The Broken Hourglass Weekly Update

Planewalker Games’ official website has received its usual weekly update for The Broken Hourglass, this time showcasing how the WeiNGINE can be “abused” to include a match-three game.

With a powerful and flexible scripting language, it turns out that a surprising range of abuses are possible. We thought we were pretty clever when we created an NPC who could play a credible game of cards with the player. We were recently taken to school by engine creator Westley Weimer himself, who decided to spend a few hours this past weekend taking our game engine in a slightly unexpected direction…

Yes, that’s a match-three game being played in Mal Nassrin’s arena.

I actually like minigames like this in RPGs, but only if they’re entertaining, 100% optional, and have some meaningful relationship to the game world. KotOR’s Pazaak is a good example of a minigame done right.