An Early Access Look at Tanzia

Thanks to Aracnity, Inc. for the partnership. All thoughts/opinions belong to the reviewer. Your experience may differ.

Tanzia is an old-style RPG set in a 3D open world currently being developed by Arcanity, Inc.

Arcanity Inc.'s first title, Tanzia is currently available in beta testing on Steam and Leigh, who recently reviewed Guardians Of Ember, got a chance to play and test out what is available in the game (which is still being developed).

(Much thanks to Leigh for the review!)

Tanzia happens to be one of my favorite genres of games RPG. Although it is an RPG and single-player, it gives you the feel of an MMORPG. The concepts and controls of the game are unique for a single-player RPG, because unlike other RPG’s where you either have a turn based fighting system or a hack and slash fighting style, you have a 10 slot spell bar and complete freedom of movement. Although your character has a staff to do melee combat with, the game does flow around a spell casters play set, at least until you unlock the ability to turn into a bear.

Storyline

As far as the storyline goes I am still trying to finish it because the game is still unfinished and the storyline is not complete, but the storyline as of now seems to be a good one so I am really anxious to see what happens next. The story so far is a narrative one - it is filled excitement, it keeps you hooked, and gives you the want to play on so you can hear more of it.

Gameplay

As far as the gameplay, I find it challenging and very enticing for you to explore and want to find out all you can about the areas and what things you may discover. Each new area has a lot to explore and some things are easy to miss if you don’t go looking for it.

Even the quests help you learn how to play a MMORPG in a single-player environment. They even have a tutorial quest to teach you how to “kite” enemies to where you can take them down without receiving damage. In regards to the quests I only have this to say: I wish they either used the MMORPG style where quest givers had something saying they have a quest for you or you are ready to turn in a quest such as a Gold or blue exclamation point or had name plates above the NPC’s head so you can find who it tells you to find in the quest just so you don’t have to run around talking to everyone just to find who you need.

With the spell list I think it’s perfect; I just don’t know how to level up the individual spells to level 2 or higher, but that could be because ether it is not currently implemented or I just missed something.

Controls & Graphics

The controls are originally set up in MMORPG style but for me that was way too difficult to play because there is no auto attack like in most MMORPGs so you have to hit “1” a lot just to use physical attacks and with all the “kiting” needed it makes it difficult to do so and get a good spell rotation done, so because of these difficulties I decided to use a controller for the game which made it a little easier on the handling.

The graphics are amazing for the comic book style they chose for the game. The storyline is told comic book style with no real CGI animation scenes but with this game, I like it.

Overall

Overall I would give the game a 4 out of 5 and the only reason that is, is because I hate waiting to finish storylines but I am confident that once it is complete, it would be 5’s across the board and I can’t wait to see what the developers do next.

Tanzia is currently in beta testing on Steam for $14.99. Developers are looking for feedback on quests and gameplay. 

read more "An Early Access Look at Tanzia"

A Complete Look At Guardians Of Ember: Immortal Edition

Thanks to Runewaker for the partnership. All thoughts/opinions belong to the reviewer. Your experience may differ.

Guardians Of Ember Waypoint

Released on December 13, 2016, Guardians of Ember is the newest hack-and-slash MMORPG game by Runewaker. Runewaker is the maker of the games Runes of Magic and Dragon's Prophet.

(Much thanks to Leigh for the review!)

I was given a chance to play Guardians of Ember in its fullest by getting its Immortal Edition, which does give you a lot of interesting items to enjoy the game with. I also looked in depth at each race and class although I did primarily stuck with three classes through-out my gameplay experience due to my play style. I tried out many of the games features including the dungeoning system, Party system, and PvP battlegrounds.

The Different Races

Races (left to right): Dwarves, Neia, Elf (Female), Elf (Male), Human (Female), Human (Male)

In Guardians of Ember there are four different races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Neia.

• The Human race has a small story to how they are part of the campaign and look as you would expect a human to look and you can choose whether you want to play a Male or Female Character. 
• The Elves also are accompanied by a short backstory and have what we would call Elvish characteristics with being tall with long hair and pointy ears, and you can also choose to be a Male or Female character. 
• The Dwarves, although are short and stubbly with beard like you would expect, are restricted to only playing with the Male gender and their short background doesn’t explain why that is. 
• Like The Dwarves, the Neia also have a sex restriction but it is restricted to Female only. The Neia also look like very short versions of the elves but their background story is very extensive when compared to the other races. 

With each race you do have a wide assortment of ways you can change the way your character can look by changing the color of their skin, eyes, hair, and lips, and the color pallet is very large compared to some games. Other than the sex restrictions given to both the Dwarfs and Neias, one other thing was missing which you can find in almost any type of MMORPG, the RNG or Random Name Generator. I love to just pick a random name for my characters instead of having to deal with a message saying, “That name is already taken.” every time you try to make one up yourself. I hope that some of these issues such as the gender restrictions and the RNG are implemented in future updates for the game.

The Classes

There are now six different classes which are Knight, Priest, Arcanist, Engineer, Ranger, and Dark Knight. 

• The Knight class is your typical sword swinging, shield wielding, tank/damage class. 
• The Priest is more of your support healer who can damage at range with spells. 
• The Arcanist is a magic casting damage dealing squishy. 
• The Engineer uses guns ether 2 pistols or 1 rifle for damage and uses machines to help buff or heal the party. 
• The Ranger is your bow and crossbow wielding ranged class. 
• The Dark Knight is also a duel-wielding damage/tank whose abilities can enhance their weapons. 

I personally like the class system which brings iconic classes to be played in a much different environment.

Gameplay

Arcanist Gameplay screenshot

The gameplay is what you would expect from these types of games. You collect your quests from anyone with a yellow exclamation point above their head and turn them into the people with a blue question mark. You go around completing quests buy collecting items, killing certain creatures, or achieving certain objectives. I just wish they had a way to tell the difference between Main storyline quests and optional side quests, especially since you have to read everything with no voice-overs even in cinematic scenes.

As for the graphics for the game I would say a good 3 out of 5 on the “World” graphics and 4 out of 5 on the cinematic graphics. 

Cutscene

The normal party system is average. All you have to do is find someone or a friend who you want to party with and send a party invite. The dungeons are a bit liner with MOBS every so often and there is no dungeon party making system, but it’s not really needed because you can solo these dungeons, even if you’re a squishy Arcanist, as long as you know how to “kite” the bosses. The PvP, in my opinion, is where the most work is needed. All the PvP is either 1v1 or 3v3 and it’s you killing the other team on a 2 tier circular map. I would have liked a more objective based PvP Battleground.

Guardians of Ember Boss

The Immortal Edition

The Immortal Edition of the game costs $50 and entitles you to many different perks. These perks include Exclusive Permanente mounts, items for visual fireworks, Bag expansion, experience boosts, and much more. There is however one very big downfall. The code given to you so you can get these Items can only be applied to one character and in my experience, when you buy a special edition of any game, including MMORPGs, it is implemented to all characters you have or make in the future and unless it is fixed in future patches, I do not think it is worth the price you pay.

Guardians Of Ember Engineer

After playing the game for quite a while I have learned that there are features that I really like about the game and a few features which seem mundane. Overall I would give the game a 3 out of 5 the way it currently is, but if some of the thing I mentioned were fixed, I would say 5’s across the board. I will definitely continue to play the game because it is a fun play through and I can’t wait to see what changes they have in store for Guardians of Ember.

You can find Guardians of Ember on Steam for PC. Editions available are the Mortal Edition ($19.99), Demigod Edition ($29.99), and Immortal Edition ($49.99).

read more "A Complete Look At Guardians Of Ember: Immortal Edition"

Zombie-Opoly - When Monopoly and zombies collide.

I received Zombie-Opoly from Late For The Sky games to facilitate this review. All thoughts/opinions are my own. Your experience may differ.

I'm a gamer - board games and video games, you name it. Granted, I'm not a hardcore gamer like some of my friends, but I love gaming. It makes my little geeky heart squeal with happiness. Plus, I'm a little competitive, depending on who I'm playing with (or against). But I learned a very valuable lesson when it comes to competitiveness when you play against a very good friend (a hardcore gamer called L.C.) and your twin sister.

The three of us, thanks to Late For The Sky Games, were able to try out Zombie-Opoly. What exactly is Zombie-Opoly? Think of Monopoly but with zombies. We like zombies so we were intrigued.

 Here's a quick run-down of game:

Player pieces (6) - a shovel, Severed Ear, Femur Bone, Lethal Weapon, Zombie Boy and a Human Remnant

These are not all the player pieces. Just the ones we chose for our game.

Properties - Properties have a zombie-theme like The Horde (also known as Boardwalk in Monopoly) or Goodbye Kitty (also known as Mediterranean Avenue). These are interesting! They include interesting facts and cute little jokes on the back.

Houses/Hotels - Houses are Boxes of Flesh and Hotels are Screaming Humans.

Play Cards - What would be Community Chest and Chance are now Stagger and Crawl. They're a lot like Monopoly play cards, except there is one card that kind of takes the game a little further.

L.C. had no problem doing a "zombie walk". (We were at a public board gaming place and the last thing you want is to be crawling around on the floor. We may upload the video at a later time!)

Time - You can play the normal version or an hour version.

Gameplay
It plays just like Monopoly. The only difference is that it is zombies and maybe a little more fun. (See "Crawl" card above.)

Most Monopoly games can go on forever, unless one person has a very good strategy. We all started out as we normally would, but within 30 minutes, my sister and I realized that it was going to get extremely competitive. About 45 minutes to an hour in, I was the first person out, with L.C. being the person who took me down. It didn't take long for the realization to sink in that L.C. knew what he was doing. About 30 minutes later, he had an empire near the "Shamble to Buried" (also known as Go To Jail), which eventually took out my sister, declaring L.C. the winner.

The only problem we saw was that because of the design of the game board, it made it sometimes difficult to see the silver player pieces.

Other than that, it was fun and if you love zombies, Zombie-Opoly might be the game for you.

read more "Zombie-Opoly - When Monopoly and zombies collide. "

Bring gaming nostalgia back into your life!

Video games have crossed into futuristic instead of the primitive games from yesteryear. Gameplay has moved from side-scrolling, like Sonic or Mario Bros, to VR, where you are the character.

For gamers, we often feel nostalgic for the games that got us into gaming in the first place. However, many of us don't own an original NES or Sega Genesis console to which we can fulfill our needs to play those games .

Well, we did a little research and found a few places where you can play the games you grew up with.

Contra on 8bit.com in Google Chrome

For Super Mario Brothers fans, there is 8bbit.com. The simple-looking website boasts over 100 NES games in alphabetic order. You have the option of playing in the browser or full-screen. All 8bbit games run on Adobe Flash.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on SSEGA in Mozilla Firefox

Another website is SSEGA. Does the name look familiar? It should! It is a website to play infamous Sega Genesis games. Besides the ever-popular Sonic series, they have over 1000+ games that came out on the Genesis console. Some games don't work, but a majority of the games do work. You have the option of playing in the browser window or full-screen. All ssega.com games run on Adobe Flash.

Asteroids (Atari 7800) on RetroUprising in Mozilla Firefox

If you are looking for a way to play games like Atari, Space Invaders, or any other forgotten games, RetroUprising has almost any game you are looking for, including user created "hack" games from other popular games like Sonic. You can also find games for N64, Game Boy, and many other older consoles.

You also have the option to save your game onto your computer but to do that, you need to download their latest version of ArcadeOx. At last check, it was safe to download and use. Unfortunately, RetroUprising only runs on Windows.

read more "Bring gaming nostalgia back into your life!"

Is Robin's Quest: A Legend Born worth playing?

I like PC and console games. I've logged quite a few hours playing Neverwinter, City of Steam: Arkadia, League of Legends, and most recently, Diablo III. (When your friend invites you over to play co-op, you play co-op. I love my Demon Hunter's Rain of Vengeance's Flying Strike.)

But I occasionally play casual games when I just need to slow down and that's I came across Robin's Quest: A Legend Born.

Beginning cutscene from Robin's Quest: A Legend is Born

You are essentially Robin, a woman (I know. I was surprised, too.), who has been jailed by the evil ruler who taxes the poor and it's up to you to save the day. Like every hidden object game, you find clues and complete puzzles, but in RQ, you are mostly searching for clues. Puzzles to solve are scarce, but relative to the story.

Screenshot of gameplay

The game is pretty short by casual game standards, lasting less than 3 hours. Most hidden object games last much longer, requiring several days to finish (unless you have nothing else going on that day). It wasn't as challenging as you'd find with other casual hidden object games. It was actually quite easy, making it great for those who don't want a challenging game.

The graphics and game play are smooth, though it will depend on the system it is played on.

All in all, Robin's Quest: A Legend Born is a pretty easy and short casual hidden object game.

You can find Robin's Quest: A Legend Born on Amazon for download.

read more "Is Robin's Quest: A Legend Born worth playing?"

Build your own theme park through Steam Park by Iello Games

Have you ever wanted to build your own theme park without any of the mess? Iello Games and Cranio Creations have come together to create a management board game where you’ll have to build your own gigantic, coal-powered amusement park and make it the largest and most profitable in the region. By constructing the three-dimensional, beautifully designed rides, you will see your park grow right before your eyes.

Thanks to a clever, original action-choosing mechanic, winning a game of Steam Park is as much a matter of being the best... as of being the fastest!

FEATURES

• Innovative yet simple, fast-paced dice system, by the designers of Dungeon Fighter. 
• An easy-to-learn game with 2 difficulty levels: one for the less experienced gamers, and a more strategic one for a even more exciting challenge. 
• Fantastic artwork by Marie Cardouat (Dixit 1 & 2).

MUST KNOW

• Up to 4 players 
• Ages 10+ 
• Can take up to 60 minutes or longer (depending on the number of players). 
• Includes 2 difficulty levels (Quick or normal gameplay)

The game itself comes with over 300+ pieces, including 18 Rides, 24 Stands, and 84 Banknotes.

What you essentially do is roll 6 of your dice and try to be the fastest at choosing the dice that has a result you think you will need. Once you pick up a Turn Token, you move onto the Dirt Phase, Actions Phase, and Income Phase. The Dirt Phase is where you pick up Dirt Tokens according to what your dice say. In the Actions Phase, you can spend your dice to build Rides, Stands, Attract Visitors, clean up your Dirt, or expand your park. There are 6 turns, each with 4 Phases each. At the end of the Income Phase during the 6th turn, that is when the winner is declared.

It will take a few games to fully get the hang of it, especially if you don't play board games very often. (I do, so it didn't take long for me to pick up the gist of the game.)

The artwork on the Ride and Stand pieces are beautiful and fits perfectly well with the game and even the steampunk genre.

You can purchase Steam Park on Amazon.

read more "Build your own theme park through Steam Park by Iello Games"