Xeno Sola Full-Featured Beta!

#1 Hi Chris.

What is a "Carcassonne-style" game? I tried Google but got a French castle.

Ian

#2 Ian:

Carcassonne is a german board game in which you place tiles down to complete structures. Different strutures have different values, and the points you score scales with the size of structure you build. It's a simple, yet addictive formula that I've taken and twisted into a faster, higher scoring game, with a different style of strategy.

You can check out this wikipedia page to get an impression of what it is. :)

#3 You and your self-destructing demos. I'm intrigued enough to check this thing out.

#4 Good job Chris, very addicting game. i played it for near 2 hours and did not even realize that that much time had passed. Thumbs up!

#5 very nice, i love carcassonne and i feel you captured it quite well. Any plans to make play online? that might be a good casual game for instant action site.

#6 @Kevin: If you think it scares off potential downloaders, it's something I'd consider no longer doing. :)

@Roland: Thanks! I found myself often getting caught playing when I was supposed to be coding.

@Mario: I'd love to see it on Instant Action as well. I'm not sure how all that works, given the only opening I've seen was the contest they held a couple months back. I'm guessing they're still too busy setting things up to support unsolicited submissions.

#7 found a bug, or missing feature.. you have to exit and restart the game when you draw a tile that can't be legally placed anywhere.

#8 Chris,

I was just kidding with you man; but seriously, it may be better just to have a message that says: "Please look online for the latest beta version . . ." then have an option to continue, quit, or download the latest version. That way, someone who is lazy and doesn't feel like downloading another package can play the game he did download and then once he is hooked to the game, go download the latest and best from Chris Jorgenson. It'd also save me the trouble of setting my clock back every time I want to play that space fighting game you made. (Are you still working on that?)

About this game: I played it for a half-hour and I didn't even remotely know what I was doing. I tried looking at the tutorial, but it was kind of Spartan. The first game I played, I got an amazing score of 0. The second game I played, I got a score of 80. I was going to finish that game, but the computer in last place more than doubled his score, and I went into last place, lol. An in-game tutorial, showing you what all the betting, and blinking lights meant, would be super helpful to people such as myself. The art, sound and music were really good, though you could use more than one track of background music. I noticed all the artists had the same last name. Any relation? ;)

P.S. If I have some time tonight, I'll make a another music track for you.

#9 @Mario: You can discard a tile that you're holding. The "Draw Tile" button changes into "Discard Tile" once you've drawn... clicking on discard gives you the option of drawing another one. In fact, it's another element in the strategy in that you can discard a tile at any time.... for a slight loss in points. I can tweak things, however, to make sure you never are forced to discard a tile.

@Kevin: Hmmm.... Which part of the gameplay confused you? I'm still working on Xeno Versus.... it's undergoing a little more revision to get it right. Oh, and my artists are my wife and sister. :)

#10 I don't get why sometimes a landing pad will score points with a tile that has the two little boxes on the corners, and sometimes it doesn't. It actually has been fun figuring out the game for myself, but a tutorial would be a nice option. I actually won a game today!

It really is a cool game.

#11 Thanks for the nice comments and feedback, Kevin. And thanks to everyone who has downloaded and tried it out for me. I've had roughly 100 downloads of the beta already. :)