My Brute

I usually don't do two posts in one day, but with tax season behind me, I have some time to do a little extra posting, and this article ties in pretty well with some of the complexity posts I have recently written.

I found a simple flash game the other day thanks to one of my coworkers, who commented that it was a cute little game. Another coworker of mine and me both signed up, just to see what it was like.

Character creation is fairly simple. Simply select a name for your character, and then click the change appearance button (it's not actually labeled, but its to the bottom-left of your avatar) until you find something you like. Then click the recolor button (just below your avatar to the right, looks like a bunch of splotches of paint) until you find something that looks acceptable to you. Click validate, and you're done!

Whatever you do, don't customize your avatar and then choose your name. Every time you type a letter, it changes your avatar completely. Don't ask me why. It's completely mind-numbing why they would do this, and I wasted a few minutes trying to find another avatar I liked.

Once you're in the game, there's nothing to do except find an opponent to battle. Simple and clean. Just select your opponent from a list of six, or type in a friend's character's name to initiate a battle against them. If you win, you will get two experience, if you lose you will only get one. You have three battles a day (though you get 5 on the first day).

The battles look great. The battles are simple and fun to watch, with cute characters holding a variety of weapons fighting to the death in a large room. As the battles play out, you get a good feel for what each of the abilities and weapons do, which is very nice, in my opinion.

All of this so far is great. But that's it. Those among you may have noticed that you don't actually do any configuring of your character in the game--that's right, you don't get to customize your avatar any way except for cosmetically. When you begin playing, you are given some stats, abilities, and weapons at random. When you level, you receive another stat, level, or ability at random. There's no equipment, no talents, nothing for you to do.

Why would you "play" a "game" like this, you might ask? I have no clue.

Look, I'm all for simplicity in games, but I still require that there is actually a game to play. I don't want to simply roll random characters and battle those characters against other players.

That's not to say that no-one will like the game. The coworker of mine that played the game ended up playing it for a few days because he liked watching the battles play out. I could totally see players getting a good character and playing the game daily just to watch their characters win battles. But I can't imagine anyone playing this game for such a long time.

It's so disappointing to see a game that initially appealed to me so much be so utterly worthless. All it would have taken is a little more weapon balance and giving players the ability to level up their characters or equip them with weapons and armor.

Sadly, this is not the game as-delivered. Maybe some day someone will make something better.