Monthly Archives: May 2016

Dungeon Crash

Dungeon Crash is a mobile fantasy RPG created by Firefly Games. Players can join in on the ultimate fantasy RPG and battle against evil forces of orcs, elves, goblins and dragons to restore order to the Kingdom of Berman.

Features:

Awaken Your Hero: Train your hero, gain new equipment and increase your hero’s power to insane levels.

Conquer Epic Bosses: Use your hero’s ablities to take down huge boss monsters including dragons, orcs and more.

Build a Kingdom Use the spoils of your battles to build up your very own kingdom.

Raid dungeons: Join up with other players in order to take on even bigger challenges.

Chronicles of Elyria Launches Kickstarter Campaign

Chronicles of Elyria Launches Kickstarter Campaign Thumbnail

The Kickstarter campaign for Soulbound Studios’ Chronicles of Elyria went live today at 12 PM PDT. The interest the past few months from the growing community of over 40,000 gamers will be put in the spotlight and anyone will have the opportunity to back the game to show their support of the dream that is Chronicles of Elyria.

 

Community members have long awaited the Kickstarter launch date and now it is here. A member of the community said “All of us who are fans of this genre are chomping at the bit for something new like Chronicles of Elyria!”. Many gamers have already expressed their interest in backing saying “I’ll pledge for sure!” and “Definitely going to pledge this one!!”. With a community formed together behind Chronicles of Elyria one gamer stated “I think Chronicles of Elyria will finally break the next barrier and offer something new and different”.

 

When asked why a Kickstarter Soulbound Studios CEO, Jeromy Walsh, answered “We’ve turned to Kickstarter to fund this project because traditional game publishers won’t take this risk. They are incentivized to clone the latest success and merely re-skin it. But not all players want a WoW clone or to play the same game every time. Our innovative ideas come FROM gamers FOR gamers. WE want to play this game, so we turn to YOU to help make that happen. “

 

Soulbound Studios, the makers of Chronicles of Elyria, are excited to be developing one of the most dynamic and immersive MMO to date. Chronicles of Elyria is the first MMORPG where your character ages and dies, encouraging you to think beyond your character to their role in a larger story. Fearless in its design, it embraces a character’s ability to impact other characters. A closed economy, finite resources, non-repeatable quests, and a fully destructible environment means the world is experienced differently for every character.

Hero Defense – Haunted Island Getting Multiplayer

Hero Defense - Haunted Island Getting Multiplayer

Berlin-based independent developer Happy Tuesday today announces that the competitive multiplayer update to their smash hit tower-defense-action-RPG hybrid game, Hero Defense – Haunted Island, will release on Steam as a free update on Friday the 13th of May, 2016.

Players of Hero Defense – Haunted Island will be able to take each other on in a fast-paced, highly-competitive synchronous 1v1 multiplayer mode where a keen eye and strategy comes into play. Each player must arm their five heroes with the appropriate skills and runes to best the opposing player, smartly maneuvering heroes to optimal locations on the map to combat waves of enemy creeps in order to protect their own barriers, and acquire magical orbs for additional offensive capabilities. Whoever eliminates their wave of undead creeps first can strategically dismantle their opponent’s defense though Punishments – the ability to customize the enemy’s upcoming creep wave, either via stat boosts or by swapping them for a different creep type entirely bested only by a specific hero. It’s each player’s goal to overwhelm their opponents by taking advantage of their vulnerabilities so that creeps can destroy their opponent’s barricade.

Hero Defense – Haunted Island’s multiplayer update will also launch with three new maps (with a total of eight maps planned for when the game leaves Steam’s Early Access program later this summer).

With the launch of multiplayer in Hero Defense – Haunted Island, developer Happy Tuesday will begin their first Multiplayer Season, a week-long event where players can compete in ranked matches to claim the title of ultimate champion. Multiplayer Seasons will be held each and every week from the release of the multiplayer update, and progress will be reset at the end of the season preceding the next.

“After many weeks of fine-tuning and harnessing feedback from our amazing community, multiplayer is headed to Hero Defense,” said Karsten Härle, CEO of Happy Tuesday. “We’re psyched to see the response to this highly-competitive mode we’ve developed for Hero Defense fans and think they’re going to be in for a pleasant surprise at how heart-pumping it is, and how it changes the game’s dynamics for an entirely new and additional challenge!”

Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises Preview – The RTS you Didn’t Know you Needed

By Jordan Hall (Apocaruff)

 

Avalon Lords Preview

Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises is a true RTS game being developed by Animus Interactive Inc. The Steam community voted to give the game a go through Steam’s Greenlight program back in 2014 and it is now available for Early Access. It features free-form city building, real-time combat between units, and a variety of game modes to play in. If you ever enjoyed the “Age of” games, such as Age of Mythology, you will be familiar with some of the gameplay elements. Today we get to take an Early Look at the game and see how far along it has come.

 

 

Building & Resource Management

Age of Mythology, one of my all-time favorite games, is pretty similar in terms of gameplay. You build buildings, gather resources, build more advanced buildings, stock up on military units, then attack and defend while trying to maintain your base and destroying the enemy base. I love that this style of gameplay, in a fantasy setting, is still being done today as it is honestly my favorite way to play strategy games. A more recent title which is kinda similar, though faster paced, would be Starcraft II. This is the type of game where you have to enjoy multitasking, because there’s a decent chance you’ll have multiple battles going on and have to maintain your base and support NPCs all at the same time.

Avalon Lords Preview

For the most part, the building system in the game is great. The concept, anyways. The game is still in early development, though playable, so there are some bugs. I want to stress, though, that bugs are to be expected in this stage of development. For example, building walls can be a bit annoying in the current iteration of the game. They are an awesome feature, though. You have free reign over your design with them. It’s a drag-and-click system, so if you wanted to you could create a walled-in fortress in the shape of a star. Or if you really wanted to (and have the sadistic capacity for it) you could build a Death Maze to funnel enemy troops into bottlenecks.

Avalon Lords Preview

There is a bare-bones technology system in the current version of the game. This is accessed by constructing the University, though there are also a few basic tech upgrades you can do without it. The UI really needs more fleshing out for the technology system, though, as right now it’s confusing and something you can easily miss if you don’t read about it ahead of time. I’m not completely sure, but I’m guessing that the end game won’t have that advanced of a technology system either. Just a simple “Build certain structures, click, and wait.” system.

Avalon Lords Preview

Resource gathering is done by constructing certain buildings and then assigning your Citizen/support units to work them. If you want wood, you need to build a Sawmill in some woods. If you want iron, build a mine on an iron mine. Same with the other minerals. Farms can be placed anywhere flat, for the most part, though. I’m not sure if it’ll be possible in the released version of the game, but currently you have to be careful in the first steps of a match to ensure you don’t run out of one of the starting resources before you can construct at least one of each basic resource gathering building. I made the mistake of using all my wood before I realized I needed a Sawmill in my first match.

 

Avalon Lords Preview

Don’t mind the UI. It’s not very functional yet, and I can’t wait until a real UI is implemented.

 

Military units are pretty basic. If you want foot-based units, build a barracks. If you want more advanced foot units, upgrade your barracks and increase your technology. Stables for cavalry, siege workshop for siege weaponry, etc… Creating military units costs population, which is gained by building houses, and other resources depending on what type of unit it is. Like I said, it’s pretty basic but it also keeps things fun. That’s what I’m liking so much about this game so far; there’s a decent amount of things to manage, but they don’t go so in-depth that you have to stretch yourself to maintain them all.

Avalon Lords Preview

 

 

Battle

Since we just talked about military units, it makes sense to talk about the battle mechanics of the game, right? Well, right now, combat is pretty simplistic. I’m not sure how advanced it will be in the end, but so far as I’ve been able to tell the most advanced orders you can give units (for now) is to attack, run away, or sprint. Oh, and you can order a tight or loose formation. I imagine that more options will be made in the future, or so I hope, as I would love to be able to fine-tune the positioning of my units or give them orders to attack any hostiles that get within a certain range. Battles can be pretty big already, and the system feels like a bare-bones version of what you would find in a Total War game. There really isn’t much to report on battle mechanics right now, unfortunately.

Avalon Lords Preview

 

 

A Typical Match

Right now, a typical match has you started in one corner of a fairly large map. There are several “green” settlements around the map, which are your teammates. These are not so far that you’ll never be able to support each other, but far enough away that you will feel mostly isolated. If the match-making can manage it, you’ll play with other players. If not, the empty slots will be filled with CPU players. I’m not sure how popular the game will be from the get-go, but I feel like it’ll gain enough attention for a healthy population, so I’m not worried about finding players to play with.

Avalon Lords Preview

As the Match goes on, you’ll instruct your citizens to build important resource gaining buildings. Farms, mines, sawmills, those sorts of things. Then you’ll have them gain resources so you can upgrade your castle and other buildings, unlocking the potential for more citizens to be made and expanding your stronghold and its capabilities. Military structures will be made, a university can be constructed to research more advanced technologies that allow you the ability to build more advanced buildings. Pretty standard stuff, really.

Avalon Lords Preview

From there, you’ll continue to advance your settlement. Once you’ve got a pretty strong core, you will probably send out some units to explore the nearby area to see who your neighbors are, and how they’re coming along. If you see someone that’s a bit worse off than you, you may want to attack and try to take them out early. Or at least set them back enough that they won’t be so much of a threat. Matches can go on a long while, especially when you’re new to the game and haven’t yet figured out the ins-and-outs of everything. Of course, if you’re like me, you’ll end up quitting matches very early in the beginning (if you’re fighting CPUs, anyways) so that you can continue to refine your strategy at a more rapid pace.

Avalon Lords Preview

 

 

The Future

The game is in Early Access, so not all features are available and some are in but aren’t complete. The feature I’m most looking forward to seeing complete is “Empire Mode.” This is the persistent multiplayer mode where players will battle against one another for control of territories. Dunno about you guys, but that sounds fun as hell. Right now it’s in the game, but it feels like more of a filler system. I can’t be sure, but there seems to be next to zero functionality.

Avalon Lords Preview

Something else I’m looking forward to is the Single Player Campaign. The backstory for the campaign (which can be found on the Steam store page) seems like it will be interesting. I imagine that there will be a series of missions where you will need to build a new settlement and a new army for each one. So far the game has been pretty similar to my old favorites, and that’s how it was done back then. I could be wrong, though. Hopefully we’ll get to see it soon.

 

Avalon Lords Preview

Conclusion

Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises is shaping up to be an awesome game. It reminds me a lot of my favorite games – Age of Mythology, even Kenshi – and some other popular titles, such as Starcraft. If the developers execute this right, they’ll have a very successful game on their hands. The gameplay is fun, re-playability is through the roof, and the future looks bright. I would say go ahead and give Avalon Lords: Dawn Rises a look, maybe even a buy. I feel like you’ll certainly get your moneys’ worth.

 

Dungeon Hero Announces Seize War

Dungeon Hero Announces Seize War

JC Planet has announced that after its successful launch of Dungeon Hero, it will bring a new update on May 4.

The Seize War is a new PvP event that will be held twice a week, letting two guilds battle it out. Attacking guilds may field up to 80 members, while defending guilds can field 100 members. Winners of the war will grant various rewards.

As part of the update, JC Planet will host a Guild Recruitment event along with two additional social events.

Mafia III

Mafia III is a gangsters paradise of betrayal, murder, deadly gunfights, and intense vehicular action, available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, OS X, and Windows.

Features:

Back Stabber: Take revenge on the people who took everything.

Well Equipped: Arm yourself to the teeth with an assortment of weaponry.

City Slicker: Freely explore a vast open world modeled after New Orleans.

Neverwinter The Maze Engine now Available on Xbox One

Neverwinter The Maze Engine now Available on Xbox One

Today, Perfect World Entertainment Inc., a leading publisher of free-to-play MMORPGs, and Cryptic Studios announced Neverwinter: The Maze Engine – the newest expansion to the Dungeons & Dragons-based free-to-play MMORPG – is now available on Xbox One. Demonic princes Baphomet and Orcus threaten Neverwinter with a second wave of the demonic invasion and a potential super-weapon, The Maze Engine. Join Drizzt Do’Urden, Minsc, and other iconic Dungeons & Dragons characters to put an end to the demonic threat.

Neverwinter: The Maze Engine follows the events of the previous expansion – Neverwinter: Underdark. Though adventurers quelled the efforts of Demogorgon, new threats have sprung up. The Maze Engine, a powerful reality-altering artifact, is under the control of The Horned King Baphomet who looks to use its powers to ensnare the Sword Coast. Orcus, the Prince of Undeath, has taken up residence in the abandoned Castle Never, reanimating slain heroes of the castle into an undead army.

Neverwinter’s ninth expansion also brings new gameplay updates, including the return of four leveling dungeons and Castle Never, which has been upgraded into an epic dungeon. All returning dungeons have been upgraded with new content and fresh visuals. The expansion also introduces the new Mounts System, allowing players to customize their mounts and how they’re stored, an improved queue system, and an all-new campaign. More details and features can be found below:

  • Return of Castle Never – Orcus has taken over this abandoned dungeon and filled its halls with undead adventurers. The level 70 Epic Dungeon returns with fresh visuals, and has had its design optimized for efficiency as well as both new and updated rewards.
  • New Mounts System – Players can customize their favorite mounts with abilities from other mounts.
  • Four Leveling Dungeons – Returning dungeons include Cloak Tower, Pirate King’s Retreat, The Frozen eart, aHeart and Caverns of Karrundax.
  • Improved Queue System – Players can join up with their friends and large groups to conquer group challenges from dungeons, the Demogorgon battle, Tiamat and more.
  • The Maze Engine Campaign – The storyline which began in Underdark continues, pitting adventurers against a siege of demons and culminating in a battle alongside iconic D&D heroes against Baphomet.