a idea for a restaurant game, basically wanted to check what the big name did for that and well I’ve haven’t work on it since then.

Aviator and Airport city: I wanted to check if there something like Koei areobiz airport city somewhat have some similar feature that aerobiz used to have but it’s not has compelling.

Garden of time: Puzzle game not much to say.

Not a web game but a online one, I like the concept of collecting the monster like Magic the gathering.

Played via a applet or you can download the client, play various puzzle to build your pirate hideout, boat, get a familiar.

Web hockey/simulator : there a lot of them and will probably go on a next post for the description but here the main one: (click on the image for the game and my referral, even if most referral are useless since I only get a bonus if you spend money on the game.)  

Old hockey simulator from back in the days were all game were made with php, they didn’t changed it at all. I used to like it but once your in the top league if you don’t pay money your doom. (weird that remind me of some other games…)

Cyberpuck is a hockey web simulator where you get to create the player instead of owning a team. It a interesting approach, you can buy stuff and own a team instead. I shamelessly plugged my referral link there, I won’t make any money though just some useless cyberpoints.

Power play manager the last one I tried is probably the best so far, you get to recruit not only the player but the staff too and you own the arena.

I Keep posting don’t worry, but it should be not more that 1-2 time week.

If you have any suggestion of game to try feel free to post it in the comment.