jdodson1

Joined 01/23/2012

I'm an Engineer and built the video game community Cheerful Ghost and text based mini-MMO Tale of the White Wyvern.

2757 Posts

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If you have sunk a ton of time into No Man's Sky and want even more there is a free fan game that might satisfy your quest for more called No Mario's Sky. Finally we have a way to go to infinite worlds to stomp Goombas infinitely. I've heard the universe of No Mario's Sky is so big you will never be able to meet up with other players and the procedural generation of each world is so deep you won't be able to tell that the Goomba's are just color swapped!

"Featuring 10s of Goombas, An Infinite Universe, Muscle Toad, "Original" Music, "Faithful" Physics, Social Commentary about Interplanetary Colonialism, and a Radical Space Ship; No Mario's Sky is the hackneyed remake-gone-mashup you've been craving."

The game is a fan project completed at Ludum Dare 36 and you can download it on Itch.io below.

https://asmb.itch.io/no-marios-sky


If you weren't paying attention you may not have known that the Witcher 3 won nearly every video game award in 2015. The game won so many awards that I heard the Witcher 3 traveled back in time to 1998 and punched Ocarina of Time in the face. PC Gamer must have heard about Witcher 3's time traveling ways because they recently just put it at the top of their 100 best games of all time list. I think putting a game that's only been out a year on top of your best games of all time list is a bit strange but Witcher 3 is very popular so I bet it made a few people happy. All that said, I haven't played the Witcher 3 yet but I always planned to after it and all it's DLC was wrapped up into one product and that day has finally come.

So Much Game, So Much DLC.

The Witcher 3 Game of the Year Edition is finally out on GOG, Steam, PS4 and XBone and contains Hearts of Stone, Blood and Wine + 16 DLC's. That's a ton of stuff and you can get even more with it if you buy it on GOG. If you pick up Witcher 3 on GOG you get even more insanity including 3 soundtracks, comic books, manuals and videos. I'd list it all out here but GOG recently changed the page and it doesn't list out everything that the bundle comes with.

If you were interested in playing Witcher 3 now seems like a great time to pick it up!

https://www.gog.com/game/the_witcher_3_wild_hunt_game_of_the_year_edition


Fallout 4 receives it's final piece of DLC content today in the form of Nuka World a vast amusement park run by a city of Raiders featuring an open wasteland and new zones like Safari Adventure, Dry Rock Gulch, Kiddie Kingdom, and the Galactic Zone. So far the new content is getting good reviews but I was wondering what you all thought of it? It's a bit sad that Bethesda is winding down Fallout 4 development but the ride had to end sooner or later.


Recently FEZ got a huge new update and developer Renaud Bédard mentioned in his blog post that he was inspired to work on the new update by the speedrunning community. At this years Summer Games Done Quick Vulajin ran through FEZ at an impressive 28:30. FEZ is one of the more chill games I can think to watch so if you have a handful of minutes, checkout the run!

http://cheerfulghost.com/jdodson/posts/3084/fez-gets-huge-new-1-2-update


Introversion Games finally finished Prison Architect after 5 years and 11 months of active development. If you played this in an early form till now you can appreciate how much work they put into the game and it seems to have paid off as it's their most successful game to date. The final 2.0 update brings a sort of free form admin/debug/cheat mode where you can build anything and mess with nearly every game setting. 2.0 also comes with a bunch of new bug fixes and a couple more things they outlined in previous videos. Introversion does plan on fixing more Prison Architect bugs but they are focusing the majority of their attention to their next game.

It's really good to see the game finally wrap up and as a Prison Architect fan I am happy to see it get so much attention. If you haven't tried Prison Architect now is a pretty good time and it's available now on Steam for Linux, Mac and PC.


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"It's been a long time coming, but we've finally made it. We've spent a large part of Early Access gearing up for this day.

While Early Access still continues, we are very excited to have reached this milestone and made the game available to everyone, everywhere - for free.

With the unleashing of Free-to-Play comes our first public iteration of the new single player experience. Most of the initial content is oriented toward new and casual players in order to provide a viable alternative to participating in multiplayer or competitive modes. You will now be able to challenge and play against characters in the Faeria universe, earning rewards and increasing your collection size in the process.

Keep in mind, this is just the beginning for our new single player mode. Today is the first of three major single player updates between now and our 1.0 full release, and we have much more planned by the end of the year: More characters, more interactions, more challenges, and even new types of challenges. Keep watching our news here for when they arrive.
"

Faeria is a fun new digital card game that mixes up the format to feature a hexagonal board you use to place land and summon creatures. It improves on some of the more popular digital card games out now and manages to have it's own unique style well worth checking out and since it's now free, why not?

https://faeria.com/news/patch-notes/77-faeria-is-now-free-to-play

Faeria is available on Mac and PC on Steam and will come soon to Linux, Android and iOS.


At this years Gamescom 2016 Video Games Live performed a cut from the Hearthstone score called "Pull Up a Chair." It was recorded in VR and you can watch the performance in 360 degree view on YouTube. Even if you don't have VR you can move the video around and watch the performance from any angle you can making for a really interesting experience.

If someone is able to watch this with some VR glasses i'd be interested in hearing how that turned out.


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I remember there was a time when the thought of buying a game on Steam seemed crazy. Why wouldn't you want the actual game install disc? What if the servers went down or if you weren't online? Buying a game on Steam seemed crazy and I stuck to purchasing games in a box. The thing that finally got me to actually use Steam was the second Humble Bundle. I much preferred the DRM free downloads for the games but since I had those Steam keys lying around I decided to redeem them. It was really nice just downloading the games and playing them from Steam and I ended up buying the Binding of Issac on Steam, then another game then another and now nearly all my modern game purchases are digital sales, many through Steam.

Yesterday Valve turned 20. Valve pioneered the PC game digital landscape and also brought us an incredible assortment of games in that time such as Half-Life, Portal, Half-Life 2, Left for Dead, DoTA 2, Portal 2 and CounterStrike. Valve has been hard at work over the last year but it's releases are mostly support the Steam ecosystem such as SteamOS, Source 2, Steam Machines, the Steam Controller, Steam Link and the new HTC Vive VR. Valve has had a pretty regular drumbeat of releasing one game per year since 2007 but skipped 2014, 2015 and so far nothing has been announced for 2016. We may be seeing a new era of Valve in a company that no longer releases many games but I think we can all admit that Steam and it's associated lineup is pretty important to gaming.


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FEZ was one of the games that some consider to have started the new Indie gaming explosion. Originally launching on the XBox, it was later ported to PC and some time later Mac and Linux as part of the Humble Indie Bundle. In my opinion FEZ is an incredible game and one of my more moving experiences. FEZ designer Phil Fish dropped some news that FEZ 2 was being developed to only later scrap it and sort of disband his company in a sad snowball of events. It was a sad time to be a fan of FEZ as it seemed the future and present of the game wasn't very clear. But as it turns out FEZ is getting a fresh update from it's original developer Renaud Bédard.

"Since I shipped FEZ 1.11 I had little intention of making additional fixes or features to the game because I simply don’t have the time with a kid and a fulltime job… and working on FEZ is getting old after 9 years. So I did want to address problems that people have with the game, but I don’t want to do it for the rest of my life. I had spent enough time away from the game that I was somewhat enthusiastic about coming back to it, especially if it’s at my pace, and that it’s my last time doing so.

So I didn’t announce anything, I didn’t announce a date, and I slowly chipped away at making this humongous update to FEZ. It’s been in beta-testing with an army of fans, speedrunners and friends since late January 2016 and over 120 bugs have been reported and fixed.
"

You can read Renaud's full post below for a ton more details than I can cover here as well as the full changelog. FEZ 1.2 is out now on Steam for PC, Mac and Linux and is being well received by fans. As with any new development some new bugs are being found and it seems Renaud is looking in to fixing some of them. FEZ is a special game and it makes me happy for it to get fixes for some of these issues that should give it a much longer lifespan. I consider FEZ one of those games that really should always be accessable so I hope Renaud can come back from time to time and make sure it's playable on modern systems. It's really cool that Renaud was able to find time for this and I want to thank him and Ethan Lee for making this happen in their free time.

http://theinstructionlimit.com/fez-1-12
http://theinstructionlimit.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Changelog.txt


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Diablo III launched in 2012 to some very mixed reviews. I enjoyed the initial game and story but like many dropped off after beating the main campaign a handful of times. In 2014 the Reaper of Souls expansion and the Loot 2.0 patch released that cut the Auction House and brought in a new era for the game many considered it's saving grace. I thought the Reaper of Souls expansion, new campaign and Crusader class was really great and I quickly looked forward to the next expansion.

According to fairly substantive rumors Blizzard did have a follow up to Reaper of Souls in development called "The King in the North." This expansion was scrapped and some of the content was wrapped up in free game updates in the form of the new Adventure only zones Ruins of Sescheron and Greyhollow Island. I am happy that content was released but I am still wondering what more Blizzard has planned for Diablo III? Will we get another proper expansion or maybe they will make a break for Diablo IV?

I'm not sure we will get a new expansion or full new game but Blizzard has dropped some hints on their official Twitter feed that may point to some big Diablo news to come from this years Blizzcon. When a Twitter user pined for some new Diablo news out of Blizzcon this was the response:

"@Coleslaw1989L: @Diablo I really hope this year Diablo gets a huge announcement at Blizzcon.... :("

"@Diablo @Coleslaw1989 BlizzCon will be really cool this year :-)"

That's a far cry from official news but it may hint at something new for Diablo. Personally i'd like another proper D3 expansion to wrap up the Leia's story that was undone in Diablo III. That said, Blizzard may be working on a new Diablo game as well so we will just have to see.

What would you want a new Diablo III expansion or a full blown new Diablo game? I know some of my friends are kind of done with Diablo entirely after the disappointment of Diablo III so hopefully Blizzard can bring back some goodwill to the franchise.

http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Diablo_III:_The_King_in_the_North
http://www.diabloii.net/blog/comments/something-cool-diablo-blizzcon-2016