E3 Impressions: Vir2L

Vir2L is a small company that previously I had never heard of, but they do offer a number of eye-catching titles on their website, including several for the N-Gage platform. Since I haven’t been paying any attention to the N-Gage, I did a little research on it. For those of you who don’t know, since it’s lackluster debut as a hardware platform, the N-Gage has evolved into a software platform available on many of Nokia’s smarter phones. Interesting. Moving on.

Since Vir2L was sharing a booth with Bethesda, I had to resist the temptation to escape the demonstration I was slated for and attach myself to one of the machines demoing WET. Fortunately, Vir2L’s offering, Medieval Games, was interesting enough to hold my attention once I had my back to WET. Medieval Games was pitched to me as a sort of Mario Party for kids. The graphics are primarily hand-drawn sprites that look colorful and pleasant. The intro at the beginning of a board game was quite charming. It starts the way a typical fantasy story does: with an ancient-looking book that opens to begin the tale. However, instead of showing text, or even pictures, the landscape springs up out of the book just like a real pop-up book. But unlike a real pop-up book, the characters that appear are moving around on the pages like paper cutouts as the narrator provides the context for your quest. Once the game started, however, the playable characters and the game board were rendered in 3D.

The game did actually play out like a simplified Mario Party. You roll the dice, move onto the board and choose one of 30 minigames to compete in. At the end of the game, assuming you did well enough, you get to participate in a final trial and a winner is announced. Though the game mechanics are not good enough to hold an adult’s attention, the game’s producer assured me that Monty Python references and other subtle humor would make playing this game with a child more bearable for a parent. There is a Black Knight in the game, but instead of hacking off limbs, you knock off his armor. The team at Vir2L set out to make a fun game for kids that could be played with a family and I think they succeeded.