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We're listening to: 'Acquisitions Inc.' and 'The Adventure Zone'
This week's IRL is about podcasts. Or games. Or both? Kris Naudus loves role-playing games -- the ones with dice rather than pixels -- and she also loves podcasts. Combining the two should be a dream, but Kris has struggled to get into some of the most popular shows. Until now.
The exquisite torture of Kickstarter exclusives
A month or so ago, I discovered a project on Kickstarter that made my heart ache with desire. It was a tabletop game called The Wilson Wolfe Affair by Simulacra Games, which is unlike any other I've seen. Each "game" is really a crate full of 1930s cartoon memorabilia, which contain clues and hidden secrets to a larger, unsolved mystery. The artwork is incredible and the puzzles themselves look fantastic -- you'd find solutions through reading letters, using a Viewmaster, playing games, looking at objects under a UV light, and more. The game invites you to essentially play amateur detective, which is the kind of game I love.
'Beasts of Balance' is Jenga evolved
Hybrid board games are not a new concept. There's only so much you can track with paper, dice and pen before it becomes 'Spreadsheet: The Game.' A companion smartphone or tablet app can, under the right circumstances, be a useful scorekeeper or dungeon master. Beasts of Balance, a new game by Sensible Object, takes this concept one step further with a deeper, more dynamic digital experience. While you stack objects on a podium, a real-time strategy game takes place on-screen. Both affect one another: The situation in the virtual world encourages you to play certain objects. Likewise, the beasts you position on the tower have ripple effects in the digital game. Mastering both is the key to a dazzling high score.
Hasbro and Indiegogo want your board game ideas
Despite the ever-growing number of screens at our disposal, there's still a desire for traditional board games that rely on paper, card and plastic. Hasbro, an industry titan that owns Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit and other tabletop classics, is now looking to the community for fresh ideas. The company is teaming up with Indiegogo for the "Spring 2016 Next Great Game Challenge," an open competition to find and publish a user-created board game. Any enthusiast designer from Canada, the US, France, Germany and the UK can submit their ideas online, up until May 15th.
Getting out of the garage and into VR with 'Dungeons and Dragons'
When I was a kid, my best friend's garage was a magical place. My friends and I would gather around a dirty table on cold winter nights, huddled between unused sports equipment and the family's spare TV, to kill monsters with dice. It was where we played Dungeons & Dragons. Then I grew up; my friends grew up. We all got jobs and moved away. Now all the old building does is hold cars. Over the years, our group has tried to recreate our adventures over the phone, through online chat programs and even over Skype, but nothing ever felt right. Tabletop gaming is a social activity that demands a sense of presence, which makes playing Dungeons & Dragons across state lines really hard. Recently, a company called AltspaceVR invited me to try an option I hadn't considered before: Playing D&D in virtual reality. Believe it or not, it might actually work.
DICE+ digital chance cubes rolling out at E3
As far as random number generators go, the traditional die is about as low tech as it gets. Or at least, it was. Gaming startup GIC has taken it upon itself to update the old chance cube by outfitting it with LED backlights, anti-cheat roll detection and Bluetooth connectivity. DICE+, as the shakers of tomorrow are called, will sell for between $30 and $40 when they launch later this year. Although the digital dice promise compatibility with iOS, Android, Symbian, Linux and Windows, GIC has yet to announce what platforms will be available at launch. We'll have to wait for E3 for the details, but the possibilities are intriguing -- hit the break to see the cubes in action. In the meantime, we'll be dreaming of Dungeons, Dragons, a digital D20 and Microsoft Surface.
Surfacescapes puts Dungeons & Dragons on Surface, makes your d20 obsolete (video)
We've seen some fancy applications for Microsoft's Surface, the touchable, strokable, caressable computing device/big-ass table, but not a single one has made us twitter in nerdy glee like Surfacescapes. Created by a team at Carnegie Mellon University, it's an implementation of Dungeons & Dragons in 3D, something that has of course been done dozens and dozens of times before, but this is different. Way different. It brilliantly brings the tabletop style of play to Surface, with players moving real figurines over virtual battlefields, rolling virtual d20s and d6s to deal real damage against digital dire wolves and the like, opponents who can move and attack automatically. Sure, it takes some of the imagination out of the experience, but it'll also make re-rolling your character a heck of a lot easier -- not to mention eliminating the dungeonmaster's folder of magic, mystery, and crudely drawn maps.
Philips reveals more Entertaible deets, screens
Philips reported yesterday that their prototype touch-screen horizontal gaming environment (dubbed "Entertaible") is ready for "market testing" which, according to these high-resolution photos, looks like it might be a lot of fun. Features include:
