off-the-grid
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BioLite adds portable power stations and a solar array to its charging lineup
BioLite has just announced its new BaseCharge 600 and BaseCharge 1500 portable power stations, along with an accompanying SolarPanel 100.
BioLite's FirePit goes beyond the camping grill
Relaxing and staring at fire is a primordial pleasure, but one that's often isolated to camping trips. It also inevitably leads to burger and hot dog cravings. While your average campfire -- a flaming stack of logs surrounded by rocks or rusty metal -- can be a challenge to cook on, BioLite's new FirePit provides a best-of-both-worlds solution. It's a portable grill station that doubles as a warming and hypnotic flame source, opening up opportunities beyond the campsite. The product is an 20-pound fire pit with folding legs and perforated "X-Ray Mesh" sides for heat distribution and flame visibility. There's also a Bluetooth-controllable fan attachment that helps expedite and regulate combustion, which is excellent for getting charcoal to red-hot ember status quickly. BioLite is introducing the $200 device on Kickstarter today with a May 2018 ship date, but I recently had a chance to check out one of the prototypes and eat a few tasty burgers along the way.
Engadget giveaway: Win a pair of GoTenna off-the-grid communicators!
Camping and hiking trips can be doubly relaxing since you're often left without cell service and have no choice but to enjoy nature undistracted. If you get separated from fellow travelers and need to communicate, though, having a tool like GoTenna can be a lifesaver. This long-range radio transmitter and receiver connects locally via Bluetooth to the GoTenna app on mobile devices (iOS and Android). You can send private one-to-one or group messages and even share GPS coordinates with other users in the area. For most outdoor terrains, the range is between one and four miles. If you're using them in urban areas, it's around one mile or less, but that's still useful for finding nearby friends at crowded events where cell service is overloaded. The company has provided us with two pairs of GoTennas for a couple of lucky readers this week. All you need to do is head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning. Winners: Congratulations to Manuel O. of Brooklyn, NY and Adrian T. of Toronto, ONT!
Off the Grid: The Witcher Adventure Game and Star Wars Imperial Assault
Like most sci-fi shows on Fox, Off the Grid is getting canceled (we're all saying goodbye, actually). In this series finale of the board and card game series I had hoped to evolve over time, we're keeping our spirits high with a look at two recent, fantastic releases from publisher Fantasy Flight Games: The Witcher Adventure Game and Star Wars: Imperial Assault.
Joystiq Weekly: New 3DS XL, The Talos Principle review, no more review scores and more
Welcome to Joystiq Weekly, a "too long; didn't read" of each week's biggest stories, reviews and original content. Each category's top story is introduced with a reactionary gif, because moving pictures aren't just for The Daily Prophet. This was a busy week, but our decision to drop numerical review scores is probably what will have the longest-lasting effect on Joystiq. While not everyone has expressed support of the decision, we immensely appreciate the effort and thought many have put into discussing the topic with us. We hope our transition into using "In Other Words" text summaries and the new Joystiq Excellence Award will be more effective at conveying our stances and better at helping you find games that you'd actually enjoy. Even if you're indifferent about the discussion of reviews though, plenty happened this week beyond our shift in examining games. The New 3DS XL will reach us next month, Xbox One consoles slipped back to their $350 holiday price, The Talos Principle surprised us with its depth, and 3D After Burner 2 transcended the fabled "arcade-perfect" status of arcade ports. All those stories and more are waiting for you after the break!
Off the Grid: XCOM - The Board Game
You may not be aware, but a new XCOM is on the way to stores later this month! No, don't bother firing up those spiffy new consoles, this XCOM experience is for your tabletop. Board and card game publisher Fantasy Flight Games has teamed up with 2K to bring you XCOM: The Board Game, and Joystiq has survived the alien invasion. While you may expect a board game based on the XCOM strategy video game franchise would resemble more of a dungeon crawler, where you hunt and kill aliens, XCOM: The Board Game attempts something unique. Utilizing an app, XCOM: The Board Game randomizes alien movement, in-game events and keeps up to four players on their toes with strictly timed and very tense situations. In this episode of Off the Grid, Xav is joined by Jeff Cannata and Christian Spicer from the DLC Podcast, to play XCOM: The Board Game and discuss the pre-release copy of the game, the app functionality and what it's like to be in charge of the budget to save the human race. XCOM: The Board Game is expected to launch later this month from Fantasy Flight Games and designer Eric M. Lang (Marvel Dice Masters, Arcadia Quest). [Image: 2K, Fantasy Flight]
Best of the Rest: Xav's picks of 2014
ATTENTION: The year 2014 has concluded its temporal self-destruct sequence. If you are among the escapees, please join us in salvaging and preserving the best games from the irradiated chrono-debris. Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes Set aside your cries of it being a glorified demo; you'll get no support from me. I poured dozens of hours into Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, exploring every facet, achieving S ranks throughout (some of which you can watch on my YouTube channel) and doing it again and again to test and examine its reaction to my exploration and exploitation. Ground Zeroes is a marvel of technology and, yes, it's a great tease of what Kojima Productions has in store with The Phantom Pain. Truthfully, I'm a series fanatic and – as last year's mention of Splinter Cell: Blacklist will attest – a lover of all things stealthy, so it may come as no great shock that I ended up adoring Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes. But I can identify when something doesn't work and I truly believed Ground Zeroes accomplished its task beautifully. I loved the game for what it offered and ultimately delivered on: a taste of what's to come, powered by technology befitting of a main course. I think we all got a little mad about it because we can't wait for more.
Off the Grid: Golem Arcana
Following its successful Shadowrun revival Kickstarter, developer Harebrained Schemes set its sights on a new crowdfunded project: a miniature tabletop game and mobile app hybrid. That game is Golem Arcana, which launched earlier this year. Utilizing an infrared stylus and specialty app, players move physical objects around a modular board and engage in combat with detailed pre-painted minis, leaving the micromanagement of the game to their mobile devices. In a new series exploring board and card games that we're calling "Off the Grid," Xav and Richard look at Golem Arcana and discuss how it works, what makes it special and whether or not it's something you should explore in any effort you may have to game offline.
'All Together Now' is a Fox sitcom about friends who unplug
Time spent with friends is supposed to be cherished. Nowadays, however, the existence of things like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter make those moments a little less special for some people, namely because they keep their eyes hooked to whatever device they have near them. To that end, according to Deadline, Fox has green-lit a TV sitcom called All Together Now, which features a plot based on six friends in their late 20's who are keen to unplug from their mobile devices and interact with one another "for as long as they can stand it." All Together Now is set to be produced by Alec Sulkin and Julius Sharpe, who most recently worked with Fox on Dads, a show canceled last May, after only one 19-episode season, due to very bad reviews. The new sitcom still hasn't begun production, so it'll likely be a while before it premieres -- hopefully it's enough time for you to gather your thoughts and realize that this is really happening. [Image credit: Associated Press]
Palm Pre finds fan off the grid
Alright, so you've no doubt seen plenty of Palm Pre reviews by this point (even if there's only one you really need), but we're guessing you haven't seen one quite like this one from PreCentral forum user Michael Bunker, who has been using the phone completely off the grid for the past three weeks (if you don't count the cell service, that is). Among other things, Bunker found that the Pre was particularly helpful for selling cows over the internet, keeping watch on any oncoming tornadoes, checking for the cheapest gas prices in the nearby towns, and catching up on the odd TV show (since he doesn't have an actual TV). Of course, he does also have a few complaints about the phone, including the familiar refrain of hoping to "see some more apps." Hit up the link below for the full review.[Via PreCentral.net]
Off the Grid + Joyswag: Donkey Kong Jenga
Update: Entry period for the giveaway has ended. Saria the Cat was randomly selected, and here's her winning entry: "Ticket to Ride expansion using the Ocarina of Time Hyrule map. Yeah, I know I'm creative. Not." Congrats to the winner, and you can still read our impressions of the game below!It's been awhile since we've brought you an Off the Grid post, and we're returning with a special edition where you can actually win the game we're talking about. During the final rounds of this year's Omegathon at PAX '08, Jenga was one of the most exciting things to watch. Which block would they pull out next? Who would topple the tower? Is it cheating to use two hands?USAopoly has been putting out branded versions of popular board games since 1994. They currently produce eight different versions of Jenga including Casino Jenga: Las Vegas Edition, and the timely Jenga: Halloween Edition. The most recent version of the game is Donkey Kong themed, features different colored Marios, pink girders, a spinner, and Pauline (not Princess Peach) who was the damsel in distress in the arcade game. Read all about it after the break, and steady your hand before commenting so you can win one of your very own.
Joystiq hands-on: Halo Interactive Strategy Game
Interactive level design to the max! The Halo Interactive Strategy Game is a crown of shame, aiming a Christmas-ruining SPNKr at happy children everywhere. Sure, I tempered my expectations of a board game based off a video game -- especially an "interactive" one. But after imposing it on my regular game night friends, the Halo board game's missed potential let me down. Building the map was fun. Playing capture-the-flag, deathmatch, or an objective-based contest wasn't.The game is full of weak and unclear rules and an optional DVD just distracts from the strategy. This could have been a chess-like adaptation of Halo, but it just ends up feeling sorry.%Gallery-35732%
Off the Grid Special: Game Design 101
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.For nearly two years now, Off the Grid has introduced (and reintroduced) Joystiq's readers to some of the best board and card games on the market. The relationship between our modern video games and their non-digital counterparts is very clear-cut. As Gamelab CEO Eric Zimmerman puts it: "a game is a game is a game."So for those readers who aspire to create games of their own, it should come as no surprise that non-digital games are a great starting place for honing the craft of game design. With no programming skills required, non-digital game design is an easy way to begin thinking creatively about interaction, without the complicated prerequisities of digital game development.The best leaping-off point for non-digital game design is with the tools. Most gamers probably already have some fantastic equipment in their closets. So let's look at the basic tools of the trade.
Off the Grid reviews Power Grid
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.In real life, scarcity isn't fun. Scarcity is the rising price of gas, or the difficulty of finding a job. In a game, however, scarcity can be incredibly compelling, and make for a very unique play experience. Enter Power Grid, a board game by German designer Friedemann Friese which uses scarcity at every level of its design to produce one helluva strategy title.The player's task in the game is to power as much of the country as possible (United States on one side of the board, or alternatively Germany on the other). As heads of various power companies (think Montgomery Burns or whoever runs PG&E), your tasks are to buy power plants, purchase resources, and allocate those resources to control as many houses in as many cities as possible. Money's not the deciding factor here; players will be judged and ranked solely on the amount of power they're pushing.
Quirks: the 1980 board game equivalent of Spore
As you know, we sometimes like to cut the wires and take things Off the Grid, which can lead to bouts of surfing through websites like BoardGameGeek until 5 in the morning ... allegedly ...However, all of that browsing paid off in spades when we stumbled across Quirks, a board game from the magical year of 1980. Looks a bit familiar, doesn't it? We wonder if Will Wright ever sat down with this back in the day. He would have been around 20 years old when it came out, and he's admittedly a huge fan of board and strategy games, so you do the math. Find out more about genetic manipulation in the 80s after the break (spoiler: it wasn't all big hair, bangle bracelets, and friendship pins).
Off the Grid: The new roommates
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.One of the most exciting parts about moving to a new place is having new people to play with. One week ago I arrived in California, and moved in with my new roommate and his girlfriend. Jet-lagged, and achy from spending nearly twelve combined hours in airplanes and airports, I still excitedly busted out the board games from my luggage once I arrived at the apartment.I unboxed Risk: Black Ops under the pretense of showing them how pretty it was. Realistically, I was prodding, waiting for one of the new roomies to say "cool, let's play!" They sure did think it was a nice-looking game, but neither said boo on the subject of playing. I packed it up and passed out.Of course, over the past week I've learned that this was not merely a single case of cold feet. Compared to the relative ease of playing video games, or watching television or YouTube videos, or renting a film, playing a round of Carcassonne or Kill Doctor Lucky apparently just isn't worth the effort.And thus, even with a small contingent of possible opponents living in the same space, it's still surprisingly difficult to get my game on.
Off the Grid: Risk Black Ops and Hasbro's wrong direction
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.Risk: Black Ops is one of the most beautiful board games you'll never play. In anticipation of the newly updated release of Risk, Hasbro produced only 1,000 copies of this special edition game, distributing them to bloggers, journos, and gaming hobby sites for perusal and easy publicity.The response was unanimously positive. The updates to the rules -- handled by Risk 2010 designer Rob Daviau -- lower the game's initial barrier to entry, and make it possible to play through in under two hours (which is significant for Risk). Most media attention, however, was lavished on the slick, modern redesign, devised under the command of art director Lindsay Braun and visual designer Jason Taylor.Risk has always wanted to be taken seriously, but Black Ops is the first version of the game to look deadly serious. A matte black finish on the box is accented by imagery of barbed wire, dog tags, and the faintest hint of blood spatter, all rendered in a subtle gray. "History is written by the victors," the box declares in a modest sans-serif font. The game board itself is designed to look like something out of our modern war-rooms, with a visual style not unlike Introversion's apocalyptic strategy game Defcon. This is not the Risk you remember.%Gallery-20806%
Off the Grid: Travel edition (part two)
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.Last time we boarded a trans-continental flight, we discovered that non-digital gaming options for solo flyers were sorely limited. The feasible solution? Invent new games! Here are some (questionably) fun, single-player activities to occupy your time on those lengthy jaunts across the ocean.The Newest Steward(ess)Carefully watch the various flight attendants as they perform the synchronized pre-flight intstructional dance (you know, the one with the seatbelts and air masks). Try and spot the newest additon to the flight staff, based on which attendant is least in sync with the others. Bonus points if you eventually ask him/her how long he/she's been on the job.What you win: A smug sense of self-satisfaction and superiority. Not to the mention the chance to flirt with a potentially cute flight attendant. Which is a game in and of itself.
Off the Grid: Gygaxian game design
Every other week Scott Jon Siegel contributes Off the Grid, a column about card games, board games, and everything else non-digital.The passing of Dungeons & Dragons co-creator Gary Gygax means the passing of one of gaming's most notable and influential designers. The legacy of Gary Gygax, however, is more difficult to discern than most realize. After all, the evolution of D&D is credited to both Gygax and co-designer Dave Arneson -- not to mention Gygax's other games, both before and after the golden age of his company Tactical Studies Rules. So what kind of designer was Gary Gygax?Gaming was already social when Gygax came on the scene. He was only one of a growing force of war-gamers. But it was Gygax that made gaming personal, with his own designs uniquely focused around the role of the individual. Instead of controlling the army, Gygax wanted to control the soldier. Instead of manning the fleet, Gygax wanted to man the ship.
68% of Americans suffer disconnection anxiety, should probably go outside
Sure, we'll admit to a certain unhealthy super-fun fascination with gadgetry, but a new study out this month by the Solutions Research Group says that overall, we're borderline obsessed -- and that 68 percent of Americans in general feel anxious when not connected in one way or another. The study used research collected on almost 5,000 people over two years, and found that feelings of "disconnect anxiety" affected people of all ages, triggering sentiments like "dazed," "disoriented," "tense," "inadequate" and even "panic." Interestingly, however, the reasons for disconnect anxiety changed as subjects got older -- teens and young adults worried about social communications being cut off, while older adults mostly fretted over work and safety issues. The study is backed up by all kinds of humorously embarrassing data like the percentage of BlackBerry users who've sent a message in the bathroom (63%) and the average number of Facebook friends a 12-24 year old has (159) but what we found most surprising is that just 37% of laptop owners frequently use their machines in the bedroom. That seems awfully low to us -- what if you miss something while you're asleep?[Warning: PDF link]
