News from Lik Sang

“Around a year ago Lik-Sang sponsored the Dream On Amateur Coding Competition, challenging everyday folks to create their own Dreamcast titles. Entries were judged by quality and playability rather than flashiness, and the winners were granted a fantastic and very unique prize: to have their game professionally mass-produced and published.

Both winning titles, Inhabitants and Maqiupai have been published by GOAT Publishing, the company that brought Cryptic Allusion’s hot-selling homebrew Feet Of Fury into the hands of gamers world wide. With these two titles however, the CD burning company GOAT outsourced to, changed their technology, and could no longer produce DC games during a long while. Naturally this caused some headaches during the past few months, and the release dates slipped. Today however, it’s all in the past, and the two titles are here, selling for US$ 14.90 each.

Time wasn’t wasted while delayed however, as both games received a lot of extra features that had not been included in the original contest versions. Inhabitants gained extra tile sets and a slightly revised menu system, while Maqiupai received an additional 16 gameplay boards and four new musical tracks.

Both games have no region protection, and are suitable for all MIL-CD compatible Dreamcast systems, which is every console from October 2000 and earlier. After that time MIL-CD reading was removed from the last few Dreamcast consoles as Sega realized it was contributing to piracy.

Inhabitants – Cool puzzle game with 4-players fun mode

Inhabitants is a puzzle game that will put your skills to the test as you work your way through level after level of tile clearing action! Play with three friends in competition mode or play by yourself and unlock many new modes of play. Inhabitants will have you thinking about how to remove tiles and get the best bonuses possible. With millions of opportunities to improve your old scores, Inhabitants will move into your thoughts for a long time!

Inhabitants will remind you of many other popular games where you need to remove tiles of the same color, only this time there is a twist – You can only remove tiles one away from the tile you are on. The maximum tiles you can remove is therefore five, and that will give you what is known as a four-way combo. Can you set up the board the right way to get tons of four way combos and get insane scores?

Maqiupai – Get into Ancient China’s crazy mah-jong (in English)

Maqiupai is the classic game of Mahjong with a modern twist. You need to remove all of the tiles in each challenging puzzle before time runs out. You can only remove tiles that match and are free on one side to be removed. You’ll have to use lots of strategy to make your way through this variant of Mahjong that has also gone by the name of Shanghai.

What sets Maqiupai apart from the other versions of Shanghai that have been released is how the game is played – there are two modes to Maqiupai: Challenge and Time Attack. In challenge, you will set to the task of removing tiles as quickly as possible. You work as the clock works against you, counting down to your fate. Luckily, you have the use of Shinobi Jokers on your side – tiles that will clear the board of any other tiles like them. After you have unlocked a table in Challenge mode, you will be able to play it in Time Attack and compete with others from around the world by submitting your highest scores online”