We are at a stage now where the simple mini games of just a few years ago are now ‘too’ simple; we could play games like Bejeweled or Tetris for hours and be entertained. But now, I think we’re well into a time where we as gamers are sophisitcated enough to add another layer of game play to these games.
Corpse Craft struck me but utter surprise; I will admit it’s the first Flash game I think I ever had to stop playing for one reason or another but came back to to play ‘just because’ several times later. This game has done the aforementioned; a simple mathematical formula. Take a simple real-time strategic mechanic, and fuel that games economy with a resource system hinging on playing a simple match-three game, and suddenly you have a new genre?
The skeleton (lol) of the gameplay is simple:
- Play a simple match-three game. Whatever colors you clear get turned into a resource; Flesh, Blood, Scraps and Energy
- You ’spend’ various combinations of the resources on creating corpses. Each corpse has a different behavior. Some are offensive, some are defensive, others have unique actions they take when you summon them.
- The object of the game is to destroy your opponents ’shack,’ the place where corpses are manufactured.
Games like Puzzle Quest have done this already; I would argue that Puzzle Quest was probably the pioneer. New games are popping up now that take those simple games to the next level. Corpse Craft is indeed one of them. Adding two ‘genres’ of games together has always been my favorite thing to do for simple game design brainstorm exercises… (Hire and fire a team of plumbers who all have experience levels and individual skills, and then send them out onto platforming game levels, where they collect coins. Bring those coins back to base to fuel the mission control center!)Corpse Craft also takes advantage of the exciting concepts that Whirled.com is doing; mainly microtrans. For a few ‘gold bars’ (a currency purchasable by spending a few real-world dollars,) you can unlock the multiplayer portion of the game, where you pit your corpsecraftery against another human or two or three. If playing against people is not your thing, spending a few bars will unlock the ‘rest’ of the single player narrative campaign. More coins, still, unlocks the ability to play an endless ’skirmish’ mode of the game, that gets progressively harder and harder.
All-in-all, unlocking all of the games features runs you about $5, which isn’t a lot, but also more then I’ve ever payed to play a Flash game. I am thrilled with this game. I would love to see it get made into a Nintendo DS game, it’s almost obvious that that’s what the developers are hoping to do with it, with both the layout of the screen and the bottom-center-centric game interface. Fingers are crossed!
It behooves you to check it out:
