Best OG: Hearthstone

Wizards of the Coast may have begun the trading card revolution, but Blizzard was the first to successfully digitalize it in a free-to-play format with Hearthstone. Blizzard boasts of over 100 million players as of November 2018, raking in over $40 million a year (earnings from 2017).

Hearthstone uses constructed decks consisting of 30 cards, as players tap into their powers, summoning creatures to destroy their opponents. The digital FTP format offers regular and ranked matches, expansion packs, arena battles, and single-play adventures.

Worst: Artifact

Artifact, developed by Valve Corporation, launched the first of December 2018 and was pounded with over 1500 negative reviews on Steam by the following day. Designed by MTG creator Richard Garfield, expectations were high upon Artifact’s launch.

Unlike other popular digital trading card games, Artifact is pay-to-win, creating a hostile flood of negative reviews. Using elements found in Valve’s battle arena game Dota 2, gamers and critics aren’t thrilled about the mechanics or the complexity of the game.

Best: MTG Arena

Taking a page from Blizzard’s handbook and customizing it towards their target audience, Wizards of the Coast is currently running a free-to-play digital trading card format for newbies and veterans in beta called MTG Arena. It’s simple to play, provides an abundance of rewards and opportunities for FTP players, beautifully designed, and hasn’t even officially launched yet (currently PC only).

Set to release in 2019, the beta version is open to all and is nothing like its predecessor Magic Online. Developers are consistently listening to fans and tweaking while Wizards enlists top streamers to develop their own arena style tournament play for short-term events.

Classic Trading Card Game With Issues: Pokémon TCG Online

Not many digital trading card games can boast of financial and pop-cultural success like Pokémon can. Launched in 2011 and arriving on Android devices in 2016 Pokémon TCG Online remains a classic amongst a sea of other digital and real-life trading card games.

Players can choose from a variety of modes, fighting either AI or other gamers with pre-constructed decks or originally designed ones. Pokémon TCG online is beloved mostly because of its name and loyal fans but has issues too, which aren’t getting resolved. From old cards becoming worthless to newbies having no idea how to play, Pokémon lives on in name only.

Best: Gwent

Officially released in fall of 2018, Gwent: The Witcher Card Game is a free-to-play digital card game developed and published by CD Projekt and is available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Instead of using mana abilities like other digital card games, players must throw a card down each turn from a minimum deck of 25 cards.

Why is EA And Battlefront II Tanking?

Gwent uses Factions with “leaders” who have their own special abilities, separating themselves from the pack of mana-based strategies.

Best: The Elder Scrolls: Legends

Available on PC and Android, The Elder Scrolls: Legends is a free-to-play digital card game worth checking out. Playing with decks (50-100 cards) each player uses a variety of cards and runes to defeat their opponents.

Five play modes exist of which four are always available, allowing players to compete in casual modes, AI, or against friends. There is a campaign mode as well as Gauntlet events which run during limited times.

In the tower defense-style Sev Zero: Air Support, two players battle the Ne’ahtu invasion by firing missiles, freezing the aliens in their tracks, and deploying explosive traps. Players can coordinate defenses to protect the Core from all sides. The game also features a new Sev Zero “Tough” mode.

Here are a few more notes about the app Sev Zero: Air Support:

• This is not a standalone game. You play it on your tablet in the same room as a friend, who is playing Sev Zero on Amazon Fire TV.
• Plan and execute coordinated strategies with your friend, then help blast enemies with six different weapons and powerups.
• Collect energy to upgrade your favorite powerups to make them even more potent.
• Supercharge the main player for insane firepower!
• Exclusive “Tough” mode tests the limits of your teamwork and skill.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXI898kyBgM

Sound pretty simple? If only. Powerups, spikes, bombs, speed boosts and an opposing team vie to pop the precious flag carrier, much of the game is spent maneuvering to outsmart, or ‘Juke’ enemy players. The clock ticks down from 12 minutes, but most games last around 5-6. The best players dance around the map waiting for the opposing flag carrier to get popped while they boost, juke, and even use bombs to stay two squares ahead of danger.

Once you’ve grasped the basics, head over to Reddit’s vibrant Tagpro community to learn more advanced strategy and tactics, and weigh in on new maps – they keep it fresh by shuffling things around every month or so. Reddit also houses the Tagpro leagues – believe it or not there are entire e-sports leagues based around this simple multiplayer game.

The mechanics and the challenge may suck you in, but the fantastic community will keep you coming back to this online gem fraught with fierce competition, a touch of humor, and more ball puns than you can shake a spike at. Just kidding. Don’t touch the spikes.

Want to learn how to play? This 60 second video will tell you everything you need to know.

Then give your jukes some rhythm by checking out my Spotify Playlist with some songs guaranteed to give you a winning tempo.

Yet, for all these success stories, many more Kickstarters fail. Many people have been talking about “Kickstarter fatigue” almost as long as video game Kickstarters have been a thing, yet recent successes like Hyper Light Drifter and Mighty No. 9 seem to prove otherwise. Perhaps the problem isn’t Kickstarter fatigue, but a lack of coverage. Crowd funding campaigns like Project Eternity, Wasteland 2, and Torment: Tides of Numenera had major industry names attached to them, so getting the coverage they needed wasn’t an issue. This is an edge that many indie developers looking into crowd funding don’t really have.

My goal with this article is to highlight some promising games I found on Kickstarter that could use a bit of a boost to reach their funding goal, much like a crowd funding version of my Greenlight articles. Considering the sheer number of games that turn to Kickstarter and Indiegogo these days, it will likely become a somewhat regular series

Paradise Lost: First Contact by Ashtree Works

Paradise Lost has a funding goal of $70,000 and, at the time of writing, is sitting at 83% of its goal with 20 days left. It also has stretch goals going all the way up to a Wii U port at $250,000. In this 2D stealth/action game you play as an alien plant that has been captured by an organization called GER and transported to a bio-engineering lab for study. It features some Metroidvania elements in the form of acquiring new abilities as you progress that allow you to access previously unreachable areas, and some RPG elements in the form of evolution paths. It seems to be primarily a stealth game along the lines of Mark of the Ninja, but there appears to be some combat-focused abilities like spore bombs and armor plating. The minimal tier for a copy of the game is $12, and also includes a PDF with some artwork.

STASIS by Christopher Bischoff

STASIS is currently hovering at around 53% of its $100,000 goal with 26 days left. At its core, STASIS is a traditional point-and-click adventure game played from a 2D isometric perspective. The game promises a mature sci-fi horror storyline with an aesthetic and atmosphere heavily inspired by Alien. The game puts you in the role of John Maracheck, a man who has just awaken from stasis on a repurposed mining vessel called the Groomlake, a seemingly abandoned ship that is secretly used to hide horrifying and illegal experiments conducted by the massive medical conglomerate the Cayne Corporation. At the $20 tier you’ll receive a DRM-free copy of STASIS, a wallpaper, your name in the credits, and access to the backers only area of the forums.

Confederate Express by Maksym Pashanin

This game is already at 308% of the $10,000 goal, but I’m including it so they can hit some more of the stretch goals before the campaign ends in a week. Confederate Express is an isometric tactical shooter where you play as a member of a sort of high risk delivery service in a future filled with zombies and rogue androids. Your goal is to deliver packages and earn money to build up a crew and purchase more advanced weapons and upgrades to tackle increasingly difficult deliveries and even bosses. As with many indie games lately, Confederate Express also features permadeath. The fairly impressive lighting effects deserve a special mention in this 2D pixel art title. A mere $10 is enough to get a Steam key of the game once it’s finished.

The Mandate by Perihelion Interactive

I mentioned The Mandate in my last Release Valve, but this extremely ambitious title is still at only half of its $500,000 goal with 20 days left. The Mandate looks to be a really odd space opera that blends mechanics and elements from several different genres. You have a very story-driven RPG with character interaction, relationship-building, political negations, trading, and galaxy-changing choices to be made, yet there is also ship-based RTS combat as you slowly build up a fleet and XCOM-style battles during boarding operations. Part of me worries that the sheer amount of different mechanics in the game could easily cause the game to fall apart somewhere during development, but the more optimistic side hopes that the developer’s ambitions are fully realized as an excellent and complex space RPG. The $20 tier for this game is very generous, including a DRM-free copy of the game, the soundtrack, digital artbook, wallpapers, backer exclusive ship decals, and avatar profile pictures to use on your favorite social media websites.

The Girl and the Robot by Salim Larochelle

This charming adventure game is at 83% of its $15,000 goal with 17 days left. The Girl and the Robot looks to be a more combat-focused version of Ico, made by an international indie team that includes beautiful artwork reminiscent of Studio Ghibli’s work. As the title suggests, it is the story of a girl and a robot who must work together to find a way out of a mysterious castle ruled by an evil queen. Gameplay is divided into puzzles that require the unique abilities of each character to solve, and combat as the knight-like robot. The combat looks slow and deliberately clunky, not unlike Dark Souls, and even promises to have very hard difficulty settings. At $9 you receive a Humble Store key for a DRM-free copy of the game, access to the current alpha build, and a digital artbook.

Dwarven Delve by TinkerHouse Games

This game is currently at 35% of its actually rather modest goal of $30,000 with 18 days left to go. Based on the videos I’ve seen, Dwarven Delve looks rather far along in development and is targeting an early 2014 release. As for what it is, Dwarven Delve is a unique blend of puzzle gameplay and dungeon crawling where you control a band of six dwarves through maze-like caverns full of monsters. The most unique aspect of the game is the ability to rotate corridors to change the layout of the dungeon, avoiding really strong foes or leading pursuing monsters into traps. As the developers describe it, the goal is ultimately to reconfigure the dungeons in a way that maximizes rewards while minimizing risks. For $10 you get a copy of the game, your name engraved on the “founder’s stone” on the official website, and an art pack containing wallpapers, avatars, and icons.

That’s it for now. Even if you don’t plan on actually pledging money to these games, still remember to at least check out their Greenlight pages. Most of them have one, with a link to it somewhere on the Kickstarter page.

At Comic-Con International San Diego 2013, Quantum Mechanix announced Firefly Online (FFO), a multi-user, social online RPG based on Joss Whedon’s almost cult status television series Firefly. FFO puts you in command of a trade ship that needs a crew and jobs to take on as you try to survive in the FFO ‘Verse.’ The initial release, slated for next summer, will support both Android and Apple iOS devices. Quantum Mechanix says the game may even be expanded to include other platforms. The trailer doesn’t reveal much about the gameplay, but you will notice a credit for FOX Digital Entertainment who appears to have given QMx license to build the game.

The Firefly Online RPG will include these types of activities:

• Assume the role of a ship captain – create a crew and customize a ship
• Aim to misbehave in space and planet-side adventures
• Cross-platform player experience across devices (pick-up and play from anywhere)
• Unique social features connecting Firefly fans
• Create a shiny ship and explore the Verse

Source: The Wall Street Journal

The game is fairly straightforward upon initialization — you select your difficulty and commence a playthrough. Once play begins, the cubes mentioned in the title align in continuous columns, scrolling from left to right towards. Depending on the difficulty chosen, you will either have 3, 4, or 5 rows of cubes in each column (3 being the easiest). The objective is to tap on a cube and move it to another cube’s location, with the end goal being that you create columns of the same color.

Combos can be acquired by creating successive columns with the same color, further multiplied by not receiving any “strikes” (which are caused by passing a column that has mixed colors). If you continue to succeed, two new colors will be added over time which exponentially increases the difficulty and truly tests your matching skills.

There are a few things that make Chemical Cubes unique within its mechanics: The first is that you can swap cubes regardless of where they are located on screen; The second is that, upon passing a column without matching colors, the game will slow down long enough to allow the user enough time to recover. If the player receives three “strikes,” the game ends and goes back to the main menu.

Upon completion of each playthrough, you are given a high-score, although you are only competing against yourself. Still, it is enjoyable to see how far you can get.

Chemical Cubes has a simple yet brazen art style, where background colors and particle effects run rampant behind the basic shapes and colors of gameplay objects. This allows the player to more readily understand the action on-screen and focus on moving cubes around efficiently. The design is well executed, although it would be nice to have some “juiciness” when creating combos outside of a text notification and multiplier number.

My favorite part of the game is how the frenetic background track pulses its techno-dub mix while you are busy matching. It contributes to the fun and wild atmosphere that the game creates for the player. The only issue I have with the track is that, well, it’s the only track in the game. At the very least, a different track for Easy, Medium, and Hard would have sufficed.

The game itself plays incredibly well and is simple enough for anyone to understand. However, if your phone has a smaller screen it could be difficult to play on Hard, as the precision required for moving cubes is more difficult to find given how small they become.

This title is great for a quick bit of messing around, if for nothing other than to give your brain a little rattle and listen to a perfectly ridiculous bass track. I would heartily recommend picking up Chemical Cubes and experiencing the cube-matching madness for yourself.

Chemical Cubes on Half Empty Studios’ Website

Whether on your phone or played on a tablet this game has graphics rarely seen on an android game and is also powered by Unity. Dead Trigger is an FPS that has endless levels of zombies to slaughter. It also includes multiple weapons that you can unlock as you advance through the game. The controls are simple but the smaller your screen the more you will find yourself staring at your thumbs rather than your enemy, but if you play on a tablet or a phone with a larger screen you will definitely enjoy this incredibly powerful game. In the game you can choose to follow the story mode or if you want to just slaughter zombies there are tons of side missions as well. And the best part? Its free! So hop on over to your play store and get to saving lives and surviving the apocalypse. (Just remember to be on WiFi, it’s a bit of a download!)