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Sometimes people have a drive in mind when they make their game. They may want to make a spiritual successor to a game they enjoyed when a child, or seek to create a game that they’ve always wanted to play themselves but no one else ever made. Or, sometimes they just want the world to know how much they love one particular make of car.
Russian Car Driver is a racing game that challenges the player to “Drive like Russian”. A big thing is made in the game of how ‘wonderful’ the VAZ 2108 car is, with characters in the story mode saying how good it is and the promos talking about the car as if getting to drive it is a huge deal. The car itself can be kind of customised, with the body colour and hub colour being the main two options, with special unique ‘styles’ available for unlock when you complete certain tasks in the game’s modes.
Speaking of which, there’s about five modes with four of them being racing or driving challenges of sorts and the fifth being a freedrive mode with optional story mode. However, upon launch some of these modes are locked and you once again need to complete a task to unlock them. Racing is what this game was sold upon being, and with a standard race and a rally you at least have options there.
The freedrive mode with story is where I spent a lot of time though, driving around and trying to discover what would (cows, deer, road signs, fences) and wouldn’t (buildings, bears, other vehicles, some larger trees) be flattened under the wheels of my tires. Every now and then the story would advance by the next mission quest text being sent via texts on the phone, in slightly broken English. I’m giving that the benefit of the doubt though, as we’re apparently in Russia and English is not the first language there. Hell, it adds a little charm for me. What confuses me is that even when the quest giver is standing next to you, they will still text you rather than talking. I didn’t think everyone was that plugged into their phones. You also gain experience by driving around, but every level up is rather sudden, with the game suddenly coming to a pause as the ‘level up’ attributes menu just pops up without a sound. Choose which attribute to improve and then suddenly you’re back in the game. It’s rather jarring, and what’s worse, picking up the 25 special information manual pickups on the car’s history will trigger the same jarring silent cut from the game.
This game does not look good, it doesn’t handle crisply although not bad at all, and frankly the races were a pain to try and win. The control system was a bit fiddly and even when I got comfortable with it, I’d still sometimes be losing control. This game is in the ‘so bad it’s good’ category for some and I can see why.
Welcome to your weekly update on things happening within the Kickstarter Gaming campaigns currently running.
As always, we start with a recap on previously covered campaigns. It’s a short recap this week, as last week we basically refreshed our list. Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game has made its target with plenty more time to go in its campaign, and Pixel Princess Blitz has a lot of funding with plenty of time to finish up and reach its own goal. Best of luck to the campaign runners for that one.
First up we have a 2D sandbox game that tries to take the best and make it better.
Built with concepts and ideas borrowed from other games of this genre, Project Life is an attempt to combine the best elements of the survival sandbox game and make it amazing. There will be some degree of ‘realism’ in that creatures in the world will have some sort of AI to dictate actions, relationships with other creatures in the world as well as time passing to allow them to age. The graphics maybe aren’t the best, but such things can be updated if the game gets funded if the developer plans to.
Project Life has 28 days to go to make its full £2,000 target, of which it still has to make any.
Next up we have a game that’s already in pre-Alpha.
Legrand Legacy is set in a world that is in the grip of a war between two kingdoms that makes life chaotic. You play as a young slave named Finn who wakes up without any memory of how he got to where he is, yet quickly discovers that he is in possession of strange and mysterious powers. You must now fight to prevent the ‘Second Coming’ and try to restore balance to a war-torn world, as something much darker waits in the wings for the stage to be set…
Legrand Legacy has a £40,000 goal and has 24 days to go. It has made £27,609 so far.
The Pedestrian takes you into the world of ‘signs’, as you try to connect road signs, restroom signs and more to make your way across the world as well as solving puzzles contained within them too to continue to advance. It’s a creative idea, and we’re seeing a lot of indies take us into worlds inside ‘mundane’ objects more and more now a days. The Pedestrian already has a playable demo available too, so you can try before you pledge!
The Pedestrian has made $10,083 of its $21,000 goal, and has 23 more days to go.
Finally, we round off with a game about pitching bad ideas.
Pitch Deck is a card game that combines weird ideas with real companies, and challenges people to make up pitches for ideas. It basically takes the mick out of terrible startup ideas, and that was what the makers themed it around, working for a year to get it ‘perfect’. There’s even a $5,000 tier for companies to get their own company included in the game.
Pitch Deck has a $20,000 target and 23 days to go. It has made that goal already – so this is not a failed startup at all!
For those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘smurfing’ refers to the act of using a low level character or account that is below that of your main accounts, to ensure that your opponents are of a level of skill significantly below your own. There’s some debate on whether people using accounts that are only a bit lower also counts, but the generally accepted definition means that it’s not a well-accepted practice among the main competitive gaming communities that exist. It strikes as very unsporting behaviour.
So no big surprise that an Overwatch pro player has come under fire for streaming himself not only doing it, but laughing about it while he was doing it, as well as commenting on their ineptitude compared to him. He even typed ‘I fak you’ into the chat to rub it in for his poor overwhelmed opponents.
The account used the alias IDDQ6, alleged to be a Swedish player known as IDDQD, and thus many outraged viewers have taken to the Overwatch forum to demand some sort of karmic payback for this show of sheer douchebagginess. The stream also went up on Youtube, and a number of the comments follow a similar line – making it very clear that the community does not think that the smurfing was in any way funny or entertaining.
Among suggestions for punishment, there has been a call from a few for ‘IDDQD’ to be permanently banned on all his accounts, with one of the top comments simply saying “Blizzard, wake up, he’s smurf streaming and you’re not banning him”
While I’m not sure a permaban is the right punishment, it’s up to Blizzard if they want to drop any sort of hammer to discourage this sort of gameplay for the future.
