By Adam Smith on October 19th, 2011 at 9:46 am.
Remember Dofus? I don’t know if it really appealed to our target demographic of landed gentry and high ranking naval officers, but it is a cartoony, apparently hugely popular and somewhat adorable French MMO that has already spawned a strategy role playing spinoff, Wakfu, and developers Ankama are now releasing a free browser-based tactical game based on a sport in Dofus’ world. Is Dofus’ world actually Dofus? I don’t know and I don’t intend to find out right now. Instead, I’m going to drop a trailer and tutorial for Gobbowl right here and inform you that it will be playable on the 26th of this month.
I wasn’t interested, I wasn’t interested at all. And then, out of nowhere, HEXES! Then I was interested. It’s free. It has graphics that don’t completely irritate my eyes. It has hexes. It’s turn-based. I’ll end up trying it, I know I will. It may become a guilty pleasure.
Here’s another video, which shows more details of the rules and tactics. Be warned though, there is an emotionless swearing youngster narrating.
19/10/2011 at 10:37 Ian says:
Hmm. That actually looks like it could be fun.
And hideously time-devouring.
19/10/2011 at 10:43 Shar_ds says:
So, cute Blood-Bowl then?
and +10 points for Littlest Hobo reference at the end of the Tutorial!
19/10/2011 at 10:53 Choca says:
We shall refer to it as Cute-Bowl from now on.
19/10/2011 at 11:13 Quine says:
My butler might like this.
19/10/2011 at 23:55 FRIENDLYUNIT says:
Hmmmm. Yes.
Perhaps I’ll give it to one of my ensigns to investigate.
19/10/2011 at 11:28 Cinnamon says:
It hardly seems like a proper sport with all those animals on the field and nobody chasing them with dogs or shooting at them. The world has gone mad these days but what can you expect when you let the lower orders have so much free reign.
19/10/2011 at 11:53 Frosty840 says:
Anticipation that “playing” will involve either a billion hours of relentless grind or paying a ludicrously high monthly fee for basic access to a game I’m only really interested in looking at.
::shrug::
19/10/2011 at 12:28 pakoito says:
THE CURSE OF THE BLOOWBOWL DICES IS UPON ME.
Seriously, double 3 dice reroll, six ones. Next turn two more and a 2.
19/10/2011 at 12:38 Maldomel says:
I came back to playing Dofus recently to see about some changes they made, and I’m still in love with that game. It is hugely popular indeed in France, but I think you really gotta speak French to enjoy the game to it’s fullest.
Dunno about the boufbowl though (that’s how we say it in French), sounds like another spin-off project for Ankama to make more money by luring innocent players. (Yes I do love this Dofus but I also have long love-hate relationship with the studio making it, Ankama corp.)
19/10/2011 at 12:43 Temple says:
Dofus are the eggs in the world that give you powers if I remember rightly.
This was the first online game that I was not addicted to (because you cannot get addicted to games)
Got out of it before Wakfu came along and so I cannot even tell the difference between Dofus and Wakfu, but if you are looking for a weird world of turn based combat you might like Dofus.
Except the world was over run by people multi-accounting and botting so they could have teams of 8 farming for drops such that the game was designed with that in mind and a single player was not going to get enough drops. Still liked the game and the crafting though.
19/10/2011 at 12:57 The Tupper says:
Sir.
I wish to complain about the continued misuse of your esteemed organ in publishing ‘articles’ on ‘games’ such as erm, ‘this’. Mere trifles that get in the way of a healthy, vigorous man-shoot.
Yours disgustedly,
Rear Admiral (ret.) Godfrey Tupper
19/10/2011 at 15:04 lokijki says:
Wakfu is more of a sequel to Dofus than a spin-off; I got into the closed beta earlier this week and it is absolutely beautiful. Shaping up to be one of my most anticipated MMOs.
19/10/2011 at 18:03 sinister agent says:
Dofus is the MMRPGKMRG I played longest when I was in my brief “hey, maybe they’re not all shite” phase.
Almost several hours, in fact.
This seems like a curious spin-off. Will have to see what comes of it.
19/10/2011 at 21:35 Tatourmi says:
It doesn’t sound like a kid to me, more like a weird voiced woman.
Also: Ankama is indeed a very big company nowadays, they’ve even got their in house anime and stuff. And their TV-channel, kinda. But what is really important is that most of the guys I’ve met or saw were lovely.
06/04/2012 at 04:30 dellphukof says:
Glad to finally see a game release and i must say i love it ! (But i’m a bit of a fanboy) I really loved the room title, and the bit with “it was me, it wasn’t me…”. I also liked the references to Mario and maybe Portal but i’m not sure, but maybe i should just shut up…It looks like I got the “tragedy” version…is it a random thing? All the room titles are things like “Corruption, Death, Rebirth” etc vi cam tay.