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After an absence it’s time for an update on things happening in the world of gaming Kickstarters.
Starting off with our updates on previously covered campaigns, a good number have finished by now. The good news is that a lot of them were successful, such as MachiaVillain, Make a Mess, Grifters and A Place for the Unwilling, all finishing their runs with their goals met or exceeded by a sum.
However, as always it’s not all good news and unfortunately significantly more campaigns failed or found themselves cancelled due to lack of funding. These were GameSpawner, Wounded, BEER HEROES, Mythical Might, Null of Hope, Villains & Henchmen and Penalty Box. Also, GAME OVER is stuck at a low total with only 5 days left to make it up. Unless something major happens, it’s safe to say that it too will most likely to fail to reach its goal in time. A number of these campaigns are planned to be relaunched again some time in the future so not all is lost though.
Speaking of relaunching campaigns, the developers of another previously covered game, Ghost Theory are going to be relaunching their Kickstarter sometime this month. When it does launch we’ll cover it obviously.
First up we have a card game in which your entire game it determined by both the luck of the draw and the roll of the dice.
DiceHunter sees you attempting to be the best hunter, bagging more animal cards than your opponents. To do this you need to roll one of the numbers on the dice of the animal card you have drawn. Not getting the number ends your turn, while winning means turning over the card for an outcome. This could see you bagging the animal or facing some other consequence, either minor or hugely negative and game-ending. Once all players have had a game over the results are compared and a winner declared.
DiceHunter has 29 days to go to make $6,000. It has currently raised $269
Next up is a card game about politics, particularly relevant to those living in America right now – as the cards seem to be based off American politics.
The point of the game is to survive two ‘terms’ – which means going around the circle of players once after you have drawn a term card from the draw deck. The other players will try to use their cards to stop the player serving a term from completing it, but at the same time it is possible for the term-serving player to use cards to make it harder for their opponents to screw them over.
Terms and Scandals has made $1,004 of its $10,000 goal and has 27 days to go.
This one is an adventure game, where you fight through the use of potions you craft yourself… if you fight at all that is.
The titular character Luna is a young witch whose talents lie in potion making. The world is inspired by fairy tales, and the creatures that you meet can be dealt with in a number of ways – burn them with fire from a potion bottle or engage them in conversation to peacefully trick them out of resources you need. You’re also able to use other enemies’ attacks to defeat them if need be – it’s up to you!
Potions: A Curious Tale has a $62,000 goal of which it has made $13,451 so far. It has 30 days yet to go.
Lastly, we have an old school roguelike in which you can actually revisit previous floors.
Unlike most roguelikes, the door at the end of the floor is not the last time you’ll see a floor. You might find yourself climbing back up the way you came to unlock a door and head a different route, or to find an item you left behind previously but now have use for. It’s certainly an interesting and different take on it and one that intrigues me.
BirthStone has made £30 of it’s £10,000 goal, and has 28 days to go.
Don’t Starve was a success for Klei Entertainment when it burst onto the scene in 2013, and the co-op version, Don’t Starve Together, allowed for friends to work together on survival. It’s been in Early Access for all that time, but now it’s due to release fully on April 21st.
Don’t Starve Together already has access to not only all the base game content, but also the stuff from two expansions – Reign of Giants and Caves. Shipwrecked is the latest expansion to the game, but as of yet Klei haven’t confirmed it’ll be coming to co-op saying that they don’t ‘have any concrete plans’. They are working on the free content pack Through the Ages though ahead of Together’s launch although it probably won’t be finished for a while yet.
“The focus of TTA is the evolution of your world over a longer period of time, and more variation between worlds,” a Klei developer wrote on the studio forum. “I’d say this is going to take about six months to develop, but uh, I’ve been off before.”
Further support will continue after launch, with Klei aiming to improve modding tools for the game.
Now that we know the release for the next expansion coming to Blizzard’s popular free-to-play game, the new cards are just becoming more and more exciting as they’re released to the public.
Here’s the ones that have been revealed this week:
——
Blood Warriors
Spell, 3 mana cost.
Adds a copy of each damaged friendly Minion to your hand.
Mire Keeper
Minion, 3 Attack, 3 Health, 4 mana cost.
Choose One: Summons a 2/2 Slime OR Gain an empty Mana Crystal.
Ravaging Ghoul
Minion, 3 Attack, 3 Health, 3 mana cost.
Battlecry: Deal 1 damage to all other Minions.
Blood of the Ancient One
Minion, 9 Attack, 9 Health, 9 mana cost.
If you control two of these Minions at the end of your turn – merge into ‘The Ancient One’.
The Ancient One
Minion, 30 Attack, 30 Health, 9 mana cost.
Spreading Madness
Spell, 3 mana cost.
Deal 9 damage randomly split among ALL characters.
Cho’Gall
Legendary Minion, 7 Attack, 7 Health, 7 mana cost.
Battlecry: The next spell you cast will cost Health instead of Mana.
Yogg-Saron, Hope’s End
Legendary Minion, 7 Attack, 5 Health, 10 mana cost.
Battlecry: Cast a random spell for each spell you’ve already cast this game, with randomly chosen targets.
It’s been a couple of weeks since the Fallout 4 Automatron DLc dropped on all platforms and I’ve been feverishly adding automatrons to all my settlements since then.
“The mysterious Mechanist has unleashed a horde of evil robots into the Commonwealth, including the devious Robobrain. Hunt them down and harvest their parts to build and mod your own custom robot companions. Choose from hundreds of mods; mixing limbs, armor, abilities, and weapons like the all-new lightning chain gun. Even customize their paint schemes and choose their voices!”
Automatron is a four mission DLC that kicks off at level 15 for the sole survivor. Now only four missions seems rather small and I thought so too, until I played it on stream the night it released and realised I had been playing for over 7 hours and the sun was coming up. You can see my live stream below, and no worries, I didn’t finish the final fight on stream, not only for spoilers, but also cos I was half asleep at the time.
What I will say about the ending though is that it gives a really interesting moral decision, one that I’m glad I chose the decision I went with and has not only left me with a fun set of armour for my companions, but also a new settlement and a new set of random radio quests for that added experience and looting opportunity.
One thing I would reccomend to anyone just starting Automatron though, if you don’t have the robotics perk, max it out! The Hack ability for robots works on ALL enemy automatrons in the DLC and adds for some hilarious outcomes when attacked by the new raider gang that use the robots!
Speaking of them, this new raider group is called the Rust Devils. They use robot parts to make weapons and armour, and the armour is comparable with good tier Synth armour, only being out done by Legendary Synth pieces later on, so unless you have a full set of heavy combat armour like I did when i started the DLC, it’s a great way to get some extra protection from the bots you have to face.
Of course, everyone knows by now what the biggest draw of Automatron is and thats the ability to build and upgrade your own automatrons and put them to work in your settlements! You kick off getting this workstation when you finish the first mission of the DLC and also gain Ada as a companion. you can use the workstation to upgrade Ada with any of the items available to you based on your perks, Science, Armoury, etc just like other workbenches, but you can also find parts from dead automatrons you find in random encounters. The other fun thing is that you can also upgrade Codsworth and Curie if she’s still in her Miss Nanny body (not her synth body, oh sorry, SPOILERS!)
The new settlement, without giving away spoiles, is both amusing, but also a pain in the ass to use properly, of course, this weeks new DLC, Wastelander (out Tuesday 12th April) will cure some of those annoyances with the new settlement build options, but right now, it is pretty useless beyond giving some minuteman style radio quests. It does however make a good hiding spot for the sole survivor, especially when the new survival update comes along aswell.
I have utterly love playing Fallout 4 since the beginning (surprising, since I never got into Fallout 4 and I was never a fan of Skyrim), but something about it has just grabbed me and won’t let go and Automatron has just added tot he experience in spades. I love updating my provisioners to using sentrybots instead of humans (they are far more valuable than being pack Brahman anyway)
One gripe I would give though is the other new settlement item you can use, the Eyebot Pod, which, in functionality sounds really useful, however, is pretty useless. It works by giving the eyebot the command to search for crafting materials or ammo, however, especially when it comes tot he junk for crafting, the amount you find fromt eh two part mission it gives you are miniscule compared to the power (6) that the pod needs. Of course, some will say that it’s also useful for getting you back to places you previously cleared out for other loot aswell, plus it can be useful for finding rare ammo like Railway Spikes and Cannonballs. But even those really aren’t worth it to be honest, so frankly, after testing, I scrapped the one I built.
All in all this is a great DLC, certainly worth the season price cost (I’ve played full price games with shorter storylines than this…) but even after the DLC price increase,
looking at the other DLC’s and free updates that are on the way? totally worth it! A Solid 9 out of 10!
After a few years of war between hunters and vampiric creatures of the night, Square Enix have announced today that they are ceasing development on their game Nosgoth.
In a post published on the site by Oghamsmith, the news of the end was announced and while the game will remain online for a little while yet, the game will go offline on May 31st 2016 and the forum on June 14th 2016. The reason for closure was that the game just hadn’t grown large enough to make continued operations sustainable apparently, and the team thanked everyone in the community for their “feedback, support and dedication to the game during the closed and open beta phases” of the game.
In a linked FAQ about the end, the team say that they will offer refunds to anyone who had made a purchase in the game since March 1st 2016, and that all eligible refunds will be processed within the next 14 days. Definitive Pack sales on the Steam Store will be processed from the week commencing April 18th 2016. Runestones and Gold are also no longer purchasable although Gold can still be earned in-game through completed public matches.
There will be no more planned updates or league seasons for Nosgoth, although the Nosgoth Open Beta Cup Series will continue to run in April as usual. As for any future game in the Legacy of Kain franchise, the FAQ says that they will be judged “independently of Nosgoth and on the merits of the proposals alone.”
It’s a sad end to a game that was promising, and a lot of fun when I tried it at an Insomnia event a year and a half back.
If you want more information, visit the site post here or the FAQ here.
