Legacy Games Blog

Legacy Goes "Wii"!!!

  Hello there, everyone!  Don Marshall here, yet another producer at Legacy Interactive.  Last year was a crazy year for all of us here.  We put out a LOT of games last year.  I produced four games: Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals, The Apprentice: Los Angeles, Fever Frenzy, and Pet Pals DS, our first game for the Nintendo DS.  We also completed work on Brain Spa, The Tuttles, and Farm Vet.  One of the things I’ve loved about working with all the new folks here is that everyone brings something new to the table – we have no wallflowers here!  Everyone puts their mark on each of our games, whether they were credited with working on them or not.

Fun Trivia fact: All the characters in Zoo Vet: Endangered Animals were named after people who work at Legacy, their families or their pets!

So this year will be even more busy, with more firsts for Legacy!  Besides a couple new DS projects, such as the exciting Zoo Vet DS, we’re going to put out our very first Wii games!  I’ve already started work on our very first vet game on the Wii with the working title of “Pet Pals Wii”, and I think it’ll start a whole new chapter for our Vet games!  The animals look great so far, and the cases are pretty neat.  We’ll be starting work on story and script soon, which is my favorite part, so I’m really looking forward to it.

Even more exciting is that Legacy is putting out our very first movie title!  Based on the upcoming movie “Igor”, we’ll be putting out two entirely different games!  One will be put out on the Nintendo DS, and will have a fun puzzle and fighting game style.  The other will be for the Wii and the PC, and will be a platformer for up to 4 players.  The designs for both versions look fantastic, and I can’t wait to share more details with you as we unveil them!

And don’t think we’ve forgotten our PC fans!  Legacy will continue our long history of top notch PC games this year with several titles I’m not allowed to talk about yet.  Trust me, though, you won’t be disappointed!

Oh!  And if you’re on Facebook, keep an eye open for our new Facebook applications!  So far we’ve put out The Apprentice as a facebook application, and in a week or two you’ll see Fever Frenzy go live.  We’ve also got a couple of original applications coming up soon that we’re really excited about, so be sure to add LegacyGames to your friends list, and we’ll keep you up to date.

That’s it for now!  Keep an eye open for more entries in coming weeks from our other producers where they’ll keep you up to date on all the fun stuff we’ve got coming!

Don

Woah! What a Hot Dish!

I like to think of myself as a hot dish who as every man's fantasy, can also cook a hot dish. I want to be a hybrid of an Italian mother who pinches cheeks and always has a lasagna in the oven and antipasti in the fridge, and Elle MacPherson. I decided to work on one alchemical transmogrification at a time, and practice my cooking skills.

Luckily I found help in the game Hot Dish by Big Fish Games. It's a simulation of cooking for restaurants of different styles, starting off with high-spirited Mama Giovani's for rapacious appetites, graduating to the fiercer edges of Bushido Wok, and if you're talented enough, reaching the pinnacle, five-star Chez Velours. As the expectations become higher of you, the "trial cook," with each respective chef, the dishes more complicated. This game is good at characterizing the chefs to either dote on you with expressions of approval - take Mama Giovani's "Yummy Yum!" - or instill fear in you with the disapproving "Mon Dieu!" (my God) of the stuffy French.

The goal is to improve your capacity for stress as well as delicious and hot, time-managed delivery of food. The specific goal in my fantasy world became lofty: to be able to cook a baguette and creme brulee of foie gras fit for Le Bernardin. But then I remembered that I was after Elle meets your Italian grandmother, not some caricature of a fastidious fop with a beret. So to hell with the croissant and pate! I was thrilled that I was able to mince garlic for the paunchy Mama Giovani's pizza sauce while at the same time boiling water for her lasagna.

I loved the sound effects and cursor motions of the grating and chopping, stirring and stuffing. They were necessary to make me feel like I was actually in each kitchen with the rosy, glowering or peevish Chef, smelling the heavenly ingredients simmering. Sure, it's not exactly a Wii (Hey now that's not such a bad idea...a Wii game for cooking simulation), but it's a great tool for learning the multitasking and careful step-by-step nature of cooking when the stakes are high.

So high that there are faces to your fate: the expressionless bureaucratic inspector who watches while you haphazardly clean up by scrambling tiles around like you know what you're doing and eliminating pests; and worse, the prim and proper food critic, Julia Daravich, who can ruin you with a smile.

Because what's a restaurant without PR? And what's PR without a review? Ah velors, isn't it enough for a girl to look pretty and provide a hot dish full of personality, even if her apron full of pizza sauce is twisted around her neck? In my book that deserves five stars (too bad it's not a book that's going to be published anywhere).

In playing this game just remember, it's only a meal...for a paying customer (wink). And there's always a next meal.

Until dessert,
Flower Child

DOWNLOAD HOT DISH HERE>>

Dark, Creapy and Full of Details...Fatal Hearts

Oh, have I got one for you gals and guys this week. I actually had to tear myself away long enough to write this blog, but you can bet I'll be playing again when its written.

Fans of Cute Knight (like myself) are cheering Hanako's new release, Fatal Hearts. It's a “choose your own adventure” story, much like an interactive novel, but with numerous original puzzles that are integrated into game play. During the game, you might find yourself searching through foreign language dictionaries, putting together elaborate puzzles, or playing board games. The game autosaves, but I also recommend manually saving often, in case you get stuck and want to go online for help.

If some of the puzzles are really driving you crazy (like the leaf puzzle that had me stuck for ages), Hanako has released cheat codes to bypass them. There is also a walkthrough which tells you how to unlock different endings. Once you've beaten the game, you can go back and skip over puzzles you've already played. It's worth playing through a few times, since taking a different route unlocks puzzles and storylines you haven't played before.

About the story – its dark and creepy, and full of detail. Without giving away the plot, lets just say there are plenty of twists, all of which depend on the choices you make throughout the game. The music and sound effects are perfectly used, and the pacing is excellent. It has a definite Japanese feel to it, from the animation to the game style. It's a lot like reading a graphic novel at times.

It's worth mentioning that parents might want to review the game themselves before giving it to their young teens, since there are some elements that people might find questionable. For example, a couple of the endings involve a romance between the two female protagonists, while others have the teenage girl marrying a much older man. There is also murder and supernatural elements involved in all storylines. Nothing is explicit or graphic, but the stories are there. As an adult, I thought it was a bold move for a casual game, and preferred the more mature elements to game play. It's a judgement call if you are a parent or sensitive gamer.

I've unlocked 3 endings so far, and am completely addicted. Even if you didn't care for Cute Knight, Fatal Hearts is a whole different type of game. If you like story-based games with a dark feel, you will not be disappointed.

Lisa

DOWNLOAD FATAL HEARTS HERE>>

The Tuttles Madcap Misadventures - Behind The Scene

Hello world!  My name is Ryan Modjeski, and I am one of the many producers here at Legacy Interactive. One of our New Year’s resolutions at Legacy is to start keeping a blog about the games we’re involved in and process of making them. As the inaugural post, I thought it would be fun to look back at the game I just finished working on, The Tuttles: Madcap Misadventures.

The Tuttles: a classic platform game that’s fun for all ages.
Download it here!

The Tuttles was a convergence of three different worlds; The Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation who inspired us, Dave Thomas’ Animax Entertainment who supplied the characters and script, and to that we added our 10 years of gaming know-how to pull together a one-of-a-kind downloadable game. For those of you who haven’t heard, The Tuttles is a classic side-scrolling game about a family trying to bond while taking a family vacation to the Alamo. Legacy is contributing 75% of its proceeds from the game back to Starlight Starbright Children’s Foundation.

Comic book style storytelling, addictive gameplay and beautiful environments make The Tuttles more than just another charity project.

The hardest and most rewarding part of this collaboration was that Legacy, Starlight and Animax all had to learn how things worked in each other’s field of specialty. The result was a cacophony of fresh ideas, new perspectives and clever innovations that none of us would have thought on our own. We all found ourselves innocently asking the other to do the impossible and while it sometimes meant doing three times the work, the game was almost always better for it. I was often being asked to do something completely against all conventional wisdom and asking myself, “Well, why not?”

In return, I would ask Animax’s amazing team of writers to come up with new ways to develop the characters outside of the traditional TV script exposition and
Starlight would dig deep into its resources to pull out amazing gifts from thin air – free studio time, celebrity voice over talent, top-quality musicians. All of these things just made me want to work harder to live up to the standard being set for us.

By the way, it was interesting to see how the different actors approached their work. Bob Saget, for example, made a point to riff on almost every line. He dramatically improved his character’s dialog and kept us giggling throughout every take. It is too bad that most of what he said can’t be repeated in mixed company. William Shatner, on the other hand, walked into the room read each line exactly as it was written and killed it on the first or second take. He could read a Chinese menu and people would be rolling with laughter. There’s just something funny about Shatner.

Me and William Shatner.
Note his awesome Lynnard Skynnard T-shirt.

Now, I’m not saying that we made the Citizen Cane of sidescrollers, far from it. Beta testers and early reviewers were more than happy to point out annoying sound effects, game design flaws, and I heard plenty of feedback about the flying car levels. It seems that no one liked my precious flying car! I thought the levels were a fun throwback to older arcade games, but many people said that they found those levels tedious and impersonal.

It’s daunting to realize how many things can go wrong and how easy it is to derail months of work with the smallest oversight. We quickly tweaked what we could, rearranged what didn’t make sense and trimmed the fat on what did work as we had hoped. In the end, I think we came out with something really fun to play, entertaining to watch, and the best part is that we did it for a really amazing cause. And it seems some other people feel the same way, we’ve recently been awarded GameTunnel.com’s Kids Game of the Year 2007.

Starlight Starbright’s original idea for The Tuttles was to have a game where you could “have fun while doing good.” I think we accomplished that. In fact, I think the same could be said about making the game – We did good and we had fun doing it. 

Ryan Modjeski
Producer
Legacy Interactive

It Takes More Than A Clickfest To Build A Civilization...Cradle of Persia!

Well lets start off the new year with a bang shall we?  Most of us will spend our time focusing on sticking to our new year’s resolution.  Whether it be losing weight, to stop biting our finger nails, or to simply remember where we left our keys without the aid of another person.  How about you just find something easy and fun and make that as your new year’s resolution?  If you want a good example, go and download a great game from Legacy Games website.  For starters, how about we go with Cradle of Persia!  This is a puzzle game that might appear to be a simple click-fest, but this game has a few tricks up it’s digital sleeves.

First off, the game looks and sounds amazing.  You are going to be gazing and listening to some high quality entertainment, when you play this game.  From the cute icons of villagers and their buildings, to the delightful and colorful fireworks display you receive upon completing an area, you will love it all.  But, a game can’t be just pretty it has to play well or else you just get something lovely to stare at for a few minutes.

Well, Cradle of Persia has you covered there!  This game utilizes a great play style, instead of the boring click, click, and click some more style.  Instead of clicking on a tile located by two or more similar looking tiles and connecting them, you look around for three or more tiles together, and then click and drag the tiles together.  This may sound like a lame idea, but once you try you won’t want to stop playing the game.  You also need to use a little strategy during your play time.  Your main goal is to build buildings and structures to make a civilization.  In order to make these things come to fruition, you need to meet the requirements of each building.  At first, these requirements are simple, have enough gold and then buy the building.  But, then things get complicated with more complex buildings and structures.  Once you have a building, you unlock new objects to fill your little tiles which you need to match up.  For every matched tile you acquire a certain amount of needed supplies.  It may seem like an endless loop, what with the gathering of materials just to make a building that will allow you to make another building with more materials.  But, you forget that this is a game and it is meant to be fun.  And, it is!

So overall, this is, yet another, superb game that is available to you once you head over to Legacy Games website.  Great visuals, awesome music and sound effects, easy to learn and fun to master gameplay, and the perfect game that can either eat up hours of your time or be a nice snack during a quick break during a long day.  So forget all those annoying and agitating resolutions, and just put some time away to play this game.  Trust me, you will be so happy you did.

Aaron Roberson

DOWNLOAD CRADLE OF PERSIA HERE>>

Dora and Friends!

My oldest daughter, Ashley, being the typical 2-year-old, absolutely loves Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer. She also loves the computer, probably because she sees Mommy typing away on the keyboard most of the day. Because computer skills are so important for today's kids, we make it a point to play computer games together on occasion. There are four Dora the Explorer games out, with different strengths and weaknesses, and we've played each one so I'd love to share.

Dora's Carnival Adventure was the first game we checked out. It's probably the weakest of the lot, with the fewest game choices. My little girl was mesmerized, although a bit too young to play on her own, since we got this one when she was 18 months old. She especially liked Tico's bumper cars, and Boots' boots game. Although I wasn't sure if she completely understood, she cried when I turned it off, so I think that's a good vote! It's cute, not very educational, but good clean fun for the little ones. I think most little ones will need Mom or Dad or Gran's help to play.

Dora's Carnival 2: At the Boardwalk was a big improvement over the first. It's more educational than the last game. The drawings look just like the show (although the voices are different), so Dora fans will be pleased. Kids under 3 probably won't be able to play most of these games, but my 2-year-old still liked sitting on my lap while we played through the games. The games include seek and find, matching task, and memory puzzles.

Diego`s Safari Adventure is a good choice for boys, or slightly younger kids. It's more of an interactive cartoon than a game. The game parts are minimal and basic, with lots of high quality animation. It's a lot like the cartoon, very cute. This story takes place in Africa, with all the animals, and that was very interesting to my child.

Candy Land - Dora the Explorer Edition was probably our favorite of all. I was impressed by the animations – it looks just like on tv. My daughter loves it. You are basically playing the board game Candy Land, but all Dora themed. It takes about 30 minutes to play one regular game, but there is a quick game option. The only thing I didn't like were the mini games, since they were too hard for my child, but you can switch them off if you prefer. Very good.

There are a lot of other great games for Toddlers, especially the Spot series and Calliou series. It's really a fun way to get some bonding time in while teaching them some useful skills.

Lisa

DOWNLOAD DORA'S CARNIVAL ADVENTURE HERE>>
DOWNLOAD DORA'S CARNIVAL2: AT THE BOARDWALK HERE>>
DOWNLOAD DIEGO'S SAFARI ADVENTURE HERE>>
DOWNLOAD CANDY LAND - DORA THE EXPLORER EDITION HERE>>

Green Grass and Fresh Air...Fairway Solitaire!

Golf is really hot in South Africa, especially with business tourists from Asia who come for the wide open courses. I have to admit, it was never a sport that interested me, but I can see the appeal of all that green grass and fresh air. Minus the tweed, of course...yikes.

In Fairway Solitaire, a golf-solitaire hybrid, your goal is to earn trophies and golf your way to Grand Champion. Playing is easy, but scoring is complex. Click on cards which are one number higher or lower than the foundation card at the bottom of the screen. If there are no cards that work, click on the draw pile to deal a new card. The "hole" is over when you have used up the draw pile. The more cards you play in a row, the longer the long drive run, and the more money you earn. You can use the extra cash you earn to buy special power ups in the form of clothing which increase your performance.

There are several surprises included along the way, like wild shots and water and sand traps. To pass the sand traps, you must first free the "wedge" card, which is hidden in the layout. This will allow you to play the sand trap cards. Water traps can be passed by completely clearing the adjacent pile. Wild shots are interesting. You can play them or drop them, but dropping them comes with a penalty. If you play them, you get a randomly selected good or bad event.

The in-game tutorial is spoon fed to the player at the end of each hole. You mostly learn as you play. The sound effects and music are good, with realistic sports caster commentaries. The backgrounds, while cartoonish, are cute and pleasant.

If you're looking for a unique and interesting solitaire game, this is worth your download. I was really impressed, and surprised, because I figured solitaire had been done to death. However, the whole scoring system and theme makes things really interesting and fun to play.

Lisa

DOWNLOAD FAIRWAY SOLITAIRE HERE>>

2007 - The Year of Casual Games for Adults

2007 was a remarkable year for adults who play casual games. First the good news…

1. Nintendo sells the two best and best-selling game platforms for casual gamers – Wii and DS. Our New Year Eve’s party was a rousing success, as the adults stood around the Wii, practicing their tennis, golf, and bowling skills most of the night. I woke up the next morning, not with a hangover, but with tennis elbow. The Wii consoles are still hard to find, but I guarantee that your entire family will enjoy playing wonderful games like Guitar Hero and Super Mario Galaxy.

2. Nintendo’s handheld console, the Nintendo DS, is not just for kids. In 2007, brain games like Big Brain Academy and Flash Focus, designed for baby boomers, outsold all other games. Other applications related to food and wine, travel, language learning, and more, are available. So borrow the DS from your children or grandchildren and check out all the products that are available for adults. There are increasing numbers of games and programs geared to you and your interests on the Nintendo DS.

3. Have you joined Facebook yet? Did you know that the fastest growing group to join Facebook is people over 35? Did you know that you can play games on Facebook? I joined about a year ago because a business contact invited me. I felt a little silly and didn’t add much information to my “profile” for the first few months. Then my eighteen-year-old daughter, Leah, invited me to be her friend, and my network of friends and other family members expanded rapidly. When Facebook began to allow developers to create applications that members can add to their profiles, including games, I became an active member. Leah challenged me to take quizzes (e.g., “Guess who the celebrity is without makeup”) and to play simple arcade games. Mostly she beat me, until I found a great word game more to my liking - Scrabulous. Games are definitely getting more social, and joining Facebook allows you to easily play with your friends. I expect game playing on social networks to get even bigger in 2008.

So much for the good news. What’s the bad news? I personally was disappointed with PC casual games in 2007. Production values are definitely better than they’ve ever been before, but there were few PC games that introduced anything new. I thought that the two most innovative downloadable games were Build-a-Lot and Azada. What were your favorite games in 2007?

So stay tuned for next week's blog, when I'll describe what Legacy has planned for 2008. And as always, I’d love to hear from you! Best wishes for a great 2008!

Ariella

President

www.legacyinteractive.com

www.legacygames.com