The end is nigh. Grab a few allies and play your part in saving the world once and for all.
Frozen Flame Alpha Trailer
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Yearly Archives: 2019
Into The Game: Dungeon Crawl Quest Now Available
Fantastic Science Fantasy Adventures Press is proud to announce the release of author C. A. A. Allen’s new fantasy, LitRPG adventure: Into The Game: Dungeon Crawl Quest, available April 1st on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited.
Mr. Allen stated:
I combined my passion for computer gaming, DnD, and epic fantasy to concoct this book. I was addicted to a groundbreaking RPG called Wizardry: Proving Grounds of The Mad Overlord back in the days. I have included many nods to the game that had me up for several months of all-nighters in this book.
Into The Game provides readers with an original experience including breathtaking illustrations and a unique in-real-life/trapped-inside-the-game story. Taking you deeper into the books immersion are in-depth Dungeons and Dragons style player sheets that give you unique insight into the abilities and personalities of both the novels main characters and its monster antagonists.
C. A. A. continues:
Another thing I included is illustration. I have been fascinated with drawings in fantasy ever since Thror’s Map and The Trolls in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit. I am also a big fan of the DnD Monster Manual, so I had to go all-in on illustration. I commissioned over a dozen works for this project including tavern logo’s, action scene’s, monster portrait’s, and of course an epic fantasy map. I love the way it all turned out.
To spread the word about Into The Game, Fantastic Science Fantasy Adventures Press is launching a unique advertising campaign that includes everything from the tried-and-true to the new.
“For the new, we teamed up with CPMStar,” says FSFA Press marketing director John Palmer. “They have the largest ad network in the games and youth oriented entertainment space. We will be running ad’s on several MMO review sites they represent including MassivelyOP, MegaGames, and OnRPG. For the tried-and-true, we will be running online ads on some Sci-Fi/Fantasy staples like Clarkesworld, Analog, and Locus.
From the Humpty Nose to literary prose… C.A.A. Allen is a hype-squad dancer for multi-platinum hip-hop group Digital Underground, Humpty-Hump’s personal nose crafter, and a fantasy book author. His first book, The Cave Maze: Wizard Warrior Quest was a finalist for best Sci-Fi/Fantasy novel at the 2017 San Diego Book Awards.
Into The Game will be on sale for .99 cents from June 1st to June 30th on Amazon.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 – Operation Spectre Rising Trailer
Operation Spectre Rising is the latest update to Call of Duty Black Ops 4 and comes with a new Multiplayer Specialist/Blackout character. There’s also the Wetworks Map Update, new weapons, and new Zombie Gauntlets.
Warhammer: Chaosbane Preview
By Terris Harned (NWOrpheus)
Choosing to buy a game carrying the Games Workshop licence can be a bit of a crapshoot. You throw the dice and hope. Unfortunately, despite being really excited for Warhammer: Chaosbane, I think the game is more craps than anything else. While the art style is of reasonable quality, that and the fact that it carries the Games Workshop name are about the only things it has going for it. In fact, I think it only nominally even carries the Warhammer theme, and that by relying heavily on tropes, unoriginal storytelling, and name recognition.
In Warhammer: Chaosbane (Chaosbane from here on), you choose one of four heroes to play as in an ARPG that tries to be both Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, but pales horribly compared to either. You choose between Vollen, the human soldier; Elontir, the high elven mage; Bragi, a dwarven slayer; or Elessa, wood elf waywatcher.
The diversity between the characters themselves is one place where the developers over at EKO Software seem to have done okay. Unfortunately, they’re also quite familiar to characters from the Diablo 3 franchise. Bragi, for example, has a sustainable whirlwind attack that is painfully similar to the D3 Barbarian.
Every single time you start using this ability, he lets loose an obnoxious laugh. So obnoxious that I stopped using the skill, despite it being one of the more powerful abilities.
The skill system itself is quite similar to Diablo 3, as well, if given an ever so slightly different layout, and a point based system that’s nothing if not annoying and prohibitive. Each player has a selection of active and passive skills, and a unique class skill. Then there are so called “god” skills, as well as a few skills obtainable by donating items, which, yeah, I’ll rant about that later.
Active skills are, again, similar to Diablo 3. You’ve got energy builders, energy spenders, and then abilities on cooldowns which often don’t require energy to use. Each of the characters does have their own unique skill tree, unique passives skills (unlocked normally be leveling), and the favour tree.
This favour tree is where the obvious Path of Exile influences seem to come in, though it’s not done nearly as well as PoE, and just feels arbitrarily added. It is the favour tree, however, the allows you to unlock the god skills, after the deities of the Warhammer universe, presumably.
It’s like those miserable psalms. They’re so depressing. Now knock it off!
The part that annoys me most in the skill department is that these god skills that require special allocation of points to unlock, also cost skill points, which your character has a fairly limited selection of. So limited that you have to choose between having a narrow focus of useful skills, or a wide variety of useless ones. This might change later in the game, as I only played through Act I during the second beta weekend, but it was rather infuriating to unlock things and not be able to use them without giving up something else I’d come to rely heavily on.
There are plenty of other things that frustrated me about the game however. One example is the alt key. Now, ever since Diablo 2, the alt key has been the “show all the things” button in ARPGs. Diablo 3 used it, and so did Path of Exile. Chaosbane also uses the alt key, but in the case of this game, it highlights only objects. Not gold. Not shards. Not barrels. Just dropped armor and weapons. I just find this to be lazy, and annoying. I want my gold!
Why do I want gold?! Well… I’m actually not entirely sure. I haven’t found anything to spend it on yet. Yeah, that’s right, I completed the entire first act, 19 levels and 8 hours played, and haven’t found anything I can spend money on, except reviving. Except the only time I actually died was because my cat started yowling like he was dying in the other room, and I ran AFK (don’t worry, it was just the sight of the bottom of his food dish that had him freaked out).
Note: This is one of two times in Act 1 where you’re not fighting in the sewers. The other time is also in this exact same spot.
There does appear to be a locked option at the donation guy for “trades”, but playing through the entire first act, that never unlocked. You can’t actually buy any gear, nor even sell it, in THE ENTIRE FIRST ACT. The only thing you can do is donate it to some random guy in the keep, in exchange for some passive skills: one ups your XP gain, another makes you get more money from drops, and yet another I believe increases movement speed a tiny bit. Thankfully these particular passives didn’t seem to cost skill points, they’re just always on.
The utter lack of challenge contributes heavily to exactly how boring this game is, in my estimation. The fact that I can pretty much ignore mobs is bothersome. Now I get it’s the first act, but some challenge would be nice. Even the “captain” level mobs, which have little glowy bits above their head, or the lesser daemons, really don’t present any major struggle, aside from tedium of having to hit them over and over again.
And the final boss of the first act? About five minutes of attack, dodge big attack, potion, fight boss for two seconds before it turns invincible and a horde of mobs come out. Rinse, repeat. And again. Aaaaand again.
Furthermore, 95% of the first act takes place in the sewers. Not even unique or changing sewers, you actually go back into the exact same sewer sections several times. The sections themselves seem to be stuck together copy/pasted assets in yet another example of just plain lazy development.
I feel the same about the lack of nametags above enemies. There’s a health bar, but no name. It’s not even like they had to name the enemies, as they just took it (loosely) from Warhammer lore. They just couldn’t be bothered to stick the names above the mob’s heads, like, well, every other ARPG out there. Now, again, this could be “well it’s still in beta” talking, but IMO that’s a game feature, and game features go in during alpha. Beta is for getting the bugs out.
Final thing to rant about: the gear itself. Now, the artwork on most of the gear is pretty cool, and some of the gear even has a bit of lore on it. Mostly this has to do with where exactly the gear came from. See, in Warhammer tabletop, you paint your miniatures to look like tribes or armies in companies or dwarven clans, or whatever, and often try to stick to a theme for all the units of a given army. The game has some of those unit collectives named, to give you a basis for painting.
Chaosbane pulls on some of that theme/lore and tags some armor pieces with it, which is cool enough. Furthermore, when you have a complete set of five pieces of the same gear, you actually get a set bonus. This applies to all gear, not just special specific pieces that are set gear. Unfortunately, I don’t feel like this balances out the fact that there are only four tiers of gear total: common, rare, heroic, and legendary. By the end of Act I, almost all of my pieces of gear were heroic. This didn’t leave me much to look forward to, and I felt like I was given too much, too soon.
Oh, and also, one of Bragi’s item slots is tattoos. So yeah, you can take off and switch tattoos on the fly. Hair and beard, too. Again, lazy. Just… lazy. They could have given him a static hair and beard length, and color, and then added ornamentation. They also could have given him certain tattoos, maybe even that increased in elaborateness as he leveled, and then added warpaint. The thought of a character changing tattoos though just rips me right out of the immersion and makes me cringe.
The Slayer’s new “clothes”.
Like I said at the beginning, I really wanted to love this game. I love ARPGs, and I love the Warhammer franchise. What I don’t love, however, is how readily Games Workshop allows its intellectual property to just get slapped on any ol’ dumpster fire of a game. I think the folks at EKO were planning on sailing on art direction over game design to carry them, but in my opinion, it’s just not enough.
I did, by the by, try the game couch co-op with my fiance. The game supports up to four players in a match. When we found out it was tethered game play, though (as in all players must remain on the same screen) we just got annoyed and gave it up for a bad job. In fairness, split screen would have made things far too tiny to see. It’s just… not a worthwhile feature, either way you cut it.
Again, this is only the second beta for Warhammer: Chaosbane, and I feel that’s worth of mentioning, but I can’t imagine them doing the complete overhaul of this game that I would want to see before I could recommend it. As it is, I’m recommending that unless you’re just completely desperate to throw your money down the Games Workshop gullet on a tedious ARPG with a Warhammer fantasy skin, to stay away from Warhammer: Chaosbane.
A game key was provided for preview purposes.
The World of Remnant: From the Ashes: Yaesha
Despite the Earth being in ruins, Yaesha is vibrant and full of life. How will your teammates adapt to this new world on August 20th, in Remnant: From the Ashes?
Chrono Trigger – Between Earth and Sky by Julia Henderson (Music Review)
by Jason Parker (Ragachak)
Are you guys tired of me talking about just how much of a masterpiece Chrono Trigger and its soundtrack are yet? Well too bad, because I’ve got one more masterpiece to talk about today! Julia Henderson, through the Materia Collective, released a new album last week, entitled “Between Earth and Sky”, a tribute to Chrono Trigger, and all of the memories that game has provided countless fans around the world. It’s a short album, six tracks long, but each one packs an Ayla-sized punch of emotion. Of course, it was incredibly hard to pair this down to my favorite songs, because Julia Henderson is just incredible. I enjoy her work a great deal, so having this in my collection is a true privilege. I highly recommend any fans of beautiful vocal work and the music of Chrono Trigger go pick this up immediately in the links below. I also wanted to give a special shoutout to the smooth jazz of Wings that Cross TIme. That’s definitely a first for me for that track, and I thought it was a very relaxing rendition. All six of these songs are amazing, and the vocals for Memories of Green are well, memorable. But I definitely wanted to focus more on Corridors of Time.
“Chrono Trigger’s soundtrack has personally touched me more than any other, and I know there are many others with similar emotional connections to both the game and Yasunori Mitsuda’s soundtrack,” comments Julia Henderson. “My concept and the reasoning behind the album’s title, Between Earth and Sky, was to highlight the physical, emotional, and metaphysical journey that the characters undertake as they discover the truth about the end of the world, experience the end of time itself, and defeat Lavos. Most importantly, Crono’s friends throughout the game all come from
different eras and lands. Thus, Crono finds a greater common purpose along with the unlikeliest of allies, including a robot, a princess, a frog, and a demon king. This theme echoed my collaborative efforts, as I involved many musicians and non-musicians who all share a love for Chrono Trigger and its music.”
Battle with Magus (Track 2): How could I not include this, once I saw it made the cut? The intro with the haunting chanting and flutes really pulled me in. I thought that was going to be how the entire track went (and I was honestly fine with that), but they hit me with the swerve! The transition into the electric guitar, backed by the singing and the flutes were incredible. In many of the renditions of Battle with Magus I’ve listened to, violins are a popular backdrop instead of the flute, but I like this. Towards the end of the track, when the breakdown hits, there’s a duel between what sounds like a classical guitar and the mighty electric guitar, which in my estimation represents Magus and his dark magic, preparing that infuriating Dark Matter spell. The chanting continues throughout the whole song and really adds a chilling elegy to the background to one of the most important fights in the whole of Chrono Trigger.
World Revolution (Track 6): World Revolution is one of the last major songs of the entire game. This is the song that you hear when you break past the crusty shell of Lavos and get to the meaty interior. If there were any song in this whole game that needed the mighty pounding of drums, this is the one, and it delivers. Julia’s wail of despair in the background behind the trumpets and steady drum broke open a floodgate of memories of my first time doing battle with Lavos. World Revolution has always been a song to me that paired neatly utter despair, with just a sliver of hope. That comes towards the end of the track when you hear that beautiful flute again. It doesn’t last, as those powerful drums beat again. Lavos is one of the mightiest bosses I’ve had the pleasure of fighting and is truly worthy of being the final encounter of Chrono Trigger. The mindless, steady beat matches Lavos’ own emotion. Lavos is not necessarily evil, it’s just a devourer, the death of planets. But this world is one worth fighting for.
Corridors of Time (Track 3): From powerful metal to rhythmic drumming, to something softer, quieter. Corridors of Time is unquestioningly one of the greatest songs in any RPG ever. This is the overworld theme, such as it is, of the Empire of Zeal, the floating kingdom of magic in Chrono Trigger. Instead of chanting and wailing, this song has lyrics backing it, and it felt to me, that it was Schala talking about her younger brother, Janus Zeal. Ultimately, Janus has a dark fate, and she can see it every time she peers at the child and his cat Alfador. Though the two are split apart thanks to Queen Zeal and Lavos, this could also be an allusion to Chrono and Marle/Nadia’s relationship, because even though the two are ripped from each other in two occasions in the game, the other never give up on the person ripped out of time that they were fated to find. It’s really a beautiful song, and I can’t really put it any other way. There’s a great deal of depth to the original song, but Julia adds so much more with her take on this particular track. This album is worth purchasing just for this song alone.
This album was provided by Materia Collective for purposes of this review. It can be found in a variety of storefronts, at this link.
Magisterion
Magisterion
Forager Sells 150K Copies and Reveals Year Roadmap
Forager is an adorable 2D open world game inspired by other farming/crafting titles like Stardew Valley, Terraria, and Zelda. It’s done incredibly well and has been well-received on Steam, and we couldn’t be happier. Players gather, craft, collect and manage resources in this incredibly cute world. Today, Humble Bundle and Mariano Cavallero revealed the roadmap for content coming this year, from May’s new game modes, weather effects, and improved options menu, all the way to Winter 2019/2020, where co-op, new lands and items will come into play.
Forager is Humble Bundle’s fifth game to reach over 100k sales for their publishing division. “We’re very happy for the success of Forager, HopFrog has put their heart and soul into this game and to see it payoff has been incredible to watch.” says Connor Bridgeman, Publishing Brand Manager at Humble Bundle. “Humble Bundle has enjoyed a lot of success on the publishing side and it’s due to our passionate developer partners. We can’t wait to expand the program.”
“I am completely overwhelmed by Forager‘s positive reaction!” says Mariano Cavallero, creator of Forager. “I always thought my silly little crafting game could be something special, it’s so wholesome and exciting that players around the world seem to agree!”
“There are a lot of new content and features coming to the game in the near future that I am VERY excited about! Things like massive content updates, Mod Support and Multiplayer which are only possible thanks to the amazing support of gamers worldwide!”
Deck of Ashes – Early Access Preview
by Jason Parker (Ragachak)
Nothin’, not even children’s trading cards are free.
Deckbuilders definitely seem to be en vogue again, and that’s without a doubt a great thing. Deckbuilders come with all the cards you need to play the game without having to buy booster packs. Deck of Ashes just has players hunting down the cards, playthrough by playthrough, slowly building a collection. When you die to an enemy encounter (and it’s going to happen), you start over, as does your collection. Depending on how many Points you earned through that playthrough, you can unlock passive traits, new card recipes, and things of that nature. So playing over and over will still provide new challenges and ways to grow. This game is still in Early Access, so there is still a lot of room to grow and change as time goes on. I will say that despite my years of deckbuilding and CCG experience, this game is brutal. Even with varying degrees of difficulty, this game is pretty difficult. I appreciate that though – roguelikes are no fun if they’re easy!
I’ve heard of people getting through Martyr on one or two playthroughs. I am not the one though.
There are four degrees of difficulty to choose from. Wanderer is the easiest; on that difficulty, you respawn at your Camp when you die, and you have more health. This mode lets you learn about the cards without any risk, so it’s a great way to learn deck builds and combos. Next came Raider, which offers more health than normal, and death resets the chapter, instead of the whole game. You can also still perform the Ressurection Rite to evade death. Adventurer is the mode I played on, where you have a normal amount of health, you start at the beginning of the game when you die, and you can perform a Resurrection Ritual at your camp to avoid death. Martyr is a step above that; you cannot perform the Ritual, and the game is even harder still. I think I’ll stick to Adventurer if it’s all the same. At least I’m building a collection of potential cards, and just have to unlock their use in each playthrough.
At the end of battle, thankfully, you can restore some of your cards/hp with rest points.
Right now there’s only one character to use: Lucia the Eternal Flame, who is, as her name suggests, a Pyromancer. Sly the Black is coming soon, and I imagine he’ll take advantage of more of the stealth, poison, and sneaky cards I see the enemies use. The game takes place on a series of maps, with your Camp located in the center. The paths branch off to various tiles that do anything from Random Events (Question Marks), Resources (Circles with a mining pick), Chests (require x amount of keys to open), or Battles (Swords). There’s also a meter in the top middle of the screen, and when it gets to the end, you must go back to camp and prep for the battle with the Lord of that map. It’s typically something hideous, awful, with tons of HP and powerful cards to battle you back with.
Just look at the damage numbers I can drop on this boss.
You start off with 8 cards in your deck, though you can purchase more card recipes from the Merchant at your base camp (center of the map). Cards are bought with gold, and crafted with Ash. Ash is acquired from winning fights, occasionally from events, and from Ash Storms, if you can get to the Ash Urn in time. Ash Storms randomly happen between turns on the map and last for three turns total. A turn passes when you walk from one spot to the next on the map. The Ash Master in your camp can renew your cards once a day, and perform the Ritual to bring yourself back to life and cheat death. It’s a little on the pricey side in terms of gold, but no risk, no reward! This camp is key to your success and the only real safe spot on the map. Each of the members of your camp (Ash Master, Blacksmith, Herbalist, Merchant) can be upgraded, using resources that are mined from the map. When you hit a circle tile, a mining pick will pop up on it, and you can mine resources. The further out you go, the darker the combat/event/resource tiles get, which is also an indicator of how dangerous they are. The further out, the greater the danger. But you can teleport back to camp, and there are also portals to use that can teleport you around, once you unlock them.
There are plenty of good (and bad) things to come from events.
Whether you engage a Battle Tile or get Ambushed on another tile, combat works the same way. The side with the highest Speed goes first, and thankfully, you can see what each creature is going to do before they do it. Their card is revealed to you, and it can be hovered over for more info. One of the things I’m not as wild about is that you draw two cards a turn. When you have 8 cards starting, it doesn’t take long for you to run out of cards to draw. At the end of your turn, you can also return up to 3 cards to your deck, and draw that many more back. This is borderline useless at the start of the game, but once you have a sizable deck, this can really turn the tide of battle. When you can’t draw more, you receive a card that recycles 5 cards from your discard pile back into your deck for 20 HP. This is a mechanic called “Strain”, and there are other cards that are built around the concept of paying life for effects. The player receives 5 Mana a turn, and this regenerates every turn.
In the beginning, you can drop maybe 14 or so damage on a good turn. Battles can really be a slog. That 5 hp monster was just a summoned minion.
I’m not exceptionally upset about the low amount of mana, but I wouldn’t mind having an option to increase it. The part that is a pretty major turn-off right now is the length of the fights. Even the level 1 enemies take several turns to kill, and in that time period, you could be crippled and unable to come back after a few fights. Every 24 hours in game you can get new products at your camp and can refresh your cards, but that means surviving that long. Even one enemy on its own feels like it takes forever to do battle with, and there are plenty of them that summon minions, or create minions when they die, heal, or drop constant DOT damage on you. The longer a battle takes, the more often you have to recycle cards into your deck, and creating a cycle of having to go back to town, waste resources on healing, or avoid exploring out of fear of death – especially in the early going. This could probably see a little fine-tuning. That said, I do like the character dynamics, I like the actual battle mechanics, and the concept of recycling cards with a cost, but I think with as much RNG as this game has, it can feel very deflating.
You really have to consider carefully what you use your resources on (or when to trade at the merchant for more of another resource).
Deck of Ashes created an interesting, but frustrating, dynamic for me with recycling cards in exchange for life. In my first playthrough, I managed to get through a few chapters of the game with relative ease, but after chapter 1, I started coming across a new type of card that enemy characters insert into your deck – Diseases. These ailments are presented as cards that are shuffled into your deck. You can cast them, which has a negative effect on you, and it puts them in your Ash Pile. Alternatively, you can just keep shuffling them back into your deck. The only way to get rid of these is to have a card that dispels a random illness from your deck or to cure them by upgrading your Camp Healer. This requires quite a few resources, so I found myself fighting less, and farming resources more. This left me with a weaker deck, but at least I could protect myself from those ailment cards. In later parts of chapters 2 and 3, having so many of those ailments in my Ash Pile turned to be profitable – I had a card that dealt damage according to how many cards were in my Ash Pile! So at that point, I had 30+ cards in my Ash Pile, thanks to the Ash Master. He can (for a price) turn some of your cards to Ash, including these Diseases. They still can come back with the Ash Ritual or when you renew your deck though. There are cards that deal bonus effects every turn when they’re in your Ash Pile, so it is helpful to at least consider that, especially if you have no discard engine.
Take your time, there’s no rush. It’s only the end of the world.
The Story Thus Far: 3/5 (Good)
I enjoy the story Deck of Ashes tells. I won’t spoil it, but Lucia as a character does have some depth, and this, coupled with the grimdark aesthetic, gives a lot on offer. I like the designs of the enemy demons/undead you fight, as well as the actual card art. Everything in this game stands out nicely, and though the Epilogue is not playable yet, I’m glad it’s set aside, away from the main story so players should have access to it when they please. The Prologue was treated as a Tutorial and did a solid job of teaching the game’s mechanics and base keywords for cards. The whole presentation of this game, in general, is very well done, and the atmosphere is created in a way that I truly appreciate. Deck of Ashes is a pretty dark tale, and they hooked me early on. I wonder how the other character is going to play, and how their tale will intertwine with Lucia’s.
You get rewarded on how well you did, at least.
Honestly, I think Deck of Ashes offers a lot for fans of games like Slay the Spire, especially for the price of 15 bucks. It has plenty of replay value and several different ways to build your decks. The game has more than enough challenge and is certainly a new take for me, in the deckbuilder genre. I’m looking forward to seeing how it grows during Early Access. I can only imagine/hope they will add more cards, and adjust combat a little to feel less frustrating, but overall it was a lot of fun. I do wish battles didn’t drag on for quite as long as they do though. Every playthrough, you get a little better. As the card library and the game itself grows, I think this could be a truly enjoyable deckbuilder/roguelike.
Note: A game key was given for purposes of this review.
Deck of Ashes Image Gallery
For Honor: Weekly Content Update (5/02/2019)
New weekly content is available in For Honor, such as a new Free Roam Emote. It’s time to show your dominance in the mighty T-Pose (Sole T)!