Monthly Archives: May 2019

XERA: Survival Enters Early Access In May 2019

Spotted Kiwi revealed today that they will be entering Early Access in XERA: Survival, following a successful five-month Open Alpha, with over 10,000 active participants. Their debut title arrives on Steam on May 24th, 2019, priced at 19.99 (USD). XERA: Survival is an action-focused looter-shooter, designed from the ground up as a PVPVE, with a persistent global gear stash that players can access in the game from any server. Players will search for glory,revenge, salvation, or even political leverage. And of course, loot.

Scavenge for weapons, ammo, food, and water, medical supplies; craft the tools you need to survive a harsh and unforgiving forest environment. Deploy drones to scout, transport – or close the business a bullet left unfinished. And when you’re ready to store your loot – just make it back alive to either base. Players can play at their own pace from session to session, and use the day-night cycle to their advantage, as well as the weather. Whether you want to avoid PVP and build up resources, or track down your foes in the darkness, it’s up to you. You can trade safely with other players in the base, or save your loo tto your server-side stash, which will persist.

Or you can take part in giant PvPvE compound events or missions you pick up from NPCs back in the base. You can go at it alone as a lone wolf, or team up with up to three players. And all the while, lose just the equipment you brought with you in the event you meet an untimely death – getting straight back into the fight, dropping where you want in the 4x4km world using regular helicopter insertions from the bases.

RAD To Launch on Consoles and PC August 2019

RAD - Announcement Trailer

Bandai Namco, in partnership with Double Fien Productions revealed their upcoming 3D Action Roguelike, RAD, will arrive on August 20th, 2019. It will arrive on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4 and Xbox One on the same date. They also announced a contest today, where the community can submit graffiti designs that represent the game.  Entries will be evaluated by the development team, with the winning design being featured in the game itself, and the grand prize winner receiving additional limited swag items, including a skateboard, glow-in-the-dark action figure, lunch box, and floppy disk. Two runners up winners will also be chosen to receive the limited swag items. Those interested in entering and finding official rules and regulations can visit this link.

“We’re almost at the home stretch and I couldn’t be more excited for everyone to jump into what we’ve built with RAD,” said Lee Petty, Project Lead at Double Fine Productions. “One of the best parts of developing RAD has been getting early feedback from the community with the Closed Beta. I want our fans and future players to know that they’re being heard and we’re going to bring an experience they’ll want to keep going back to.”

Rainbow Six Siege: Phantom Sight Operators / Lesion Elite Set

We have a double dose of news for Rainbow Six Siege today! The first is gameplay and gadget starting tips for the Phantom Sight Operators and the second is a teaser for the Lesion Elite Set, which is available with Operation Phantom Sight. It unlocks Nano-Tox 32 uniform, victory animation, gadget skin for his GU Mines and weapon skin for the SIX12 SD, T-5 SMG and Q-929 as well as the Elite Lesion Chibi charm.

Ashes of Oahu Exclusive Developer Blog – The Factions of Oahu

Ashes of Oahu

During Kai’s adventure throughout Ashes of Oahu, he will come across five distinct factions. Kai will be able to interact with four of these factions and gain or lose reputation depending on his choices. The fifth faction, the Raiders, will always be his enemy. Depending on Kai’s standing with the individual factions, he will gain access to new skills. In today’s blog, we take a look at two of the factions that Kai can work with to become his friends, or work against to become his foes, The Research Institute, and the Islanders.

The Research Institute:

Ashes of Oahu Exclusive Dev Blog 1

A secretive scientific collective, the Institute for Research at Oahu, colloquially known as The Research Institute (T.R.I.), has identified an elusive energy field that they believe holds the key to unlimited power. This privately owned and operated non-profit organization believes that by harnessing this energy, they may find the key to Oahu’s salvation. In their attempt to restore Oahu and undo the damage of the Hekili Nui T.R.I. has been suspected to infringe upon the livelihood of the other factions. Believing their ways superior, if not the only way to do things. If Kai chooses to assist the T.R.I. on his journey, he will gain access to skills dealing with energy weapons and n-dimensional technology (N-Tech) augmentations. Two of the earliest skills Kai can unlock are Chemistry and Educated. Chemistry will increase the duration and effect of drugs on Kai. Educated will grant Kai bonus experience points throughout Ashes of Oahu. One of the later skills Kai can unlock is Penetrating Round. This allows Kai’s shots to punch through enemies.

The Islanders:

Ashes of Oahu Exclusive Dev Blog 2

After the cataclysm that shaped the events preceding Ashes of Oahu, survivors of all kinds came together to support one another. This group of people has come to be known as the Islanders. While not willing to be subjects of the Lava Dogs, return to the ancestral ways of the Hawaiians or adapt all of T.R.I.’s technology, the Islanders do attempt to live in relative peace with the others on the island. While they aren’t as traditionalist as the Hawaiians, they attempt to treat others with respect and live in harmony with their neighbors. Still, flare-ups are known to occur along their borders. Over the years they have grown into a loose collection of agricultural communities working together tirelessly to do more than just survive. Befriending the Islanders and helping them advance their cause will grant Kai access to skills that specialize in medicine, rifles, and horses. There are twelve skills in all that Kai can choose from and learn. Two of the earliest are Hunter and Riding. Hunter elevates damage against animals. Riding increases Kai’s mounted speed as well as the maximum stamina of his horse. As Kai increases in faction standing with the Islanders, he will eventually be able to unlock skills like Mounted Weaponry. This skill allows for extended firing with higher accuracy of mounted weapons.

You can pre-order Ashes of Oahu now and receive access to the upcoming closed beta as well as 3 days early access once the game is released. Be among the first to assist the T.R.I. and the Islanders in their efforts to reclaim Oahu or turn them into your mortal enemies as soon as the game launches! You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook, as well as join their Discord.

Nowhere Prophet Beta Impressions

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

Nowhere Prophet Preview 28

Things are seldom safe here in the wastes.

Nowhere Prophet is a roguelike card battler RPG that’s coming to PC this summer from No More Robots and SharkBomb Studios. It takes place in a ruined, post-apocalyptic world, where hope and resources are both fairly scarce. You are a Prophet, leading a caravan of entities across this hopeless land. Since this is a roguelike, you can expect to perish often, and start over, even on the Easy difficulty. I tried all three difficulties and all were pretty punishing. Even Easy was pretty damn difficult to get through. The game will have five “worlds” to traverse, though the closed beta only showed the first one was shown off here in the beta. It was definitely enough to hook me on the concept of the game though. You are the leader of a tribe that just wants to get somewhere safe, to have hope and peace again. Which of course means, you’re going to have to slog across the worst, most treacherous and dangerous terrain that the world has to offer you. So, roguelikes and card battlers aren’t really all that new, so what makes this one so interesting?

Nowhere Prophet Preview 29

Which convoy fits your playstyle better?

Your followers, the people you’re trying to lead to safety are your deck. That’s right, your flock is your deck, and you make them fight for you against bandits, wild animals, and even another prophet. As new followers join your party, you can add them to your deck, and as battles invariably happen, you’ll play them on a battlefield that’s divided into two sets of columns – yours and the enemy. The number of columns will change, and there is also the matter of obstructions that can deal with the row they’re in damage. So that means you also have to juggle where to place people, and if it’s worth the time to deal damage to opponents obstructions or to just focus on their leader. The longer a fight goes on, the more dangerous it is. If a card is defeated, it receives a wound, and if it receives another, then it dies. Should they die forever, they’re removed from the convoy and have a skull marking them. You have to be incredibly careful, which is hard for me – I tend to play card games in a pretty aggressive manner. It really made me rethink everything I did, as I tried and tried again.

Nowhere Prophet Preview 19

There is a lot that can happen on this map. As you can see, even this early I almost have dead followers (in red).

The world is a map where you start at one end and are working towards the opposite side, where you will generally fight a boss to reach a Milestone. The map is broken up into paths that have Hexagons of varying color on them. The bright blue is where you start, and also where you want to get to. Dark blue are tiles you’ve already visited, Brown denotes places to camp, trade, buy materials, or gain more followers. Red is a guaranteed fight (but I believe I did get around one of them with groveling and begging), and green are places to gain food. Food is incredibly important, because each time you move to a tile, it has a Food and Hope cost. The longer you travel the wastes, the lower your Hope gets. Food is pretty easy to acquire – you can go hunting in events and sell junk to buy food. But Hope is a little harder. To gain Hope, you have to share luxury items with your followers at camp. These are things like Dyes, non-essentials. These also sell for quite a bit of money, so you have to consider what you need more: to eat or to have hope. Running out of either while traveling to the end is dangerous because your followers can lose faith in you as their Prophet.

Nowhere Prophet Preview - 2

Fighting the slavers was not the right call to make.

Since this is a Roguelike, you can also expect events! They occur while you’re on the path between areas, and come in a variety of flavors. Some of the choices can only be accessed if you have a certain amount of followers, certain types of followers, or particular traits/mindsets at a certain point. Mindsets are Altruist (how open/giving your convoy is), Believer (How spiritual they are), and Scholar (How given to seeking knowledge they are). You can receive more followers, you can get into fights, more food, you can wind up giving up food, all manner of them. I’m sure I didn’t see all of them, and they were pretty even for me in terms of good/bad events. I’m glad they revealed three of the factions in this beta too – to get them, all you have to do is complete the first map! This was much more challenging than I thought it would be. The first time I got to the end, I had 6 hp left, and the enemy Prophet was loaded down with rare and powerful followers, and plenty of health. Each of the factions plays differently, and when you begin a playthrough you choose two decks. A Convoy Deck (The Forgotten, The Horde, The Explorers, which are unlocked as I said above), and your Class Deck (Only the Firebrand is available now – Echo, Banshee, and Tower are to come).

Nowhere Prophet Preview 11

Combat is incredibly dangerous – but nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Though that leads me to battle. You do not regen health between battles but can rest at camp to take some of that away. As you get into battles, you also gain experience – and batteries can be used to level up and increase your overall health. This is another fun dichotomy because you really have to be careful where and when you fight. You can’t just grind this game, because then you’ll have no food, hope or followers. You can gain more followers, but that’s not always a sure thing. Battle, as I said earlier, takes place on a series of columns and rows. The goal is to kill the other person, by dealing damage with Leader Cards or attacking directly. Both sides start with 3 energy (the cost to play cards), 3 Convoy Cards and 2 Leader Cards. You do get an option to mulligan, which is nice. Now, here’s the tricky part. Your Convoy cards are your creatures, but only the unit in the first slot of a row can attack the enemy directly.

Nowhere Prophet Preview 30

Many of the fights can feel very unfair, but that’s the nature of roguelikes.

If there are 4 columns, and you have a unit at the very back, they can still attack directly, until you place a unit in front of them. That had me a little confused in the first battle or two. Enemies come from a variety of tribes, each with their own playstyle. I think the hardest ones for me to deal with were the ones that drop tons of armor and taunt because it was almost impossible to break past their defenses in the position I got to the battle in. You do not want the battles to drag out, because units dying is bad, but also consider which unit gets the killing blow – those units become blessed, (signified by a golden mark), and gain +1 attack. There are plenty of CCG-style keywords, which are in the game’s rulebook (which is in the in-game file – thank goodness for that). The cost for a card is displayed in blue, and you can play as many cards as you have the energy for. You can only hold 6 Convoy Cards in hand though, and 4 Leader Cards (each are displayed as separate hands). If you need to draw and have no cards in your deck, you take 2 damage each time, so be careful.

Nowhere Prophet Preview 27

This went about as well as you might expect: Poorly.

All told, I think this game has a lot to offer the roguelike/card battler communities. The visuals are amazing, the challenge is definitely there, and it has a lot of replay value in different tribes, convoys, classes, and overall difficulty of fights. There will be five worlds when the game launches, so count on there being plenty to see and do. Even on Easy, this game does not hold your hand, but you can at least see what each card in your collection is in the main menu, and you do not go into classes/tribes blind. You can clearly see every starting card you have, their cost, their keywords (it also explains what those do), and more. It’s not too hard to figure out what tribe is going to be best for you, and what their general playstyle is like. It’s challenging, it’s frustrating, but that’s what you expect in a roguelike. I think the story is what compels me the most. You’re a Prophet trying to coax your band of followers across a wasteland, trying to bring some hope and survival to them. Nowhere Prophet is a beautiful, but a tragic story well told, even in these short play sessions. I think the most frustrating thing was how incredibly quick it seemed like even a random fight could overwhelm you. Suddenly, thanks to one object on the field my opponent had several 4/5s with Taunt (you can’t attack the leader until you kill the Taunt creatures first). It can feel very hopeless sometimes, but that ties into the story neatly at least. It’s coming this summer, so don’t miss out on it.

Life is Strange 2

Life is Strange 2 is an episodic 3D graphic adventure game featuring impactful decision making with far reaching rewards and consequences. Follow the grim tale of two brothers on the run from law enforcement after the worst possible series of events changed their lives forever.

Business Model: Buy-to-Play

Microtransactions: Yes, each episode requires an additional payment upon release.

Key Features:

Unbreakable Bonds: Take on the role of Sean, the older sibling, and protect a young Daniel across the US all while teaching him fundamental life-lessons.

Far From Home: Navigate through major cities like California and Seattle stopping at derelict gas stations, abandoned shacks, and unsettling forests along the way.

Music to the Ears: Enjoy a curated soundtrack by the prequel’s original composer Jonathan Morali, as well as few guest bands.

One Day Free: Explore the stories and actions of everyday people thrust into terrifying life-or-death situations.

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES Remastered Edition

FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES Remastered Edition is an action adventure role-playing game featuring both a solo campaign and effortlessly accessible 4-player online co-op. Guide a plucky young group of adventurers across the land in search of Myrrh, a precious resource necessary in the maintenance of protecting the world from a deadly miasma.

Business Model: Buy-to-Play

Microtransactions: No

Key Features:

Caravanner: Customize your avatar down to their race, gender, stat distribution, and choice of equipment.

Active Engagement: Hack and slash through dangerous encounters making sure to dodge potentially fatal attacks as necessary.

Stocked Up: Gather, craft, and upgrade a diverse selection of items.

Arcane Weaving: Fuse spells in the heat of combat for dazzling new effects.

X Factor: Complete challenges in dungeons to unlock the use of powerful artifacts.

Back and Better Than Ever: Revist classic locations and discover new surprises laying in wait.

Races:

Clavats – Simple farmers boasting both high defense and magic attributes.
Selkies – Silver-haired humans experts at speed and rushdown tactics.
Lilty – Stout warriors wielding piercing spears.
Yuke – Tall and mysterious scholars dedicated to glass cannon sorcery.