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Hello and welcome to your weekly update on what awesome stuff you can find in Kickstarter’s gaming campaigns.
As always, we’ll start with some updates. There’s not much to update with only last week’s campaigns to catch up with, but half of last week’s campaigns were cancelled in the last week. Firstly Code War was cancelled after the developers listened to feedback suggesting they update their page with more content, but they have promised to tell us when they relaunch their campaign page so stay tuned for more. The other game to see cancellation is King of the Hill which has been called off for similar reasons as the developers call a ‘timeout’ to work on their game a bit more before they re-launch the campaign page.
First up is a ghost hunting adventure made for VR, and that’s something I never saw myself writing this week.
Ghost Theory places you into haunted places with ghost hunting gear and challenges you to investigate their hauntings while evading the nasties residing there… and potentially eliminating the ghosties entirely. Stealth aspects are apparent as well as open-world mechanics and each location will have a backstory to discover. Sweet.
Ghost Theory has 27 days to go to make a £100,000 goal of which it has made £4,848 so far.
Next up we have a game that take inspiration from two popular games of yesteryear – Megaman and Metroid.
Dread Bot Factory sets you in one big level and challenges you to open up different areas to reach bosses, customising your character AI to fight and for some other mysterious purpose that is not yet clear. It’s also possible with your customisation to play through the game in a number of different ways, so unless you try no two playthroughs should go exactly the same.
Dread Bot Factory has made kr400 SEK of its kr420,000 SEK goal and has 29 days to go.
This is my weekly card game and it’s a party game about… tweeting?
#FML can last as many rounds as is decided upon and the point of the game is to have the fewest points at the end. To avoid points, you need to be the fastest to place a white card that matches the colour of the black card that is in play – or failing that use the hashtags on the cards to craft something funny, witty or insulting like you’d see on social media!
#FML has a goal of $13,500 of which it has made $295 with 27 days to go.
Lastly we have a game that is more about exploring than playing.
Mission to Mars will involve an accurate game-playable replica of the planet Mars in which you can explore. Develop your crew as you explore and make decisions that will lead to survival or death of those under your command as you play. The end goal seems to be terraforming a part of the planet for human life, but obviously that will take a long time and needs a lot more accomplished first!
Mission to Mars has made $2 of its $100,000 goal and has 29 days to go.
The Elder Scrolls Online is due to receive another DLC pack soon with the addition of Thieves Guild, which will feature the organisation in question.
Thieves Guild will come in two parts – the expansion itself as well as a patch for the base game which will add scrolling combat text and a new 64-bit client for PC and Mac users that can support it, among a bunch of other things to update the game.
Coming with the expansion will be a new area – Hew’s Bane – and you’ll find the Guild at Abah’s Landing which is the HQ and where you can start off as a recruit for the thieves and other criminals of the streets. It’ll also bring a whole bunch of other stuff, such as new costumers, motifs, items sets specific to the guild and “hours” of new quests and story. One new 12-player trial in particular will be Maw of Lorkjhaj, but other than the name there’s been no details given on it or much else.
Release date and pricing has also not yet been revealed, although we’ve been told to “be on the lookout for more articles starting next week” which suggests that they’ll be coming out to the public soon.
And in news of things that really should have been gotten around to earlier, Microsoft have made it so that your IP address is now hidden by default on Skype, preventing anyone who had your details from finding it out.
Previously it was possible for gamers online, if they were losing and wanted to use more underhanded tactics to win a game, to look up their rival’s IP address if they had their Skype details; then they’d launch a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack upon them and through it knock them offline, winning by default. It’s also been used to attack livestreamers on Twitch while they were halfway through a stream. Needless to say, there will be a lot of gamers saying “finally!” upon hearing this news.
“Skype is fully committed to delivering as safe and secure of an experience as possible to our customers. We have recently introduced the ability to hide a Skype user’s IP address and we’ve set this as a default status in the latest versions of Skype. Starting with this update to Skype and moving forward, your IP address will be kept hidden from Skype users. This measure will help prevent individuals from obtaining a Skype ID and resolving to an IP address.”
You can get the update from Skype’s site or if you wait long enough, it’ll probably upgrade you to the latest version at some point.
Skype blog “To our gamers: IP will now be hidden by default in latest update”:[x]
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD Launches with a Wolf Link amiibo
REDMOND, Wash., Jan. 21, 2016 – The Nintendo games launching in the first part of the year are going to include some fun amiibo functionality. Games like The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD for the Wii U console and Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games™ for the Nintendo 3DS family of systems, both launching in March, use a wide variety of different compatible amiibo figures. Some new amiibo figures will also launch in March, including the legendary Wolf Link amiibo that is included in every physical version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD, as well as three new figures in the Animal Crossing amiibo series, featuring fan-favorite characters like Timmy & Tommy, Kapp’n and Rover. The previously announced Ryu, Roy and R.O.B. (Famicom Colors) amiibo figures will also launch in March.
“New amiibo figures and functionality will keep surprising fans in 2016,” said Scott Moffitt, Nintendo of America’s Executive Vice President of Sales & Marketing. “All the upcoming amiibo prove that the must-have figures are continuing to evolve in unexpected and fun ways.”
When the physical version of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD launches on March 4 at a suggested retail price of $59.99, it will include a beautiful Wolf Link amiibo figure based on the same character from the classic game. Purchasing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD and Wolf Link amiibo bundle will currently be the only way to get this amiibo figure. When tapped to the Wii U GamePad controller, this legendary lupine opens the Cave of Shadows, a challenging new bonus dungeon in the game. After completing the Cave of Shadows, players can save their remaining hearts to the Wolf Link amiibo, and then use those hearts inside the Cave of Shadows to replenish life energy. After conquering the cave, players can save a record of their remaining hearts to the Wolf Link amiibo and attempt to beat their score at any time. Some of the data stored on the Wolf Link amiibo figure can also be used with The Legend of Zelda game for Wii U, which launches this year. More details about this functionality will be revealed in the future.
In addition to the Wolf Link amiibo, other amiibo figures in the Super Smash Bros. series like Link, Toon Link, Zelda, Sheik and Ganondorf will work with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD. By tapping the Link or Toon Link amiibo, players can replenish their arrows. Tapping Zelda or Sheik will refill the player’s hearts, while, in a devious twist, tapping the Ganondorf figure will actually make Link take double the damage!
On March 18, new amiibo figures in the Animal Crossing series will launch in stores, including characters like Timmy & Tommy, Kapp’n and Rover. Digby will also be made available as a stand-alone amiibo. The next series of Animal Crossing amiibo cards also launches in March, bringing the grand total of available amiibo cards to be used in games like Animal Crossing: amiibo Festival for Wii U and Animal Crossing: Happy Home Designer for Nintendo 3DS to a whopping 300. Let the collecting begin!
Fans who are ready to compete in Rio de Janeiro with Mario, Sonic and the gang in Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will also have to warm up their amiibo-tapping fingers. When the action-filled game launches for Nintendo 3DS on March 18 at a suggested retail price of $39.99, both Mario and Sonic amiibo figures will be compatible*. By tapping the Mario or Sonic amiibo figures to the New Nintendo 3DS system (or on a Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo 3DS XL or Nintendo 2DS system using the NFC Reader/Writer accessory), players can boost Mario and Sonic’s outfits with that character’s power for the day.
To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, some of the Pokémon amiibo will be made available again at select retailers. Fans should be on the lookout for Charizard, Jigglypuff, Greninja and Lucario to once again return to shelves right next to Pikachu.
Finally, Star Fox Zero delivers a new beginning for the classic shooter series. With a unique control scheme that uses both the TV screen and the screen on the GamePad, players pilot multiple vehicles through intergalactic levels with Fox and his classic crew. The game launches exclusively for Wii U on April 22 and will feature amiibo compatibility. More details will be revealed at a later time.
MinecraftEdu has been used in classrooms around the world to help with the teaching of children, using a modified version of the original Minecraft game. Now Microsoft have snatched it up and will be re-launching it as Minecraft Education Edition later on this summer.
Originally the product of education software developer TeacherGaming, they combined the popular game of Minecraft with features to aid learning. MinecraftEdu was been designed to help teachers manage their pupils’ in-class gaming sessions and has been used to teach everything from maths to foreign languages so far. Minecraft Education Edition will keep those same core features but will be improving upon them, although Microsoft hasn’t yet given any clues as to how they’re going to do this. For the moment Microsoft have said that MinecraftEdu will be continuing as normal, including the hosting service, until Education Edition is working and ready to go. All existing users of the software at that point will then be given a year’s pass of use for Minecraft Education Edition for free.
TeacherGaming have published an FAQ to spell out differences between the two versions as well as giving assurances that Minecraft Education Edition will be a positive thing for everyone.
“Minecraft: Education Edition builds on the early learnings from MinecraftEdu, while growing and expanding its feature set. Working with the MinecraftEdu creators Joel Levin and Santeri Koivisto, we started with all the learnings from the EDU edition, and built its key features into the Minecraft: Education Edition. We also added new features including login and personalization, the student portfolio feature, a second screen experience for teachers, and the ability to save student progress.”
Exact details will be released within the next few days.
