@harrytulloch: there are instructions on the site for checking your connection; under the "achievements" tab, there are instructions for reporting missing badges.
@abarnybox et alia: why is it such a big discussion point to zoom in when you have trouble seeing? I regularly play this zoomed in a couple of clicks -- it's part of using the browser, not a game defect. The whole-course establishing shot is cute.
After I ran out of lives, the game gave me that chance to try the last level again. However, every status variable came up as "undef" (undefined) or "NaN" (not a number). Serious reset flaw. The level is now hung with no tiles, undef/undef lives, and NaN seconds. Fail.
For those complaining about the small scale, learn to use your browser's "zoom" feature.
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For those complaining about losing progress -- this is *golf*. It keeps us from cheating for high scores. Granted, I'd like to see a "best of" feature that could combine my top score on each hole, but there's no reason I should be allowed infinite replays for the "professional" badges.
@MasacruAlex -- you didn't "beated" the game; you simply *finished* it. That qualifies you to *attempt* the higher level of the course. When you break, say, 30 under par and 130K, I'll accept that you beat the game.
I've done my gamer thing, replaying each hole until I have playing notes on how to get 10K on each hole. I'm beating 150K every play, almost without thinking now. As with real golf, the trick now is to get my play *consistent* enough for the big time. I've managed to get 8 perfect holes twice now.
I'm also trying to get the playing time down for the "speed demon" award. The problem is that one bad shot can take a 5-second hole and turn it into a 20-second hole. Two of those, and you're dead. Besides, the minimum theoretical time for the entire course isn't much below 3 minutes, since it includes all the ball-settling time, the inter-shot animations, and a few holes that simply *require* three or four shots.
I want to see Wonderputt II.
I get the usual dialogue box asking to store info on my laptop.
However, this one gets grayed out immediately, blocking the game.
Any suggestions? Let's keep them anatomically feasible, okay? :-)
Play seems to be frozen and my experience keeps leveling up.
I can open inventory and switch things, but I can't seem to get the main map to allow me to move anywhere. How do I get out of this loop? I appreciate the extra levels, but they're no good if I can't get to the next level of the dungeon.
Bug 1: On first play attempt, game refuses to let me step to the fountain to pick up the stick. Dead end.
Bug 2: On second play, game fails on first auto-save (right after I gave it permission). Error box blocks center of screen, game is dark, play is pretty much ruined.
Bug 3: Cannot move into obviously open areas. One passage on first island works in only one direction.
Bug 4: Response is out of synch with my directions; some commands get lost, some are obeyed more than a half-second late. This ruins the combat experience.
Play deficiency: The main problem I had with Castaway I is still a joy-killer: GRIND! I was hoping this deficiency in the original design would have been fixed in any sequel. I'm six monsters in, and all I can envision at this point is a repetitive stress injury.
Yes, there's a decent amount of luck in the game. However, I noticed that by carefully looking for favorable combinations of vehicles coming by, I could get significantly better results and eventually got the hard badge. For instance, on the 8-lane divided highway, I restarted until I got a pair of oil trucks in the inner two lanes on one side, and simply took them both out. After a few tries, I got enough collateral damage to pass the level and record the win.
One good aspect is that the inclusion of luck keeps people from posting nice, clean, walkthrough videos (e.g. cheating).
The basic mechanics need clarification and improvement. The skill modification directions tell me to drag an add-on modifier to my base skill, but the dragging doesn't work, and there's no readily available explanation. I have 4 skill points and 20 power points left, but I can't seem to develop my critter's fighting skills.
Also, how do I evaluate opponents? When the list of available opponents comes up in teh coliseum, the stats for the others are run together. It appears that one has, for instance, an experience level / rank of 766.6997K, whatever that's supposed to mean.
I do like some of the shortcuts, but it would be nice to have ready explanations for a lot of this readily available from within the game.
Also, spinning through one refresh after another, just trying to find an opponent with parseable stats, is very time-consuming.
Until I can actually plan my combat and upgrades, I'll think I'll go find a game that works for me.
Cute text, amusing drawings, but the load speed kills the pace of play. This feels like I'm back in Civony/Evony. Consider bringing the writer out of the bottom of that well, so you don't have to send the bucket down for every new page. Two stars for now.
What determines the score on a level? I've already figured out that it's not simply how fast you waste the opponent. I hit a high of 238 on level 4, then beat my previous time by 3 seconds ... and no score boost!
Ha! Followed my own advice, plus the advice from another player (keep the perimeter flat as practical to minimize exposure to zombies), and I just beat this sucker on "nightmare" level. We cured zombie-ism on day 101. Now for a constitution!
Been here, done this, got the points, not coming back.
If the designer had put a significant effort into the game design itself, rather than the trailer, this might have been an amusing little piece. As it turned out, this is a trivial maze game with overarching metrics that don't really mean much to the game play. The music loop got annoying long before I hit the 100th gradian, but the overall graphics effort was good enough that I gave this a second star.
I recommend the simple tutorials Kongregate has for game designers.
It's a nice start, and I don't mind test-playing this base implementation. However, now it's time to turn this into a real game. This version is a trivial toy -- exactly right for the initial user interface testing. However, anyone with enough sense to use distance weapons from a distance and keep the infantry in front will breeze through the game with no mortal danger whatsoever.
The automated moving needs work. Sometimes, one player can walk through another; other times, that's a block. The algorithm for moving the party has no recognition of previous battle formation, so I couldn't really use it to speed up the movement down a long hallway.
Finally, the story line is cute so far, but it really needs fleshing out and integration with the game play and mechanics. I could totally ignore the king and get the job done just as well. The enemies don't seem to relate to the story, in either severity, deployment, or type.
Not for me. The slow grinding seems to be going nowhere. The clunky interface slows down the game a lot. The "graphics" don't do much for me -- a round creature floating over to my figures and declaring damage just doesn't add anything to my enjoyment. The "interaction" with NPCs just isn't interaction. As far as I can see, my only choices are to hit the space bar or not. Also, if you're going to market this game in the English-speaking world, it would be really nice to get someone used to writing in the language.
Frankly, I don't see how this got into "Best of 2010". I grew up with D&D, and this seems to have nothing more than bare-bones hack-and-slash game play.
I've beaten this on "harder" through careful play. So far, I haven't made it through 7 weeks on "nightmare" before hitting that string of fatal bad luck. A user-controllable save would certianly help here, although it also opens up the game for abuse.
As best I can see, winning nightmare requires an up-front good city map: the eight adjacent squares and their extensions must contain plenty of farms and security, a couple of living spaces, research, and hospital: no idle spaces (warehouse, rubble, office, XXOR, park, McD's) allowed in the direct line. In general, winning here requires getting ahead of the game from day 2 and staying ahead: no time for doing the kill/recruit/scavenge/kill/reclaim cycle on a property with no immediate value.
After that, it's being lucky enough to build up the community before the zombies start getting to us.
Re: training -- If you read the tutorial hints, you'll see that survivors can be trained two ways: (1) school; (2) on-the-job training through missions. Guard duty is a mission.
 "Wonderputt"){kind=icon}
 "Pike Club Platinum"){kind=icon}
 "Hack Slash Crawl"){kind=icon}
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 "Roadkill Revenge"){kind=icon}
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 "Fantasy University"){kind=icon}
 "Tentacle Wars. The Purple Menace"){kind=icon}
 "Rebuild"){kind=icon}
 "de Blob 2 Revolution"){kind=icon}
 "Flagstaff: Chapter One"){kind=icon}
 "Epic Battle Fantasy 3"){kind=icon}