Monthly Archives: March 2014

Over $160,000 pledged to Planets3; New Pets Unveiled To Celebrate

Planets3 Pets

Now that the KickStarter campaign for the RPG game Planets3 has reached 64% of its goal – meaning more than $160, 000! – the French video game studio Cubical Drift has announced that all current backers are being offered the opportunity to get complimentary pets in the game.

By adding $20 to their initial pledge, backers will receive 3 extra pets that will accompany them all throughout their adventure. Each of them has specific attributes: Kbot is a robot able to detect minerals, Kick is a loyal four-legged companion which supports them in combat and last but not least, Onof is a luminescent living gelatine.

Depending on what happens in the game, either Kbot, Kick or Onof will join the players to support them. See more about these goal markers in the handy chart below:

Planets3 Stretch

Innovative Mystery Game Cloud Chamber to Launch this Year

Cloud Chamber Poster

Investigate North today announce their latest project for worldwide release: an innovative mix of story exploration and collaborative investigation that forms a new kind of massively multiplayer game.

Cloud Chamber – which won plaudits in the Scandinavian press and a ‘Game of the Year’ award during its Danish beta phase last year – casts players as users tracking confidential information through dreamily rendered data landscapes. Their aim: to piece together a tale of murder, betrayal, electronica and astrophysics. The game will be available for PC and Mac this year, via Steam and other digital distribution channels.

Cloud Chamber follows the investigations of young scientist Kathleen Petersen into the Petersen Institute, one of Europe’s most prestigious scientific centres. While investigating the suspicious circumstances of her mother’s death there, Kathleen uncovers a skein of astonishing revelations about her father, the Institute and the existence of communicative rhythms in the fabric of space. Soon she is faced with an impossible choice between loyalty to her family and a duty to pass on what seems to be a mysterious warning to mankind.

Navigating through a series of 3D datascapes, players collect nodes of information and discuss them with other players. As they progress, players piece together what actually happened from fragments of found film footage, science journals, video diary entries, actual space footage and astrophotography. Only by working together with other players can the truth about Kathleen’s parents and the universe be uncovered.

“We’re extremely curious to see how global audiences take to investigating the Cloud Chamber mystery,” said Christian Fonnesbech, creative director at Investigate North.

Cloud Chamber is a new kind of game which brings story exploration to a multiplayer environment. In the beta launch, we saw core players discuss everything from the characters’ inner lives to the birth of the universe while trying to figure out what happened. It’s going to be fascinating to see how people from all over the world meet and respond to the challenge.”

Cloud Chamber also features an electronic soundtrack from renowned artists such as Burial and Trentemøller and high-quality found footage from the team behind The Killing – as well as star performances from Hollywood actors from Game of ThronesCasino Royale and Quantum of Solace. The full game, which will include numerous tweaks and additions following the success of the Danish beta, is due for global release on PC and Mac this year.

Warlord Saga Introduces Classes and Factions

The development team behind Warlord Saga is hard at working every element to deliver the ultimate gaming experience. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the worst thing we can say about it is that it will leave you wanting more to sink your teeth into. Today, PopPace team was very glad to announce that the long-awaited Open Beta may be released at the end of March.

There are three playable classes, namely Warrior, Strategist, and Archer in Warlord Saga. Warriors wield a long spear. They excel at tanking and are brave enough to protect teammates to the end. Strategists master military strategy and tactics. They are capable of wielding a long sword to deal massive damage and make up their poor defense. Archers are agile ranged damage dealers. They excel at dealing damage fast from afar.

In addition to the choice of classes, players can feel free to select a faction from Shu, Wei and Wu.

Shu, also known as Shu Han, was one of the three major kingdoms that competed for supremacy over China in the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD). Shu was founded in 221 AD by Liu Bei who was directly related to the imperial clan of the Han Dynasty, based in the area around Jingzhou and Yizhou.

Wei, also known as Cao Wei, was one of the three major kingdoms that competed for supremacy over China in the Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD). With its capital at Luoyang, the state was founded by Cao Pi in 220 AD, based upon the foundations laid by his father, Cao Cao, towards the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Wu, also known as Eastern Wu or Sun Wu, was one of the three major kingdoms that competed for supremacy over China in the Three Kingdoms period (220–280 AD). Its name was derived from the place it was based in the Yangtze River Delta region, which was also historically known as Wu.

Fore more info, visit http://ws.poppace.com/preview

Brain Storm Review – MMORTS with a Knowledge-based Twist

By Jordan Hall (ApocaRUFF)

 

Brain Storm Tools

Introduction

Brainstorm is an MMORTS being developed by Genia, whose slogan is, “Knowledge-Powered Games.” As that might imply, Brainstorm has a twist that makes it a bit different than most browser-based MMORTS. This twist is a setting where “knowledge is power,” and everything you do will be dependent on that factor. If you like trivia, enjoy quizzes, or generally just enjoy testing your mind, you will probably find some sort of enjoyment from Brainstorm. So, if you think you have what it takes to take over the virtual world using your real-world knowledge, you may want to check this game out.

 

 

Customization

There’s honestly not a whole lot of customization. If you’ve played an MMORTS in the past, you’ll be familiar with the lack of customization this genre offers. You’ll also understand that it doesn’t detract from the game at all. In Brainstorm, you’ll be free to make choices, but these are the same choices other people will run into, which means there will be a lot of people out there with similar outcomes to you. Most of your choice-making will come in designing your base and choosing how to expand, which is where you would expect it to be.

 

Brain Storm Review Graphics

Graphics

The game has very nice animated 2D art-work. It has a realistic feel, but with an idealized slant. Rather than dark-and-grimy, you’ll find a lot of bright colors. This gives the game a happy or progressive feeling that you’re participating in something great. Which, I suppose, is the sort of feelings you’re supposed to feel while playing Brain Storm. Either way, I enjoyed the art style and felt it complimented the game a lot.

 

 

Controls

As with most browser-based MMORTS, you will be playing the game almost completely with the mouse. This means the responsiveness and effectiveness of the GUI will dictate how well the ‘controls’ work. While playing, I did notice a slight laggyness to the responsiveness. Other than that, I didn’t notice any problems with the controls. The UI was easy to learn, especially after you participate in the tutorial, so there was no issue with it being confusing. All-in-all, I have to say I was pleased with the controls in Brain Storm.

 

 

Community

Community is an important part of Brain Storm, or so it is said. Constantly, you are encouraged to work with others as it is the best way to create the best, most powerful Oracle (A feature I’ll get into in the “gameplay” section). To be able to succeed, you will need to join what is known as an Alliance, which is (as the name suggests) an alliance of players. Communication is done via the forums, or the built-in chatroom function. So far, the community of the game feels small, but that is to be expected of a beta game.

 

Brain Storm Experts

Gameplay

Brain Storm starts out feeling almost exactly like all other RTS games out there. You build your city, setting up specialized buildings to create specialized units and gain access to new things. Expanding your city is important to the gameplay, just like other MMORTS. Where things get different is the lack of violence, and the emphasis on trivia. Rather than creating armies, you’ll create experts to do research to unlock new knowledge fragments which are (essentially) trivia questions on different aspects of life. It can be something like a bikini and who created it, to information about how sniffer dogs are used to find truffles.

 

Mastering these knowledge fragments will let you use them in your own city. If you master sniffer dogs, you can then use them to help with security. If you get the bikini fragment, you might find a use for it somewhere else as clothing for some expert. You can also use any bit of knowledge you get as part of your city’s “trivia” shield. This shield will help protect you against ‘attacks’ from outside sources (such as other players). If you like answering odd bits of trivia, you’ll enjoy this game a lot.

 

Brain Storm Review Oracle

 

The big end-goal of this game is to create the best Oracle. To accomplish this, you’ll need the help of your fellow players and will end up joining an Alliance. The goal of the Oracle is to display just how knowledgeable you and your fellows are, proving that you are the best. Collecting knowledge fragments, improving your city, expanding your domain and production… all of this will go towards the creation and improving of your Oracle.

 

Brain Storm Review City Building

 

As I mentioned, a big part of the game is building up your city. This is done using specialized resources, such as the potentially infinite resource of Genium. You will plan and upgrade buildings that will give you access to newer and better stuff. For example, to get to the best sources of Genium, you will need to create a Geology lab and upgrade it further and further. Basically, it’s the same concept as other MMORTS games, just with a slightly different process for getting to the end goal.

 

Brain Storm Review Credits

 

One thing you will notice early on is the possible uses of Credits. As you might have guessed, credits are a premium currency that you can get by spending real-life money. You can use it to automate some parts of your city, or if you find you’re not particularly good at the trivia questions you can use it to gain access to the in-game wikipedia of knowledge. If you fail to answer a question correctly while attempting to master it, you can use Credits to get a second chance, too. Generally, these features are relatively cheap, but they do give paying users a certain edge. But, then again, a few fast wiki or google searches can make the in-game options completely null.

 

Brain Storm Review World Selection

 

Another familiar feature will be the creation of newer worlds. As time progresses, older servers (or worlds) will become stagnant or clogged with older, more advanced users. Or maybe there will simply just be too many users on a single server. Other games have combated this with the creation of newer servers, and it seems like Brain Storm will also be going down that route. I am currently playing on the newest server, which is just seven days old as of writing. There are two other servers, with one that is about a month old. This is good as it lets people join whichever type of environment they want to.

 

Brain Storm Review 2

Conclusion: Good

Brain Storm is certainly a unique game, which is refreshing with the staggering amount of generic MMORTS games that come out on the browser each year. Of course, this doesn’t mean Brain Storm is completely alien – there are a lot of features that are quite familiar to veterans of the genre. However, I’m sure anyone that gives the game a try will agree that is does have its own special twist. In the end, I can see how a lot of people might enjoy this type of knowledge-based game. So, while I will probably not be playing it much myself, I can safely recommended it to anyone looking for a new browser-based MMORTS.

 

 

 

Features: 4/5 – Some new, some old.

Customization: 2/5 – Not much here.

Graphics: 4/5 – I enjoyed the 2D art, and the animations weren’t half bad.

Controls: 3.5/5 – Some laggyness, which I hold will be sorted out.

Community: 3/5 – The game promotes community interaction a great deal, but the population is currently small.

 

Overall: 3.5/5 Definitely a game worth trying, and it has room to grow.

Conquer Online Launches “Wrath of the Trojan” Expansion

Conquer Online

Conquer Online has welcomed the first big expansion of the new year, called Wrath of the Trojan. With this latest content update, the very first Epic Weapons have emerged in the world of Conquer, as well as several new skills available for all classes. The beginning of this new feature is the epic “Cross Saber”, exclusively for Trojans.

New unique Epic Weapons with certain oriental elements can be especially earned designed for the Ninja class. For those who want to get a hold of their own Epic Weapons, you’ll have to go through the Epic Quests, which are by far the most challenging quest in Conquer history. But for those with patience and determination, these Epic Weapons can be obtained.

For more info, visit http://co.91.com/

Stormfall: Age of War

Stormfall: Age of War is a free-to-play strategy RPG on Facebook. Darkshine has descended into chaos, and rival warlords seek to rip the land asunder: can you restore the land and bring peace in an age of war?

Features:

Rule Rightly: Raise a castle as you master elements of sword, spell, and siegecraft.

Gather Armies: Recruit units from Barbarians to Dragons, Necromancers to Paladins, as you march forward across the land.

Allied Strength: Choose alliances carefully; honesty may be a mere guise for survival in this land.

Zombies Ate My Pizza Open Beta Pack Giveaway

OnRPG has partnered with R2Games for the open beta launch of Zombies Ate My Pizza, a free MMO action shooter!

Zombies Pizza Giveaway

Zombies Ate My Pizza is a post-apocalyptic, MMO action shooter. Blast your way through hordes of ravenous zombies and their evil alien overlords, blowing up foes and picking up grabbing supplies along the way. Join your militia in dungeon events, unlock mighty super powers and become a tournament champion, but most of all… don’t let them near your pizza!

Zombie Pizza Packs Include:
1) 300K Gold
2) 150K Souls
3) Lvl. 3 Ruby
4) Lvl. 3 Sapphire

 

To Redeem Your Key:

  • Make an account and go to the Events Center in-game.
  • Click on the ‘Activation Code Exchange’ button.
  • Paste your code in the field.
  • Click ‘Collect’.
  • You will receive a confirmation that the items have been redeemed.