Monthly Archives: April 2017

Breaking News: Sega Partners with WWE:

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I received a curious bit of news in my inbox today. It’s no big secret that I love the WWE, and wrestling in general. However, I read this morning that SEGA is partnering with the WWE to make a mobile game! An idle game, in particular, called WWE: Tap Mania. This is smart branding on a lot of different levels. Kurt Angle just got inducted into the Hall of Fame, and is famous for “making people tap”. Tapping is a thing you do in a lot of those idle games, and well…submission moves are cool! They all look horrifying and unpleasant and get victories. If Kurt’s not on the loading screen, there’s something wrong. The Tap Lab is working on the game itself, and they are well-known for making popular, well-received mobile games, and I’m sure this will be no exception. I enjoyed all of the ones I’ve played so far, Supercard, and Champions. I’m curious what the next mobile game will bring to the table!

“We are always looking to engage our global fan base in new and exciting ways. Partnering with industry leader SEGA is a great opportunity for us to continue our mobile game strategy while bringing in new fans with WWE Tap Mania.” said Casey Collins, WWE Executive Vice President, Consumer Products. I can’t wait to see the roster and the gameplay! You can count on us covering it when it’s available! Or at least… I will.

Games for Kids: Harvest Moon

Harvest Moon Editorial

Welcome to Clickbait 101, guys!

I. Love. Harvest Moon. It’s so weird though because it’s a game about damn farming. I hate work in the yard, or on the farm. I’ve worked in a garden and done years and years of working outdoors. I hate it. It’s tedious, and it almost never feels worth it. But Harvest Moon? It…just feels right. It combines relationship building with farming, and it’s wonderful. It’s wholesome and entertaining. It feels like you really accomplish something, even in the smallest of tasks. And I feel that’s important. Not to mention I frankly love the publisher, Natsume [Serious Fun]. They released some of my favorite titles of all time, so that’s just another feather in their cap. I’m typically willing to give titles they release a fair shake. So when I saw in my email “Harvest Moon coming to mobile” I was elated! Excited! Then worried it would be a cash grab! That fear was at least, put to rest.

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Harvest Moon: Lil’ Farmers is an activity playset on mobile/tablet for little kids. It’s being published by Rising Star Games in conjunction with the original publisher Natsume, so I’m really excited to see this come out. Not so much to play it [but let’s be honest; I’ll probably try it anyway] but to see how young children react to the Harvest Moon franchise, and if they have fun with it. Smoking companies want to “hook ’em while they’re young” and so do gaming! But this is designed to be an app that teaches and entertains, from a team that has made games for Paddington Bear, Postman Pat, and Bob the Builder [only really familiar with Paddington, but I’m old]. The best part? No micro-transactions/in-game purchases. It just has a baseline cost of like…3.99. That’s wonderful. So it’s inexpensive, it’s simple enough for a young child to play on their own, or with their parent/etc, to help develop verbal skills at the same time. Technology is a wonderful thing, and I’m pretty happy to see it being used to expand the minds of children, and with the Harvest Moon name attached.

New Harvest Moon when, though?

 

SMITE Apollo’s Racer Rumble Patch Livestream Recap

Today was another SMITE patch note reveal stream – and this one’s an exciting one as Patch 4.6 includes Apollo’s Racer Rumble, a new adventure mode! Check our notes on the patch stream and the screenshots from the stream below.

Apollo’s Racer Rumble Mode Lowdown:

  • Available for next 4 weeks (April 11 – May 9, 2017 on PC, April 25 – May 16, 2017 on console)
  • Hitting PTS on Friday, April 7
  • 10 Unique Cars/Gods. Cars modeled to match each god: Mercury, Sylvanus, Zeus, Ymir, Ratatoskr, Fenrir, Izanami, Cabrakan, Aphrodite, and Sun Wukong.
  • Each god has unique turning animations and reactions.
  • 8 Players in race. Free for all style! No duplicate picks.
  • Two Total Maps from one queue: Molten Pass and Elisian Beach.
  • Custom Horn for each car. No VGS in this mode.
  • Can queue up to 5 man to race friends.
  • Players can drift to boost speed. Speed boost power ups on map. Pick up items from boxes just like Mario Kart. Item drop rate impacted by your position you’re currently in.

Items in the race include:

  • Shield – CC immunity and block incoming effects
  • Nene Kappa – Works like a shell in Mario Kart

The Racer Bundle Includes: Apollo Skin, Pedestal, ward skin, music theme, gold key.

Progression System: Depending on how you finish, you gain progression points for an outside of game lap reward system. The better you race, the quicker you get your rewards. Should take 5 hours to complete the nine laps of rewards.

There’s two additional enigma chests and a new ‘awesome’ chest which includes only exclusive skins! 60+ exclusive skins inside chest and you’re guaranteed to get one!

After you finish the primary laps, you gain access to 10 bonus laps worth 10 gems per lap!

Patch Note Screenshot Gallery:

Dropzone Dev Interview – Looking Forward to Free to Play

Questions by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Answers by Jason Coleman, Founder of Sparkypants

 

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1. Dropzone is at last leaving early access to accept  a fully free to play model on April 12th. Has planning for this transition been a challenge?

Actually, it’s just the opposite for Dropzone. Dropzone was built to be a F2P game so it was actually awkward the other way around. For example, we wanted to give away a lot with the purchase but it really hurt the fun of progression we had built. So we’re happy to restore that idea. Also, a game like Dropzone needs players and lowering the barrier to entry with F2P helps a lot.

 

2. Can you explain to us how that’s going to change? Will it be free to play with no restrictions or more of a “veteran” system where you can opt to purchase the game?

It will be F2P. We may offer some kind of bundles on Steam at a later point but it’s very much built with F2P in mind. That said, our goal was to make it perfectly reasonable for players to fully experience the game without having to spend real money. We are sensitive as developers and as players strive to avoid being labeled by the community as the dreaded Pay-to-Win. To that end, we give a nice collection of options even during the initial tutorial and “onboarding,” and we’ll keep working to make progression a fun experience.

 

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3. One of the biggest things for me is I’m getting on in years! Mastering the control of 3 rigs at once can be incredibly overwhelming for people that normally aren’t big into RTS, but love the concept of this game. In that vein, I heard there’s a a new 3v3 mode! Can you tell us a bit about it?

Yes! It’s actually our most requested feature or at least the concept of only controlling 1 rig at a time. We were stupidly stubborn about it but then decided 3v3, 1 rig each. And it is so much fun! Even our hardcore developer players love playing on a team and the core of the game is still there: rig customization, capture points, scoring, 15 minute limit. We did end up increasing rig speeds slightly, reducing cooldowns, and decreasing respawn times. Some of those changes have actually made it into the 1v1 mode. But we knew it was fun immediately and we have had to sometimes ask the development team to stop playing so much. Nice problem to have! An awesome side effect of this change is that the game is basically balanced for both team and individual play.

 

4. Will players be able to pick the same characters, or Mirror Matches on the other side?

In 3v3, there are actually no restrictions on the Pilots. You can even have duplicates on the same team. This may change with time, but we’ll start with looser rules and go from there.

 

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5. Have you considered 3v3 Ranked matches? Is that something that players might be able to look forward to?

We wanted to get 3v3 out there and we are just now introducing 1v1 ranked draft. But, with demand, we’ll make it happen.

 

6. In that same vein, there’s going to be 1v1 competitive, where players will control the traditional 3 Rigs at once. In that mode, every decision is going to be incredibly important, from Rig to Pilot. Will there be any major changes between Normal 1v1 and Ranked 1v1? Bans, etc?

For serious competitive play, Ranked Draft is definitely a game changer. In Ranked Draft, there are no bans (yet) but Pilot picks are exclusive. In addition, there is a gear “sideboard” which each player can bring to make changes in a second phase of the draft with each Pilot in succession. This should dramatically increase the strategy and variety of play on the competitive scene. Unranked 1v1 will continue to allow mirrored Pilots in its current form.

 

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7. Will there be a ladder or a season to climb, and what awaits players that climb? Would you like to see Dropzone become a new RTS esport?

We will soon release the ranked divisions and the associated leaderboards. And we’ll have more details at that time. We would of course love Dropzone to be successful as an esport and as a more casual game, and we’ll keep working to provide for both.

 

8. Are you going to be pushing the focus of the game on one of those new modes over another, or will players be able to progress through the game in whichever one they feel more comfortable in?

Players should definitely feel free to play the game as they wish. However, there will be some level gates on various forms of matching-making and ranked play with 1v1 having the higher level requirements. Because of the upfront skill needed to play 1v1 successful in a competitive sense, we feel it’s important to provide ample training beforehand. The one caveat to all this is that, where it matters, we will balance for 1v1 first.

 

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9. Dropzone is at last leaving early access to accept  a fully free to play model on April 12th. Has planning for this transition been a challenge? And since I always drop a goofy one: If Dropzone became an esport…given that it has a sports feel with the scoring and the time limit, who would you like to see do color commentary/play-by-play of esports matches? Personally, I’d like to see Jim Ross and Mauro Ranallo.

Gotta go old school… John Madden or bust.

 

Thanks for your time! To learn more about the big changes in the coming free to play patch, be sure to check out the latest patch notes page!