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Day 1 of EGX 2015 kicked off yesterday and while sat this morning with my aches and pains (I’m getting too old for this, I’m sending Cyborg next year), I was sorting through what games I saw there that I wanted to write about first and there was a stand out winner in that regard
Tears of Avia is a turn based tactical RPG with a core focus on build crafting. We want to make a game where the party composition, skills, items and strategy that you design are just as fundamental to the game play as the battle itself. We are coupling this with a dynamic story system that delivers a unique experience each time you play.
It’s Kickstarter started a couple of days ago and, as of writing right now, has 26 days left on it. BUT, it has already been Greenlit on STEAM, so thats a great sign of the games popularity already.
Now, I love a good JRPG, I’m a long term Final Fantasy fan (7, 8, 9 and 10 especially), and Tears of Avia gives me a FF7 vibe off the bat, but it changes things up with a slick RPG combat system, a fresh take on skills and beautiful graphics and effects
The game looks stunning, even the prototype build the team from CooCooSqueaky, the system was slick and it was beautiful to watch other people play the game and get excited about what they were doing.
So, whats the game about? Well, lets head over to the kickstarter page and get the info:
Over 200 years ago a war was waged against the floating city of Avalon lead by the demonic overlord Vylenkine. A powerful mage stood up against his evil forces and cast a spell that would seal the portals to the demonic realms forever. Except… there was a problem. The city froze and crashed along with the love of his life, Avia. For hundreds of years he has been seeking a way to free Avia with little success. That is until you came…
The trailer is gorgeous and tells the story in suitable anime way and the character models and enemies look like they were dragged smoothly from some of the best animes to come out of Japan
In fact, if this story isn’t picked up by Manga, they are missing a trick
Tears of Avia is set for a Jun 2017 release so far, with kickstarter backers at certain levels getting beta access (£30 or more pledge) and lots of other perks
Big Punch Studios are at it again. The UK-based studio of comic creators responsible for 7STRING, Afterlife Inc., The Heavenly Chord, Cat & Meringue and Big Punch Magazine – among other projects – has taken to Kickstarter to fund a brand new project – but this time, the team is going down a whole new avenue.
Sandwich Masters is Big Punch Studios’ first attempt to create a brand new card game with a wacky, somewhat twisted style of humour only comic artists truly master. The game, which is for 2 to 4 players in standard form, involves using ingredient cards – some good, some bad – to construct sandwiches to order, aiming to be the first to fulfil a specific request and earn the cash, while sabotaging your opponents and hoping you won’t get sabotaged yourself – first to 50 “noshbucks” wins. Or, as the Kickstarter puts it:
Sandwich Masters is a fast-paced, colourful card game with a slightly twisted sense of humour for two to four players. Players race to build sandwiches and complete orders using the correct ingredient cards. The winner is the first player to earn 50 noshbucks.
But in the battle to earn the most money, standards are easily forgotten. You see, each good ingredient has an evil counterpart. Hungry customers won’t notice the difference (is that bacon or facon, sliced beef or a live cow?) but if someone plays a Health Inspector card, you’re in trouble. Throw in Attack Condiments (broken glass, a sneeze), Vegetarian Rats and the occasional Poop Flood and it’s a recipe for disaster!
(Poop Flood… ewww…)
The standard game will come with 180 Cards making up three decks, and printed instructions for how to play. Should the project beat its £5,000 target, further stretch goals tempt the prospect of additional cards; while a total of £8,500 or more will lead to the expected print run being doubled.
The Kickstarter is open for 30 days, with a backing of £15 or more securing one set of the cards, which aim to get delivered by January 2015. For the first 20 backers to take the perk, a pledge of £40 or more will earn you the title of SANDWICH LORD and allow you to design your own Attack Condiment, which will be turned into a one-off card to be included with your copy of the game, and the pack will be signed by the team. So what are you waiting for?
If you’re one of the small group of people out there who owns a smartphone running Windows Phone 8 or 8.1, or a computer running Windows 10, you probably recognise Cortana. Effectively Microsoft’s answer to Siri and Google Now, Cortana is Microsoft’s answer to a voice-operated assistant that lets you speak to your phone to have it perform tasks for you, such as setting reminders, finding out things you need to know, or messaging contacts.
Though developed for Microsoft’s own devices, Microsoft of late have been very eager to expand the reach of Cortana and turn it into the personal assistant behind ALL your devices. To that end, the company has also released Cortana as apps for iOS and Android. But while these app-based versions of Cortana might allow you to message people with your voice or look up information from the internet, it’s not really integrated with Android or iOS. There’s only so much the developers can do when they don’t control the operating system.
However, a new announcement from Cyanogen suggests that this could change.
For several years now, a team of developers have made waves with a fork of the Android system known as Cyanogen. Cyanogen’s original intention was to take what was good from stock Android systems and modify the rest, to create a system that gives control and customisability over how their smartphone looks and works back to the actual user. Cyanogen has since become a corporation – of which Microsoft is a key investor – and the system has become a standard mobile phone OS in its own right, with Cyanogen OS becoming the original system of choice for the OnePlus One and many other phones; with the older Cyanogenmod remaining the tool of choice for replacing stock Android and installing Cyanogen to traditional Android-powered phones.
Cyanogen’s desire to put control back in the hands of the user has put the system regularly at odds with Google’s ethos; and Cyanogen has ditched many standard Android services for equivalents, either home-grown or ran by competitors such as Microsoft. And now, the company has revealed that it’s working with Microsoft to integrate Cortana into Cyanogen- kicking the traditional Android voice assistant, Google Now, out onto the street.
It’s not clear exactly how this will compare to the assistant on other platforms, but Cyanogen hints that it could offer better control over third-party apps than rivals like Google or Apple’s Siri. You could tell Spotify to play specific songs or playlists, for instance. We should not have long to wait to find out how well this pairing works, however – Cyanogen have claimed Cortana will start in her new role from the very next Cyanogen OS release.
Who remember their first game of pokemon? Whether it was on the grainy black and white screen of the classic Gameboy, or in colourful 3D on the N64, pokemon is close to a lot of gamer’s hearts. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live in a world inhabited by strange and wonderful creatures, that can be tamed and used to battle your friends? Well now you can!
A new phone app allows you to search out pokemon in your local areas, and with the use of a pokeball watch, capture and battle them with people around you.
Geo-caching is not a new phenomenon. It’s a simple premise where you are given map co-ordinates and go treasure-hunting. This sort of real-world application is always open to abuse; some people may remove the treasure, or you might not live in a place where a treasure hunt has been initiated.
Pokemon Go eliminates all these problems by making everything digital. Your pokemon are available in cyberspace, located over physical co-ordinates. Although details are scarce on release dates and game mechanics, I for one have never been more excited to wander round my town and collect ‘em all.
Not too long ago, computer hardware manufacturer Asus had a slogan: “Inspiring Innovation, Persistent Perfection”. It was an excellent summary of the company’s core traits: As well as trying to make computers which utilised existing technology well, Asus also regularly tried to push the envelope and look for the next new thing.
It seems this spirit still remains with the company, as during this year’s IFA – which seemed to put a heavy focus on gaming – the company managed to unveil a gaming laptop that goes beyond anything shown off by its competitors.
Dubbed the Asus GX700, the newly-revealed gaming laptop is the first ever to use water cooling. Water cooling is something that has become common in gaming desktops, used often by the hardcore gamers both as an efficient enhancement to standard cooling solutions and to prove their salt as hardcore gamers; and as companies have started developing self-contained water-cooling kits that take a lot of the pain (and spills) out of the installation and the components in computers continue to get smaller, the practice has become a lot easier to achieve. Even so, to see the technology make it into a laptop for the first time is the kind of insanity we at Sanitarium.FM adore.
Asus are keen to state this is not the only first the laptop will bring: supposedly, it is also the world’s first 17-inch laptop to incorporate a 17-inch display. The actual water-cooling rig will take the form of a dock; with the premise of this laptop being that the device can be used in its own right as a mighty pixel-pushing machine in its own right, but once it’s docked, everything can be turned up that extra bit further. Going by this, we can assume the laptop will also enable overclocking while docked; and there’s also a suggestion there’ll be an Nvidia GeForce graphics card inside it.
Sadly, the rest of the Asus GX700’s specs remains very much a mystery at this point in time, with the company keeping quiet on the details for now. Also unrevealed at this point is the planned price point and launch details. We hope to report such information when it becomes available; but for now, lets just admire the almost ludicrous imagination of Asus’ product designers.
