Giveaway of the Day - Egyptoid 2

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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Problems installing, activating and running today’s game:

If you have difficulty downloading or activating the game you can try again later or do one of the following – for example once downloaded when you click on the dual activation and set up file you may get the message “Failed to connect. Please try again later” Check to see if your internet explorer isn’t offline (thanks to MrSnoozles/Mike and GMMan for that fix). If the previous suggestion doesn’t work go check out previous comments from the last several weeks and look for comments from GMMan and Mike. They have also posted their possible fixes for this problem.

Mike suggests that you check to see if Internet Explorer is offline (even if you use firefox). If it is make sure that it’s online thn try again. I’ve always tried re-booting my modem and/or router with some success, though Mike has said that doing that does nothing. Still, it’s worth a try if all else fails.

If you are getting the black screen problem right click on the games executable and select properties then click on the compatibility mode and select the disable visual themes. This should fix the problem, if not try disabling the display scaling on higher dpi settings and disabling the desktop composition.

Other fixes include changing your screen resolution, installing the latest direct X (remember that XP uses DX 9 or earlier only, Vista uses DX 10 or before and Win 7 DX11 or before). Also try updating your graphics drivers. The main two chip manufacturers are NVIDIA and ATI both of which offer driver downloads for free. Just go to the respective manufactures home page and you’ll find a link to the driver download page. To find out which graphic card or graphics chip your computer uses type in Dxdiag in the search field (Vista or Win 7) or the run command (XP); this opens up the DirectX diagnostics panel. click on the display tab and look to the left panel. You should easily see what graphics card or chip you are using. (This is required information when selecting the correct download from the developers site).

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Installation:

The game downloads as a 13.2MB zip file that unpacks to a read me that contains the terms and conditions and a wrapped dual activation and set up module. Just for the newcomers amongst today’s users that means the game will be registered once it’s gone through the set up process, so there’s no registering the game with a activation code.

The game installs to C:\Games\Egyptoid 2\

There’s no shortcut installed to either the Start Menu/Programs list or the desktop, so you’ll need to create your own by opening up the installed games folder and creating one via the games executable. The games icon is an improvement on the original Egyptoid icon.

The game should work on all windows operating systems from XP onwards. (I’ve tested it on XP Pro with SP3 32 bit, Vista Home Premium SP1 64 bit and Win 7 Pro and Ultimate 64 bit). If you miss todays giveaway you can get it 24/7 from gametop though it’s known as egyptoball. See end of the review for a download link.

Introduction:

Egyptoid 2 received a positive 76% of votes from 292 total votes back in December 2007 when it was first given away. There were 55 comments which you can read http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/egyptoid-2/ .
It was then given away again back in May 2008 where it received a positive vote of 80% out of 548 votes, with 86 comments which you can read http://game.giveawayoftheday.com/egy-2-ptoid/

You investigate 7 deserted temples, find secret treasures, fight ghosts and escape from the evil magician traps. But you are lucky – you have an ancient army, called Egyptoid. Blending it together with the magicians symbols you’ll achieve great magic power that none can resist!

http://www.starsashes.com/egyptoid_2.html

The Game:

You are a treasure seeker. A piece of ancient papyrus showed you the way to a lost temple that contained tombs of untold wealth and an ancient magical weapon called the Egyptoid. The Egyptoid will show you the way to the secret treasure and help you gather it. Scattered around the temples are forgotten magical elements that when combined with the Egyptoid activate ancient spells. Only when you’ve collected all of Anubis’s keys will you be able to enter the secret chamber to gather the treasures of the Pharaohs.

Reference Taken and then edited from the help menu in game

Basically Egyptoid 2 is similar to the original Egyptoid apart from some graphical enhancement’s plus of course a whole new set of levels to destroy. There are 17 bonuses, including the lightning cannon and the mega magic cannon, these two are the only additions from the first version of the game. Other bonuses that are also found in the original, but are slightly different from your normal Arkanoid are the three different levels of ball destruction from high, maximum and absolute. As with the first game there are also seven special symbols to collect. Collecting three of the same will give you magic spells that range from ‘the glance of Horus, Breath of Atum, Lightning of Hathor, Fire of Ra, Curse of Atem, Fireball of Oseris, and the ‘Pitch of Darkness’ that when added to the bonuses makes a total of 24 bonuses. The spells will be expended as soon as you collect the three symbols. So ensure your bat is in a suitable position to take advantage of the spells power. That is if your bat just so happens to be under an area of very few bricks you will not make the most of the spell. The spells are basically the same as those you got in the original Egyptoid apart from that the developers have changed the names around a little, for example the Fire of Ra becomes the Flame of Ra (and there’s a Fire of Aten,) and the Pitch of Darkness was known as Outer Darkness. Also the graphics are better. To boost your score there are lots of gems to collect.

With respect to playability, I found that I had to set it on the most difficult setting to make the game even slightly challenging. As it suffers the same as many 3D arkanoids in that the ball does seem to travel incredibly slow. This would be an ideal game for those who are new to this genre as well as younger children. If you like 3D arkanoids and want more of a challenge I would suggest checking out the games I’ve suggested in the section at the end of this review. The first one has been amongst my favourites for a few years and the second one is much better than its predecessor Action Ball Deluxe and is now free from MyPlayCity 24/7 (Actionball 2). Apart from Actionball 2 you’ll also find several more excellent arkanoids over at MyPlayCity including hyperblloid 2 (watch out for toolbars being installed) which has a levels editor. Alawar did have a download link for community based levels, but I’m not sure if that exists any longer.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ALWGdzKBaE

Conclusion:

In my opinion this version is better than the first one in the series, but if you were not in the enviable position of getting it free today and had the choice of buying either one, I’d definitely buy Egyptoid 2.

With respect to playability, I found that I had to set it on the most difficult setting to make the game even slightly challenging (though I have been playing these games for more 30 years (starting with the very first one by Taito); because it suffers the same as many 3D arkanoids in that the ball does seem to travel incredibly slow. This would be an ideal game for those who are new to this genre as well as younger children. If you like 3D arkanoids and want more of a challenge I would suggest the following for starters. The first one has been amongst my favourites for many years.

Suggestions

There are hundreds of breakouts available on the net. The few suggestions I’ve listed below only scratch the surface but are amongst my favorites. (I have over 200 breakouts in my games library). There have been few new releases over the last three or four years apart from Shatter, Actionball 2, Hyperballoid 2 and Magicball 4 (all the Magicball series had a name change a couple of years ago to smashball for some unknown reason)

As 3D arkanoids go Egyptoid is reasonably challenging when you compare it to the likes of the Magic Ball series which are very easy by comparison. I’ve listed a few below that you can purchase, though Actionball 2 and Hyperballoid 2 can now also be downloaded for free from MyPlayCity, but despite unchecking the toolbar and home page hijack check boxes I still got a MyPlaycity toolbar installed when I recently installed the MyPlayCity version of hyperballoid 2 (I think I may have given away my activation code for this game some time ago) so I would urge you to support the developers of these games by purchasing them if you can afford to.

Incrediball: The Seven Sapphires:

http://www.bigfishgames.com/download-games/861/incrediballthe7sap/index.html

Action Ball 2:

http://www.alawar.com/games/action-ball-2/

Nuclear Ball 1 & 2:

1)

http://www.ursegames.com/games/nuclear-ball/nuclear-ball.php

2)

http://www.ursegames.com/games/nuclear-ball-2/nuclear-ball-2.php

Gem Ball:

http://www.ursegames.com/gem-ball.php

There are of course many more arkanoids, two of the best include Ricochet Infinity and Acky’s XP Breakout as well as more recent releases such as Shatter. You won’t find these free unless you go to ‘illegal’ peer to peer sites but you will find lots of arkanoid/breakouts over at MyPlayCity and other free games sites like Gametop and FreeGamePick. Do watch out for the toolbars and home page hijacks when using these sites though. A couple of the ones I list above such as Nuclear Ball and Gem ball may be amongst the freebies though they have had name changes (Nuclear Ball changes to A Ball). Caiman games also has loads of freeware breakouts, but at the moment their download section is offline while they transfer everything to a new site. The following has been tagged onto this review from a previous breakout giveaway. you’ll find some repeat statements which I’ve not got the time to remove, so please forgive me for the duplicate postings.

Similar Games available for free

You’ll find loads of Arkanoid/breakouts HERE, HERE (Giveaway forums) and HERE (Caimans – almost 200 2D and 3D breakout games, though the download section is deactivated at the moment for reasons I’ve already mentioned)

You can also download a previous gamegiveaway Sawnoid every day for free over at Gametop as well as several others such as A-Ball (which is also known as Nuclear Ball), Geometry Ball, Scaraball, Cosmoball plus others, though you will get your browser opening every time you shut the game down. Thankfully this is one of the games they have had for quite some time so there’s no tool bar or home page tick boxes to bother with, but just in case they’ve changed it since I last checked make sure when you are installing the game that you watch each step of the installation wizard.

You’ll also find 13 breakout titles over at MyPlayCity HERE, that now include several of Alawars breakouts such as all of the Strike Ball games (Strikeball, Strikeball 2 and Strikeball 3), as well as one of my early favorites called Actionball Deluxe and it’s sequel Actionball 2; oh yeah and not forgetting the second Hyperballoid game, which in my opinion was a big improvement on the original despite the first one having a massive number of levels (over a thousand) with gorgeous graphics called (not surprisingly) Hyperballoid Complete Edition (or if you purchase it from Big fish Hyperballoid Gold edition) – the down side w.r.t. the original, was that even with the speed up power-ups, the ball used to go too slow for me, (however; GMMan did create a speed-up mod for me); there’s also previous giveaways (though not Alawar games) such as Egypt Ball and Egyptian Ball as well as several others that you can download for free. I recommend all of the Alawar titles especially Hyperballoid 2 (Which has an editor for making more levels – there may be custom made levels to download via Alawars site, but I’ve not checked in some time) and the original Actionball Deluxe (the sequel also has upgradeable power-ups) and Strikeball 3 (The third in the series is similar to the earlier Magic Ball games {Magic Ball 2} but with better graphics and power ups that are also upgradeable, plus the game is slightly more challenging than any of the Magic Ball series (which for some reason Alawar decided to change the name from Magic Ball to Smashball Frenzy)). Unfortunately the best (IMO) arkanoid/breakouts such as Ricochet infinity, Acky’s XP Breakout, Reaxxion and Shatter are not available for free via any of the free game sites apart from illegal ones. You can purchase Shatter from Steam for £6.99, though during the big sales over the summer and Christmas period and maybe thanksgiving you can get up to 75% off. Both Ricochet infinity and Acky’s XP Breakout have editors and for the former thousands (literally well over 60 000) of downloadable levels for free. There are also free level packs for Acky’s XP Breakout, but not to the same extent as Ricochet. you download the levels for ricochet directly from the game and can upload your own creation from the game as well (which probably explains why there are so many – all the levels are graded for game play, graphics etc and get a score of A to D with +’s and -’s (for example B+; though the best of the best are starred as well)

ps. You’ll find the Egyptoid 2 for free over at Gametop 24/7, though it’s had a name change to Egyptoball:

http://www.gametop.com/download-free-games/egyptoball/

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Anyone who votes thumbs down on this is a fool.