I like the new Fallout 4 trailer because it mixes a fun 60's song with live action and possible in game art. At least I hope some of that CG is game art, it would have the final game look incredible. Fallout 4 drops on November 10th and it would be a day one purchase for me if not for Starcraft 2 Legacy of the Void. As much fun as shotgunning both games at once, I don't think I am up to try as it might make my brain explode.

A couple days ago Blizzard announced that Warsong Commander was getting a nerf and we've talked about it a bit already. I think all Hearthstone players wanted to see the Grim Patron Warrior deck get a nerf but after Blizzard talked about Warsong Commanders changes some people voiced some displeasure. No nerf is going to make everyone happy but is changing Warsong Commanders ability that big a problem?

For folks not in the know Blizzard is changing Warsong Commanders ability from:

"Whenever you summon a minion with 3 or less Attack, give it Charge."

TO

"Your Charge minions have +1 Attack. "

But some people feel this nerf is bad for Hearthstone in general as seen in a recent article from PCGamer.

"Before Patrons became the target of vitriol from the average ladder player and Twitch stream viewer, Face Hunter, Zoo and other aggressive decks were the main point of complaint. What stopped these decks from dominating the meta if not the rise of Patron Warrior? Maybe we should be taking a minute to thank the Patron players for farming those pesky aggro players out of existence. "

If any love exists for Patron players I don't think it's still around. To me, the deck feels a bit cheesy but on the other hand it's nice to have a strong deck from cards you can pickup easily from Naxxramas and Blackrock. I urge you to watch the developer reasons for the nerf in the video above and then the article at PCGamer below. After that drop your thoughts in the comments.

http://www.pcgamer.com/why-the-warsong-commander-nerf-is-actually-bad-for-hearthstone/

I still think nerfing Grim Patron Warrior is a good think and this change wasn't terrible but it makes Warsong Commander less interesting to the point I am not sure it will be played much anymore. It's sad for a standard card to be less useful but I understand Blizzards rationale even if it's not universally loved.

http://us.battle.net/hearthstone/en/forum/topic/19288409377

Hey Everyone,

Cheerful Ghost & Starship Rubicon will have a booth at this years Portland Retro Gaming Expo. This Expo looks blow the doors off the last one with over three thousand tickets already sold! They plan on even more people attended so if you want to lock in your ticket, click the link below. Wick and I have our new booth ready to go and are excited to have people check it out. We are also having a daily Starship Rubicon ranked ladder where the top 3 scored players will win a free copy of the game! So stop by, play the game to get ranked, grab a free sticker and remember that Wick loves selfies so make sure to ask him to take as many with him as you can!

I also plan on replacing my lost original Gameboy or upgrade to a Gameboy Advance SP. Still not sure which, but I am leaning to the SP.

Portland Retro Gaming Expo is October 17th - 18th at the Portland Convention Center. More details at the website below.

http://www.retrogamingexpo.com/

The Legend of Zelda: Symphony of the Goddess is now on tour and they recently stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to rock out a pretty cool piece from the show. The arrangement here is pretty solid as well as the players themselves. A few years back my friend had the idea to take me to Video Games Live, which is a similar thing save one important point, it wasn't good. Nintendo entering the mix seems to have upped the quality considerably and I give them huge props for doing it well.

Nintendo Published a History of Zelda Documentary that was originally released to Japan. A few years ago some members at Zelda Informer translated it and posted it to YouTube for your viewing pleasure. It's a really great run through of the series and winds things up talking about Wind Waker and a very lengthy discussion with the games creator Shigeru Miyamoto. The captioning isn't large so you might have to squint some but it's a good documentary I recommend.

Head on over to the time machine because it's time to hit the nostalgia button!

Broforce will launch on Steam October 15th and will add a whole slew of campaign missions set to defeat the devil. Wait... as in king Diablo himself? Like Satan incarnate?

The full launch of America’s favorite freedom simulator will include a new set of challenging campaign missions as the bros charge into Satan’s stronghold for a final confrontation in hell with the dark lord himself!

Oh hell yes.

So grab that American flag and your favorite beer to cozy up to Steam because the devil needs a freedom paddlin'.

Rarely a day goes by where I don't play a few matches of Hearthstone. It's a great game and I still find the matches engaging and fun. I recently just got to a point where I have 4 decks that net me consistent wins in Casual and I felt they were worth sharing. Feel free to share your decks too, i'd love to see what people are playing with.

First things first, I am a free to play pleb that's only been seriously playing since the game dropped on mobile. Also these decks are not put together to be competitive on ranked. I play enough ranked to get the new card back but I am not good enough to do well there. Someday perhaps, but not right now.

Paladin Control Deck

My most recently thrown together deck is my Paladin control deck. This is an odd one for me because I don't think like a control player so this is a good deck to practice with. I looked up good Paladin decks and sort of borrowed some elements from other popular control decks and improvised a bit. I feel bad playing this deck because I hate these cards and how they well they work together. I guess another way to say that is that i've been on the other side of this deck and really didn't enjoy it so I feel bad.

http://i.imgur.com/Io2ww0j.png

Something Awesome - My Longest Running Shaman Deck

I used to have an irrational love for Shaman. It wasn't the best class and didn't stack up well against nearly everything else. After The Grand Tournament and the additions to Shaman I focused this deck on totems and it does way better. This deck wins less that my other decks but it's fun to play and the end of exceptionally long matches can be really satisfying. Plus having a ton of totems on the board and then buffing them all to insane numbers is incredible.

http://i.imgur.com/tsWnHtI.png

Grim Patron Warrior - What Else Can You Do With Warrior?

So I have a Grim Patron Warrior deck like everybody. I don't enjoy playing this deck but I use it to get Warrior wins for my daily quest gold. I feel dirty typing that because Grim Patron Warrior is both the most played deck and the most hated. It doesn't take that much skill to play and if you get the right card draw it's game for most people in casual mode. Still it's a solid deck and you can't argue with it's effectiveness.

http://i.imgur.com/H7iXXSs.png

Quick Beast - Not That Quick But It's Deadly

My Quick Beast deck is my second longest lived deck and was also kicked up a few notches after The Grand Tournament. It's somewhere between an aggro deck and mid range deck. It's biggest weakness is it's lack of card draw and it doesn't respond to things as well as my other decks. That said the beast combos are awesome and Webspinner and Ram Wrangler give this deck an incredible amount of random chance to do some very fun things. Some people knock Hearthstone for allowing so much random chance but for someone that loves gambling when it doesn't matter(like a freemium game) I love it. Bringing out a Ram Wrangler for 5 and getting a King Crush is epic shit and everyone should experience that feeling.

http://i.imgur.com/QeWDyiS.png

So what do you think? Anything recommend? Realize I have a fair amount of cards but not everything so some suggestions I might not be able to pull off. Also, what decks are you running and have you found anything you seriously recommend I try?

In world with very disappointing early access games it's nice to point to one and realize it was done right. I picked up Prison Architect in 2013 after a very positive review of Alpha 10 by Chris Schetter. At the time it was a lot more simple but even then it had enough gameplay to hook me. After the next updates came I decided to pause my play of it because it seemed like they had a ton to add and I wanted to pick it up in closer to 1.0. As luck would have it, it seems I can head back and start managing my prison again.

Blizzard dropped a huge 3.0 patch to Starcraft 2 today. This brought a some new changes including an entire redesign of the user interface. It also preps current Starcraft 2 players to get all the files they will need for the expansion come launch day. Blizz has also now made the new Legacy of the Void prologue missions "Whispers of Oblivion" free for everyone. I just finished up the first mission and it was a frantic ride with the Protoss. The into cinematic and first prolog mission really set the stage for the upcoming campaign and if this mission is a taste of what we have in store for the main campaign, it will be great.

For all of you that only have Wings of Liberty or maybe only the free starter edition let me know in the comments if you can play the "Whispers of Oblivion" campaign. Blizzard has allowed more functionality in the Starcraft 2 starter edition with this update and I am curious if the prolog campaign is included for you.

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/19913940

One of the things I want to spend more time doing is interviewing game developers making great games. Portland has a very active local game scene and I plan on giving it more attention over the upcoming months. Some of my local friends over at Tiny Horse Games are working on a local couch multiplayer platform shooter that is so frantically fun it gives me some of the original Unreal Tournament feels. I reached out to Tyler and Hagen to do an interview with us and after a great PAX showing and a few local cons later they had time in their indie rock development life to talk to us about making games.

jdodson: I want to congratulate you both for the game coming out on Steam Greenlight and Mimic’s upcoming launch. Tell us a little bit about how you both met and decide to start working together?

Tyler Edwards: Mimic started as a global game jam a few years back. I’ve been working on it alone off and on for about 9 months when I approached Hagen at a Pigsquad meeting for suggestions on an artistic direction. I was squeaking by with minimal programmer art for far too long. I handed Hagen a controller and for a brief moment our hands touched, that is when I knew it was destiny. Haha ok maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that but he definitely had some genuine excitement in Mimic and wanted to be part of it.

Hagen Deloss: We are totally pumped to get Mimic Arena on Steam through Greenlight!!! I met Tyler through Portland Indie Game Squad about 2 1/2 years ago and he asked me to work on a global game jam (2013) project he had. I liked the idea, so we drafted up a contract and I spent nights and weekends creating art for the game for about 9 months.

jdodson: Mimic Arena is a couch co-op deathmatch game that in my mind is very reminiscent of Unreal Tournament. What are some things you felt really worked about the game and what are some things that you tried that you scrapped?

Hagen Deloss: Pretty much everything. On the art side, I rarely go with my first game concepts, so "scrapping" wouldn't really be the correct term. The fast, iterative building blocks are vital to the game as an end product. All games finished visuals are built on top of an invisible tower of "scrap".

Tyler Edwards: You are actually the first person to make that Unreal Tournament connection, there was definitely some inspirations there. Rounds of UT are typically very intense with minimal breaks in action. Often when people play UT the get into “the zone” a Zen like state where they spatial awareness and reflexes are amped up, they are able to make and act on split second decisions; even if you cannot achieve this state in a meaningful way, you’re still having fun and are rarely punished. So back to your question, what seems to enforce this ideal in Mimic the best is the projectile presence. Weapons needed to still feel dangerous when fired from a Mimic, who wouldn’t be conscious of what they are shooting at since they are just a copy of a player’s past life. We slowed down projectiles then allowed them to ricochet off walls. This causes projectiles to be easier to react to but now from multiple sources/angles which makes it much more satisfying when you dodge or land a hit. One Idea I’ve scrapped to allow players to have more of an active means on recording and spawning Mimics. This was meant to give the game a bit more strategy and further spotlight the main hook of the game with the clones. Unfortunately this added a layer of complexity that was too difficult to set up anything effective while focusing on any of the other existing machinates. It felt an awful like rubbing your stomach and patting your head, just not very natural, at least not without a good deal of rework that would've created a completely different game.

jdodson: One game mode you added to Mimic is “cross the line.” This mode seems to be a fan favorite and as such I am wondering about the process of how it came together?

Tyler Edwards: For a long time Mimic was not really using its main unique feature in strong way. Yea it was possible to use them tactically but most often there would just add to the bullet hell and were ignored completely by the player they were based off of. I wanted to find a way to make the Mimics more integral to the play cycle. I’ve have a good amount of history playing competitive multiplayer games and they typically sport some sort of objective based game modes outside of death match. Most modes and be broken down as kill those, get that to there, and protect that. Cross the line is definably of collimation of those. For those who are not familiar, Cross the line mode functions identically to a bombing run or capture the flag in most other games. You need to get something (your past self) to a physical location while the enemy team tries to stop you. I started with a prototype and saw instant potential that was only confirmed by my buddies and the local community. I still feel incredibly lucky with well it feels with the Mimic mechanic and how well it was received.

Hagen Deloss: I dunno that was all Tyler, but it's brilliant.

jdodson: What things do you want people to feel when they play Mimic Arena?

Tyler Edwards: Definitely that “zen” moment I was mentioning earlier. Where a person get sucked in and can no longer focus on anything else. I don’t even know how many times I’ve tried to hold a conversation while playing and literally can’t.

Hagen Deloss: I want them to feel feelings, I dunno man. I want them to have fun! The game isn't a super deep, meaningful game. I do like when people play the game and wrap their brain around the core "past life" concept and get psyched!

jdodson: Do you plan on adding anything to the game before launch?

Hagen Deloss: That is all dependent on $$, if we get any type of publishing help or the the game's launch is popular, then we can use that dosh to put it right back into developing some features our initial project life cycle didn't allow. Reverse gravity stages perhaps?

Tyler Edwards: Definitely some more stages. Some last minute polish here and there. Most of my future attention however will be going to porting.

jdodson: This one is for Hagen. I follow you on teh social and see your art in process and completed. Your work has an almost mad scientist feel and at times you mix the beautiful and horrific in human and animal hybrids that are hypnotic and puzzling. How was your process on working your unique flavor into creating the art for Mimic?

Hagen Deloss: I created artwork that worked for the gameplay, I didn't expect the game to function around my art. We went through a few other visual styles before landing on what you see in Mimic Arena now.

jdodson: Why make games?

Tyler Edwards: It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Something that, while not very easy to achieve, is still very rewarding to pursue; giving you an opportunity to learn a lot of skills not only in your field but others while still being a creative outlet of expression. Plus you know, making games is cool.

Hagen Deloss: Cuz it’s fun.

jdodson: What do you consider to be some of the best games out there and what do you like about them?

Hagen Deloss: All games are great, but I prefer RPG and TBS games, If you’re asking me to list a few favs, despite that being a little cliche, I would say Push me Pull You was a standout because of its unique visuals and their integration into the core game mechanic. Massive Chalice because duh, a TBS with character and family tree customization is rad.

Tyler Edwards: The games I’ve enjoyed the most were the ones with a single well rounded core mechanic with everything else there to enforce it. Splatoon is great example. Shooting ink is at its core. You shot enemies but are also encouraged to shoot the environment as it directly influences your ability to traverse it.

jdodson: You just showed Mimic at PAX Prime 2015. My fear of showing at PAX is that there is so much going on my mind would explode. How did you guys handle the show and what did you take away from it?

Tyler Edwards: Be prepared, pace yourself, and take breaks often. We went up there with a couple extra friends who helped a ton. If I would have changed anything it would have been to build up a stronger community following beforehand. Despite that the whole thing was still amazing; nearly lost my voice, made some friends, and got Mimic in the hands of some new people.

Hagen Deloss: I handled it by embracing that mental explosion. I have been to PAX a few times but it was way more fun to be on the other side of things this time, showing a game was really rewarding.

jdodson: What games have you both been playing recently?

Hagen Deloss: Life is Strange chapter 1, haven't gotten a chance to play any more.

Tyler Edwards: The last three games have been Shovel Knight, Axiom Verge, and way too much Destiny. Haha may need to cut them all back for know if I plan to make these next few deadlines.

jdodson: During Mimics development Hagen posted a video to Twitter of one of the Mimic fighters dancing to Single Ladies by Beyonce. After that I’m sure we were all wondering what aspect dancing would have in the final product? Hoping for a couple game modes where you can put rings on other players. (you can have that one for free)

Hagen Deloss: Noh

Tyler Edwards: Haha yea that was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever seen, unfortunately there’s just no way we could get the rights to that song so we had to cut it. I still want to visit the idea of extra modes either in the form of a single player or cooperative.

jdodson: This one is for you both. What’s the most rewarding part of game development?

Hagen Deloss: I love the process of creating worlds and then seeing people interact with them, love them, and get frustrated and confused by them, and then turn to me and say..."whoa."

Tyler Edwards: It has to be watching others thoroughly enjoying something you made or seeing the same group of kids continually coming back to play at a show.

jdodson: I’m torn between super excited for the Star Wars VII and super nervous. MESSAH TINK DIS MIGHTEN BE TERRIBLE! You know, like is this going to be good or is this going to be another Gungan nut punch? I guess I just need to keep talking this over with friends because I need to work out all my prequel trauma.

Tyler Edwards: Well I’m pretty confident Disney will be very careful to protect their new domain and they haven’t done anything with it yet (with it or Marvel) for me to think otherwise. I’m still much stoked to watch it, I have actually been avoiding trailers due to the risk of spoilers. A little bit of me is hoping it comes out exactly like Patton Oswald described it in Parks and Rec.

jdodson: Thanks you both for taking the time to talk with me, anything you want to say before we go?

Tyler Edwards: Thanks Jon. I guess the only thing to add would be look for Mimic Arena on Xbox One and Steam early next year and for anyone that wants to ask about the development or anything else to go ahead hit me up on twitter @TinyHorseGames.

jdodson: You can vote for Mimic Arena on Steam Greenlight right now.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=498344168