So, as predicted today brought the announcement of Means Streets of Gadgetzan’s release date, and it’s soon – December 1st.

Gadgetzan was one of many reveals at BlizzCon this year, with a lot of teasers placing the expansion in the outpost – but no one really predicting the angle it was going to take. Mean Streets of Gadgetzan focuses on the three main crime families who run Gadgetzan’s seedy underbelly – the Grimy Goons; the Kabal and the Jade Lotus. Each family represents three classes (Grimy Goons: Hunter, Paladin, Warrior; Kabal: Warlock, Mage, Priest; Jade Lotus: Shaman, Druid, Rogue) and so we will also see the introduction of tri-class cards that can be used in the decks of three different classes.

And of course, with the release so soon the rest of the cards have also been revealed. Here they are!

Hunter

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Druid

—

Mage

—

Priest

—

Rogue

—

Warrior

—

Shaman

—

Warlock

—

Neutral

And of course, The Storm Guardian token has also been revealed too:

Now, we wait for release. And a mass of chaos as the meta shifts to accommodate the new cards. Can’t wait.

It’s time for your weekly look into some of the interesting new campaigns that have appeared on Kickstarter in the Gaming section.

As always we start off with some updates on previously covered campaigns. We’ll start off with the bad news. Death Witch: Bloodlines, Cloud Runner, and Alone in the Woods have all completed their campaign times without meeting their goals. Death Witch and Cloud Runner have no updates available on their campaign pages, and while Alone in the Woods does have 2 updates, the last one was over a month ago. Whether we see any of these projects again is anyone’s guess. Also in the ‘bad news’ column are two campaign cancellations – PURRKINS and Space Wars: Interstellar Empires. Both were presumably cancelled due to having too little time to make up their goals, but Space Wars at least is going to continue on to its release date. They’re offering rewards in-game to those who did pledge certain amounts, as they made $32,000 of their $40,000 goal in the end. Not bad for a cancellation.

However, where there is a lot of bad news, there is a little good news to balance it out. The Station has made its target and still have 11 more days to go, which means this atmospheric game is going to be made. Even more surprising is that Drawing Dead, which last week I said would have to push hard to make its goal has finished having reached it. Well played that campaign runner! And grouped in with ‘good news’, Dragon Skies VR, which was crowdfunding only to get more funds for development and were offering a copy of the game to everyone who donated at least $1 has made $799 with just over 2 days to go. That’s a decently sized community for the game from the offset!

Monkeys on Your Back

Let’s start off with the card game this week, and a game about… addictions in the shape of monkeys?

The game starts off with every players being dealt five cards. There are three types – the addiction monkeys which are what you want to avoid holding onto, action cards which let you pass the monkeys onto other players or into the deck and the figure cards which combine together into powerful combos. Each player has three lives and a life is lost each turn that is ended with a monkey still in your hand. Last one with lives wins. Simple.

Monkeys on Your Back has a €15,000 goal and has made €442 with 28 days to go.

Overstep

Next up we have a first person shooter, with emphasis on choosing how you upgrade.

Overstep is a game that the developers want to be like the old-school fast-paced shooters, and its free-to-play as well. You dispatch opponents and then have the choice of how to proceed with your upgrades, even selling on tools or keeping them as your spoils of war. There will be built in capabilities for fast-paced stunts or just entering and blasting everything to pieces. It’s up to you how you play.

Overstep has 16 days to go, and it has made €10,247 of its €100,000 goal

Plague Road

Next up, we have a game that’s planned for release onto consoles and PC.

Plague Road is a rogue-like game with some turn-based strategy elements thrown into it. You follow the tale of the plague doctor who once left his home and is now venturing back after a virilent disease, seeking survivors and possibly finding out the story of where this sickness came from in the first place. You will fight dangerous foes and have the chance to rescue survivors you find and return them to the safety of your farm home.

Plague Road has made $4,281 of its $30,000 target. It has 29 more days to go.

DämmerLicht

Finally we have an interesting game based on the many worlds theory.

The game is at its base, a 2D pixel RPG set in a fantasy medieval world. However, going off the multiverse theory of each action creating a different split off universe of what happens when each solution is chosen, each action you take in this game creates an alternative universe – in other words each action will effect which way the story develops.

DämmerLicht has 22 days remaining to make its CA$450 goal, of which it has so far managed to earn CA$75.00 of.

We’re getting close now to the release time for Hearthstone’s next big expansion, and it seems the time has finally come to focus on the remaining crime family – the Jade Lotus!

This means that we’ve had a lot of reveals in their three classes of Druid, Shaman and Rogue this week (particularly Shaman!) – as well as finding out just what’s up with the Jade Golems and why so many of the Jade Lotus cards want to summon them for you!

Druid

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Priest

—

Rogue

—

Shaman

—

Tri-Class

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Neutral

And as you can see from a great many of the Jade Lotus cards, they summon Jade Golems. Having expressed curiosity last week about what they look like, we finally find out. The more Jade Golems summoned, the more powerful the subsequent Jade Golems are!

Shaman got a lot of cards this week, about time given how long they went without any new cards revealed. The most interesting one for me has to be Devolve, the antithesis of the popular Evolve card among Shaman players who love a little bit of chance. Of course, Devolve also has that same RNG taste to it, but usually you count on 1 Mana less Minions being weaker. At the very least it is another one that upsets the plans your opponent might be plotting at that moment.

Not that many Neutral reveals this week, but Hozen Healer could be a good one if it appears at the right time. Sure, 2 attack isn’t great for 4 Mana, but 6 Health AND a full Minion heal? Pretty good value to me, although we shall obviously have to wait and see what kind of use it receives after Gadgetzan gets a release.

There’s going to be a big livestream tomorrow over on the Hearthstone Twitch channel, so you can bet that we’ll see more cards and probably a release date announcement happening during that stream. Tune in if you want to see how each family plays, because they’ve certainly said they’ll be doing that too!

After a surprise awakening two days ago, Hello Games have posted up the patch notes for the Foundation Update they’re adding the No Man’s Sky.

The patch notes are hosted over on their site, taking up an entire page with big sections devoted to each new ‘big’ addition coming in. For those who heard about the Update and thought it’d be a small, token thing… well, by the looks of it Hello Games really have been hard at work for the last few months. If you look at the patch notes that is. Certainly impressive.

So, to start we know that the Foundation Update is setting up the groundwork for a bigger and better base building mechanic. You should now be able to claim unoccupied bases you come across, and will be able to hire alien researchers to help you develop new technologies for your living arrangements. Or, if you later find a much nicer place to have a base, break it down and reclaim the materials to rebuild it there.

Farming is also going to come to the game, with some new crops being the result of the aforementioned research in that area at least. You will also be able to build automatic resource harvesters to cut out the need for you to constantly go searching for that last thing you need across many planet surfaces.

If you could have lived our lives over the last months, you’d know how meaningful this is.

Here’s update 1.1https://t.co/4TelmFIgsK

— Sean Murray (@NoMansSky) November 27, 2016

Off the planet, you can now hire massive freighters to transport big loads of cargo for you. They can also be sent to certain systems to accumulate resources as well.

Other changes include UI tweaks, and the addition of both a Creative Mode for unrestrained building, and a Survival Mode for anyone who wants a challenge.

Hello Games say that this is “the first of many free updates.” So hopefully there might be a chance NMS will become the game it was supposed to be.

That is, if the gaming community can forgive past mistakes…

Recently it was announced that Sega and Creative Assembly were teaming up with Wargaming for a collaboration on Total War Arena, one of their upcoming games. Now an image has been released on the official Facebook which along with e-mails sent out, confirm the date of closed Alpha tests for the game.

The image is of Roman soldier’s pauldron with the roman numerals  XXVI.XI.MMXVI. visible on it. For those of you who get confused with Roman Numerals or just can’t be bothered to decipher it, in numbers we’d recognise more easily it reads 27.11.2016. You might be reading this and realise that it happens to be tomorrow’s date. So we won’t have to wait long for news.

We know that it’s closed alpha as well because the subreddit for Total War Arena is currently filled with players saying that they’ve received alpha keys, and a number of people have screencapped and posted the e-mail that came with the key. Said e-mail suggests that the tests will start from 8am tomorrow, so as long as NDA isn’t put in place you may see the game popping up on Twitch and Youtube Gaming tomorrow.

Of course, the partnership with Wargaming means that the game is not available on Steam and must instead be played through Wargaming Game Center, along with a wipe of any previous tests’ progress. So everyone’s starting from square one which is probably a good thing.