Publishing Games Now: Let's Talk About the Incredible "Band Saga"

The past few months of radio silence has culminated in a fantastic new job for me in Osaka. Active Gaming Media has signed me on as their new Content Manager for their indy game translation and distribution service, Playism. Basically that means I am going to be hunting far and wide across the net and convention centers for indy games that look truly excellent so that we can bring them to foreign audiences. Playism has already put out a lot of really killer games, including Gunhound EX which I wrote about some months ago. Take a look at the library on our site, which is quite big at this point and is full of awesome games that are otherwise not available in their non-native regions.

Having just joined the team, there is still a whole lot for me to learn (my god, the sheer number of names and companies I am going to learn about in the near and far future!), and so I'm still getting up to speed even with some of our current projects. What prompted this post was checking out the Kickstarter for Band Saga, the video for which simple blew my f#&king mind. Have a look at the Kickstarter page, but below I'll borrow the video and some of the images to let you get a feel for what it is.

Band Saga is "a musical action rogue-like of epic proportions." It is a game where you utilize the sounds available to you in the game to create and remix tracks. Those sounds then affect the random generation of the SHUMP levels that you battle across. It's a beautifully drawn and animated game. The colors really pop, as do the sprite animations. The creator, Roger Hicks, has both incredible talent and excellent support from his lead artist Hillmon Ancrum. Right now I am actually listening to the OST on a free stream here and it kicks very much ass.

Roger has some really cool ideas for where he wants his game to go, including simultaneous coop play and asynchronous music collaboration. But it is really the core game mechanic that intrigues me most. I can't wait to get my hands on a build so I can see how the gameplay in this video unfolds for the player. There is more information on the Kickstarter, so go there to find out more about the game and if you like what you see (why wouldn't you? This game looks utterly bonkers) then back it and spread the word.

Republique Free in the App Store; Super Famicom Gaming is Go

I just had a quick post to put up. Two things. First, the other day I got Republique for iOS for free from the US iTunes store. I'm not sure if it is still like that, but I got the impression that it was a limited-time-only kind of thing. I had my eye on that game for a while when it was getting made and it looked really cool, but I didn't want to buy it when it did come out. Heck though, for free I'm happy to download and sit on it until I can get around to playing it. Supposedly it is really good, so if you're inclined give it a look.

Second, I've been playing the heck out of Final Fantasy V on Super Famicom and was thinking I'd like to write something about it when I'm done. I played 4 and 6 when they came out in the US and was absolutely fanatical about them. During the gap between the two I wondered what happened and where the next one was, so right now I'm filling in a gap in my SNES childhood that sort of puts some long-lost puzzle pieces into place. There are a lot of games that only came out in Japan that I have always wanted to play, so now that I have finally gotten off my butt and bought what I need to change the batteries in the cartridges I can finally get to them. Some games I want to play because I haven't seen the original Japanese (like Chronotrigger,  Secret of Mana and FFVI), but others like Front Mission, Romancing SaGa 2 & 3, or the SNES Fire Emblem games never came out in their original format back home. Rather than bumbling through my first experience with SNES-era classics on an emulator, I've waited until I could do them right. It's a project that's a long time in the making and I'm really excited to be moving ahead with it now.

That's something to look out for while I am waiting on my 7th Ed rulebook to arrive. I played a game of 6th the weekend 7th came out (on my birthday, actually. Thanks for remembering, GW!), and it was a great time. Definitely a good way to send off an edition I honestly feel was unnecessary considering it only last two years and wasn't that different from fifth. But until it comes in and I've gotten a chance to read and play with it, I'll be more likely to post about modeling and video games than actual 40k battles.

Review: Armored Hunter Gunhound EX

In case you hadn't noticed, almost all of the non-40k games I've reviewed on this blog have been for indy games. That's mostly because many indy games these days feature a lot of the SNES/Genesis era qualities that I have only grown more fond of as I have gotten older. I like pixel art. I like side-scrolling. I like quick, engrossing action. I like gameplay that rewards experience and dexterity. I like brutally hard games, the ones that make you really, truly angry. And I love the glorious, rewarding feeling that washes over me when I finally beat that boss I've fought two dozen times.

I like old-school games.



Armored Hunter Gunhound EX is a proper old-school game in all of those respects and even improves on the conventions I would have expected in the mid-nineties. I haven't met the creative people behind it, but it seems clear to me that they grew up on the same games that I did. They played those games and learned a lot from them. When it came time to make their own game they did what they knew and what they were passionate about making. They infused an old genre with some genuinely funny humor, characters that are refreshingly round and a plot with turns so mature I found myself questioning whether events were really unfolding the way it seemed. All of this comes across smoothly in the translated English, but if you're inclined you can also switch the settings to Japanese to get the original Japanese subtitles and menus.

Yet for all that Dracure Software innovated on a tried-and-true formula, the game still keeps close enough to its roots that it doesn't overstep the boundaries that attracted me to it in the first place. If you have ever played Target Earth, Cybernator or Metal Warriors then you have an idea of what the game plays like. It's a side-scrolling, mech-based shooter. You have infinite boost on the ground and a gauge for your thrusters in the air. Once you get used to it, you can scoot around the stages with the boost on all the time, wreaking havoc on everyone around you with an arsenal of unlockable weapons. All of the weapons I have unlocked have been useful and I find that no matter what setup I have, I use all of weapons constantly. It's really gratifying to unleash volleys of missiles in between auto-cannon and machine gun fire, and then to zoom in with a power fist to smash enemies in the face.

I did find that I had to set up my controller well in order to get the most out of the controls. There are a lot of buttons and you really need to be comfortable using them all in order to beat levels without dying. I use the MotionInJoy drivers and found out that I had to set it to a normal UID and then assign the buttons in the menu using the keyboard (Z for OK, X for cancel!) in order to play. If you're using an XBox controller, I hear it works fine without any fuss.

Gunhound EX is an excellent game available through Steam. It can also be found through Playism, the direct distribution service of the guys who localized it. Their work bridges the gap between the English and Japanese indy game markets. I know many of their in-house translators and editors and I also know some of the freelancers who translate for them. Their work is fantastic across the board. They've localized other excellent titles such as One Way Heroics, Papers, Please, Astebreed, Shadowrun Returns, Machinarium, Inside a Star-filled Sky, Jamsouls and the Pixel Junk games, just to give you a (brief) glimpse of their tastes and portfolio.

On Playin Slayin: a Guide to...Slayin

(Formatting note: I wrote this guide in Google Drive and optimizing it for Blogger would be very unfortunately problematic. If you find it unreadable, please let me know in the comments, but otherwise I'm going to leave it as is.)

If you haven’t already played it, Slayin is a retro-styled arcade game ported over to the iOS. The controls are incredible simple. Your character always runs forward. You can change directions left and right and you have one action button. The action button does something different for each character, but it is essentially both an offensive and defensive move of some kind.

Slayin is really hard. It’s like retro-hard, where you die and die and die and swear to yourself that you are going to beat that damn level even if your fingers fall off as a result. And then they do and you still keep trying. It’s like, retro-hard.

So naturally I wanted help. I turned to Google for answers to certain questions I had while playing. When I searched, I was shocked to find that there was no information. In fact, what I found was a wealth of misinformation. I found advice like “always spend your gold” and “play cautiously, occupying one half of the screen.” This is awful advice if you have a clear picture of the game’s mechanics in mind. Let me shed some light on essential advice to getting to the depths of Slayin’s brutal levels.

1. Combos are gold - No,  really. I mean points are nice and all, but combos give you more gold. It is essential to build a 25+ kill combo and maintain it at all times. Buying certain items means buying up the prerequisite items and the costs add very quickly when combined with armor and potentially health that you might buy. You need a lot of gold early-mid game and that means you need combos. I find myself slayin only two to three enemies at a time so that new ones have time to spawn. If I slay everything on the screen at once it is likely I’ll lose my combo while waiting for new enemies to slay.
2. Gold, in addition to being gold, is also health - This is the other reason why combos are clutch. They keep you alive. The best way to keep your health up is to avoid getting hit...but collecting tons of gold is the next best thing. It can’t protect you from taking tons of hits all in a row, but it’ll keep you topped off.
3. Great as gold is, don’t lose your combo for it - You have to let some loot and gold disappear. There’s often a coin or a chalice that you’ll want to pick up but there are no enemies over there and you’ll lose your combo to get it. Leave it be. Even if you need the health from the coin, let it go. Your combo is worth more health over time than that one coin. I go out of my way to get the giant coins from treasure chests, though. I find they stick around long enough that it’s rare for me not to be able to get them.
4. You don’t always need completely full health - The price of health at the vendor goes up very quickly, and extra quickly for certain characters like the Archer (those with low defense, I suspect, but haven’t tested it). Try to be efficient with how much you buy. Use coins to fill your health and leave a little room for that at the end of your health bar when buying health.
5. Some weapons and abilities are worthless - Just a fact of life in any game. Some of the equipment, units, etc in any game are not worth using. The Knight has a lot of good equipment options in my opinion, but the Wizard and Ninja have some utterly pointless ones. Ice spells in particular, all of them, are terrible. They freeze enemies instead of killing them. The frozen enemies still hurt you if you touch them and they unfreeze soon after. Just avoid stuff that you figure out sucks. So far the things I don’t like to use are those ice spells and any of the Ninja skills except the Shuriken.
6. Horizontal attacks are the best attacks - This is common sense considering that enemies line up along the stage in rows. If you launch a lightning ball across the board it clears out all the ground enemies in that direction. Remember that horizontal doesn’t just mean along the ground. The reason the Shuriken is so good for the Ninja is that it clears out all the air enemies. The Archer’s bounce arrow essentially does both jobs, flying up into the air and then plowing through enemies in a line on the ground.
7. Vertical attacks are also the best attacks - Or rather, they are essential because you need to be able to kill enemies in the air and if your air attack has some horizontal momentum to it, all the better. Again, this is one of the Archer’s greatest strengths. His arrow flies in a parabola, killing a couple air enemies and landing on guys on the ground that are out of the reach of his slide.
8. Master the back and forth shuffle - Your character is always moving forward, so the only way to stay in one place is to run back and forth. You have to do this to time attacks well. It matters a lot with the Archer and Wizard who have some down time between attacks.
9. Strategize your upgrade purchases - You don’t have to spend all gold immediately to get upgrades like many guides suggest. In fact, if you don’t plan out what you are buying and when you might find you don’t have enough when it matters. I’m sorry to say I haven’t got the upgrades progression figured out, but they seem to be linear. They show you three--if you buy the second one you’ll see two more the next time you visit the vendor. But sometimes the list updates on its own. The Wizard can buy the 80gold spell and then wait until the ice spells disappear on their own, skipping to the lightning ball, for example. I wish I describe a more concrete pattern, but you should be aware that there is one.
10. Play the whole board - Many guides advise sticking to one side of the stage and keeping it clear. I tend to start at one end and gradually work my away across the board. Then I get to the other side and having collected all the gold and loot, I edge my way back to the other side where more gold and loot are undoubtedly waiting. Playing only half the board makes comboing difficult because you only have access to about half of the enemies and…
11. Killing fast means leveling fast - Why does it matter what level you are? Because your level determines what enemies spawn and when the stage ends. If a certain enemy tends to  give you a hard time, kill a lot of enemies as quickly as possible and it will stop spawning. I do this most often when I fight spiked walls (really try not to get in a jump/attack/evade cycle that has your jump/attack/evade ending just as the walls crash in since that can get you killed very quickly).
12. The Dragon Scale item doesn’t help at all with high scores - Every guide I’ve seen talks about how you need to get the Dragon Scale ASAP. I don’t know if it might have been patched since those posts were put up, but don’t bother if your goal is to get a high score. It resets all your points and in most cases won’t be worth it. To get a really great score, you have to just play awesomely. The only times I use the scale are to try and clear a quest that I’ve almost finished or to just play more continuously/further in the game.

Character specific notes:

The Knight:

The Knight is pretty good all around and is easy to get accustomed to. Get used to his jump so you don’t bump your head on enemies. Jump often because the other way the Knight frequently takes damage is enemies biting his ankles as they spawn underneath him. Oh, armor is good. Get armor. But some guides advise getting armor every time it is available. You don’t have to, especially if you don’t get hit a lot. But the price of armor does go up after the Death Worm boss, so at the very least get it half-way through that stage.

His weapons:

The Thief Knife:

It’s good because it boosts your luck which gives you more coin and loot drops. That means more health, more points and more gold to shop with. It is short and that means you take more damage, but to a degree the extra gold makes up for this. Still, you have to be proficient in not taking a lot of hits.

The series of weapons with long reach:

There are several of these and the more expensive they are the better they perform. The weapon prereqs come into play, but I have found you can skip the Bone Cleaver and Silver Sword if you buy the Thief Knife, wait a while and then buy the Broad Sword. That unlocks the Lance for the least amount of gold possible if I’m not mistaken.

The speed weapons:

These are great because the speed lets you play very aggressively which helps you keep up combos and clear the levels quickly. I think I might have noticed a bug where if you buy the upgraded armor enchantment while using these weapons then it makes you slower. I’ll have to try that again to test it out.

The Wizard:

She is really powerful and easy to use. Her action makes her invincible and kills what she touches. While not attacking she charges a spell if you have an active one equipped.

Various non-obvious notes:

Ice spells are worthless because they don’t kill enemies. Dancing Flame is amazing, but only in the first half of the game. The higher the level of your spell, the taller your tornado attack gets. There is a limit as to how tall you need your tornado to be. I think the best spell is Lightning Ball because it is cheap, gives you a tornado tall enough to kill almost all air enemies all the time and wipes everything in front of you on the ground when cast. This was the first configuration that I beat the game with. I buy Lightning Ball about half-way through Peloria’s stage because on that level there are a lot of air enemies which makes it difficult to combo with Dancing Flame.

The Archer:

He is a monster in a man’s skin. I love this character because once he gets a few armor upgrades (allowing his arrows to kill multiple targets), his gameplay becomes very technically satisfying. I play him dashing back and forth around the middle of the board and launching arrows toward the board edges. Firing your arrow with perfect timing at the end of your slide results in a golden arrow that doesn’t disappear due to striking enemies. Enemies hit by it always drop coins of a grade 1 higher than your combo allows. For example, with no combo, you will get gold +2 coins. With a 25 kill combo, you will get +3 coins from enemies struck by the golden arrow. It adds a layer of depth to the character, which is fun, but it also allows you to get more coins and thus survive longer.

Arrows:

I always buy the basic arrow because comboing with the Archer using only the slide in unbearable. Then I get the first armor upgrade and the Bounce Arrow after that. Then the rest of the armors and that’s it except for health. I have found the other arrows to be more difficult to use and/or obtain. I like the Light Arrow for example, but getting it means throwing a lot of gold away to unlock it. The bounce arrow, by contrast, is cheap and kills enemies in the air and then in a row on the ground. It’s essentially doing the same job as the Wizard’s Lightning Ball. I really only use the other arrows to complete quests specific to them.

Knave:

I have little experience with the Knave, but I have noticed his jump vector is different from the Knight. For example, getting over the Minotaur boss is harder. Killing enemies in the air requires different timing as well. As with the Thief Knife for the Knight, I find that the Knave’s high luck means you can get a lot of coins which helps keep you alive.

Ninja:

The Ninja has a lot of attacks that I found difficult to use. In my uninformed (I haven’t used her a whole lot) opinion, the Shuriken might be the best weapon, but some of the others are fun. I think the biggest challenge is learning to evade with her. She’s not invulnerable for the whole duration of her jump, but it seems like there might be some frames in there where she can’t be hurt. I’d have to test it more to say anything useful about it. I do know, however, that I often take damage coming down from it.

Tamer:

I played the Tamer. It doesn’t get lamer.

I don’t even understand how he kills airborne enemies. Maybe he’s neat if you figure him out, but I have yet to.

Slayin is a surprisingly deep game considering there are only three buttons and a few upgrades. When I first picked it up I had the impression I would mess with it until I got over the iOS app addiction phase, but I've found that there is a lot of satisfying challenge buried within. I hope this woefully incomplete guide will give you the edge you need to SLAY.

If you have any comments, specific questions or advice to add to this, please post them in the comments!

Warhammer Quest and Star Command Updates

I never did get around to a follow-up post on Warhammer Quest. It's late now and I'm flying out to Hawaii tomorrow, but let me hit the points worth hitting. I had a brilliant first playthrough with the four basic characters. Even having used all but one downloadable characters (6 in all), I think the basic ones might be the best balanced. I found the Trollslayer flavorless and the Warrior Priest too unreliable to be of use. The Archmage was useful though, and in my recent playthrough I've been having fun with the Shadow archer-whatever and the fire mage. I haven't played with the new area, but from the description it looks like new tiles and enemies for the end-game, something WQ desperately needs. If you're looking into the downloads, I say skip the Trollslayer and Priest, but the rest of it has been good in my experience.

While I'm at it, Star Command has some new content. I haven't gotten to the new missions, but they did update the UI in some very useful ways. I honestly forget if I've mentioned this game on 2d6D or not, but it rocks inside and out. It is fun, funny and old skool hard--a rare combo these days indeed. Err, well it was hard for me until I leveled my doods and built up my ship. I'm actually thinking of restarting on a harder difficulty now. Still, it is a very demanding game in terms of tactics and dexterity. I strongly recommend it.

That's all I've got right now. I'll be back to posting when I'm back from vacation. Peace out 'til then!

I Need Worlds of Magic Greenlit, Let's Help Make that Happen

You won't hear me say often how fortunate I was to grow up with three older brothers, but when it comes to my exposure to awesome stuff as I was growing up, there's no denying it. Games were a real big part of all of that. It was my brothers and their friends who brought home Final Fantasy 1. It was my brothers who introduced me to Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk and my older brother's friend who first showed me the glory of F-Zero on SNES. And it was the second oldest of my bros who bought and carelessly left out Master of Magic where I could steal it and lose myself in its deep wells of badassery. 

If you're not familiar with Master of Magic (MoM), it is one of the seminal works of the 4X gaming genre. 4X stands for the four X's of eXplore, eXpand, eXploit and eXterminate, and it is essentially these four activities that make up the whole of the genre's gameplay. 

The 4X genre has withered away into a husk of it's former robust, mighty form. It is comprised of but a few recent titles, but luckily Wastelands Interactive is hard at work on a spiritual successor to MoM, Worlds of Magic. If you look at the features they're working hard to include, at the way they involve the dedicated fan base of the original in their development, at the way their game is almost flawlessly faithful to Master of Magic, it is clear that it is a game made for fans by fans. 

Unless it can't get greenlit because YOU wouldn't vote YES for it on Steam! Yeah, that's right I'm blaming YOU specifically for something that hasn't yet and might not even happen. All right not really, but this game will be seriously excellent if Wastelands Interactive can get the support they need to get the thing out. There is already a demo available and while it is clearly still in development, it is equally apparent that the developers are going in the right direction.

Basically the point is that I want to play this game really badly and I need you help to get this game onto my hard drive. C'mon, be bro. Err, a bro, not my bro. I"m not asking you to buy this so I can steal it off your desk. Just try the free demo and click yes that you'll buy it =)

Steam Sales Oct 3-7

Just a quick post about this week's Steam sales. Though I (probably) won't be getting Borderlands 2 because I'm completely addicted to War of the Roses right now, it's 66% off. But even better than that is that XCOM: Enemy Unknown is 75% off!

I've been playing XCOM since I was a little kid. I even played the original only about a year before the new one came out. Enemy Unknown is not only a great XCOM game, but if they'd finally release the source code for modding it would make an incredible template for any turn-based, skirmish system. I dreamed of a 40k mod almost constantly throughout my 100 hours of blissful gameplay. If you like games that are old-school hard, and if you want to really challenge your tactical thinking get this while it's cheap! Then after you've finished the awesome campaign mode, hit the multi-player assuming there are still people playing. It gets so incredibly intense. Seriously, the suspense and atmosphere created by the fog of war is nerve-wracking at times.

Just some notable video game news you might not have noticed if you don't log into Steam regularly. On another note, you may find me posting about War of the Roses sometime soon. I got into that game pretty late, but I'm stunned by how excellent it is.

Satellite Reign (Syndicate, basically) Incoming

Here is another Kickstarter project that I have my eye on. It's by the creator of Syndicate Wars, which I never got around to, but it looks just like the original which I played religiously.

Space Hulk Pre-orders on Steam

Seems I was actually ahead of the curve on something. Seems a lot of people are finding out about the Space Hulk game only now that it is up for pre-order on Steam. There's no question as to whether or not I will buy it. The only question is whether I buy it for iOS or for Steam. I intend (finally) to get an iPad when the next one releases and I'd rather have this for that and my iPhone. Especially if it supports iCloud saves the way Warhammer Quest does. Being able to pick up where I left off on either device would be a really attractive feature. I also would like to be able to play during my break at work.

I am still enthralled by Warhammer Quest on iOS. I have by now beaten the basic content and bought all the extras. I had to start a new campaign because the Skaven content begins at level 2 and I didn't want to just blow through it with a maxed-out party. I hope Space Hulk follows up with more excellent UI design and fun gameplay. I feel like this is a very good time to be a gamer/hobbyist.

Full Control will release Space Hulk on August 16th, 2013.

A New Age of VR: Omni and Occulus Rift

So my brother was kind enough to tip me off to this kickstarter project for the Omni, a VR movement apparatus. It can be used with the Occulus Rift to create a very realistically engaging game experience. I have almost no interest in playing Skyrim after I sank hours of my life into Oblivion (funny how that phrase works out so perfectly), but I would actually play it with this if for nothing other than the exercise. The Skyrim world is unbelievably big and navigating it on foot would be a blast compared to running a treadmill. And while you're at it you might as well rob a whole town, run from the cops and slay a dragon. Crazy excited to see this become a widely supported consumer product.

More Classics Ported to iOS: Chainsaw Warrior

Wow that's really convenient. Yesterday I got curious about upcoming GW games was thinking to post what I found of this on DakkaDakka yesterday. Turns out I don't have to say much because Natfka has already covered it very well over at Faeit 212.

Very briefly, it's a single player game where you race against the clock to save NYC from an extra-dimensional horde of zombies and mutants. I love that they're trying specifically to maintain the bodaciously radical 80s feel. And the fact that they're embracing the camp that comes with a title like Chainsaw Warrior. That's refreshing in an age of games where many seem to be taking themselves all too serioiusly.

Chainsaw Warrior is developed by Auroch Digital and is scheduled to release later this year.

Review: Warhammer Quest for iOS (and my 100th post! Woo!)

Warhammer Quest is f%&#ing awesome. I'll keep going, but really I could stop there. I bought it just to review it for 2d6D, but I am hopelessly addicted at this point. It's worth the five bucks I paid for sure and I think that's saying a lot because I consider anything over 1-2 pricey for iOS games. Unfortunately WHQ was one of those games I always saw people playing at the LGS, but could never afford myself. As a result I'll be looking at this purely from the stand point of video games. Feel free to chime in if there are things that should be said about the board game original and where the devs were coming from with this iteration.

You start out with four classes unlocked: the Grey Wizard, the Marauder, the Dwarf Ironbreaker and the Wood Elf Wayfarer. They're exactly what you might expect from fantasy game classes. The basic game play is tactical turn-based combat. You cannot move after attacking, so positioning gets satisfyingly complex. It's really easy to get yourself into a situation where warriors you need combating certain enemies simply can't get there and your team gets picked apart one-by-one.

Each of the different characters has a number of special abilities and character-specific equipment types. I actually feel that the classes are sufficiently differentiated. That is something that really matters to me in dungeon crawlers as it is something that is rarely done right. The Grey Wizard, for example, is very flexible and can attack, support and move in a number of useful ways, but doesn't do the raw damage that a Marauder does. The Marauder on the other hand can put out ridiculous volume of attacks but doesn't take hits like a Dwarf Ironbreaker. And the Wayfarer is nigh useless in melee, but once he has a good number of ranged attacks, he can kill distant enemies very well. The interplay between these classes makes for a fascinating, strategic game with lots of opportunities for tactical optimization.

The game does fall short in a few areas. First is the downloadable content. It is pretty expensive to unlock everything for the game. It already starts off at 5 bucks. Then the three unlockable characters are 2.50 each and the unlockable area with new monsters is another 5. So to have all of the content you're looking at a game that is really 17.50, much more than I'd pay up front if that were the base price to get all the content. Then there are also in-game pay-to-win options like buying gold, but luckily the game design isn't skewed toward driving you at their store the way Diablo 3 was. So far I have unlocked the Archmage and he's pretty fun to use. I was worried at first that he would end up being way too good (as a way of getting more buyers) and that he'd unbalance my party, but that hasn't been the case at all. If anything, I think the Ironbreaker may be more useful.

Second, the story is terribly dull and has no bearing on the player's experience. I never see my characters outside of the dungeons and my choices seem to have little in the way of meaningful consequences. Characters that you meet are likewise text-box entities and the text does little to give me an idea of these throw-away characters' personalities. As a result, I have no interest in what is happening or why. The background and story are there if you want to read them, but it doesn't build a believable world for me to get lost in the way good story-based games should. The fluff is a sauce for me to pour on a steak that doesn't exist. You might say "It's not really that kind of game, so why not let it go? The writer isn't trying to be the R.R. Martin of the iPhone." That is true and totally fair. I honestly can't tell if I'd rather they left all this out so I don't have to skip it. Knowing it is there is probably satisfying at some base level, maybe simply because I have been skipping bad story in games for many years (what? They can't all be as great as FF6 or Bioshock =P).

Thirdly, there are a LOT of random rolls made in the game. There are tons in combat, but that's where it matters least to me. Sometimes when traveling and ending turns in dungeons, random events occur that do nothing more than debuff you for no reason. It interrupts gameplay and has almost no noticeable bearing on the game. Generating a random number of magic points to use for casters can be irritating too. This gets especially bad when you are randomly ambushed in dungeons and have are given no magic at all. When that happens a few turns in a row you quickly run out of reserve power (that doesn't regenerate in dungeons) and find yourself dead due to no particular fault of your own. I'm not playing on Hardcore mode yet where your characters die permanently, but I can tell I will be very frustrated to lose a whole save due to some silly bad luck.

In closing, I want to remind you that I was sort of stretching to find some flaws in the game. The in-app purchases aren't necessary for the game to be a very good time. The story is so minimal and meaningless that skipping it doesn't get in the way of having fun in the slightest. The randomness probably comes from the board game, so if you played that you might be nostalgic for it in the first place. Losing a save would stink, but really without that most of the fights are so easy that there wouldn't be enough challenge without it. I've had a great time with the game so far and I expect to keep playing it for some time to come. I don't know whether or not I can recommend the additional content, but the base product is more than worth the few dollars it costs.

Edit: Something I forgot to mention before is that there is no multi-player. Where I was really disappointed in Talisman HD for that, I really don't think it takes anything away from the WHQ experience. Having more than one person playing might make the game cumbersome and slow. Playing a whole party is fun and works very well, just as it does in other RPG dungeon crawlers.

Given the game a try? What did you think? Got a favorite class?

Links to the Eternal Crusade AMA Videos

Just in case you missed them here are the twitch streams of the Eternal Crusade AMA. There are two. Here is the first and here is the second. Enjoy!

Happy 5th Anniversary, App Store! Thanks for the free games!

Apparently there are a number of free games available on the App Store. Here is the Kotaku link I found out about this through. They may not have a full, comprehensive list of what's free, but I did manage to pick up some games I've been wanting for a while.

In other news, Limbo is apparently on iOS now. If you never played it on the console, it is an action/platformer/puzzle/horror game with a delightfully eery aesthetic. I strongly recommend it.

What will Eternal Crusade be like?

I thought I'd just look around and see what kind of actual information I could find on Eternal Crusade. It seemed from the Reddit AMA that a lot of people already know plenty about the game and what it will be like. So what will it be like?

Here is an article on it from mmorpg.com. In it there are some interesting bits of information, but the key points as I see them:

• Free-to play. Ork Boyz represent the free element of their faction and other armies and their progression paths appear to unlock through payment. 5 free Ork Boyz are equal to about one paid Space Marine in terms of power.
• 3 month wars with clear winners. When they end, a war for a new planet begins.
• Destructible environments must be rebuilt using resources gained from winning battle and taking resources.
• Procedurally generated dungeons for PvE. Focus on PvP, however.
• Large-scale battles
• 3rd-person action blending shooting and close-combat

I'll be honest, I'm likely to try this game almost no matter what. 3rd-person, 1st-person, RPG or FPS, I'd still want to see what it's like. The problem here for me and probably for many other is the F2P aspect. I hate F2P games. They are invariably pay-to-win games. I'm going to want to play my beloved Eldar and it will be irritating if it costs a lot to play the way I want. I'd honestly rather buy the game or even pay a subscription fee than be charged individually for options and character classes. I always feel like I'm being swindled when making those transactions. I suppose that setup works for some people, but I resent it and always quit playing before I fork my money over.

On the other hand, my brother made a great point about how Ultima Online could have kept its player base up without turning its back on the in-game thieves and murderers who loved the game. His idea was to only charge the hard-core crowd and make the game free-to-play for people who aren't allow to initiate fights with other players. This would give a huge herd of noob sheep for the hardcore wolves to prey on. The game was already playing out that way in the first place, with noobs hiding and retreating from player-killers anyway, so this would just ensure that they were more likely to put up with getting shanked and robbed from time to time.

I really don't know if it will work in Eternal Crusade. Assuming the game turns out to be fun in the first place, I really hope the F2P elements work out because MMOs are only as fun as the population they boast. There's nothing sadder in one of those games than ghost towns and empty dungeons.

Devs of 40k MMO, Eternal Crusade, post AMA on Reddit

Here is the link to their AMA thread. Have a look see and ask them some good stuff! I just want to know how their game will be different from WoW. I won't even try it if I think there is a chance I have to collect the scalps of 35 grots to get a new pair of pants.

What was your question for them?

Talisman: Prologue for iOS - A Single-player Board Game. Yes, really.

Talisman: Prologue is the adaptation of the classic Talisman board game by Games Workshop. Board games are a genre that I think work exceptionally well on touch devices because they do not rely on sensitive controls or twitch-gameplay. They also provide a portable version of something usually impossible to play on the go. For board games, that means for most people that the kids can play something together and keep themselves occupied. They are also still interacting with one another, rather than anti-socially gluing their noses to their own individual portable game systems. For gamers without kids this might mean being able to play with a friend in public like at a cafe without struggling to find a place that will allow you to unpack a big game board onto a tiny little table. Or perhaps gaming together on long train rides. To put it briefly, multi-player modes that utilize a single device are the essential feature in a board game adaptation. So it begs the question, where the hell is that feature in Talisman: Prologue?

Before I even got to load up the game that was my very first question to my friend Jeremy who tipped me off about Talisman's release (thanks bro). His thought was maybe that's what the "Prologue" subtitle is all about--that it's the prologue because the multi-player will be added or released later. He's more forgiving than I am when it comes to what ought to be expected from game developers. I'm a demanding consumer, in part because in my work obvious deficiencies and flaws are met with unrelenting support before a product is ever even shipped as a prototype.

Gamers in general are very demanding, in my opinion. We are very experienced in the products and have no doubt witnessed a broad spectrum of quality. If this game didn't play so well as a single player game I'd probably not put much more effort into writing about it than to say it's a waste of money (like Kill Team was). It's not a waste at all...assuming they do actually implement multi-player. From the looks of their Facebook page, it seems they will and I'm really glad for that because they've done a good job with the game so far. But it's not complete yet.

I don't give out scores. I'm more interested in saying whether I feel a product was worth my money or not. And more importantly, whether or not I think it is worth yours. At 450 yen, I can't say I feel the single-player version of Talisman will be worth it in the long run. It's four times as much as some other games I've put tons of time into. I don't expect to get as much play out of a game that doesn't involve a lot more than pressing a dice roll button and picking up cards. Random events are fun when they influence the outcome between two or more people and you can marvel at terrible and fantastic luck together. But when played alone, the board game experience is a lonely and unfulfilling one. Talisman: Prologue will be worth it when the multi-player is released, but until then save your money.

Worlds of Magic: A Spiritual Successor to Master of Magic

If you've ever played a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) genre game, then you have probably already lost hours of sleep to the dangerously addictive Master of Magic. It came out when I was a kid and I've gone back to it a number of times in the last...19 years? Damn, that makes me feel old. Anyway it was an amazing game. It is terrifically customizable and has endless replay value...except that even the version updated to run better on Windows 7 machines still only runs as well as it did when it released. This is a game that more than anything just needs to run cleanly. Well it seems these nutty fans are making the game's spiritual successor, Worlds of Magic.

It may not be directly related to 40k, but I think these games would/do appeal to 40k gamers for their variety, customization and strategy. At the least, go click Steam's "I'd buy this" so it can get greenlit. I wanted to play this about a decade ago. Let's go already!

Bonus: An interesting interview by Adam Smith over at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, discussing Worlds of Magic with the lead designer and the producer from Wastelands Interactive.

Star Command Release Trailer - Thursday, May 2nd 2013

I really wanted to post this yesterday, but I had my hands tied with some last minute hobbying and packing my figs. Star Command is a really killer-looking spaceship simulator/strategy game. From what I've seen it has a cheeky sense of humor and should resonate with any who's played a lot of old school PC games like Star Control 2. The game has finally launched and is selling at a reduced price for the first week. I haven't gotten far into it, so I can't say much more. It's cheap though, and I expect it to deliver in the long run. I'll try to write something more detailed about it later on, but for now I think the trailer says plenty.

Space Hulk Adaptation on iPad and PC: 2013

 

Space Hulk: Interview and Game Play

There's a link to an interview with Thomas, of Full Control which is currently developing a Space Hulk game for PC and iPad. Judging from the game play footage the project still needs some work but it looks incredibly promising. While the old Space Hulk PC game was very faithful to the board game for its terrifying atmosphere and the unforgiving death it dealt your troops, it was more of an action game. It certainly wasn't that they tried to reproduce the board game in software.

This is what I'm most excited about with this new release. It's clear that they're putting a lot of work and love into making a faithful digital version. This is actually something I'm dying to see happen with regular 40k, though the effect it would have on model sales almost definitely prohibits it. Still, it works for Wizards of the Coast with their Magic video game on XBox Live. The secret there was for them to successfully monetize it. They allow players to buy digital versions of the cards and build decks in-app. A similar system would work for 40k in terms of software, but realistically the production costs for GW's models is much higher than the cost to print cards. And then there is the need for the hobby culture to promote and cultivate sales. It's not anything I actually expect to see happen, but that's probably a good thing if for nothing other than the amount of time I would lose to it.