She's Crafty

Dig: it's called "Craft." It's a game like Warcraft, except it's not Warcraft and there ain't no orcs and shit. And it runs on Linux and it has little smart people that do smart things. It's fun and I like to play games so good.

So, has anyone noticed that "Quantum Deep-fried Electrodiddle" is an acronym for "shit Mr. Bad likes to dick around with in his spare time"? Because that's what it's all about. Shit I dick around with. Nobody else on PDJ ever uses this category, probably because it has a lame name and a little googly-eyed walnut man for the category icon.

Oh, so one thing I've been dicking around with for the last couple of weeks is CRAFT. Craft is this hip real-time strategy game. Real time strategy (RTS) games are this different kind of game from Quake and High Life and all those other games. Those are called first person shooter games or FPS games. The difference is in FPS games you go around shooting people and monsters with big guns, and you try to find bigger guns and ammo and stuff to shoot them with. Conveniently, there are lots of guns and ammo lying around, probably left by some NRA agents provocateurs to encourage extended firefights between zombies and steroid users.

In real time strategy games, on the other hand, you have to send your little peasants to go get iron to make a gun for you. Actually, you have to grow peasants first, then send them to get iron. Then they build a little smithy and tromp across the screen carrying the iron back to the smithy where it gets turned into steel. Then they carry the steel over to the gun shop (after they build a gun shop) and the gun people make the steel into a gun, after you grow some gun people. Then you have to go mine lead to make bullets out of, and take it to another smithy to make into bullets. And then you have to have pig shit and get alkali or whatever and put that in a big pit and let it sit for 300 turns until it becomes gun powder. Then you have to train an elite cadre of peasants into soldiers and then you give one of the soldiers the gun and the bullets and the gun powder and then he goes and shoots somebody for you. All this happens with lots of thermometer status bars that say, like, "Pig Shit: 58% Complete." And then you start all over again.

The "strategy" part of the name comes from the fact that you have to have some kind of strategy for keeping your peasants, gun smiths, pigs, and unarmed soldiers from being massacred by hordes of orc zombies before your gun is made. The "real time" part of the name comes from the fact that it takes a real long amount of time before you get anything done. Strangely, I find these kinds of games really satisfying. Maybe it's just the nice feeling of having a tiny controlled world of order in my otherwise crapped out mess of a life. I dunno.

There's a couple of other kinds of games, too. Like, there's side-scrolling games, where you have this lovable little character that lives in a little 2-dimensional world and swings on ropes and eats powerpills. I call these "fall in a pit and die" games, because that's what my little character always seems to do. Oh! And then there's these super-complex turn-based strategy games, like what people who find chess too simplistic play. Those kind of games make RTS games seem like a Ritalin romp in the park. Yawn!

So anyhow I dig RTS games, but there aren't a lot of Free Software RTS games out there. Until now! Because there's this cool game called "Craft." It's loosely based on some kind of wack concept of marauding Vikings and shit, but I'm not sure I follow the reasoning. The upshot is that there's lots of interesting gameplay with slaughtering and pixellated blood spooting everywhere, and lots of arcane Medieval-guild-style buildings and warrior classes and shit. And of course easily-slaughterable peasants all over the place. It's a pretty darn good game. You should try it! Check it out below, and remember to POST SENTRIES. d00d, it's imperative and shit.