Month: September 2016

These are the reviews from the games featured on the show RE-LOAD: Games on Review that aired on Binus TV. There were 3 games featured: Snowman Defender, War of Creatures, and Necrolands.

Snowman Defender

Snowman Defender is a mobile game developed by ValourHearts Games and/or Dwi Satria Widarso, a student of Binus’s Game Application & Technology. The premise is pretty simple, snow monsters are attacking and you have to protect your friend, the snowman, by fighting off the snow monsters.

Graphics wise, they went with pixel art. The art is great and easy to look at, albeit not really detailed, also it’s pretty cute so it certainly appeals to all. As for the animations, the movements are pretty limited so they are only good. The music is nice, by being a little tense and it fits the graphics quite well.

Now to the gameplay itself, by evading enemy projectiles while also shooting the enemy, you have to stay alive and keep the enemy from reaching your snowman. By doing this, you may fight for the highest score, and also, the longest time. It starts off slow, but it gets more intense by the minute, becoming some kind of bullet hell game, which, makes the game more challenging and fun. Enemies also have a few variations. Other than the normal ones, some has faster speed, while others also have higher health. While you are shooting the enemy, they sometimes drop power ups. Power ups range from shields that protects you for a moment, freezing the enemies in their place, to shooting rapid fire snowballs. These power ups are a nice addition, not only that they help you, they also add variation to the game.

The gameplay is overall pretty good and simple so anyone can play, but it lacks replay value because there isn’t any progression system and goals (missions, challenges), but in the case of Flappy Birds though, it really helped. If you really enjoy the endless genre and want to keep breaking records, I recommend this. (8/10)

War of Creatures

          War of Creatures is a card game developed by Indharto & Susanto, that are also students of Game Application & Technology. As for card games themselves, I have little experience as I only have played some of them, such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, Hearthstone, and Pokemon, though, not extensively. Lore wise, if I’m not mistaken, are about religions and clans fighting. These clans and religions all fight because all of them believe that their god is the one true god, each enforcing their believes on each other, through violence it seems. Seems kind of familiar.

The gameplay is pretty unique by combining traditional RPG elements and card games. From what I saw and heard from the show, the creators took some gameplay elements from popular card games such as Hearthstone with their mana system (in which every turn you have limited mana that are used to play the cards) and others. They also have phases like Yu-Gi-Oh! draw, mana, summon, and battle each with their own respective things to do. When talking about the RPG elements, they implemented a hero class system and also a level system for the heroes. As for the card arts they haven’t finished it, yet, considering this might still be in pre-alpha state and changes are still being made.

They actually didn’t show any real gameplay on the show if I’m not mistaken, and if you only listen to their explanation once, it might be confusing. At first glance this game might be too complex for players, and it might even be that way. But for card game enthusiasts and people who are willing to learn, this might have potential to be a very fun game. (7/10)

Necrolands

          Necrolands is a “twin-stick shooter” game developed by Yuven Charles and Todo Daniel. The game itself is horror themed, but uses Indonesian ghosts and locally inspired items.

3D graphics is a plus but the colors and textures are too bland, especially when the field you are in has only trees in it. The UI and icons are also not that great. For a horror themed game, the style they used is rather cute, with our character and ghosts having a round head and somewhat bright colors. The “tuyul” and “pocong” are especially cute with their smile. The music is scary enough to build suspense as the ghosts approaches and keep us on our feet.

The gameplay is pretty good for a “twin-stick shooter” but considerably slower than most. The game looks simple on the outside, just surviving against hordes of ghosts by shooting. But the game is rather deep with so many variations of characters, ghosts and also items. Your character does not only represent you visually, but they also have their own unique skills to use against the ghosts. Items can also be bought using money earned from killing ghosts, and each item also have their own uses such as life steal, health regeneration, damage, and plenty of other things. For the ghosts, they used Indonesian ghost that we all know and fear, such as “tuyul”, “pocong”, “leak”, etc. These ghost also vary in size, power and speed, so plan your moves accordingly. There are plenty of modes too, from endless mode, boss rush, and even fighting only one ghost of your choice, if you hate one in particular.

This game looks pretty good but it is an unpolished gem, a really unpolished one. The gameplay is a bit slow and graphics wise it needs to be better. Considering it probably is still in alpha state, these things are common. But overall, the game is easy to play and accessible enough for people because of the graphics and gameplay. If they actually are going to improve the game, it has potential to be something incredible. (7/10)

HTTP

         HTTP is our welcoming “party” given by the HIMTI organization and it is held in the BPPT building, which I went there by taking the bus provided by Binus. I also paid 150 thousand rupiahs for this, which is fair considering you’re getting so much out of it (t-shirt, HIMTI kit, transportation, food, entertainment, etc) I guess.

I arrived there at around 9 in the morning, and while waiting for the show to start, the movie Zootopia was played. Finally, after waiting for quite some time, the show started. After the show’s opening, a band called Peanut Butter came on stage, and they played my favorite song from Chrisye called Panah Asmara, so it started pretty well for me.

After this, the heads of HIMTI gave an opening speech, they are then followed by the opening speech from our dean of Binus’s SOCS, Freddy Purnomo, S.Kom., M.Kom. Then, after some people were called on stage and played games, we got a lunch break.

At around 12, the show continues by having a talk show with guests, and they were given awards by HIMTI. The show continues with more games, and the drama visualization of HIMTI started. The drama itself is pretty good, entertaining while also giving moral lessons and showing you a little bit of HIMTI’s life, but the drama has a pretty long duration.

When the drama ended we were given another break, and we are finally at the end of the HTTP. This is a little bit different because we were all gathered without seats in the middle of the hall, maybe so that we can enjoy it to the fullest. The first performance they gave us was the dance, but really I can’t see the stage clearly from the back. Next performance is from a band called Vibing High, they weren’t so bad and even managed to hype up the crowd again before finally our inauguration as a member of HIMTI or Binus’s School of Computer Science. After the inauguration, as the closing performance, we were treated to a DJ performance. Everything was quite chaotic and the room got really hot, but it was fun I guess. After the DJ performance we were given our Goodie bags (t-shirt, HIMTI kit, etc) and finally we all went home and HTTP finally came to a close.

Freshmen enrichment program or FEP is what you would usually call the orientation for new students in other universities. And it consists of 3 parts:

1. GO (General Orientation)
2. AO (Academic Orientation)
3. CLO (College Life Orientation)

Each focusing on different subjects and events. The General orientation is the first one

FEP: GO (General Orientation)

         General orientation is the first part of the FEP journey and it lasted for 6 days. My “batch” is called EBN, which is probably the fifth “batch” according to its alphabet. My Orientation started on the 22^nd of August, and unlike almost everybody, I arrived already using the white shirt and black pants, which is actually not mandatory on the first day. The day started normally, Buddy Coordinators (our upperclassmen that are tasked to give us instructions) introducing themselves and also us introducing ourselves. it’s only the first day, and we were already making “yell yells”, we were split into groups and the winner’s “yell” will be used on Saturday as our class’s yell (EBN09 is my class), my group actually lost.

On the second day, we were introduced to the “Binusian Journey”. it explains the purpose of this FEP and what you need in the coming years, such as soft skills, organization skills and also hard skills. All of them are available at Binus University. The next day, we were introduced to the Binusmaya website and how to use it (considering it was mandatory) because almost everything we need from schedules to assignments are posted there.

The next day, we were treated to shows and demonstrations of clubs so that they can attract new recruits called “bunga rampai”. It was pretty entertaining, especially tennis and badminton club’s demonstration, definitely a high point of the general orientation for me. After the show we learnt the rules and regulations of the university. On Friday, we attended something called “Binus way”, it is essentially the familiarization of Binus itself. We learnt Binus’s vision, mission and values, we also memorized the songs of Binus.

The final day being the arguably most important day of the General Orientation, is the day we perform our “yells” that we practiced this week and finally the end of using our uniform and General Orientation. This was also the day we signed up for the clubs, there were so many to choose from, especially with their performance the other day, made for harder choices.

 

FEP: AO (Academic Orientation)

         The academic orientation is a representation or simulation of what you would experience in a normal college class. The classes here are already grouped based on our majors, unlike the GO class. Academic Orientation lasted roughly 1 week, with normal classes such as algorithm and coding but only the basics. And also we were already given assignments and projects to probably simulate real classes. And at the end of the Academic Orientation, Exams were held to greater familiarize us with the tests and rules are already applied, such as bringing KMK (Kartu Mata Kuliah). I didn’t do well at the test.

Organization Skills

         A few organizations also were recruiting and held presentations in our class, they were Ureeka, HIMTI, and Jollybee. Ureeka focuses on making games and joining competitions, while also training us to make the games itself. Jollybee is a coding team that focuses on joining coding competitions, unlike Ureeka that makes games, Jollybee only codes. It is recommended that you join one of these because it trains your soft skills and organization skill while also giving you experience from competitions.

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