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Apple Games' latest feature examines the Egyptian themed adventure game, Ankh. The 3D graphic adventure gives players the task of aiding young prince Assil in his efforts to rid himself of a curse. The article includes a review of the game and a collection of tips and tricks.

Borrowing its sense of humor from a variety of media — the Monkey Island series of games, the movies “ The Emperor’s New Groove ” and “ Shrek ,” and such series of novels as “ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ” and Discworld — Ankh brings wacky absurdity to ancient Egypt. Assil’s life is one of wealth and privilege, leading him to engage in the kind of reckless behavior typical of youths from any era. And, true to form, he shrugs off a death curse with the assumption that, hey, he’ll find a way to meet the Pharaoh — the only one who can lift the curse — and all will be well.

If only it was so easy. When Assil sneaks into his home after his misadventure, he arouses his father’s suspicion, which means he’ll need to find a way out other than the front door. True to its roots in the adventure genre, you guide Assil around his environment, picking up objects that will help him and engaging other characters in conversations that reveal clues pointing toward your next series of actions.

Apple Games: Ankh

Runesoft

ANKH

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Gamasutra has posted a new audio recording featuring Introversion Software's Mark Morris and Tom Arundel. Recorded at this years Game Developers Conference, the lecture covers the company's struggles as an independent developer and offers advice on how to find success as an indie game developer.

"Introversion returns to spill the beans on what happened when all of the hangovers, camera crews, excitement and hype surrounding IGF dissipated. We will discuss the trials and tribulations of running a small, independent games company, including topics such as:

* Advice on how to attain commercial credibility and compete with the big boys of the games industry whilst retaining creative freedom
* Maximizing the benefits whilst downplaying the limitations of running a small dev team
* Tapping in to the opportunities now present to indies via internet retail and distribution
* Why now is a better time than ever for the budding independent developer."

Gamasutra: Introversion Software, After The Party

Introversion Software

PlayFirst and Big Splash Games have released Chocolatier, a new casual strategy game focusing on the business of chocolate. In the game players must build a chocolate empire by trading for ingredients, maximizing factory production speed in an arcade mini-game, and selling the sweet confections for the best price. Chocolatier features both Story and Freeplay modes, over 130 quests through 14 cities, and 60 recipes to discover.

Oh the gloriously rich and delectable life of a chocolatier! Constantly surrounded by mounds of chocolate bars and boxes of mouth-watering truffles! Become a master chocolatier one ingredient at a time as you travel the world to find the best prices and maximize production… but don’t forget about those conniving competitors who wish you poorly! Do you have what it takes to conquer the world through chocolate?

Follow the links below for more information.

Chocolatier

MGF: Chocolatier 1.0

PlayFirst

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Games Industry recently posted an interview with legendary game designer Richard Garriott about the evolving MMORPG game genre. The creator of the classic Ultima series discussed the impact of World of Warcraft and the reasons why the enormously successful title is good for other MMOs yet to be released.

What's interesting is the MMO space is still growing so rapidly. The only enemy we have are bad games. If people try MMOs and get a bad taste because of a bad game, they won't continue to play MMOs. They'll go back to playing offline.

We commonly get the question, is World of Warcraft a big competitor that might hurt our sales? It really turns out to be quite the opposite. In the case of the MMO genre, when people sign on to play one of these games - while it's true that they generally only play one, maybe two at the most, no one plays any particular MMO for more than a year or so.

For example, Ultima Online still has hundreds of thousands of players just like it did when it launched. But the ones playing today have almost no overlap with the ones who played it a year ago, or the year before that. What's happened is the majority of those players are now looking for other things to play and have moved on to EverQuest, or World of Warcraft, et cetera.

GamesIndustry: Richard Garriott On MMOs

Blizzard Entertainment

World of Warcraft

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The Mac Observer has posted a new review of Star Wars: Empire at War, a strategy title which puts players in control of ground and space warfare in the Star Wars universe. Set during the time period of the original move trilogy, Empire at War lets players join the Empire or Rebellion in a struggle to conquer the galaxy. The Mac Observer gave the game a score of 3 out of 5.

Of course, a Star Wars game is nothing without its central characters. To this end, Petroglyph did a job that was second to none. The voice acting is second to none and there's a genuine, immersive feeling that comes from this. More to the point, it becomes incredibly fun and addictive to take a heroic character such as Darth Vader, Han Solo, Chewbacca or the Emperor down to a planet and use that hero's abilities to help conquer it (Chewbacca can easily commandeer enemy vehicles, the droids can repair units and the Emperor can both brainwash enemy units into fighting for him as well as fry dozens of Ewoks, Gungans and assorted other alien races at a go with lightning from his fingertips - complete with digital yowls of pain). It's this that keeps the game fun, albeit land and space battles can become somewhat repetitive if the battle isn't close...

While multiplayer gameplay is fun, this is essentially limited to LAN-based gaming, as entering the "Internet" mode shows a complete dearth of Mac clients to play against. Still, the game runs well against friends and it's worth investing a few hours to work to crush your opponents and dominate the galaxy. Like single player gameplay, the goal is to raid your opponent, whittle down their forces and try to back them into a corner. Not a bad thing, this would just be a better situation if licensing issues permitted combat against Windows-based opponents in the short term.

The Mac Observer: Star Wars Empire At War Review

Aspyr Media

Star Wars: Empire at War

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