#azada

Publisher: Big Fish Games

Date: August 29, 2008

Series: Azada (2/4)

Plot: 3/5 Titus, the character you rescued in the initial Azada game, calls upon your help again to help him defeat an ancient evil that resides in his uncle’s library of magical books.  The characters in the books are alive and consist of such recognizable faces as Dorothy, Captain Nemo and The Headless Horseman.  One of these characters is secretly the evil being and you must work your way through each book to determine who it is.

Mechanics:  4/5 I found this one actually rather interesting.  Each story book is a puzzle and you must work your way through the pages, finding useful objects and solving mini puzzles, to free the main character.  This gives you a nice mix of environment puzzles and mini puzzles.

Art:  2/5 Not a great step up from the original Azada, though the story book environments aren’t bad.  The characters are very old style 3d art and come across kind of creepy.  It’s not terribly off-putting, but these games always seem better when the developers stick to nice 2d art.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 There was no voice acting.  The music was nice and vaguely thematic to the story books.  The sound effects were minimal and unobtrusive other than the jarring clang when you dare to try and click on something while a dialogue box is still open!

Overall: 3/5 An improvement over Azada in plot and mechanics which leads this game to be more engaging.  The storybooks make for nice stopping points if you don’t tear through games in one sitting like yours truly and there is a relaxed mode without the timer, unlike Azada.

ABD merkezli arama devi Google, Play Store'da daha oldukça Android Auto uygulamasına izin vereceğini geçtiğimiz yılın ağustos ayında duyurmuştu. Şimdiyse şirket, geliştiricilerin artık Android Auto için yeni navigasyon, park etme ve şarj uygulamaları yayınlayabileceğini ifade etti. Bu, Android Auto için geliştirilmiş daha oldukça uygulamayı yakın zamanda Play Store'da görmeye başlayacağımız anlamına geliyor. Geçtiğimiz mart ayında Google, Jetpack'in bir parçası olarak Android for Cars App Library'yi yayınlayarak süreci başlattı. Sürücüler, bir beta programına kaydolarak bu uygulamaları araçlarının ekranlarında kullanabiliyordu. Bir tek yeni genişlemeyle birlikte geliştiriciler, uygulamalarını doğrudan mağazada kullanıma sunabilecekler.

Android Auto nedir?

(Stalled out on Mystery Case Files so I’m taking a little break from them.  We’ll get back to them soon enough.)

Publisher: Big Fish Games, Tulip Games

Date: June 29, 2007

Series: Azada (1/4)

Plot: 1/5 In Azada you awaken in a mysterious building without any idea how you got there.  You find a magic paper that tells you that you were brought here by someone named Titus because of your amazing puzzle skills in the hopes that you can free him.  As you make your way through the puzzles you get some backstory as to how Titus became trapped, but the story is almost an afterthought to the puzzles.

Mechanics:  3/5 You must assemble the magical book called Azada by solving the puzzles on each of its different pages.  Some of them are rather interesting, wherein you poke around a room to find items that will help you find the magic page hidden within.  Those pages have a sort of escape room quality to them.  Unfortunately most of the rest are extremely basic puzzles that you’ve encountered in every other puzzle game ever; slider puzzles, matching puzzles and the like.  They start laughably simple and ramp up slightly as you progress through the game.  One aspect that I found frustrating was that you had to solve each section within a time limit.  While I had no problem completing the game within the time limits given, I strongly dislike having a timer that you cannot turn off as I dislike the pressure, even if it’s minor, and it is always good to have accessibility options, such as being able to take as much time as needed.

Art:  2/5 Some of the art, particularly in the escape room puzzles, is fairly dated but not in a way that heavily distracts from the game.  The game doesn’t show you anything amazing, or even terribly interesting, in terms of art, but it reads well and is just fine.

Sound/Music/Voice Acting: 3/5 There was no voice acting.  The music was simple and unobtrusive and the sound effects were rewarding without being annoying.  Nothing awful but nothing to write home about.

Overall: 2/5 The concept of the game is fine and if it stuck with the more unique escape room style puzzles I would be all over it, but the basic puzzles which were rehashed over and over were repetitive and boring.  I was not invested enough in freeing Titus, who I didn’t know from Adam, to be very motivated to continue when the puzzles got tedious.  Not a game I’ll be going back to.