Game Giveaway of the Day

#35

Pretty! This has been a really wonderful article.
Many thanks for providing these details.

Reply | Comment by Hayward CHXPRS1931 Heater Pressure Switch – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#34

I love what you guys tend to be up too. This sort
of clever work and exposure! Keep up the amazing works guys I've included you
guys to my own blogroll.

Reply | Comment by dragon box elements apk – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#33

What a bummer, my broadband breakdown this morning, only now they fixed it.

I missed this game giveaway. Sigh...

Reply | Comment by Tom – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#32

Ok, this game took a bit of trial and error (a lot of it) but after a few games, my son and I figured out most of the game play. There's way too much random chance items in it for my tastes. The game is finally won once you reach 75 prestige or more, so that will explain why the game suddenly stops and says you win and then exit on its own.

To give this game a real try at first (to get used to it) here's a cheat: this is an error that my son discovered...
to make quick cash, you can sell your peasants. So, if you sell all but the last 2, here's the cheat--buy ("train") something with the last peasant (like a knight), then "sacrifice" your last peasant. Keep pressing the "sacrifice" button and your peasants will go into the negatives, providing endless opportunities while gaining unlimited wealth. Once you have all the wealth you can possible use, train a massive army and then conquer the world.
A tip on the cheat, if you want a huge army of knights, then start off the cheat with training soldiers, because you won't be able to go back and train them on the same turn (and the negative peasants will reset to 0 at the end of the turn). So, train soldiers, sacrifice peasants (like I did 500), then train knights (again, I did about 350).
With the money constrictions out of the way, you can explore the slightly more fun aspects of the game--using diplomats to take over lands without attacking them, using Hero's to either fight, send on quests or trading expeditions, etc.
Over all, it is an interesting game with potential; but the development and a help guide is a must. The "wars" seem way to random to have any real useful predictable or playable results. It's like the computer randomly rolls a 1000 die and determines the entire battle without any rhyme or reason for it. This is a good mackup to explore the potential of the game concept and market, but that's it (so far). Hope to see a more feature / game play rich game developed in the near future from this "concept".

............................Moderator comment....................

ha-ha trust the young-uns to find a cheat. lol

Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the late moderation.

Ok, this game took a bit of trial and error (a lot of it) but after a few games, my son and I figured out most of the game play.  There's way too much random chance items in it for my tastes.  The game is finally won once you reach 75 prestige or more, so that will explain why the game suddenly stops and says you win and then exit on its own.

To give this game a real try at first (to get used to it) here's a cheat:  this is an error that my son discovered...
      to make quick cash, you can sell your peasants.  So, if you sell all but the last 2, here's the cheat--buy ("train") something with the last peasant (like a knight), then "sacrifice" your last peasant.  Keep pressing the "sacrifice" button and your peasants will go into the negatives, providing endless opportunities while gaining unlimited wealth.  Once you have all the wealth you can possible use, train a massive army and then conquer the world.  
    A tip on the cheat, if you want a huge army of knights, then start off the cheat with training soldiers, because you won't be able to go back and train them on the same turn (and the negative peasants will reset to 0 at the end of the turn).  So, train soldiers, sacrifice peasants (like I did 500), then train knights (again, I did about 350).  
     With the money constrictions out of the way, you can explore the slightly more fun aspects of the game--using diplomats to take over lands without attacking them, using Hero's to either fight, send on quests or trading expeditions, etc.  
    Over all, it is an interesting game with potential; but the development and a help guide is a must.  The "wars" seem way to random   to have any real useful predictable or playable results.  It's like the computer randomly rolls a 1000 die and determines the entire battle without any rhyme or reason for it.  This is a good mackup to explore the potential of the game concept and market, but that's it (so far).  Hope to see a more feature / game play rich game developed in the near future from this "concept".

<blockquote>............................Moderator comment....................

ha-ha trust the  young-uns to find a cheat.  lol

Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the late moderation.</blockquote>

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Reply | Comment by BF – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#31

Like many others I can't get past the first turn. Many of the problems identified here seem to relate to all the options shown in the screen shot here are unavailable. No matter how I reset the resolution after the game tweaks the settings, I cannot see or access "end turn" or any of the three training buttons. Any work-around? Also, the need to reset the resolution and desktop settings every time the game is played is a factor that would keep me from playing this much, though I often love this format game. Regardless, thanks for the offering and the presence.

............................Moderator comment....................

Hi Jack, sorry for the late moderation. Try posting the problem in the main game forums. It's more likely to be seen there.

Reply | Comment by Jack – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#30

PS - I did give this thumbs up. I waited on voting until I had a chance to sort things out. -Bob

....................Moderator comment.......................

Thanks.

Reply | Comment by Bob – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#29

Hi Derek. Thanks for explaining this again. Now I'm more impressed. Sorry about the alpha-version comment earlier. I'm having foot-in-mouth now.

It's great that you're on the site today, and that you've opened the door at your site to comments, questions, etc.

Happy Father's Day all.

Reply | Comment by Bob – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#28

Had a serious problem with this one - got to the page with all the regions but no instructions and after "assignment", nothing happens. I keep coming back to the graphics and no way to even exit the game. Some serious technical difficulties with this game. I had to reboot my computer to not only exit the game but to regain control of my computer. Oh, did I mention, I uninstalled this one. Thanks for the freebie but like many free games, this one is a throw-away.

Reply | Comment by Maryment – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#27

Usually love most games, this one messes with my screen resolution, the right panel menu is blank/won't load on either of my W7-x64 units. had to exit with task man so thumbs down!

Reply | Comment by Bob2 – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#26

Norton anti-virus flags this as a virus on first run after install and removes the exe from your system. Since it is most likely a false positive, the developer may want to contact Norton.

........................Moderator Comment.............................

Definitely a false positive. The game was thoroughly checked by the giveaway team before release

:)

Reply | Comment by Idunno – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#25

Thanks, Vicky! This game is meant to only be a very small taste of the type of games I produce at Simprose Studios.

It should be noted by the above negative posters that the other games on the site are more polished in terms of help, readme files, presentation, etc. than this game is. Having said that, I agree that I should have included more help with this game, however.

I urge any one of you with questions to contact me directly using my contact form on the site.

........................Moderator Comment.............................
Hopefully some of today's comments will have inspired you to maybe update the game. I do think with a little tweaking it's got the makings of a decent strategy game.

Reply | Comment by DerekD – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#24

The game does seem like a work in progress. A tutorial level, help file, or even mouse-over pop-ups would help; but it is interesting. I don't like that the "save" function also exits the game - I might want to save and keep playing, plus there is already an exit button if that's what the player wants.

As an aside, to no one in particular - one reason developers freely offer their wares here is for feedback .... "crap", "middle school project", "waste of time" are merely derogatory, not constructive.

Reply | Comment by jgf – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#23

Not my kind of game - but maybe my kid will take a liking to it when he gets home! Seems odd that the rabbit's wife let him sleep in, but his kids forgot to write a review for him, becus it's fathers day! Note - Seems not popular game per rating - so maybe - something to listen to - a whole lot of - Little Orphan Annie https://archive.org/details/LittleOrphanAnnie1
People need to relax on father's day - game playing might be too stressful today???

........................Moderator Comment.............................

:)

Reply | Comment by wot – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#22

I have never played a game like this one, snd I am still learning, but I really really like it. Its fun and challenging.

Reply | Comment by vicky cain – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#21

I have to add to the negative comments; after installing to a different drive than "C" I was able to load the game, but then ran into problems with saving/exiting. My screen went black and nothing happened. Thinking maybe it was because I didn't install to "C" drive, I uninstalled and reinstalled, only to find the problem persisted and now I can't enter the game at all. Therefore, not only is the poor uninstaller a huge problem, the game itself is not ready for public release. Using us as "guinea pigs" is not very professional and I promise I will not buy _anything_ from Simprose Studios _ever_.

Reply | Comment by Therese – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#20

Hey all,
I developed and released this game about 8 years ago, so it was a little lacking in the help department, my apologies for that. Please do read the review up at the top, as it gives you vital info.

Here are some tips:

To start with, you need to train some Soldiers and a few Knights perhaps, so you have troops to conquer the lands with. You start with 15-30 Peasants and 1-3 Soldiers ready to go. Each troop costs gold and 1 Peasant to start up, so early on, you're mostly just training until they're finished. Maybe train 1 Diplomat as you go along to grab some lands peacefully; fighting ALL the time can be slow going early on.

Once you have anywhere from 4-7 Soldiers (which are your "stock" troops) and 1-2 Knights (stronger troops), you can click on a Domain. Best to start with a few smaller resistance ones, so you can get your income going early on. Assign most of your early troops to that one Domain, and hopefully you can grab it with a minimum of losses, that's where the Charge vs. Normal vs. Stealth comes in. Charge allows you to grab a territory faster, but with potentially higher losses, Stealth is slower but probably fewer losses.

Many buttons come with tooltips if you mouse over them that describes what they do.

You can assign troops to more than one Domain at one time as you amass more troops. Peasants can sacrificed for Gold as needed if you run low on money.

Heroes can be recruited that typically have strong powers and can used for special functions to get gold and fight for Domains.

..................................Moderator Comment..........................

Thank you for your feedback and tips, :) it's rare that we get the actual developer leaving comments.

Sorry it's taken me so long to moderate, I've has guests at the house today, so haven't been able to moderate till now.

I was a little confused when I first played the game this morning, but, after playing the game for a few hours I got hooked. I do think there are some area's lacking, such as a decent help section, and the save system leave a little to be desired. I lost my first half hour of progress when i simply exited the game without saving. I'd allow a player to save without actually exiting the game. I've always made multiple saves when playing strategy games. This game doesn't allow it.

I'd also consider including a wider range of characters such a spies, settlers etc, each with their own attributes. Maybe include a wider range of soldier types seeing as this is more of a battle strategy game. You could even add an extra layer of game play where you battle each region much like a game of chess, with your armies arrayed against that regions armies. winning would give you additional armies with which to attack other regions. I'd also enable users to modify regions, maybe include an editor to dio this. Even import images to add to the already extensive image library you've included.

Hey all,
I developed and released this game about 8 years ago, so it was a little lacking in the help department, my apologies for that. Please do read the review up at the top, as it gives you vital info.

Here are some tips:

To start with, you need to train some Soldiers and a few Knights perhaps, so you have troops to conquer the lands with. You start with 15-30 Peasants and 1-3 Soldiers ready to go. Each troop costs gold and 1 Peasant to start up, so early on, you're mostly just training until they're finished. Maybe train 1 Diplomat as you go along to grab some lands peacefully; fighting ALL the time can be slow going early on.

Once you have anywhere from 4-7 Soldiers (which are your "stock" troops) and 1-2 Knights (stronger troops), you can click on a Domain. Best to start with a few smaller resistance ones, so you can get your income going early on. Assign most of your early troops to that one Domain, and hopefully you can grab it with a minimum of losses, that's where the Charge vs. Normal vs. Stealth comes in. Charge allows you to grab a territory faster, but with potentially higher losses, Stealth is slower but probably fewer losses.

Many buttons come with tooltips if you mouse over them that describes what they do.

You can assign troops to more than one Domain at one time as you amass more troops. Peasants can sacrificed for Gold as needed if you run low on money.

Heroes can be recruited that typically have strong powers and can used for special functions to get gold and fight for Domains.

<blockquote>..................................Moderator Comment..........................

Thank you for your feedback and tips, :)  it's rare that we get  the actual developer leaving comments.

Sorry it's taken me so long to moderate, I've has guests  at the house today, so haven't been able to  moderate till now.

I was a little confused  when I first played the game this morning, but, after playing the game for a few hours I  got hooked.  I do think there are  some area's lacking, such as  a decent help section, and the save system  leave a little to be desired.  I lost   my first half hour of  progress   when i simply exited the game without saving.  I'd allow a player to save without actually exiting the game. I've always  made multiple saves when playing strategy games.  This game doesn't allow it.

I'd also consider including a wider range of characters such a spies, settlers etc, each with their own attributes. Maybe include a wider range of soldier types seeing as this is more of a battle strategy game. You could even add an extra layer of game play where you battle each region much like a game of chess, with your armies arrayed against that regions armies. winning would give you additional armies with which to attack other regions. I'd also enable users to modify regions, maybe include an editor to dio this. Even import images to add to the already extensive image library you've included.</blockquote>

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Reply | Comment by DerekD – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#19

Installed... and immediatly uninstalled : the most boring game encoutered from decades... simply ridiculous ! The most part of the 80's games of this type were most interesting !!! Good for nothing... or children less than 6 !

Reply | Comment by French Observer – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#18

Uh...

I don't get it!

There's nothing to do in this game.

Why, even yesterday's s...u...p...e...r ... s...l...o...w ... g...a...m...e was better than this DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING game.

I was thinking RISK! I LOVE RISK! But this is like playing RISK without any little colored markers to represent your armies. I DON'T GET IT!

Help me! Help me! Help me! Why in the world would the seller of this game include no HELP FILE?

Uh...

Reply | Comment by Swamp Thing – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#17

Let me guess ... this is version Alpha-0.01

Reply | Comment by Bob – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#16

Happy Father's Day Stephen aka WhiteRabbit!

(Also father's day in the US.)

........................Moderator Comment.........................

Thank you. :)

Reply | Comment by LadyLei – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#15

Their website says that the demo version is good for 60 moves ans has no save function.Is that what this is? Happt Father's Day to all the Dads!

............................Moderator Comment. .............................

I installed the demo yesterday so that i could spend some time checking it out befpre writing a review. Todays giveaway is the full version. you will have to create your own ddesktop shortcut though as the giveaway installer doesn't allow for a shortcut to the desktop. (don't know why).

Reply | Comment by Dusty – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#14

Hi, WR! Late B'day greetings!

This game does install a shortcut (which says it's a 'Demo'!) and also entries to the Start Menu (game, uninstall), writing to the Registry to do that; no big deal but, if you expect it not to, and then just delete the game folder to 'uninstall', you're left with those...

Reply | Comment by Alexyu – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#13

my earlier comment was never posted - this is not a game it is a waste of time. NOTHING happens.
Crapware, sorry, but do not waste any time with this.
Deleted.

Reply | Comment by promytius – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#12

The menu buttons shown in the image on the right such as the save and exit did not appear on screen. As such I had to find the process to shut down. There wasn't even an application to close.

I don't have time to play a game to figure out how to play it. It should be clear from the start. There's thousands, if not millions, of other games out there.

This game is far from being ready to release to the public. Whatever charm it might have does not make up for it's lack of development, especially when you consider they're actually trying to sell this. It's such an embarrassment that they'll have to change their name to release anything else.

Reply | Comment by Patrick McNamara – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#11

Is today 1.april - this game is a joke. Nobody knows what to do. I have 2 soldiers that I can place and then it happens nothing. When I click the button a message come and a new day begins but no action or something?!? I hope there comes a review.

............................Moderator Comment.........................

The game does require some though due to the developer not including any instructions. However, once you've picked up the basics this game can be quite rewarding.

Reply | Comment by whatsthat – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#10

Two further comments. The desktop icon which the game's installer creates is entitled 'Domain Wars Demo'. The built-in uninstaller doesn't appear to remove anything. On my PC it left everything behind, including the full program folder.

Reply | Comment by Julia – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#9

I've no idea why the developer of Domain Wars thinks it's ready for release. Well actually I'm uninclined to believe that he thinks that. It's not an actual game, as far as I can see. Maybe he thinks that inducing us to install a crude mockup is an effective way of driving traffic to his web site? Either that or he's wildly optimistic about commercialising the results of his first programming project. Pass.

Reply | Comment by Julia – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#8

oh boy. What is this? All I get is 2 soldiers to assign. That's it. No other controls, actions, screens, text - nothing. No help, no manual, no game. In fact no way to leave; had to ctrl/alt/del to kill the process. What did I miss? This seems to be a mistake.

Reply | Comment by promytius – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#7

Downloaded and installed fine.
If the creator of this game is in middle school, I commend them on their first project. I'm being attacking or belittling, but it does not show much creativity, skill, or imagination beyond programing 101.

I'm sorry, this was fun 25 years ago.

Reply | Comment by Will S – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#6

Morning, Mr. Whiterabbit.

Downloaded and surprised to see this game install to a smaller size than the zip was.

There doesn't seem to be an in game tutorial and both the "Save Game" and "Exit Game" buttons closes the game. Couldn't get past the assignment of troops. Not sure if you need to spend all the gold you have before you can "End Turn". I also didn't find any more information on the game itself. It's that new I guess.

Looking forward to your review later today. Cheers.

Reply | Comment by Dana – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#5

22 thumbs down (69%) but no comment why !

Reply | Comment by justchuck69 – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#4

Home page was really useful (NOT!) Forums - no entries????

No simple info/instructions as to whether this is a game I might be interested in. I haven't got enough time to download and play to figure out if I'd enjoy it or not.

So, down-vote based on their site page alone

Reply | Comment by Peter Holgate – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#3

This appears to be the type of Game I usually enjoy. I am running win 7 on a home built desktop computer, more than enough power for this game and LOTS of open space. this game does not open up past the pics of the different planets with NO options on the side. I can pick troops and the style of advance and then go back to the planet choices but there is nowhere else to go. the options shown in the 2nd pic are not there and the screen size is ridiculous. and there is room for those missing 'keys' to let me play.

Reply | Comment by zealotron – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#2

What should this be?

Reply | Comment by nööööö – 9 years ago – Did you find this comment useful? yes | no (0)

#1

Sorry for the lack of a review so far today. I overselpt this morning (My wife let me sleep in because it's fathers day here in the UK. We now have my wife's in laws and are having dinner, so I've not had much time to play the game and then write up a review. there is one in process, but I've barely started it.
I will post it eventually later today once the guests have left later this afternoon.

Just a few points about this game.

There's no help document, so you'll have to play by trial and error initially.

Make sure you save any progress. If you press the exit button you'll lose everything.

At first glance it may seem this game isn't very playable; however, once you've figured out what to do it can be quite rewarding. Please don't let the massive thumbs down put you off. I personally would give this game a little time to at least learn what's required, then decide whether it's for you.

it reminds me of those text based adventures you get on Facebook for example Mafia, but it's not as well presented.

If you start a new campaign the regions will reset to a totally different selection of regions with different images

Make sure you choose a hero ASAP, who can then negotiate with various regions. you can win regions just by diplomacy and some gold, so no need to lose your armies. Which cost and take time to build up.

I'll post a more cohesive review later (if I get time), and it will depend on the reaction to this game. I'm not going to spend three or four more hours preparing a review if no one likes the game.

There's no windowed mode

I've got to complete the game and conclusion sections yet. Thought I'd at least post what I've completed so far:

:)

Domain Wars:

Installation:

Domain Wars downloads to a 15.2 MB zip file that unpacks to a read me and a wrapped setup file (the orange colored file with the key symbol), plus there's a setup file with security (setup.gcd) that's protected from being hacked (because the previous giveaway system was easily cracked). This file may case some security software to alert the user to a possible malware attack, but it will be a false positive.

The game giveaway team check all game giveaways for malware using several well known anti -malware suites. There has never been a game giveaway infected with malware since the project started back in Dec 2006. (The owners know that allowing such things would compromise their business, so they make sure all software given away via the giveaway and gamegiveaway sites are thoroughly checked for all types of malware before allowing community members to download any files.

To register and install the game click on the orange colored icon. The installed game is 7.85 MB in size. and installs to the following path by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\DomWars

The path can be changed to any path you prefer, for example I always save my games to either my G or J drives ((I have several hard drives in my main computer). Once the game is installed you can delete the giveaway setup files. There,s no shortcut installed to the so you'll need to remember where you installed the game so that you can create one.

I've tested the game on a Win 7 and Win 8 systems and it works on both

Introduction:

Domain Wars is a unique board/strategy game hybrid where you play the leader of a medieval resistance, bound to take over the land. Use Peasants, train and rally your troops and harness the power of wandering Heroes to conquer the kingdom!

The game board is randomly generated every game, as are the Heroes and special events, so no two games are the same. An intuitive interface makes it easy to get started, but gives you total flexibility to adopt whatever strategies you wish. Negotiate peacefully, or take the lands with blood - it's up to you!

Reference accessed HERE 15th June 2014

The Game:

This game reminds me of one of those free Facebook games. It's more like a text based strategy game than a regular strategy game. Don't let the basic nature of the game put you off.

There is a bit of a learning curve on this one, simply because there's no help document. However, with a little trial and error I think you'll find a decent game hidden in Domain Wars.

On first boot up you are presented with a very simple main menu with only one button called 'Start a new Campaign'. Once you've started a game you must save it when exiting the game otherwise you will lose all progress. Unfortunate there's no auto save function included with the game. If you exit using the exit button you lose all progress. When clicking on save it will then shut the game down, but on restarting you will be given the choice of starting a new campaign or returning to the game you have already started. If you click on start a new campaign al;l progress from the previous game is wiped.

When clicking the Start new Campaign, the world map overview is presented, where you can choose to dominate 35 regions. Each region is represented by an image (usually a mountainous scene). Hovering your mouse over any region will bring up information about that region:

The name of the region
It's size
Income (in Gold)
Resistance
Prestige

When you select a region a shield appears with crossed swords on the region image you've chosen. You can select any region from the 35 provided. so long as you have enough soldiers, knights or diplomats you can attempt to dominate more than one region at a time. If all your soldiers in a region are killed the sword and shield disappears and you lose all influence in that region unless you decide to send more soldiers. If a region is a lot more difficult to dominate than you originally anticipated, evidenced by the number of casualties you've sustained you can withdraw your remaining soldiers in that region to fight another region with less resistance.

You can train soldiers, knights and diplomats by clicking the train button. Training costs gold and can take several turns just to create one soldier. Knights take longer and diplomats even longer; you can see their progress at each turn when the end of turn report panel appears.

To earn gold (apart from random events that give you money) you need to dominate regions. The more regions you control the more gold you earn, which should be spent on creating more soldiers, knights and diplomats to attack or negotiate.

Heroes are randomly generated; these can be used to quest or negotiate with regions. Depending on the heroes attributes/strengths, you may find a domain will hand over the territory for a certain amount gold, or refuse and go to war with you.

At the end of a turn you should get a battle report, for example it may say 'Troop morale is still very good despite tough fighting, my Lord. Our tents are filled with injured

Occasionally you will get an event message popping up this can be either positive or negative, for example:

Windfall, collect x5 this turn, (so, the higher your earnings are at the time, the more gold you'll earn). A diplomatic report may tell you you've conquered a region or that the regions king has refused your offer and is preparing for war. You need to withdraw your diplomat at this point in case he is killed off. If you get a message saying you are bankrupt the game ends and closes.

That's basically as far as I can go today. I'd certainly give this game a little chance. It's not graphics oriented, but the game play is actually quite good.

Conclusion:

With no instructions many of you may be put off by this strategy game, however, if you are prepared to stick at it you may find a decent game here. I wasn't impressed initially, but because I wanted to prepare a review (of sorts), I was determined to stick at it till I was able to figure out how to play the game. Once I got the basics, I found it much more interesting. It reminds me of a game I played on Facebook that was purely text based. I only played it initially as a friend wanted me to send him stuff from the game; but, once I'd got used to the game mechanics I was hooked. I don't think this game is as addictive, but it certainly has a charm all of its own.

It does need further development in my opinion. A help feature is a must have and the save system needs an overhaul. The layout needs revising and more content needs adding. hopefully the developer will read our comments and update the gam

Problems:

If you are posting late in the day I would also suggest posting in the main giveaway forums, in the game discussion section because I cannot moderate 24hrs a day over the weekend. If you've installed the game but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so someone may be able to help at another time. Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it then once the giveaway period is over there’s nothing that can be done until the game is given away again (though that isn't guaranteed). Sometimes you can still register the game after the giveaway has ended so long as you managed to start the download before the giveaway ends. I've tested this and sometimes the grace period lasts for up to 2 hours, but more often than not 1 hour is the norm.

It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them. MyPlayCity has the most with over 1000 games to choose from. Today's game isn't available on any free game site at the moment. Please do remember to un-check any boxes during installation otherwise you may find one of several things happening, e.g. toolbars installed, home page changed, browser changed, files installed over several locations on your computer (Jenkat). All of these can be reversed, but can be an annoyance. You browser will be opened when you close a game from these sites down, but it's innocuous.

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Games, Games, and yet more Games plus Download, Installation & Game play Problems:

If you have any problems installing or getting to work today's game please go HERE for help. I've posted all of the common problems and solutions in a FAQ thread, which you can find in the sticky section of the forums by following the above link.

There's well over 100 games on sale over on Steam at the moment with discounts from 9% to 90%. You'll find all the deals via the Specials tab on Steams front page HERE. The usual weekend sales include between 33 to 66% off the Wargame franchise (Airland Battle, European Escalation and Red Dragon), 75% off the Indie Game The Movie bundle (Super Meat Boy, FEZ, Braid, Indie Game: The movie plus dlc), and 50% off Thief. Thew latest 48hr deal is 66% off Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist and yesterdays 48hr deal is 50% off Platformines. you'll also find loads more excellent deals for example, 62% off Pro Evolution soccer 2014, 75% off the Serious Sam complete pack (you can buy most of the game sin the pack separately), 50% off all other thief games, 70% off shadow Warrior, 60% off 3DMark, 75% off Jade Empire, 50% off VVVVV, 50% off Kinetic Void, 50% off Worms Revolution Gold Edition, 85% off Velvet Assassin, 90% off Puzzle Indie Pack (), 50% off Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, 75% off Warp, 60% off Hotline Miami, 80% off Waking Mars, 50% off shadow Warrior Redux, 75% off Hard Truck Apocalypse: Rise of Clans, 50% off Tex Murphy franchise, 66% off Trapped Dead, 75% off Gemini Wars, 60% off Foul Play, 75% Hacker Evolution Duality, as well as many more.

You'll also find some excellent deals over on the following Game sites, some of which have summer sales on. (Steams summer sale starts next week):

GreenManGaming
Gamersgate Summer Sale
GOG
Desura
Gamestop
GameFly

To be honest there are too many game deals around too list them all. Just visit the sites I recommend above and I'm sure you'll find something that suits you for a very decent price. If like me you prefer Steamworks games, many of the above sites also sell steamwork games.

If that's not enough, check out the Game Discussion forums HERE for details of other games either free or on deals such as the Indie Game bundles (there's over 20 of them - If you purchased all of them you'd be paying around $80 for around a thousand dollars worth of games); or check out the four day sales at IndieGameStand. I've updated the Indie Game bundle thread to include all the latest bundles. you'll find that thread HERE.

The latest IndieGameStand game is Blasted Fortress, a physics-based castle assault game with an added layer of resource management. This bundle ends around 5am Monday GMT.

The latest Daily Indie game is Skyward Collapse, at the moment you can get two keys if you pay more than $1.2; (one for a friend or family member perhaps?). You'll find that deal HERE. They also have a bundle of several games that'll cost you less than $1.50 HERE

Most of the bundles retail for around $5 give or take a few dollars, but you can pay as little as a dollar for some.

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A Request for helpl>:

Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of 'potential' cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you've checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

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Sorry for the lack of a review so far today.  I overselpt this morning (My wife let me sleep in because it's fathers day here in the UK. We now have  my wife's in laws and are having dinner, so I've not had much time to play the game  and then write up a review.  there is one in process, but I've barely started it.  
I will post it eventually later today once  the  guests have left later this afternoon.

Just a few points about this game.

<blockquote>There's no help document, so you'll have to play by trial and error initially.

Make sure you save any progress. If you press the exit button you'll lose everything.

At first glance it may seem this game isn't very playable; however, once you've figured out what to do it can be quite rewarding.  Please don't let the massive thumbs down put you off.  I personally would give this game    a little time  to at least  learn what's required, then decide whether it's for you.

it reminds me of those text based adventures   you get on Facebook for example Mafia, but it's not as well presented.

If you start a new campaign the regions will reset to  a totally different selection of regions with different images

Make sure you choose a hero ASAP, who can then negotiate with various regions.  you can win regions just by diplomacy and some gold, so no need to lose your armies.  Which cost  and take time to build up.

I'll post a more cohesive review later (if I get time), and it will depend on the  reaction to this game.  I'm not going to spend three or four more hours preparing a review if no one likes the game.

There's no windowed mode</blockquote>

I've got to complete the game and conclusion sections yet.  Thought I'd at least post what I've completed so far:

:)

Domain Wars:

Installation:

Domain Wars downloads to a  15.2 MB zip file  that unpacks to a read me and a wrapped setup   file (the orange colored  file with the key symbol), plus there's a setup file  with security (setup.gcd) that's protected from being hacked (because the previous giveaway system was easily   cracked). This file may case some security software to  alert the user  to a possible malware attack, but   it will be a false positive.

The game giveaway team  check all game giveaways for  malware using several well known  anti -malware suites.  There has never been a game giveaway infected with malware since the project started  back in Dec 2006.  (The owners know that allowing such  things would compromise their business, so they make sure all software  given away via the giveaway and gamegiveaway sites are thoroughly checked for all types of malware before allowing  community members to download any files.

To register and install  the game  click on the orange colored  icon.  The installed game is  7.85 MB in size. and  installs to the following path by default:

C:\Program Files (x86)\DomWars

The path can be changed to any path you prefer, for example I always save my games to  either  my G or J drives  ((I have several hard drives in my main computer). Once the game is installed you can delete the giveaway setup files.   There,s  no  shortcut installed to the so you'll need to  remember where you installed the game so that you can create one.

I've tested the game on a Win 7 and Win 8 systems and it works on both

Introduction:

<blockquote>Domain Wars is a unique board/strategy game hybrid where you play the leader of a medieval resistance, bound to take over the land. Use Peasants, train and rally your troops and harness the power of wandering Heroes to conquer the kingdom!

The game board is randomly generated every game, as are the Heroes and special events, so no two games are the same. An intuitive interface makes it easy to get started, but gives you total flexibility to adopt whatever strategies you wish. Negotiate peacefully, or take the lands with blood - it's up to you!</blockquote>

Reference accessed <a href="http://simprosestudios.com/?q=node/96" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> 15th June 2014

The Game:

This game reminds me of one of those free Facebook  games.  It's more like a text based strategy game than a regular  strategy game.  Don't let the basic nature of the game put you off.

There is a bit of a learning curve on this one, simply because there's no help  document. However, with a little trial and error I think you'll find a decent  game hidden  in Domain Wars.

On first boot up you are presented with a very simple main menu with only one button called 'Start a new Campaign'.  Once you've started a game you must save it when exiting the game otherwise you will lose all progress.  Unfortunate there's no auto save function included with the game. If you exit using the exit button you lose all progress. When clicking on save it will then shut the game down, but on restarting you will be given the choice of starting a new campaign or returning to the game you have already started. If you click on start a new campaign al;l progress from the previous game is wiped.

When clicking the Start new Campaign, the world map overview is presented, where you can choose   to dominate 35 regions.  Each region is represented by an image (usually a mountainous scene).  Hovering your mouse over any region will bring up information about that region:

The name of the region
It's size
Income (in Gold)
Resistance
Prestige

When you select a region a shield appears with crossed swords on the region image you've chosen.  You can select any region from the 35 provided.  so long as you have enough soldiers, knights or diplomats you can attempt to dominate  more than one region at a time.  If all your soldiers in a region are killed  the sword and shield disappears and you lose all influence in that region unless you decide to send more soldiers.  If a region is  a lot more difficult to dominate than you originally anticipated, evidenced by the number of casualties you've sustained you can withdraw your remaining soldiers in that region to fight another  region with less resistance.

You can train  soldiers, knights and diplomats by clicking the train button.  Training costs gold and can take several turns just to create one soldier.  Knights take longer and diplomats even longer; you can see their progress at each turn when the end of turn report  panel appears.

To earn  gold (apart from random events that give you money) you need to dominate regions.  The more regions you control the more gold  you earn, which should be spent on creating more  soldiers, knights and  diplomats to attack or negotiate.

Heroes are randomly generated; these can be used  to quest or negotiate with regions.  Depending on the heroes attributes/strengths, you may find a domain will hand over the territory for a certain amount gold, or refuse and go to war with you.

At the end of a turn you should get a battle report, for example it may say 'Troop morale is still very good despite  tough fighting, my Lord. Our tents are filled with  injured

Occasionally you will get an event message popping up  this can be either  positive or negative,  for example:

Windfall, collect x5  this turn, (so, the higher your earnings are at the time, the more gold you'll earn).  A diplomatic report may tell you you've conquered  a region or that the regions king  has refused your offer and is preparing for war. You need to withdraw your diplomat   at this point in case he is killed off.  If you get  a message saying you are bankrupt  the game ends and  closes.

That's basically as far as I can go today.  I'd certainly give this game a little chance.  It's not  graphics oriented, but the game play is actually quite good.

Conclusion:

With no instructions many  of you may be put off by this strategy game, however, if you are prepared to stick at it  you may find  a decent game   here.  I wasn't   impressed initially, but  because I wanted to prepare  a review (of sorts), I was determined to stick at it  till I was able to figure out how to play the game. Once I got the basics, I found it much more interesting.   It reminds me of a game I played on Facebook that was purely  text based.  I only played it initially as a friend wanted  me to  send him stuff from the game; but, once I'd got used to the game mechanics I was hooked.  I don't think this game is as addictive, but it certainly has a charm all of its own.

It does need further development in my  opinion.  A help feature is a must have and  the save system needs an overhaul.  The layout  needs revising and  more content needs  adding. hopefully the  developer will read our comments and update the gam

Problems:

If you are posting late in the day I would also  suggest posting   in the main giveaway forums,  in the game discussion section because I cannot moderate   24hrs a day over the weekend.  If you've installed the game  but it won’t work for some reason, it should still be registered, so  someone may be able to help  at another time.  Unfortunately if your problem is actually installing it  then once the giveaway period is over there’s  nothing  that can be done  until the game is given away again (though that isn't guaranteed).  Sometimes you can still register the game after the  giveaway has ended so long as you managed to start the download before the giveaway  ends.  I've tested this and  sometimes  the grace period lasts for  up to  2 hours, but more often than not 1 hour is the norm.

It’s always worth checking out the free games sites as sometimes the games we get here are also available for free from them.  MyPlayCity has the most with over 1000 games to choose from.  Today's game isn't  available  on any free game site at the moment.  Please do remember to un-check any boxes during installation  otherwise you may find one of several things happening, e.g. toolbars installed, home page changed, browser changed,   files installed over several  locations on your computer (Jenkat). All of these can be reversed, but can be an annoyance.  You browser will be opened  when you close a game from these sites down, but it's  innocuous.

Games, Games, and yet more Games plus Download, Installation & Game play Problems:

If you have any problems installing or getting to work today's game please go <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/11647#post-101133" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> for help. I've posted all of the common problems and solutions in a FAQ thread, which you can find in the sticky section of the forums by following the above link.

There's well over 100 games on sale over on Steam at the moment with discounts from 9% to 90%. You'll find all the deals via the Specials tab on Steams front page <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>. The usual weekend sales include between 33 to 66% off the Wargame franchise (Airland Battle, European Escalation and Red Dragon), 75% off the Indie Game The Movie bundle (Super Meat Boy, FEZ, Braid, Indie Game: The movie plus dlc), and 50% off Thief. Thew latest 48hr deal is 66% off Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Blacklist and yesterdays 48hr deal is 50% off Platformines. you'll also find loads more excellent deals for example, 62% off Pro Evolution soccer 2014, 75% off the Serious Sam complete pack (you can buy most of the game sin the pack separately), 50% off all other thief games, 70% off shadow Warrior, 60% off 3DMark, 75% off Jade Empire, 50% off VVVVV, 50% off Kinetic Void, 50% off Worms Revolution Gold Edition, 85% off Velvet Assassin, 90% off Puzzle Indie Pack (), 50% off Duke Nukem 3D: Megaton Edition, 75% off Warp, 60% off Hotline Miami, 80% off Waking Mars, 50% off shadow Warrior Redux, 75% off Hard Truck Apocalypse: Rise of Clans, 50% off Tex Murphy franchise, 66% off Trapped Dead, 75% off Gemini Wars, 60% off Foul Play, 75% Hacker Evolution Duality, as well as many more.

You'll also find some excellent  deals over on the following Game sites, some of which have summer sales on.  (Steams summer sale  starts next week):

<a href="http://www.greenmangaming.com/hot-deals/" rel="nofollow">GreenManGaming</a>
<a href="http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">Gamersgate Summer Sale</a>
<a href="http://www.gog.com/" rel="nofollow">GOG</a>
<a href="http://www.desura.com/games#sale" rel="nofollow">Desura</a>
<a href="http://www.gamestop.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">Gamestop</a>
<a href="http://digital.gamefly.co.uk/#!/pc" rel="nofollow">GameFly</a>

To be honest there are too many game deals   around too list them all.  Just visit the sites I recommend above and I'm sure you'll find something that suits you   for a very  decent price. If like me you prefer Steamworks games, many of the above sites also sell steamwork games.

If that's not enough, check out the Game Discussion forums <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/forum/17" rel="nofollow">HERE</a> for details of other games either free or on deals such as the Indie Game bundles (there's over 20 of them - If you purchased all of them you'd be paying around $80 for around a thousand dollars worth of games); or check out the four day sales at <a href="https://indiegamestand.com/" rel="nofollow">IndieGameStand</a>. I've updated the Indie Game bundle thread to include all the latest bundles. you'll find that thread <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/100253#post-202848" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>.

The latest IndieGameStand game is Blasted Fortress,  a physics-based castle assault game with an added layer of resource management.   This bundle ends around 5am Monday  GMT.

The latest Daily Indie game is Skyward Collapse, at the moment you can get two keys if you pay more than $1.2; (one for a friend or family member perhaps?). You'll find that deal <a href="http://www.dailyindiegame.com/" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>. They also have a bundle of several games that'll cost you less than $1.50 <a href="http://www.dailyindiegame.com/bundle_2.html" rel="nofollow">HERE</a>

Most of the   bundles retail  for around $5 give or take a few dollars, but you can pay as little as a dollar for some.

A Request for help:

<blockquote>Developers rely on good feedback to improve their games. If you download this game please take some time once you’ve played it a while to leave some constructive feedback either positive or negative. The more constructive feedback we get, the more likely developers are going to give more games away. The giveaway site already has a very good standing with the search engines. Developers want their products out there on the WWW, this site has the potential to do that. The game giveaway project gives away on average between 9 to 17 thousand downloads for each game depending upon what genre and how obscure the game is. That’s a lot of homes these games are being downloaded into and a lot of 'potential' cash that’s being lost by the developers. If we get better games because of better feedback, the community are likely to continue to benefit from the generosity of the developers. Satisfied community members are then more likely to visit the home sites of those developers and purchase games that they may not have bothered with before they discovered the developer via the game giveaway site, thus giving the developers more incentives to give away even more decent games.

Please leave some feedback once you've checked the game out. It can be positive or negative, but please explain what your reasons were for the feedback you post. You could also leave suggestions for improving the game, for example, this game could do with more block types for the levels editor, add more power-ups, describing the ones you think would be suitable, add some mini games (which seem all the rage in some arcade games now) or enable the user to be able to change the in game music easily.

Thank you in advance to all those who take the time to post a constructive comment.</blockquote>

Regards

Whiterabbit aka Stephen

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