Monthly Archives: November 2018

Thea 2: The Shattering Is a 4x Hybrid Strategy Game Coming to Early Access in November

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MuHa Games is a Polish-British indie developer, creator of Thea: The Awakening. Thea: The Awakening is a 4x strategy, RPG, survival and card game hybrid, and has a sequel coming to Steam’s Early Access. Arriving on November 30th, Thea 2: The Awakening is scheduled for a 2019 release overall. Early Access will include the core mechanics, such as exploration, battle, resource gathering, research, and crafting. Thea 2’s Early Access will also have the main quest and many of the side quests playable. The goal during this time is to polish the game and analyze feedback from the players, to tweak the game and get it ready for the final release.

Thea 2: The Shattering will once again offer a unique blend of 4X turn strategy, RPG, survival — and an original card game with a dark fantasy setting — all inspired by Slavic mythology and culture. Players take on the role of gods, overseeing the actions of their tribe of followers while navigating a procedurally-generated environment. They will decide on a favored play style and build on it during their adventure: they may wish to simply explore the world as nomads, take on all comers as a warlord-led army, or master the art of diplomacy; building alliances with other factions and trying to ensure the peaceful survival of their worshippers. Thea 2 will also feature co-op multiplayer, free DLC, an adventure editor, modding tools, which ought to bring quite a bit of replayability as well as community engagement.

The Ballad Singer – Early Access Thoughts

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

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This was the start of an animation before a great battle.

“Choose Your Own Adventure” and “Fighting Fantasy” were two of the styles of books I grew up on in Elementary School, and absolutely swore by them. I’d go out of my way to get every single one of them I could, and only occasionally cheated by holding my finger on a page before turning forward/backward. That way, if you haven’t let go of the old page, you didn’t really mean to move forward and make a fatal mistake that killed you. So when I saw The Ballad Singer, I was pretty intrigued. It’s more like “Choose Your Own Adventure”, in that you don’t have a health bar, attack dice, et cetera. Instead, you have a series of characters, each with their own stories and stats, and if you die, you die. Easier difficulties let you have chances to remake your fatal choices, because trust me: You’re going to make an absolute ton of them.

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Even if I like the character art, I’m not as wild about the characters themselves.

The game starts off with two characters, Ancoran, a Range, and Leon, a Master of Elements. These are the two you take through the Prologue, and after that, the game opens up with two more characters: the Assassin Ancalimo, and the Bard/Warrior Daragast. But to complete the prologue, those choices are locked. One thing I think is fascinating is that each character has a set of stats: Challenge, Combat Skill, Potential Opponents, Fame throughout Hesperia, and Starting Alignment. It’s fascinating that all four characters have incredibly high challenge ratings, instead of them being a little more staggered, for the sake of variety. It’s not very clear what those skill bars actually mean. They have icons, but you can’t hover over them and read what they do. For example, Weapon Skill has one sword and two swords at either end, and Potential Opponents shows a person and a dragon at either side. I can infer what they mean, but I would still like to know exactly.

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I’m glad for do-overs because I sure as hell needed them.

Each of the difficulty ratings offers different settings for the following: Starting Fate (How many retries), Saving Slots, Manual Saves, and Choices Needed to Allow Manual Save. You also have two Game Modes, but I have only experienced Standard. In this, there are two playable characters in sequence, and to win, you have to make an impact on the story of the four characters with at least one Hero. The death of a character also affects the story of the next character based on your choices. Since these characters are tied together by fate, this makes sense and is a solid choice. These difficulty settings don’t change what you do in the story, only how many chances you have to try it again. The game is still pretty challenging, exactly what I expect out of a Choose Your Own Adventure Book. I will say that I died. . . a lot in the Prologue. A whole lot.

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Victory feels so good…

One thing I certainly enjoyed was that the story is narrated. It’s a pleasant voice, but the story itself sort of reminds me of a would-be Game of Thrones tale. I feel some of it tries a little too hard to be edgy. Hearing the narrator say “Your mother just sucked my dick, you know,” when my character was taunting someone was a bit much, I think. It was entertaining to hear nonetheless. I do not think the writing is bad, but it’s not exactly my cup of tea. That aside, it’s been an enjoyable adventure, with plenty of challenge and options that make sense. Some of the choices and options for these characters borders on or otherwise leaps into the obscene. While that may turn some people off, I like having to make harder choices. That is a positive of the writing, that not all of your decisions will feel heroic or noble. In fact, a lot of them aren’t. Speaking of choices, the major battles, the ones where you’re likely to die in, do not require six, seven, eight choices. I can see it being a little frustrating on the highest difficulty, and dying at the very end. That has not happened to me, but I am certainly curious to see how it affects the next Hero’s tale.

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Not all of the choices will feel good, or right.

Whether it’s a one-night-stand or outright infanticide/murder. I don’t think having these options in the game is bad, because the world, whether a fantasy or reality, is awful and cruel. That fits. But I do think there ought to be some kind of warning at the beginning that many of the things the player reads might not be suitable to them. But the choices are simple, easy to grasp, and do genuinely change the story that unfolds, which I love. Regardless of how I feel about the characters, I like the setting, the music and animations are very thematic. I don’t have to like characters to want to read more, and I look forward to seeing more of the game. I am admittedly very curious to see how The Ballad Singer grows. For people interested, their Indiegogo is at this link.

ARK Exctinction: The Final Chapter Begins

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The end is near in ARK: Survival Evolved. On November 6th, it will be time to finish your journey in the worlds of ARK. Earth is infested by elements and new creatures that are both organic and technological, and it’s up to you to discover the secrets of the Titans. It’s time to grab a plasma rifle, get those mighty dinosaurs ready, because the fate of the Earth is hanging in the balance. Titans are roaming our planet, and the ARK cycle is coming to a close with the end. The Titans must be stopped, for the sake of our lovely planet.

Features of ARK: Extinction:

  • Orbital Supply Drops: In a random world encounter, a crate will plummet from the sky and down to Earth, releasing a giant shield and attracting hordes of Elemental Infested Dinosaurs determined to destroy the crate. Build, battle, and defend the crate long enough for powerful rewards and a unique challenge never seen before in ARK.
  • Titans: A boss the likes you’ve never seen before — massive Titans roam the Earth powerful enough to make even the mightiest T-Rex whimper. Gather your friends, all your dinos, and all of your weapons… you’ll need them all if you want to survive.