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It’s time for the weekly article on what is new in the world of Kickstarter Gaming campaigns, as well as your update on how what we’ve looked at before it doing. Hope you’re ready for some new interesting things to check out.
Firstly we’ll look back at a few of the previously covered campaigns to see how they’re doing. There’s not too many at a point worth catching up on, but what is there is in the majority good news.
Space Jammers have pulled back a lot to reach their full funding figure and get a fully completed campaign, with keys coming in the new year to backers. Two other campaigns have good news to report too, with Jupiter Hell having reached its target comfortably with only 24 hours left to go and Bitdude already four-fifths of the way to its (small) goal with 18 more days to make up the rest – which amounts to just £25.
However, as always there is some bad news and Return to Earth has only 44 hours to go on its campaign and has made under half its end goal right now. While it doesn’t look likely that it’ll get funded, I have been wrong about games in the past so watch this space next week for update. Berghain is also still unavailable due to intellectual dispute at time of writing.
First up we have this local co-op shooter for up to 4 players.
Never Not Shooting is a twin-stick arcade style shooter game that focuses on a team of players equipped themselves with a customisable set of weapons and then fighting together against procedurally generated waves of enemies. Together you are trying to survive as long as possible and at the same time rack up the highest score for the global leaderboards. The viewpoint is a top-down one and co-operation is key. A good ones for gatherings of friends for some couch co-op play.
Never Not Shooting has a $7,500 goal with 23 days remaining, it has made $856 so far.
Next we have a 2D action platformer game with two playable characters and a time limit.
Set in a world where the Sun and Moon are siblings, Twin Flames lets you control one of the two siblings as you climb a tower to meet and do battle with your sibling for control of the day-night cycle. The game has some roguelike elements to it in that there’s a lot of weapons, artifacts, spells and more to randomly find and collect to upgrade your character for their journey up the tower and for that final battle at the top. However, take too long to climb and you will lose all your powers, automatically handing the other sibling the win.
Twin Flames has made MX$59,286 of it’s MX$200,000 goal. It has 7 days to go.
I included this one because of other similar games that have been popular in the past, and frankly it’s just pure Youtuber bait – I love it.
Left For Dad is a game for many players, one playing the Dad who needs to drive his car through the corridors and rooms of the school to pick up his children (yes, really), and the rest playing the Children who need to avoid Dad and break as much stuff as possible to meet a damage total and win. The Dad player needs to learn how to move around the building but is fast, while the Children are smaller and have pick ups that can hinder the Dad player’s progress for a while.
Left For Dad has a goal of CA$7,777 of which it has yet to make any. It still has 29 days to go.
Finally we have a classic action RPG set in a future full of turmoil.
Legend of Decay’s world is a post-apocalypse one inspired by Norse myths, in which a chain reaction started by a couple of plant species dying ended up bringing almost everything to an end. Now the world is filled with wastelands, deserts of sand and mud, deep forests and huge mega cities; all of which you will find yourself travelling through on your way through the story. The developers have said that if the campaign fails, they still plan to make and release the game – just with some delays and a little less content.
Legend of Decay’s target is CHF 50,000 and it has 29 days to go. It has made CHF 28.00 so far.
The roguelike game Binding of Issac has been around for years now. It’s a very popular game, because it’s very engaging and has an awful lot of things to pick up and use. The variety makes all playthroughs very different to each other, and more recently the developers remade the game as Binding of Issac: Rebirth. Now it’s about to get an expansion that will add even more content to the game.
The Afterbirth+ DLC will retail at a cost of $9.99 ordinarily, but will probably see reductions in the weeks after its January 3rd launch onto Steam. For that price you get a startingly large amount of extra content added to what was, as I already said, a game with a lot of pickup variety already. It’ll also give you access to the mod tools, letting you play around with room, items, enemies, playable characters; everything that comes in the game. The best mods will also be highlighted to the entire game’s community by being added to everyone’s game in monthly updates. Not bad.
As for the other extra content, you will get 67 new items, 27 new trinkets, over 10 new pickups, a new final chapter and final boss, a new playable character, “greedier” greed mode, 62 new achievements, five achievement “challenges”, a huge amount of new rooms, a function to keep track of all enemies you killed in game called the ‘bestiary’, two new transformations, four new bosses, some new boss alt forms, new minor enemies… and much more besides.
So if you’ve already played it out, you’ve a lot to return to find and see. Also, check out the trailer:
The Elder Scrolls Online is due to get an update similar to Skyrim’s Hearthfire, in that players will soon be able to purchase and fill with items to make their very own dwellings. The update was originally mentioned at E3 this year back in June, and now a rough ETA has been put on it – Feb 2017.
Named Homestead, the update will be free and introduces 40 different homes across the map; all within base zones on launch, none within DLC-only areas. There will be over 2000 items to buy or craft as well for your chosen home, and the dwellings will be styled after the game’s ten playable races. There will be a variety of sizes too from small living spaces such as Inn rooms to huge manors with large outside areas included, and homes will be instanced to save players all rushing for the best plots of land when the feature launch. Fast travel to homes and the ability to invite friends and guild mates will also be available, and all homes are secure from other players who would try and steal furniture and other features from your home.
Bethesda wrote about Homestead: “Unfurnished homes will be available for purchase with either in-game Gold or with Crowns in the Crown Store. Fully furnished homes will be available for purchase through the Crown Store with Crowns. Players will be allowed to preview homes prior to purchase, whether furnished and unfurnished.”
For further information, visit the game’s official site.
About a week after dataminers found and revealed a bunch of details about what to expect from Overwatch’s winter event, Blizzard have officially revealed the date of when it’ll start – December the 13th had had previously been guessed.
Dataminers had already revealed a lot of detail about what was coming, although it was all pretty vague. For example we knew that a new gamemode would be coming, but not what it’d be; as well as which characters would get new skins but not what they’d look like. It did reveal some interesting details though, including that Torbjorn was the only character who would be getting a skin, a highlight animation and an emote through the special loot boxes – so was probably quite important for this update.
I’m a storyteller by my nature. I love a good story, love hearing them, making them and telling them. So when an indie RPG about stories came up, I was enthusiastic to give it a go. I love RPGs and stories, so it seemed a good match.
The game in question is Torn Tales by Twistplay and published by Chilled Mouse. The game follows a team of three storybook protagonists as they venture through a landscape mashed together from many different tales and corrupted by a jealous storyteller who was jealous of his own works not getting the attention he felt they deserved. Now the three fight through the obstacles ahead of them to return to their own stories.
The three protagonists are Robin Hood, who plays an archer archetype, Dr. Jekyl, who is melee, and lastly Snow White, who acts as a mage. The game is portrayed from a top-down view, with a minimap letting you sight ahead a little way as to what is coming. Movement is done by clicking where you want the characters to head, which eventually manifests itself in rapid-fire clicking to direct them. The path ways are fairly linear in the game and it’s next to impossible to get lost if you pay attention. Enemies give experience which will then go towards a level up for characters, which will give skill points to be assigned and unlock new special abilities which can then further upgrade over time as more points are assigned to them. It is possible to switch your lead character as well, rotating between the three.
The game does have pickups in the form of assignable trinkets, which will improve some aspect of the character it is assigned to. There are also health pickups which help you keep your characters healthy, along with save points represented by stands with a book upon them.
The game itself is good fun to play and engaging. I certainly enjoyed playing it, and it was challenging in some aspects, requiring me to learn enemy attack patterns and strategise how best to take on a battle. I also feel the storybook and fairytale aspect is a big plus for the game, it’s a unique little thing about the game.
However, I feel the graphics could have been a bit better although they’re not bad. The best visuals are in the storybook-esque cutscenes and they’re still images. However this is an indie so I’ll let it off there. I also wish there’d been more characters to recruit and change but again, indie does mean limitations sometimes. They don’t actively have a big effect on how much I really liked the game though in the end.
Torn Tales is going to be coming out on Steam in January. If you enjoy small, well put-together RPGs, you should probably at least give this one a look. It’s worth your time.
