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These last two days have seen those final 8 who made it through the group stages last week fighting on the stage at Blizzcon for the title of Hearthstone World Champion of 2015. Asia-Pacific was the region with the strongest showing, having 3 players to Europe and China who had 2 players each and the Americas sole remaining player.
The Friday saw the players matched in single elimination best of 5 matches, with the first match-up seeing Kranich of Asia-Pacific, the only player to have made it to the final stages of the World Championship this year and last being knocked out by Thijs of the Europe team in a hard fought match that had all 5 rounds played as both players fought against elimination. His fellow European player Ostkaka was up next against the self-proclaimed Shaman Master Pinpingho also of Asia-Pacific; and won a convincing 3-1 victory against them.
Next saw a Chinese player fighting the third Asia-Pacific player as DieMeng was matched against Kno. Despite winning the first match against Kno, DieMeng was eventually beaten 3-1 as Kno won 3 games in a row to make it to the semis. The final quarter-final match saw HotForm of the Americas region facing off against Zoro of China and it was once again a hard fought battle that needed all 5 rounds to be resolved. Although at once point he went down 2 games to 1, HotForm eventually won two games back-to-back to advance and keep the Americas region in the tournament while also eliminating the last player for China from the tournament.
Saturday came and brought with it the semi-finals and the final match itself for the title. The semis consisted of both the European players, Thijs and Ostkaka being matched against each other which meant Europe was guaranteed to get to the finals no matter who won; and Kno and HotForm fighting to keep their region in contention for the title. Both semi-final matches were 3-2 results, every player fighting their hardest and using as much of the timer rope as possible to choose their moves carefully.
At some points during the matches between Thijs and Ostkaka both players were playing right down to fatigue (the point where there are no more cards to draw so players take increasing damage each turn instead), but in the end Ostkaka won the last game although Thijs did well to come back from a 2-0 to equalise the score and his performance was excellent.
The match between Kno and HotForm was more back and forth, with first Kno, then HotForm taking the lead at certain points before they went 2-2 and played their final game. Both players were on top at certain points during the game, but eventually HotForm was able to find purchase and managed to defeat the sole Asia-Pacific player to take the Americas region into the finals.
After a little pause for a breather the final match was finally on: Ostkaka of Europe verses HotForm of the Americas. Both players had seen tough matches to get this far, although Ostkaka had gotten to the final 8 through winning more of his first matches with HotForm having gotten in by winning matches in the lower brackets having lost some of his original first matches. Both players played hard and used their time wisely, with games constantly tilting back and forth in each player’s favour; but in the end each time Ostkaka with his thought to board placement managed to emerge on top. Ostkaka took the title of World Champion of 2015 with a 3-0 victory over HotForm.
Congrats to the new World Champion Ostkaka! Well played!
The last two days of the four-day opening for the Hearthstone World Championship finals have played out and out of the sixteen who started on the first day, the eight who have advanced to play on stage at Blizzcon next weekend have been decided in rounds of nail biting, clever play from all.
Day three was dedicated mainly to seeing which of the eight who won their first matches on days one and two would secure the first four places in the Blizzcon line-up and saw an equal balance in the number of matches that were more dominated by one player of the pairs and those matches that ended up coming down to the final game to decide who would advance. Of those four games played, the players who advanced were Thijs and Ostkaka of the European team; and DieMeng and Zoro of the China team, with Zoro in particular pulling out a win against the only player in the sixteen who had been in the 2014 tournament: Kranich of the Asia Pacific team.
So for the eight still remaining in contention, it all came down to the four matches on the forth day of the Group Stages – the winners would claim the remaining four spots at Blizzcon and the other four would not. It was as simple as that.
Funnily enough, every match that was played on day four was a pairing that had already been played earlier in previous days: Kranich vs LifeCoach and Pinpingho vs Purple from day one; JAB vs Kno and HotForm vs Neilyo from day two. While there was a chance for the players who had previously lost the match up to win this time, the resulting winners were the same as the first time each pair had met before. Of particular note was that Kranich made up for his day three defeat by going 3-0 against LifeCoach during the first games of Hearthstone played on the day; and HotForm won a very narrow match against Neilyo going from losing 1-2 to winning his last match with a deck (Rogue) that was at a disadvantage against his opponent’s Warrior deck to take the spot at Blizzcon with a 3-2 victory. This also made him the only member of the Americans team to advance to Blizzcon.
In the end, the other four victors were as previously mentioned HotForm of the Americas team and Kranich of Asia Pacific, as well as Kno and Pinpingho also of Asia Pacific.
So next weekend we will see eight players compete for the title of 2015 Hearthstone Champion, with Asia Pacific being the region in with the best chance fielding 3 players of the eight, while Europe and China each have 2 of their players in and the Americas team having just one person still remaining in the running for the title and the grand prize.
If you missed any of the matches so far, catch up at Blizzard’s Hearthstone Youtube with the posted VoDs so far.
Here it is, my weekly little update on what cool things are up and coming in the world of gaming Kickstarters.
As always I’ll start off with a brief recap of some previously covered games, and both Home Free and Dracucat have finished their campaigns funded. Home Free didn’t quite make its last stretch goal, but the completed campaign update makes me think that short-legged dogs haven’t been 100% ruled out of making their appearance within that game. The games covered in the Round-Up of Oct 9th all still have some ground to make up with less than a week to do it in, but while Boom Chicka Meow Wow and NinjaFrog are way out, Bertram Fiddle and Wolf & Hound at least have some chance of making their targets if their developers really push their campaigns.
Finally GOAT ARMY is still close to goal with plenty of time left to make it, and Wanderer and Crematory Bot are also doing decently well although have to pick up the pace to hit their goals within the time limit set.
The first game is one that’s actually been around for a little longer than the others, but it’s an interesting enough game that it’s been on my list for this week since I found out about it.
Doko Roko is a “2D rogue-like, vertical action game with an emphasis on lightning-fast combat and rich atmosphere” made because its creator envisioned a game that cared as much for its lore as it did its unique game mechanics. As a storyteller I do like a game with a good story and Doko Roko sees your character fighting through a tower where not everything is out to get you. Some will trade, some will fight and others merely wish to make small talk or even trade information. Weapons come in all forms to fight the hostile beings you meet as well, so each game could be a little bit different.
Doko Roko has made $22,656 of its $30,000 goal so far with 20 days remaining to make the rest.
This one is a turn-based strategy game set in space with randomly generated events, supplies to manage and a role play setting.
Solar Hideout sets you as an AI taking care of a group of human renegadess fleeing the forces of the “Space Clearance Forces” (SCF), an international military space force company of Earth. This military forces wishes to destroy them and your job is to navigate this band through perils both human, alien or natural as they randomly occur.
Solar Hideout is a new campaign so currently has made nothing of its €10,000 but has a full 30 days to go to make it.
This one is a Kickstarter staff pick and its easy to see why, it looks beautiful.
Pankapup is another throwback to the old 2D platform/action games of the 90s and features the titular character platforming through worlds and fending off opponents using a shield to block and a sword to attack back. The story is told to a child through a book and the game you play is therefore seen in the child’s mind, with parallels to the story and the child’s own world becoming more apparent as the game progresses through.
Pankapu has 27 days to go and has made more than half of its €40,000 goal at €20,079 currently.
I admit it, I chose this one because the idea of video game development as a card game was appealing to me as a journalist who has heard tales about it through the Indie Game Show.
As you can probably guess, GOTY the card game is all about using your cards to attempt to navigate the video game development process to create the next Game Of The Year. The game was created to give players a “different perspective of the industry” through funny and unexpected events based off real-life events. Since life is sometimes much stranger than fiction, that sounds great to me.
If you’re interested GOTY the card game has a €15,000 of which €6,418 with 35 days to go and a lot of Early Bird tiers are being offered.
Finally we have yet another Kickstarter staff pick, but one that so far hasn’t benefited too greatly from it.
Cold Blooded sets you in a city with the drug trade controlled by five gangs. You as a gang leader must create and manage your own gang, taking over and eliminating the competition and eventually aiming to control every drug spot in the city. It has taken inspiration from strategy, rogue-like and tycoon games, and the developers are aiming to release the game in 2016 on PC, Mac and Linux if they get their game funded.
Cold Blooded has 25 days to go and a target of just €3,000 to hit with €115 raised so far.
Day 1 and 2 of the Hearthstone World Championship group stages have gone past already, half of the matches being played before Blizzcon to cut down the 16 player field down to just 8 to allow them to play in the big finals at Blizzcon itself next weekend. These two days were dedicated to setting up the matches that would not only decide matches for the next two days – it also served to knock out 4 of the players at the end of the second day.
The four regions; North America, Europe, China and Asia Pacific have each fielded some of their best players for matches that were streamed over Blizzard’s PlayHearthstone Twitch channel live. Divided into their four teams of four, going into the tournament while Europe were the favourites both the Asia Pacific and China teams proved hard to beat, with many of their players putting up difficult fights against their opponents and three of the four Asia Pacific players making it through their first matches.
The first day saw a lot more of one particular player per pair dominating their game of 3, with the very first match-up being a 3-0 sweep in favour of Thijs verses opponent NoTomorrow; while the second day saw matches going on a lot longer with many 3-2 matches especially during the four elimination matches which resulted in the losers having their tournament runs end at that point. The second day also saw a nail-biting final match between Neirea and Purple coming down to the very last turn and saw Purple’s Rogue deck pull out an amazing one-turn kill that amounted to more than 20 damage done to Neirea’s face, winning Purple the match.
Deck-wise despite the worry that Paladin Warrior decks would die out with the change to Warsong Commander, two of the Warrior decks used Paladin tactics to great effect. Also out there were decks for the lesser used classes: Shaman decks, Rogue decks and even a Priest deck from European player Thijs. The most popular class by far was Druid with twelve of the sixteen fielding a Druid deck, and Paladin was also pretty popular with the Mysterious Challenger/Secrets Paladin deck being the favoured type of that deck. Another common deck types being used was the standard Freeze Mage set up containing cards like Frost Nova, Doomsayer and Alexstrasza which were commonly seen. Among all types of deck it was also common to see Piloted Shredders and Dr. Booms being played.
In the end the second day saw the end of the road for four players – NoTomorrow and LoveCX from China, Nias from North America and Neirea from Europe. This means that after two days only the Asia Pacific team had all players still in the competition to make it to Blizzcon.
There are of course two more days worth of matches to go, which will decide exactly which eight of the remaining twelve will be going to the final matches at Blizzcon next weekend. Day three will sort out four who will guarantee their place on the Blizzcon stage, and then the remaining spaces will be decided on the forth and final day on October 31st.
If you missed any of the matches so far, catch up at Blizzard’s Hearthstone Youtube with the posted VoDs so far.
Cobalt has been on the gaming news feeds now and then since it was announced as Mojang’s little side-scrolling project back in 2013. It surfaced as a more fully-formed idea that was being published by Mojang and developed by Oxeye Studios.
Now however Mojang have announced on their blog that the game will not be releasing at the end of this month as was originally planned, but has instead been delayed until February of next year. The reason? The current build they have is much buggier than they’re happy with releasing.
“We want every part of Cobalt – the campaign, challenges, and local and online multiplayer to live up to your expectations, no matter which platform you play it on. That’s going to require a bit more development time.
In honesty, we don’t need four months to fix the outstanding issues, but releasing a game on console is an especially complicated business. There are release windows, and certification things, and all kinds of boxes that need to be ticked before games can be released into the wild.”
There’s no new exact date for the release, but I will always support a studio delaying a game’s release because they want to patch out as many bugs as possible. Buggy and broken games are not fun and even if a delay will disappoint some, it is usually a very responsible step on the part of a game developer/publisher to do so for this reason.
Mojang Blog “Cobalt delayed until February 2016 :(“: [x]
