Edge Case Games
Monthly Archives: April 2015
Spacetime partners with League of Legends Pro Players on New MOBA
Spacetime Studios, a Texas-based independent mobile game developer and publisher, has partnered with former League of Legends professional Esports players James “PhantomL0rd” Varga, Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani and Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis to consult on the development of their latest game Call of Champions. Built from the ground up for mobile devices, Call of Champions is a game that streamlines traditional multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) mechanics for fast and strategic matches. The former Esports players will bring their unique backgrounds and pro experience in the competitive MOBA scene to assist in refining the gameplay of Call of Champions.
“James, Joedat and Stephen have helped level up competitive gaming and define what it means to be an Esports competitor today,” said Gary Gattis, CEO, Spacetime Studios. “Their extraordinary ability to understand MOBAs and how people play these games makes them the perfect partners to work with our team creating Call of Champions. With their help, we will set a new standard for competitive mobile games.”
Serving as independent consultants, the three professional gamers have extensive experience in the MOBA genre and are highly accomplished within the Esports circuit. James “PhantomL0rd” Varga began his professional gaming career with Team Fortress Classic, Counterstrike, Quake3 Arena, and World of Warcraft before immersing himself in League of Legends where he co-founded the original V8 Esports team. Joedat “Voyboy” Esfahani is among the most accomplished and well known League of Legends players in the world and has represented teams such as Dignitas, Counter Logic Gaming, and Curse in tournaments as big as the World Championships. Stephen “Snoopeh” Ellis is a former professional League of Legends player who has competed with and against the best players in the world for more than four years.
Call of Champions is a next-generation MOBA refined for mobile and designed for competition. In the game, players will be able to control one of over twenty different Champions across five distinct classes, each equipped with their own unique playstyle and special abilities. Each match is packed into a thrilling 5-minute time limit enabling players to enjoy quick competitive games with anyone, anywhere, anytime. Call of Champions features a robust social toolset, allowing players to recruit team members, plan matches, and earn achievements, plus spectate or broadcast matches live.
“PhantomL0rd”, “Voyboy” and “Snoopeh” will collaborate with the game design team and provide commentary on the game’s development via their respective social channels. These pro gamers will also be the first players to participate in the Call of Champions Alpha Program. Spacetime Studios will be opening the Alpha to an elite group of competitive gamers and innovators later this month. To stay up-to-date on the latest information, #AnswerTheCall and visit www.CallofChampions.com where you can rate the game’s Champions and sign up to receive exclusive information on the upcoming Alpha and Beta.
Call of Champions will be available in 2015 as a free download on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch and on Google Play for Android devices.
Play Fractured Space for Free This Weekend and Unlock Permanent Access
The tactical space combat game, Fractured Space, from the team behind Strike Suit Zero, is free to play this weekend on Steam–even better, all players who log in this weekend also unlock permanent access to the game. Exclusive rewards such as a premium ship and skins for all players can be unlocked for the team-based space combat game when goals are reached for a set amount of players logging in during the weekend.
The free weekend runs from Friday April 17th until Monday April 20th at 2 PM EST and also discounts the game’s founder packs by 25%. New players can learn how to play in this tutorial video. You can find further details on this blog post.
The following are the rewards for the players logging in the game during the free weekend. These rewards will be made available in future updates:
- Permanently unlocked early access version of Fractured Space
- Exclusive captain based on well-known Youtuber and early Fractured Space supporter The Mighty Jingles
- At 5,000 players: Exclusive skins for the three beginner ships
- At 10,000 players: Exclusive community-voted legendary skin for a TDS ship
- At 15,000 players: The exclusive legendary skin gets upgraded to an exclusive TDS premium ship
Hounds: The Last Hope Cinematics Trailer
Netmarble releases Hounds: The Last Hope, an action shooter RPG.
Epic Games
Epic Games
Triad Wars
Triad Wars is an open-world action game developed by United Front Games. Set in the same world of the Sleeping Dogs universe, players can rise to power as the king of the Hong Kong criminal underworld.
Features:
Familiar territory: Triad Wars is set in the same universe as Sleeping Dogs, so fans of the original Sleeping Dogs game will feel right at home with many areas and zones pulled straight from the original game.
Unique combat and acction: Experience the unrivaled combination of fighting, shooting & driving.
Criminal activity: Succeed through strategy via extortion, hacking & money laundering
World of Warships Dev Diary 5 – Japanese Navy
The Wargaming team discusses the unique strengths of the Japanese navy in World of Warships.
United Front Games
United Front Games
Warlocks vs Shadows Preview
By Andy Skelton (Outfoxed)
What do you get when you mix arena combat, RPG elements, magic, mayhem, and a dose of unique elements? No, not a jumbled mess of a game. You get Warlocks vs. Shadows (previously just ‘Warlocks’), developed by Frozen District and published by ONE MORE LEVEL. The game promises heavy action, challenging bosses, and an exceptional storyline. While the game is in early access on Steam, I was given a chance to try it out to see if it delivered on those promises.
Fire, Ice, and Everything Nice
Warlocks vs. Shadows gives you five characters to choose from at the start. You can choose from Rainer, who teleports around the battlefield; Jake, whose speciality is fiery destruction; Anya the Ice Mistress (guess what she does!); Borubar the Bugbear warrior, bringer of smashy destruction; and Kheera, a shamaness with a wonderfully dual personality. That’s one plus about Warlocks vs. Shadows for me: every character is unique, and wonderful to learn to play.
You’ll also unlock additional characters as you play through the stages, five more in total. It’s rare to find a game like this with ten completely unique characters.
Walk Softly, Carry Phantasmal Cosmic Power
Once you’ve selected a character, you’re taken to a tutorial stage. The training dummies here don’t fight back, have a lot of health, and are great to learn the moves. The game does a good job telling you what abilities do, but only for that character and only via description. Attacks are carried out using the Z, X, C, and V keys. Z is the auto-attack for everyone, and varies in usefulness. C is (usually) a dash move for each character, with various offensive and defensive applications. X attacks vary greatly, and the V attacks are what can be considered defining abilities.
Considering you can freely switch between characters while playing, the inability to know at a glance what their abilities can do is a major problem. Even then, a lot of the skills may not be immediately obvious. For example, Jake’s V skill is held down to activate and maintain, whereas most everyone else’s V is simply activated. There is no in game information that displays this outside of that singular tutorial level (and then, only when you’re playing as Jake).
Fight For Your Right To Warlock
Combat in Warlocks vs. Shadows is very intense. You’re under almost constant attack from the shadows, and have to use all of your abilities to survive. In fact, the difficulty is remarkably refreshing, considering that you can avoid almost all damage that would come your way. Despite their simple seeming designs, every enemy type is unique, and the first world alone throws five types at you. Enemies come in waves, and each stage requires a certain number of waves to be defeated before you can advance to the next. On some stages, completing a wave spawns a treasure chest that contains powerful equipment, or a merchant that allows you to buy and sell items (more on this later).
Of course, you’re not just fighting on the ground in boring, flat arenas. There is plenty of platforming to be had in taking out some of the shadows, and you’re constantly moving, jumping, and dashing around the gorgeous areas trying to dish out the pain. It was a pleasure to see the controls were incredibly responsive for keyboard players. Playing on a wired XBox360 controller was a bit more awkward – mainly due to jump being bound to the directional pad – but still quite responsive.
Do More? Take Less? Why Not Do Both?
Enemies sometimes drop equipment, which is where a lot of the rogue-like elements come in to play. What you get is completely random, and can also come in cursed varieties. Generally speaking, you don’t want cursed items, as they cause you to take vast amounts more damage, but hey, an upgrade is an upgrade for some people! Helmets and armor share two base modifiers: armor or cooldown reduction. What these stats do is pretty self-explanatory, I hope. Boots can have movement speed increase, or jump height and armor.
Weapons have the most options. Damage is the primary function of weapons, but they can also have critical chance, cooldown reduction, armor, and more. All pieces of equipment can also carry enchantments, which further add effects like slowing enemies, stealing life, or causing damage they inflict to be dealt back to them in return. As can be expected, different characters function best with different attributes, but most players will find what works best for them, and stick with it.
Note that while equipment is important, your characters skills are far more so. When you defeat enough enemies, you’ll level up, and can increase the power of one of your skills. The one thing I realized quickly when I changed characters to try someone new is that these skill increases carry over from character to character. This makes your choice on how to develop each warlock into a battle of focusing on a specific one, or balancing to be able to switch to another class if things are getting too hard for your currently selected character. While that may not appeal to some, I actually enjoyed that design decision.
Final Thoughts: Great (4/5)
Warlocks vs. Shadows has a lot of potential. It’s already a very solid game in its current state. It’s got great gameplay, excellent music, varied characters, and incredibly challenging and fun boss battles. It could use some polish here and there, like the aforementioned issue with skill explanations. Still, I was blown away with just how much fun I was having, despite the campaign currently being only a couple hours long. Throw local and online multiplayer on top of that, and you might start to see where Warlocks vs. Shadows starts showing even more promise. If you’re a fan of fast-paced action, rogue-like style games, and gorgeous pixel art, I’d highly recommend keeping an eye on Warlocks vs. Shadows.
Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless Free on Steam All Weekend
Popular French developer Amplitude Studios officially unveiled its community-driven Steam Free Weekend today, giving gamers the chance to try, play, and join a worldwide effort to unlock new, secret characters, items, and more in the 4X fantasy-strategy Endless Legend and the rogue-like dungeon–defense game Dungeon of the Endless. Equally exciting is that Amplitude is offering participants the chance to unlock official playable Team Fortress characters in Dungeon of the Endless – all of them perfectly ‘retro’-fitted into ‘bit’ graphics that match the rogue-like’s colorful, old-school art style.
As part of the free weekend-long promotion, which starts today, Thursday, April 16, and ends Monday, April 20, all of Amplitude’s games will be on sale at significantly reduced prices: Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless will be on sale at 50% off, and Endless Space is 80% off the retail price.
Amplitude’s free weekend is dedicated to offering new and veteran gamers the chance to experience the studio’s growing GAMES2GETHER community. Using ‘stretch goals’ for participants to reach, Amplitude has created a universal set of tiers where the more players who join and play, the more unlockable characters, items, and other secret content pieces are unlocked in Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless. Gamers are encouraged to play alone, together in multiplayer, and to tell their friends to increase the cumulative number of players participating to reach a series of unlocking tiers. Each time a tier is reached, new content is unlocked for future updates.
For the full list of Stretch Goals, head this way!
“We build games for our fans, and, in turn, they improve our games every step of the way,” said Romain de Waubert de Genlis, chief creative officer at Amplitude Studios. “Our free weekend is a gift and a community game unto itself, encouraging our community to play, tell their friends, increase player activity, and, as a reward, earn new content for our two latest games.”
Amplitude Studios’ Steam Free Weekend starts today, Thursday, April 16, and ends Monday, April 20.










