Bang! Howdy Goes Beta

GameSetWatch relates the launch of Bang! Howdy's Beta. The new game from the folks who made Puzzle Pirates even has a Beta blog. From the article: "The game ... is 'a hybrid between turn-based and real-time strategy gameplay, and is played in short fast-paced rounds', looks very neat indeed - and it's going to be 'play for free, pay for items' when it launches, just like a whole bunch of Korean titles like Kart Rider that have been super-successful. Also, damn, it's steampunk!"

Interesting

[FirienFirien]

Puzzle Pirates (http://puzzlepirates.com/ [puzzlepirates.com]) has been a successful and fun project for Three Rings; it's targeted a lot of social gamers, avoiding the wailing speedmongers who powerplay on WoW and go around ganking. The lack of vast rewards for time-in-game disinterests those who want to be ahead of everyone else; by leveling the playing field to depend significantly on skill, they've made it a much more interesting game to play. The graphics are amusing; the cartooniness again pushes away powergamers. As a result of this the community as a whole is more social and interactive. They've filled a nice niche in the market, and made it work well. Hopefully Bang!Howdy will follow the same vein in a different style; if the developer/community interaction is as good as it has been for Puzzle Pirates, this should be a great game.

Powerlevellers, gankers, and those who believe that the best games request and require top-spec hardware need not apply. It won't interest you anyway, and it gets rid of you for the rest of us to enjoy better.

Trivia

[HunterZ]

Ian McConville, the artist of the webcomic Mac Hall [machall.com] recently started working for Three Rings [threerings.net], the company who made these games.

Is this related to Bang! the card game?

[Digital_Quartz]

Is this in any way related to "Bang!" the card game, from mayfair games?

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/3955 [boardgamegeek.com]

Re:Wow it must be popular

[Green Light]

I think they share names (user IDs) with Puzzle Pirates.

Deja Vu All Over Again

[BobBobBobBobBob]

Unlike Puzzle Pirates, Bang! Howdy pits you against other players in little strategy puzzles (mostly, how can I kill them and get the gold nuggets or cattle before they kill me and get the gold or cattle). You can convert your gold nuggets to dollars (like the whatevers to dubloons in PP). You can also buy the "harder" currency with money.

For a "casual" player, PP was actually more friendly, since you could hop on a Navy vessel and just play one of the station puzzles (sailing, carpentry, bilging, navigation) without having to talk to anyone. After a while, they started making the land-based head-to-head puzzles free only on certain days. And to run a store or own a ship, you had to have a badge purchased with dubloons (the harder currency). It was easier to buy it for dollars than grind away to get enough of the light currency to buy dubloons at auction. The whole thing ended up being no fun.

In both games, you can buy new clothes with some of each type of currency. In PP, at least, clothing deteriorated, so if you didn't want to wear rags, you had to buy new clothing at intervals. Also, some colors were more expensive because of scarcer raw materials. The look of both games is cute, as ar the themes, but if you want a casual game, get Tetris or solitaire.

I would like the developers for making Bang! Howdy no fun right out of the gate, so I wasted almost no time with it.