Yearly Archives: 2019

Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York Revealed

Vampire: The Masquerade is the first V:TM title to be heading to the Nintendo Switch, but it will also arrive on PC, both set in Vampire: The Masquerade’s Fifth Edition rules/clan set. Coteries of New York will play out a battle between the Camarilla and the Anarchs, in the dark nights of New York City. Players will be a fledgling vampire, trying to find out what it means to be a Kindred in this setting. Players can choose from several of the Vampiric clans to pick from, each with their own powers, ethical dilemmas, and dialogues.

Stronghold: Warlords Releases New Developer Diary

Revealed during E3 2019 last month, Stronghold: Warlords offers a step forward in the castle sim genre with new gameplay, but also has a greatest hits in terms of features. Fear Factor is back, and lets players inspire love or fear in their followers to boost the economy. Laddermen and Siege Towers also return to make castle sieges far more exciting. The Warlords System is an evolution of the original Stronghold feature, which takes estates beyond their beginnings, to something leaning towards grand strategy.

“In terms of core features Warlords is a love letter to fans of the series,” said Nick Tannahill, Marketing Director at Firefly Studios. “We’ve taken Stronghold to a completely new setting, but also brought back fan favourite units like Laddermen and Siege Towers. In addition, we’ve made some big improvements to unit control and wall building, based on player feedback from Crusader 2.”

Alongside the return of fan favorite units and options Firefly are also planning troop and wall improvements requested by the community. Returning to the classic grid-based wall placement, allowing walls to travel along the terrain and taking advantage of 3D to introduce proper unit displacement and collision are just a few of the improvements fans can expect when the game launches next year.

Kickstarter Report: July 2019

by Jason Parker (Ragachak)

It’s that time again! Time for me, your favorite Internet Ragachak, to go over some really amazing stuff being crowdfunded on Kickstarter. These are all in a various state of funding – some close, some well over the mark. But I picked these because honestly, I love the concepts for them. I did want to give an honorary mention to BESM – Fourth Edition, which is a tabletop RPG book, and I have a lot of fond memories of BESM. That stands for Big Eyes, Small Mouth and is an anime tabletop RPG. It’s what ultimately led me to finding The Slayers tabletop book, and for that I thank them. The BESM book has been funded, but I wanted to point it out because slowly but surely, I want to branch out to some of the tabletop/card games that are also on Kickstarter. For now, though, I want to focus on digital video games.

Kingdoms of the Dump – Okay, so – Kingdoms of the Dump is a world of trash, created by two real-life janitors, and honestly? That’s pretty damn life-affirming. Follow your dreams, friends. This gorgeous pixel game has a pretty interesting story and absolutely brilliant art. Plus one of your main characters is an animated, living trashcan! What’s not to like? Players can swap their main character on the fly, and take part in fun turn-based combat. However, the main character is Dustin Binsley, a disgraced Garbage Squire. This game has so much heart, and charm – it would be a goddamn shame for it to not get funded. A digital copy runs 15 bucks, which also gets the donators name in the credits. At 125 dollars, you get a ton of stuff, but possibly the best to me, is the SNES boxed copy of the game. The ultimate prize, honestly made me laugh far more than it should. 5,000 dollars lets you clean up trash with the creators of the game, and talk video games. Travel is not provided, but the food will be! “If you don’t feel like coming, we will do the litter pickup regardless”. Progress: 37,208/60,000 (26 days to go). Kickstarter Link: Kingdoms of the Dump

Reverie a Heroes Fate

Reverie – A Heroes Fate – You guys know by now that I absolutely adore turn-based RPGs and retro-style games. I come from that era, so I’m, of course, drawn to that style. Now Reverie: A Heroes Fate is already funded, albeit barely, but there’s still time to help them grow further. This game title sounded very familiar to me, and that’s because it takes place in the world of their previous project, Reverie: A Heroes Tale. It’s not a continuation of the previous game (so no sequel), but it is set in that same world, so a great deal of the world-building was probably already done. Reverie: A Heroes Fate takes the traditional Final Fantasy 1/Dragon Quest 3 style of building a party of four, but it features 15 awesome, unique classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. They had me at “Omnimage” if I’m being totally honest. One of the upcoming Stretch Goals looks really fascinating too, the “Monster” class. It learns random abilities, which makes me think of the Gameboy Final Fantasy titles, and that’s a good thing. PLUS RANDOMIZER OPTIONS at 1,000 dollars. Come on, you know I love Randomizers. If you want to donate enough for a copy of Reverie, a DRM-free copy is available for 7 bucks, with an estimated date of December 2019 (my birth month!), but this is a limited backing price. The big winner is at 500 dollars, where whoever donates that much will have an NPC in your likeness, a personal gravestone, a quest NPC, and a complete questline! You can also create a town! If I had the money just sitting around, I’d do it – no lie. Progress: 622/500 (27 days to go). Kickstarter Link: Reverie: A Heroes Fate

Bleak Faith: Forsaken – This has to be one of the grimmest titles I’ve ever read out loud. It reads to me like a title of a Paradise Lost song, which is fine – I love them. On a personal note, survival horror is not my cup of tea, but I respect and appreciate the genre. There’s a lot of really cool stuff in the game style, but I personally don’t get down to it as much. But Bleak Faith: Forsaken looks to do some interesting stuff in the genre. The last frontier of humanity is trying to survive the horrors of the Omnistructure, and players are one of the Forsaken, which defend against this threat. It’s adapt to survive or be consumed, and your faith decides your fate. Now that‘s storytelling. Bleak Faith: Forsaken looks to bring a brutal open world to life, and I’m sure it’s going to draw the comparisons to other games in this style and that’s fine. I really like the art style they’ve shown off here, and they have some pretty ambitious stretch goals (like players being able to be dismembered? Rough). It’s got a ways to go yet, but I have faith in this title (Huh? Get it?). People interested in a copy of the game digitally can pledge 30 bucks, which also grants access to their private Discord and digital wallpaper. For the True Believer, 2500 dollars nets a sculpture of you in-game, the ability to co-write a quest, design an enemy and item, and so much more. Progress: 18,155/30,000 (19 days to go). Kickstarter Link: Bleak Faith: Forsaken

Destroy All Humans! (2020)

Flip the tables on the alien genre as you ravage the 1950’s countryside as the adorable little murder hobo alien, Crypto-137 in the remake of a hilarious cult classic open world, third person shooter: Destroy All Humans! For PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 4.

Business Model: Retail $39.99

Microtransactions: Negative

Key Features:

Brain Mojo: Use the power of your mind to lift objects, or people, as well as to hypnotize the humans.

Anal Probe Gun: It’s no BFG-9000… thank goodness.

SPACESHIP!: Fly around in Crypto-137’s saucer to complete your mission of harvesting human DNA for your nefarious purposes.

Killsquad

Become an alien bounty hunter and travel from planet to planet to collect dues in the co-op ARPG Killsquad.

Business Model: Retail Purchase (early access) 24.99

Microtransactions: None so far.

Key Features:

High Replay: Planets are created on the fly, giving you a massive universe to explore in your hunt for lucrative enemies.

Squad Goals: Play as one of 4 alien bounty hunters. Join your friends or team up with strangers who’ve put out a call for help in online co-op supporting 4 players per mission.

Maplestory M – Phantom Update Giveaway

We’ve partnered with Nexon Mobile to give away some codes to celebrate the Maplestory M “Phantom Update”.

This Code Includes: This giveaway has a variety of special gift boxes for players of all levels of MapleStory M – Unique Weapon Whetstone, Unique Armor Whetstone, Auto-Battle Charge Ticket, and much more.

Please Note: These codes are only for the Android release.

Redemption Instructions:

  • Download MapleStory M via this link.
  • Log in to MapleStory M and click on the “Options Menu”
  • Enter the code after clicking “Enter Coupon”
  • The items will appear in your MapleStory M account.