Our live radio broadcasts are currently on hiatus while we work on improvements to Sanitarium.FM's core services. For further information, visit our Discord.
Welcome to your update on gaming Kickstarter campaigns, with a selection of some up and coming games you might be interested in checking out.
As usual though, we shall begin with a look back at previously covered campaigns. As thought in previous weeks, it seems that neither Queer Quest or Creekside Creep Invasion were able to reach their goals in the time allowed to them. The people behind Queer Quest are still ploughing on, with an update listing both a Paypal and Patreon option to help them fund the game if people still want (they did make over $10k so it’s feasible); and the people behind Creekside Creep Invasion are still continuing development with an estimated April 2007 release onto Steam. Best of luck to both of them in future.
On the other side of the table, we don’t have any finished campaigns that succeeded – but we do have Goblins of Elderstone which has a few days to go and has exceeded their target by more than $4k NZD at time of writing. Also both Agony and The Bird Told Me To Do It from last week’s article are well on their way to meeting their own goals.
We’re starting off with one of the non-video games in the list this week, and this one is a card game about being a bouncer for a nightclub line.
The point of this game is that a few rounds of the game are played, with each player trying to let in the ‘right’ guests into the club. What this means is that by the end of the game when the amount of rounds have been finished the bouncer with the biggest total from their guest list is the winner – each guest scores from +5 to -2. However, some guests have special abilities that allow them to chain with other guest cards to build more points up.
Berghain has a goal of kr90,000 SEK with 29 days to go, and has already made kr11,358 of it.
Next up is a game about the 1950s when the world was growing and business beginning to boom.
Because of the growth of the world’s economy savvy investors and stocks sales will help totals grow and that is the point of the game. Invest, buy shares, sell and utilise our labor pool to the best you can to outgrow your opponents and win. This game has been well-researched and put together, and it shows because this is one of my inclusions that has already met its target before I covered it – in under 4 hours according to the campaign’s main visual!
Goodwill has 24 more days to go before its campaign ends.
This one is a game starring a character that the campaign describes as “the last guy you’d abduct if you were an alien from outer space.”
Jacob is an organic vegetable farmer. In this point and click adventure, the galaxy is in peril and in need of rescue! Only, the writer of this tale has left out the ‘hero’. So Jacob will have to do instead. The game has been in development for about 3 years at this point and will have 3 chapters of roughly 1.5-2 hours gameplay per chapter. There are also demos of the game for both Windows and Mac if you want to try before you pledge any money.
A Little Less Desperation has 24 days to make its €9,000 goal, it has made €2,571 so far.
Finally we have an oddity here – a campaign not just to fund the game, but to allow people to get a copy for a low price before its full release!
Dragon Skies VR is, as you might be able to guess, a VR game. The full release will be available on Steam for $19.99, but for just $1 anyone pledging to this campaign will get themselves a copy of the game. The setting is a steampunk world, and the game play involves riding on the back of a flying dragon in aerial fighting and shooting battles as you advance through the story. There are even stretch goals if enough people donate to this campaign for copies.
Dragon Skies VR had a $1 goal, but given its uniqueness it can’t really be considered a goal to be met. It has made $223 and has another 23 days to run.
Those waiting for the Warhammer 40k FPS game Space Hulk: Deathwing might already know about the face that the game is about to enter a pre-order beta. This article is for those of you who don’t.
The game will enter into this beta next week before the full release in December, and pre-ordering will let you get the game for a 15% discount. As well you will be able to get a taster of the full campaign from November 20, three weeks before December 9th when the full game will be releasing for everyone. You’ll also receive the Lost Mace of Corswain to use in the game too.
The game will cost £25.49/$33.99 to pre-order and a video has been release to help clue you in on just what it is you’ll be doing and why you’re digging into those giant rocks in the first place. There’s also some looks at the weapon upgrading system and other choice you can make for your squad’s Terminator Armour to make it just that much more effective.
After the cancellation of Evolve’s support by their publisher 2K, developers Turtle Rock Studios seem to have had a little spare time. They’ve used the time to do up and release an unfinished campaign for the original Left 4 Dead game that was scrapped before the game’s release as an add-on in 2008.
The Dam It campaign (which shares its name with an unrelated single-map mod released in 2009 by Tom Baldry) is a multi-map stroyline that takes the four players of the game from a crashed C-130 plane on an airfield to a hydro-electric damn, fighting zombies all along the way. The developers had intended the finale of the campaign to be different to the other campaigns by having the party needing to be split instead of all focused in one spot fighting off waves in a hold-off until time has elapsed situation. Other elements include an apple orchard, a graveyard of crawling zombies, a ravine and even a set of fuel storage building that would trigger alarms if fire-based weapons were used inside – bringing the zombies right towards you.
Obviously as an old scrapped campaign, you can expect a few things not be working fully. The fire alarms for example aren’t fully implemented. The maps are playable though and mostly completed, so getting them to work isn’t going to be a big issue. If you fancy giving it a go with some friends, grab the download here.
After the furious fighting of the quarter-finals the previous day, the remaining four Hearthstone players took back to the stage at BlizzCon 2016 today to compete first in the semi-finals before the winners of those matches then went on to take on each other for the title of Hearthstone World Champion of 2016.
After the events of yesterday, the field of 3 Americas players, 2 European, 2 China and 1 Asia-Pacific player was cut down to eliminate one China player as well as all three of the remaining American players, two of them going out to the European players and the last one to the sole remaining Asia-Pacific representative. This effectively ended America’s run, but gave Europe a great chance of retaining the title after the win of Ostkaka in 2015’s World Championship.
The first semi-final was a match between the remaining player from China, JasonZhou and Russian player Pavel. JasonZhou had made it here by beating his fellow China player, Hamster; while Pavel had taken on Americas player Amnesiac previously. The first match up saw JasonZhou playing his Zoo Warlock against Pavel’s Rogue, one that he won after a timely Doomguard draw gave him the amount of direct damage needed to finish Pavel off. The second game was taken by Pavel’s Malygos Druid against JasonZhou’s Dragon Warrior, before JasonZhou’s own version of the Malygos Druid deck took the third game against Pavel’s Tempo Mage. JasonZhou then played Dragon Warrior again for the forth game, coming closer to a victory this time; but Pavel’s Tempo Mage managed to pull a Leeroy Jenkins out of a Fireland Portal which again gave the player the amount of direct damage needed to take the game. Equalised at 2 games apiece now, JasonZhou opted to use his Rogue deck which Pavel defeated first with the Rogue deck, then finally with his C’Thun Warrior. This won him the set and moved the Russian on to the Final round, to face the winner of Semi-Final #2.
——
The other semi-final was between che0nsu of the Asia-Pacific group and DrHippi of the European group. In order to get here, che0nsu had beaten Cydonia the previous day to knock out another American player, and DrHippi had taken on HotMEOWTH to finish the total elimination of the Americas team from the running. As with the last semi-final, the first four games were taken by each player alternatively, with DrHippi taking the second game with his Druid after a Yogg’Saron play late in the game paid off for him yet also potentially making a game-changing decision that could have lost him the match by using an equipped weapon from Yogg before he used his Hero power to gain an extra point of damage that would have been lethal in that round just then. The third round was won by che0nsu’s Bloodlust Shaman using its titular card to power up and rush down DrHippi’s hitpoints, while the forth round saw his Dragon Warrior deck suffering from having a bunch of cards that synced well with Dragons but having no Dragon activator in the hand and by the time one was drawn DrHippi’s Zoolock deck had too firm a grip on the field. The fifth match saw a bit of a reversal with DrHippi’s Dragon Warrior being the one missing the crucial Dragon and instead having to rely on some late-game Ragnaros RNG which fortunately paid off after DrHippi held back the 8/8 Minion until che0nsu had played his already so there was a chance of one Rag destroying the other. The sixth game was the final one as che0nsu played his Dragon Warrior again against DrHippi’s Tempo Mage. Although the Dragon Minions were around at the start, once again che0nsu’s deck let him down by having a lack of drawn Dragons in the mid-game, which allowed DrHippi to take the set 4-2 and making the final a fully European one.
——
So the final opened with the guarantee of Europe retaining the title for another year, and the question just being whether the Russian Pavel or the Ukrainian DrHippi would be the one to take it with them. The first match was between Pavel’s C’Thun Warrior deck which had finished his semi-final, and DrHippi’s Dragon Warrior. DrHippi took that first game, but then Pavel pushed back taking the next three games in succession with his Tempo Mage first, then his Malygos Druid and finally the C’Thun Warrior deck in which Pavel managed to eliminate two 8/8 Arcane Giants from DrHippi’s side of the field while keeping his 6/6 Ancient Shieldbearer with a lucky RNG roll of his Brawl. DrHippi pulled back with the fifth game using his Zoolock deck against Pavel’s lone remaining Rogue deck; but in the end Pavel only had to win one more game and did so. The sixth game was between the Rogue deck and DrHippi’s Druid and was decided very early with a critical chain play from Pavel that saw him able to get out a Van Cleef with a 10/10 stat that the Ukrainian player just had no answer to in the end.
So the Hearthstone World Championship is concluded for another year, with Europe retaining the title for a second year and Russian Pavel being crowned as the Hearthstone World Champion of 2016. Congratulations to the Champion and well done on such expertly played games of Hearthstone.
Here’s to another year of great plays and wonderful new cards to come!
After a seemingly never ending, Blizzard finally revealed Sombra yesterday at Blizzcon as she hacked into the Overwatch lookback trailer. A fast, medium range offense hero, Sombra comes equipped with a machine pistol, teleporter and the ability to hack enemies and health packs on the map. She can prevent enemies from using abilities, take out shields and turrets and teleport to her translocator as it flies through the air.
She seems to be everything we’ve been speculating about and more, making the wait well worth it.
In addition to Sombra, Blizzard is also bringing 1v1 elimination and a 3v3 arcade mode to the game. The game just continues to grow, and it seems like Blizzard is going to reward us for playing these new modes with loot boxes. Since we all love loot, it seems this will get players to play the new modes right out of the gate.
