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It’s time for the weekly look into gaming Kickstarter campaigns.
Starting with a look back at ones I’ve previously covered, it’s a wide spread of mostly bad news I’m afraid.
Many campaigns have finished this week unsuccessfully, with one being cancelled before it could finish. The cancelled one was The End is Nahual: If I May Say So, with an update after cancelling saying that the team is going to seek funding in other places for the game. Of the failed ones there was Sons of the Void, which unfortunately has now had its development cancelled as a result of the failure; Lost Cities, which apparently is still being released on Steam soon regardless; BLANK, which is still being continued and has just been Greenlit on Steam; Abstract Arena, which had no updates even prior to the ending of the campaign; Fake News!, another one with no updates (and the site still lists it under the game’s previous name – Lizard People); and PipPow, which hasn’t been updated since the campaign finished, although that was merely seven hours before the time of writing.
There is also one campaign still going with less than 48 hours, and a monster task of making up over 4000 euros – The Salt Fortress. Strangely despite its pedigree, Project Rap-Rabbit has also been struggling to raise funds. It has a week to go and the developers recently released a video of gameplay footage in a big to try and drum up interest again.
However, there is a little bit of good news. Firstly Rememorex which I covered last week has passed its goal so we can expect to see that one getting made. Also spaceBOUND is nearing completion having reached its goal weeks before – so that one will be listed next week as a completed successful project.
First up we have a game based on the popular tabletop RPG Pathfinder.
We here at the station love tabletop RPG, and Pathfinder is one of the favourites among some of the staff. Pathfinder: Kingmaker is a isometric single-player version of the game, in which you customise your character the way you would when starting a Pathfinder campaign – race, class, stats and abilities. There are 7 races available, over 10 classes and the developers say that while the core story will take 40 hours, the additional side-quests will take you that long on top of that. 80 hours worth of play doesn’t sound too bad, does it?
Pathfinder: Kingmaker has a $500,000 goal, of which it has made $396,642 with 29 days to go.
Next we have another RPG, this time done in a minimalist top-down style.
Darkened Abyss is a game where you play as someone who has fallen down into the abyss of the title. You’ve lost your memory and as you climb your way out, you encounter ancient works and relics which slowly help you piece together who you are and what has happened. The game itself is played in very dark light to make seeking out discoveries that much more hazardous as you don’t know what could be around the corner. You’ll encounter monster, untouched buildings and puzzles on your way through the abyss.
Darkened Abyss has made $240 of it’s $6,000 goal. It has 30 more days to run.
Next up is a game that describes itself as a “nightmare action-rpg”.
LUCAH is apparently a game about finding oneself, set in a world that is very sketchily drawn in. The game is a simplistic looking pixelart style one, with dark background and a nightmarish tone to it. You play as one of the ‘Marked’, able to use both melee and projectile-based combat styles to ward off the horrifying things that attack you. There is a demo available on the page if you wish to try before you back, and it will be released for PC, Mac and Linux in 2018.
LUCAH has 27 more days to go to make $20,000. It has made $8,168 so far.
Finally we have a game that requires you to build a gang to rule the street racing scene.
The Underground King is a “strategy racing manager RPG”, in which you tinker with junk cars, fix them up, recruit lowlifes off the street to form a team and compete in street races to earn infamy and money. The campaign page itself has a quote from Jim Sterling which praises it and says that this is apparently the last game ever to go onto the now-dead Steam Greenlight. If Jim Sterling likes something, that’s a pretty good endorsement for the game.
The Underground King has made €2,558 of its €15,000 goal and has 23 days left to run.
Thr first of E3’s big panels for 2017 has concluded, and despite my fears, it wasn’t all mostly devoted to EA Sports and what we could expect from this year’s FIFA game.
To give a quick summary, it started off with a drumline for Madden 18 along with a trailer, but we actually started with some Battlefield 1. There were also trailers for the expected EA Sports games – FIFA, more info on Madden and NBA Live (which also accidentally made a cameo during a later part), along with the announcement of two more games. One of those, A Way Out is a co-op game that looks very interesting, and the other was Project Dylan which was finally given a name – Anthem. Unfortunately it only got a teaser of less than a minute, so we’ll have to wait until Xbox’s panel to see more. Need For Speed’s latest game Payback looks to have some interesting narrative to it as well. The most time though was taken up by Stars Wars Battlefront II.
The followup game to the first Battlefront aims to address the concerns raised during the first game through feedback that was described as “constructive” on stage. This means that this time the game will be coming with a singleplayer Story Mode, as well as seeing the return of the Skirmish game mode. There will also be ‘seasons’ of post-release additional game content, and from the sounds of it every single one of them will be free for people who own the game. There was also a big multiplayer match played live on stream, with some impressive looking vehicles and fighting going on. Obviously this was all being played on very good machines, so hopefully it will still look just as good on lower-tier machines. More details can be found on EA’s press release for the game located here.
Need for Speed Payback was also pretty good looking, with footage of part of a mission being shown off called Highway Heist. The game sets you playing as three characters as they take on ‘The House’ – a criminal group who holds all the cards. So a plucky underdog story, and from the gameplay we saw which depicted a lot of car road battling action (complete with cinematic slow-motion crashes as enemies were totalled) as well as scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in an action movie – seems Payback might be one to keep an eye on.
Battlefield 1 was announced to be getting eight new maps this year, two of the night maps with the other six being part of the upcoming expansion In The Name of the Tsar, which will take the game to World War I’s eastern front in September. The Russian army will becoming in the expansion, along with the women’s battalion of death. Lastly they teased a new small-squad competitive gamemode which they said they will give more details on at Gamescon in August.
A Way Out was one of the standouts for me this year, with the co-op experience that follows two men as they escape prison together then go on the run looking amazing. It was deliberately planned out as a splitscreen couch co-op game, and the idea of being able to see both men’s POV is cool. We also saw that one player can be in the middle of a cutscene while the other one is still playing.
As for the sports games, we got the standard fare. FIFA 18’s story mode will be following their protagonist of last year’s game Alex Hunter, as he continues his journey so that could be interesting to watch. Madden is also going to be getting a Story Mode called the Long Shot on a man who witnessed traumatic events and must recover from them through the sport. Finally NBA Live 18 will be using both tournament and street court play to round out your character’s stats, with both sets of play effecting the development of them as a player.
Of course, the big reveal everyone was watching for was the promised teaser for Bioware’s ‘Project Dylan’ and we got it. The teaser was short and only showed off what looked to be a very sci-fi game with lush jungle environments, a large wall and power armour suits. We’ll see more details in tomorrow’s panels though, so stay tuned.
Another week has passed in WoW and I’ve progressed slightly more with both my alts. This week we found a place for Bodeclaw to feel very much like they belonged, and honour the noble sacrifice of a farm animal to a piratey cause.
I’m Pretty Sure This Is Racism…
Sorting out the final bits of the quest for Princess Poobah was pretty easy truth be told. Run round the back of the island, find the biggest ape there (again) and kick Mukla’s ass with the help of my ever trusty boar. The quest completed and the quest marker removed from my list and map (which is quickly becoming one of my favourite things to do), I mounted my Swift Springstrider (which again, is becoming one of my favourite mounts) and swam across back to the mainland coast to run up the beach and hand in more quests.
All I had to do now was try to find that cave entrance. I prepared myself for a long search…
Oh. Well that was easy. Should have listened to Lone when he said “Follow the main path.”
Back in Booty Bay, I set about handing in various quests and learning my way around the levels a little bit better than I had the previous week. This involved a lot of running in and out of buildings and I had to go by paw, as atop my Springstrider I was too tall to fit in some doorways.
I encountered the cow in the second level of a building. At first I was very confused as to why it was here… then realised that downstairs was a leatherworkers. I very quickly left, eyes a little wider for that poor beast’s future. (Yes I know, I’ve murdered many an animal over the last few months – they were quests okay?)
Eventually I found my way up to the top of the tavern and those in charge of Booty Bay. Thanks to my investigations in other questlines, it seems I was to help uncover a plot from the Bloodsails to attack and take over Booty Bay. I accepted the mission to abduct some documents from their encampment. But first I had to take a really good photo for video game confusion’s sake…
I’m so going to find as many Assassin’s Creed spots as I can now. With both alts. Look forward to that in the future.
Anyway, I went along and stole the plans with a little elimination of pirates along the way. Well, they were attacking me and i had to defend myself. And my boar, who as we all know really adores me.
The questline then took me to the enemy crew’s recruiter in an attempt to get an agent on the inside (why is it always me?)
Unfortunately it wouldn’t be that easy. He demanded I bring him the head of the Sailsmaster in Booty Bay to prove my loyalty, as he’d heard rumours of a ‘pandaren hunter’ killing the Bloodsail’s crew members. I returned to Booty Bay and spoke with the Tauren Sailsmaster. And he proposed a plan to pass a cow’s head off as his own by jamming a large pirate’s hat on it.
… Wait, a cow’s head?
Brave farm animal, you gave your life willingly. I will not let you down and let the Bay be taken…
Wait, How Many Worgen Are Here?!
Bodeclaw found themselves on a journey down to a former druidic place to combat the corruption that had taken hold of it by releasing the souls of those taken over the the darkness. Oh, and to collect a sketchbook left behind.
Fortunately there were a lot of other guardians around, attempting to fight back the corruption but it’d taken a fairly firm grasp on the land around me. It was still natural looking, but so much darker and moodier… giant tentacles and flails writhed from the ground, slimes oozed around and fae dragons found buried in the ground…
(Don’t you love glitches?)
The quests I had to do here were fortunately over very quickly. I ducked in, defeated and claimed what I needed and raced back to hand in those quests. Neither one of the quest givers required me to go back in, and thus I continued on my way to Farwatcher’s Glen. It wasn’t that far away and sticking to the paths I got there pretty quickly. And discovered that for once I was not one of a few of my kind…
Farwatcher’s had so many Worgens, with only a few of other races around. I immediately went and set my hearthstone to teleport me back to the inn here and set about collecting up the questlines in the area. I then went upstairs to sleep and discovered that I really needed to relearn pillow.
After a sleep I ventured down to the area a number of my quests required me to visit, the Charred Vale. I had been told there were Black Whelps in the area, and set about hunting them for one of the questlines given to me by a houndsmaster. I also saw Black Drakes but avoided them for the most part. I also had a jetpack to leap up the Vale and upon getting to the right area decided to use it…
I should have known. Where there’s Whelps and Drakes, there be dragons too. And I know enough lore to know that the black dragonflight aren’t exactly friendly, even without having to complete the next part of the quest which is to smash the black dragonflight eggs scattered around me…
Hello there! I am CyberGoblin and I have recently joined the team to cover Final Fantasy 14. In this first post I shall be covering the major changes in the impending second expansion: Stormblood.
First and foremost there are the new areas: Gyr Abania which is the region surrounding Ala Mhigo and for the first time the game will take us outside of Eorzea and into Orthard, the far eastern continent. There are six new zones, a new city, a new hamlet (basically Revenant’s Toll or Idyllshire) and a new housing district.
Each of the new zones will be fairly large – about the size of those in Heavensward but they all have two aetherytes so no repeats of the Dravanian Hinterlands which had none so you had to teleport into the extreme busy end game hub and walk out.
Another big addition is swimming and diving both on foot and with a mount. The former will also be retroactive to some of the old zones (the Costa Del Sol part of East La Noscea have been shown) but diving will not.
There will not be any underwater combat, indeed taking any damage underwater has been confirmed to be a one-hit kill. The development team has publicly mooted the idea of incorporating this into content such as dungeons where you have to evade defences however nothing has been confirmed or shown of this.
The next major new content are the dungeons and trials. At launch there will be nine new dungeons and at least two new trials. Locations seen have included a haunted ship graveyard, some sort of heavy artillery installation and a ruined temple of some sort as well as the underwater palace in the screenshot below.
The two primals in the confirmed trials are Laksmi the Lady of Bliss, a summon from Final Fantasy VI which focused on party healing and this time around is the goddess of the all female lamia beast tribe the Ananta. The other new god on the chopping block is original to Final Fantasy XIV like Ravana was in Heavensward. Susano, also known as Lord of the Revel is in fact one of many deities worshiped by the mercantile turtle beast tribe the Kojin.
To fight these new encounters players will have access to two new jobs – Samurai and the long requested Red mage – both of which are DPS. In addition there are several brand new abilities and mechanics added to the existing ones
Samurai is a lightly armoured melee DPS which will trade utility for extremely high single target damage and will focus around building up to unleash a single devastating attack.
Red Mage on the other hand is a ranged caster, using their rapier and crystal in tandem to combine the two major schools of magic: black and white magics. Red Mage gameplay will focus largely on building up black and white mana before diving into melee range to unleash a powerful burst combo and then diving back out to cast a finisher.
Additionally the cross class system has been reworked. Instead of the current system of having to level certain classes for specific abilities such as levelling Thaumaturge to level 26 to get Swiftcast you instead have a pool of abilities shared by role: Tank, Healer, melee physical DPS, ranged physical DPS and caster. As with before there are 5 slots and a number of existing abilities – some of which were not cross classes before – and some new ones can be picked depending on the instance.
In addition to the dungeons and trials we are also getting two new raid series. The eight man raid will be the Interdimensional Rift which will focus on Shinryu and Omega and will have a normal difficulty and a harder mode which like Alexander will be called Savage. The twenty four man raid series is called “Return to Ivalice” and is being guest written by Ivalice creator Yasumi Matsuno. Aside from the name very little has been confirmed however Game Director Naoki Yoshida has commented that playing Final Fantasy Tactics is probably the best way to prepare.
