adventures
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Dungeons & Dragons Online launches Update 22
Are you ready to buckle your swash? Has your swash been buckled in anticipation? Do you own a variety of buckles and swashes? Because Dungeons & Dragons Online has just released Update 22 onto the live servers, and that means that Bards will have plenty of buckleswashing to do with the addition of the Swashbuckler enhancement line! Dance, parry, crack horrible puns, and stab at people while still retaining all of the usual song-based mechanics of Bards. It's free for everyone! Update 22 also includes an epic-level upgrade to Three Barrel Cove, perfectly complementing the newly swacklebushing methods of Bards. There are also major improvements to guild levels and guild airships, allowing guilds to hit level 200 while sporting new and improved facilities on new and improved airships. And there's new stuff in the cash shop, too, giving DDO players plenty to do if they ever tire of the interactions of swashes and buckles.
Ambitious sandbox MyDream launches Kickstarter today
Sandbox fans, meet your next obsession. It's called MyDream, and it's marketing itself as a massive 3-D multiplayer open-world sandbox focusing on "creativity and collaboration." The game will include player-designed content it's calling "adventures," rewards for cooperation and teamwork, and player-constructed environments and structures. MyDream is currently in invitation-only private beta testing, but with the launch of the Kickstarter campaign today, all pledges over $5 will secure tester access. According to MyDream CEO Allison Huynh, the Kickstarter is intended to "help bring [MyDream's] vision of the final game to market" and offers backers rewards like flying and x-ray vision. [Source: MyDream press release]
WildStar's Adventures skew toward the unusual
Did you read Eliot's first-hand tour of WildStar's Adventure content and find yourself wanting to know more? Carbine Studios posted an excellent follow-up today giving players the full scoop on this unique group content. Adventures aren't to be confused with WildStar's dungeons and Shiphand missions, a point the studio wants to make clear. Instead of being a linear challenge, Adventures are simulated scenarios that offer a "choose your own adventure" tour through an open zone, throwing in options for specific paths and even a MOBA-like battle. These also have demphasized traditional combat (although it's still present) and created "unusual" encounters instead. There will be six Adventures at launch that will come in both normal and veteran modes, with the first one opening up at level 15. Carbine said that there will be a wide variety of loot for Adventure seekers, including housing items, recipes, and gear. Veteran-mode Adventures are also presented as a good method of gearing up for raids.
A firsthand tour of a WildStar adventure
WildStar's beta test is ramping up further and further. It's ramping up enough that pretty much everyone who isn't in the beta already is looking for a way to get in on it. Now's your chance! Hit this link for a giveaway that will grant you a chance to win a beta key for Wildstar. And one of the things you'd be able to see within the beta, if you were in, are the Adventures that have been all the talk of press releases lately. So what is an Adventure? Well, the DevSpeak video past the break will give you a nice top-level overview of that, so you could just go with that. Or you could ask me, because I got to make my way through one with the development team at Carbine Studios, getting a firsthand look at how the content is supposed to work and what's cool about it. That's also past the break.
The 20th anniversary of Myst
Has it been 20 years? Seems like yesterday. In 1993, Myst was a seemingly endless and epic adventure game, with immersive sound and beautifully rendered graphics. I remember eagerly getting my CD-ROM copy at my local computer store and losing myself for hours on the mysterious island of Myst. Originally written for the Mac by Robyn and Rand Miller, the game evolved for just about every computer or gaming platform. It's now even available for iDevices. In the original game, you clicked on objects with the mouse, and explored a world filled with beauty and some tough puzzles that, at first, seemed incomprehensible. In a way, it reminded me of an interactive version of The Prisoner TV show, which was also surreal and took place in "The Village" on an island in an unknown place. (There was a Prisoner game for the Apple II released in 1980 by Edu-Ware, but it was pretty primitive.) The game was developed on Mac Quadras beginning in 1991, with 3D renderings in StrataVision 3D and Macromedia MacroModel. Finishing touches were done in Photoshop 1.0. The game was a monster hit, and I'm sure it sold more than a couple of Macs and a lot of CD-ROM drives. Games were evolving from simple shoot-em-ups to artistic presentations. We've come a long way with games. We're still shooting aliens and bad guys of course, but Myst was something different, and it paved the way for deeper themes and adventures that stretched the imagination and the technology required to render them. Happy Birthday Myst, and thanks for all the great memories. [via The Loop]
Adventures for iPhone a decent travel log
Adventures for iPhone is a travel log (currently on sale for US$1.99 in the App Store) that syncs photos with Evernote. The idea is that you create an album, or "adventure," snapping photos along the way. The app collects meta information like location and your custom tags, then sends the lot to a notebook in Evernote. I spent last Sunday exploring Boston and took Adventures along for the ride. My experience was mostly positive. Read on for my day of capturing Boston with Adventures for iPhone. Last May, Evernote's Brett Kelly published an article on 52 Tiger about using Evernote as a traveler's companion. His idea was solid: by capturing photos in Evernote, you've got everything tagged, categorized, accessible and ready to share. I like the idea, but in practice found it cumbersome. In short, producing from-the-hip snapshots with a basic photography app is significantly faster. Evernote is a great storage solution, but it's a poor camera. %Gallery-195497% Adventures seems like a great solution. It syncs with your Evernote account and uploads your photos in the background. It's a lot faster than using the Evernote app, though you do have to enter some info with each shot. But before we get to use, let's take a look. Looks Adventures is pretty. Very pretty. It features flat-as-a-pancake buttons that will feel at home on iOS 7. The font is skinny and legible and the settings are easy to read. It's also quite responsive, with no noticeable lag on my iPhone 4S. Your completed adventures are displayed in a grid, each with a title, representative thumbnail (you can't choose the poster image, which is unfortunate if your first shot is a stinker or not representative of the group as a whole), the number of images, or "memories," included and finally your title. Tap any adventure and its images are sorted chronologically into nice-looking, rectangular thumbnails. Again, it's a pretty app. Now onto how it works. Use To get started, tap the "+" in the upper right. An "adventure creation" screen appears, with a field for a title and tag search. Note that Adventures imports your existing Evernote tags. You can also create your own (these become available to Evernote also). When I was learning the app, I accidentally tapped the "+" when I meant to take a photo for an existing adventure. A new, unwanted adventure was created, which is fine, but I couldn't figure out how to delete it. I still haven't. Once inside an adventure, tap the "+" again to add a photo (or "memory"). A creation screen appears, and you can enter the location (powered by Foursquare), add any notes and finally snap a photo. Note that you can't add a photo without entering the location. Notes are optional. Some may balk at the additional time requirement, but Adventures is a logging app. If you simply want to snap photos and be done with it, there are a bajillion camera apps ready to heed your call. You'll find several sharing options on this screen as well. Opt in to sharing via App Dot Net, Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare. Your credentials for each can be entered via the app's settings. Additionally, access to each can be toggled on or off individually. You can edit any memory by tapping the "i" next to a photo. An edit screen appears, which also features my favorite button of all time: If Adventures could literally erase certain memories from my brain, I'd pay a heck of a lot more than $1.99. Once you've collected a few images, tap the map button in the lower right to see a map of your travels. A pin represents the locations at which you snapped a photo. Evernote Sync This is the app's marquee feature, and I'm disappointed to report I couldn't get it to work. Adventures creates a notebook in Evernote called "Adventures." Inside, each adventure is a separate note. I shot seven photos while in Boston, but only two made it over to Evernote on my Mac and iPhone. I couldn't figure out why. Conclusion Adventures is a great start. It looks fantastic and makes the process of getting tagged and meta-ified photos into Evernote a lot faster than using the storage app itself. It's fast and simple to figure out. It's possible that my trouble with Evernote sync is unique or my own doing, but I can't say for sure. For now, I'll say wait until the next version drops.
Daily iPhone App: Penny Arcade's On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3
I've become a big fan of Zeboyd Games recently -- their last title, Cthulu Saves the World, is a really well-designed (and funny!) love letter to the Japanese RPGs of yesteryear. Penny Arcade is a very popular video game and pop culture webcomic that's released three games now, and Zeboyd was hired to work on the last one, entitled "Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 3," which is now available on iOS for both iPhone and iPad. And, in short, it's also really great. As you can see in the video below, it hits all the right notes for a retro RPG, including a party wandering around an overworld and stumbling into gorgeously rendered turn-based battles, a full equipment and progression system, and a great chiptune soundtrack. Plus, the game also takes Penny Arcade's slightly warped and very knowing sense of humor and translates it well to an interactive environment. And Zeboyd even left room for some nice innovation, in the form of a very slick item system and a very well-designed class system, too. Penny Arcade's third game was great when it came out on the PC and Xbox, and while I think the best way to play it is probably still with a controller, iOS's touchscreens work also, especially with the experience Zeboyd picked up from releasing Cthulu Saves the World on Apple's mobile platforms. At US$2.99, Penny Arcade 3 is a must-grab for anyone who's a fan of Penny Arcade, this retro style of RPG or just an awesome bargain on iOS (this version also includes all of the DLC costumes from the Steam release, for no extra charge). Zeboyd is quickly moving through the ranks to become one of my favorite game developers, and it's because of quality, filled-out releases like this.
Storyboard: Importance
As I write this column, I am sitting on a train to New York Comic Con, celebrating an industry that has been running for basically forever and seems to be rather steadily dying. I'm sad to say it, because I never really grew out of loving comic books, but sales that 10 years ago constituted a rather dismal failure now constitute a pretty big hit, and we're certainly not getting comics aimed at kids in most circles. (I adore Last Stand of the Wreckers, and it's a wonderful example of doing a mature comic correctly, but I feel sorry for parents who might buy it because their kid liked Transformers Animated.) That got me thinking about roleplaying, something that a lot of people see as being a fossil of the origins of MMOs. I've seen so many arguments that "RPG" no longer means any actual roleplaying is expected, and yet each one feels like reopening a wound. I think that roleplaying is important and that it's a good thing, and while its death may or may not be in the cards (I don't think we're anywhere near that), it's vital that we take a look at what is important about roleplaying and why it means so much to so many of us.
LucasArts' PC adventures possible on DS, stalled by size limitations
To this day, it baffles us that LucasArts still hasn't re-released its library of adventure titles, if only so our non-gaming friends can believe us when we tell them the developer "doesn't just make Star Wars games." Speaking to Eurogamer, Fracture assistant producer Jeffrey Gullett said it's something they've looked into it but that there's an issue of size limitations for a DS version. Said Gullet, "The cart size of the DS makes it impossible to put out ports of any of our old graphic adventures ... There's literally not enough room on those carts to put the games out." The standard DS cart supports up to 256MB (but with slower data transfer speeds), while the DS version of ScummVM is just over 7MB. We're not sure if Gullet meant the entire LucasArts adventure library wouldn't fit on a cart, but we're willing to bet you could at least get the first three Monkey Islands under 128MB.
Text adventures arrive on the DS via unofficial channels
We can't tell you to download them (in fact, we'll tell you not to), but we can definitely applaud the technical achievement. A homebrew genius called papafuji has ported a massive selection of classic text adventures and early graphic adventure games to the DS, including all of Infocom's text adventures and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams' interactive fiction.These aren't just barebones ports, either: you can save games, and you can choose to enter text via an onscreen keyboard or handwriting input! And the game engine contains shorthand functionality for common commands like cardinal directions and "get". Some of the games are public domain, but most aren't, and we aren't sure which games fall in which category. Therefore, we're officially warning you: if you download these games, there's a good chance that you are a pirate.[Thanks, Joq!]
Japanese hardware sales, Feb. 19 - Feb. 25: text adventure edition
You wake up disoriented, in a dark room. You have no idea where you are.>lookIt's a dark room. You can't see anything. We know you're disoriented, but do try to keep up.>look exitsFine. Okay. You stumble around the room until you find a wall. Keeping one hand on the wall, you walk the perimeter of the room, looking for doors. You find a door on the east side of the room. You also find a key hanging from a hook on the wall. And by "find" we mean "get poked by." We hope you find some Neosporin on this adventure.>advise readers to click post break
Blitz Games joins the Revolution
IGN reports that UK developer Blitz Games, who is responsible for the enjoyable Fuzion Frenzy (and many other not so enjoyable titles such as Bad Boys 2 and Bratz: Rock Angelz), has officially claimed they are in cahoots with an undisclosed, yet assuredly big-named, publisher to bring a game to the Revolution. We personally hope it's another entry into the dangerous world of equestrian combat starring everyone's favorite spy Barbie. We're not being sarcastic at all, really.
