Cheerful Ghost: An Awesome Community For Gamers

Scrolls Beta: A Fun New CCG by Mojang

I have been eagerly awaiting Scrolls, the new Collectable Card Game by Mojang for quite some time after it was announced. I wanted to tuck a bit of time under my belt before writing about it and feel like now is a good time.

After buying Scrolls I needed to merge my Minecraft account into my new Mojang account. This makes sense as what Mojang is doing now is having an umbrella Mojang account be the set of credentials that gets you access to all your games. So now, I can access Scrolls and Minecraft with the same information. After you get that all sorted out you can start playing Scrolls.

Scrolls is a 1 on 1 card game where the goal is destroy 3 of the opposing players... Read All I have been eagerly awaiting Scrolls, the new Collectable Card Game by Mojang for quite some time after it was announced. I wanted to tuck a bit of time under my belt before writing about it and feel like now is a good time.

After buying Scrolls I needed to merge my Minecraft account into my new Mojang account. This makes sense as what Mojang is doing now is having an umbrella Mojang account be the set of credentials that gets you access to all your games. So now, I can access Scrolls and Minecraft with the same information. After you get that all sorted out you can start playing Scrolls.

Scrolls is a 1 on 1 card game where the goal is destroy 3 of the opposing players idols. The game is played on a hexagonal battlefield broken up into 5 lanes. Scrolls differs from other CCG's in that you don't start with energy, you must sacrifice cards to obtain it. Its a interesting mechanic and I like it quite a bit.

Each new player starts by selecting one of three pre-constructed decks and I selected the green deck. As you play matches you win gold and you can spend the gold in the game store for cards or packs. I seriously recommend saving up for the packs as you get more cards for the gold you spend. You can drop real money to buy shards and coupled with gold allows you to buy the other pre-constructed decks or specific cards. You don't need to spend real money to get all the cards as you can stick to buying packs with earned gold.

I have been playing practice matches on Easy and find that offers plenty of challenge for my current Scrolls skill. Even in easy, the game isn't trivial even if the computer isn't too smart. Sometimes the luck of the draw can really hinder your win, just like in any CCG.

The game features a pretty robust deck builder and you can build a seemingly infinite set of deck variants on the cards you own. After opening a few packs now, I have some interesting choices and plan on making a few variants on my pre-constructed green deck.

If you love collectable card games and want to try a well polished take on the genre, you should give Scrolls a look.

Starbound: Updated Roadmap and Some News Blocks

Recently the Starbound roadmap was updated to cover the updated progress of the project. Many of the high level sections are at 90% complete but some still need more love. If you are interested in checking it out, check it out.

http://www.playstarbound.com/roadmap/

The Starbound team has been pumping out daily updates on their website and Starbound News collected all the past week reveals into one video linked above.

This screenshot was released this morning.

http://i.imgur.com/dZv7wZJ.png

Printing with Tetris

I love this kind of thing... It merges two of my favorite things programming (specifically algorithms) and gaming.

http://meatfighter.com/tetrisprinteralgorithm/

Using tetris pieces and rules to print out pixel images. The video gives you the feel for it, and the link goes into a ton of detail :)

Prison Architect alpha coming along nicely

So, when I first heard of this project a couple few months ago, I was dubious. I mean, prisons seem an odd setting for a tycoon-type game; it isn't exactly a lighthearted endeavor. This could probably easy drift into completely tasteless territory. Relevant: [https://www.google.com/search?q=prison+tycoon+4]

The game went up in its alpha state on Steam, and elsewhere, and last weekend I went ahead and bought it. Welp, it's been a seriously long time since a game has managed to keep me up to 3am without my realizing it. This game is horrifically entertaining, even with all the rough edges currently strewn about.

I attached the introductory video for the currently released... Read All

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/08/2013 at 04:19pm

This game looks incredible and I want to play it, but I think ill wait till beta or launch. How much more do they have to go before the actual release? I have no real reason to wait save... I think I need to wait to experience the full amazingness of this game in its full glory.

I love sim games and Roller Coaster Tycoon is in my continual play as I have a game going I play off and on until the end of time.

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/08/2013 at 04:20pm

Oh, they have a Linux port now, awesome. Kind of live commenting on the video :D

Chris_Schetter Post Author wrote on 06/09/2013 at 12:45am

Not sure really. It's a small team plodding away with it, and I don't think they're in any terrible hurry to call things 'done.' They funded it on their own by selling access to the alpha before they even really started in earnest, and that netted $1 million. So I think they're pretty cosy and are just going to keep whittling until there's nothing left to do. I suspect at some point this summer they'll stop calling it an alpha simply from lack of large awkward mechanics bugs, but I also suspect work wil continue on this for some time.

Yea, definitely worth mentioning: can buy over Steam, get Win/Mac/Linux.

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/09/2013 at 04:46pm

Hmmmm, I might get this sooner than later. :D

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New Indie Royale bundle out

Another bundle site which I buy from every now and then... But this bundle is great! All Arcen games. So there's AI War: Fleet Command and 5 dlc packs for it, A Valley Without Wind 1 and 2, Shattered Haven and Tidalis.

Everything is on steam and desura (along with direct download) except for the latest AI War dlc which isn't on steam (I'm hoping it will be).

http://www.indieroyale.com/

Xbox One: An Assortment of Opinions

Microsoft has posted some details about how the Xbox One is going to function as a console, and on first glance, it's kinda crap news. Here's a link, if you haven't seen it yet. Go ahead and take a quick gander, I'll wait. :)

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/main

So, my first grumble grumble is about the inability to actually *loan* a game to a friend. But, I do have to say that Microsoft is trading a lot of other features that kind of offset that: the idea that I can play any of my games on a friend's console, whether I brought the games with me or not, is kinda cool. Most of the time I want to loan a game to a friend, it's because I want to share the experience in the... Read All Microsoft has posted some details about how the Xbox One is going to function as a console, and on first glance, it's kinda crap news. Here's a link, if you haven't seen it yet. Go ahead and take a quick gander, I'll wait. :)

http://news.xbox.com/2013/06/main

So, my first grumble grumble is about the inability to actually *loan* a game to a friend. But, I do have to say that Microsoft is trading a lot of other features that kind of offset that: the idea that I can play any of my games on a friend's console, whether I brought the games with me or not, is kinda cool. Most of the time I want to loan a game to a friend, it's because I want to share the experience in the first place; it's probably a net gain for me that I can always do that with all my games, even if I can't do it asynchronously anymore. I think I'm OK with the constraints here.

Second, the "always on" idea. On the one hand, my console has long been my last bastion of entertainment when the Internet goes out but the power stays on. On the other, I can't remember the last time I was without Internet for 24 hours. Hell, if push came to shove, I'm not too fancy to take the Xbox to a friend's house to borrow a cup of wifi. I like the updating-in-the-background concept. On the balance, I think this one's OK too - I'm not going to get heartburn if, during the console's 6-year lifespan, I'm blocked once or twice by a bad combination of long Internet outage and unwillingness to jump through hoops to solve.

Now, the used games thing - this is more troublesome. Publishers "may" authorize reselling of games via "participating retailers"? This is where we formally turn games from things you buy into things you license or lease. The publishers will say this has always been the case; while it may or may not be technically true it certainly wasn't the case in practice. I like going to yard sales and getting games; I like knowing that if my plate is too full today for Final Fantasy XIII, then at least I can look forward to snagging it used in a year or two. Now, I get to *hope* that publishers will allow me to do that, and that's a disappointing situation and a significant problem for me. But again, Steam doesn't support the Used Game paradigm, and my PC Gaming library has absolutely flourished.

All in all, it looks like the Xbox One has all the bad bullet points we were afraid it might. But, maybe those bullet points don't mean the end of Gaming As We Know It. What do you all think?

Travis Admin wrote on 06/07/2013 at 07:56pm

I'm not as worried about my internet connection as I am Microsoft's. Remember what happens on every major launch? XBox Live crashes pretty hard. If you miss your window to get updates and you want to play games but Live is screwed up at the moment, no games for you.

PC gaming has always been a little different. I understand the Steam model because games are so easy to pirate on PCs, but generally requires a hurdle of software, or often even hardware, hacking on a console to achieve.

scrypt Supporter wrote on 06/07/2013 at 10:43pm

Steam may not support used games, but I just picked up Batman Arkham Asylum on Steam for $5. If Microsoft can support a similar economy to Steam's when it comes to older games, then the pill becomes a little easier to swallow. Otherwise, they will simply lose customers, and quite a few of them at that.

CapnCurry Supporter Post Author wrote on 06/07/2013 at 11:06pm

@Travis: That's a good point about the Microsoft servers. I didn't really think of that at first; I usually miss the major launch events by at least a few weeks. Hopefully they've figured out the logistics a bit better - they've *got* to know how much worse it'll be if they screw up this time.

@Scrypt: I'm hopeful that the old-game market will be rather exactly like that. Once a title gets to be a couple years old, it boils down to a question of whether they can sell the game at enough of a discount to warrant production & shipping costs; if the delivery is purely digital ala Steam, the question slowly morphs into "would the studio rather have $5 or not have $5." I think the basic economic principles of the two platforms are the same, and I'd be really surprised if we saw markedly different strategies arise for them.

hardeyez wrote on 06/07/2013 at 11:35pm

I'm wondering how they are implementing the "family" grouping. That is, anyone in your up to 10 member "family" can play your games on any machine. That will be interesting how that plays out. I used to always share games with friends in the "I'll buy this one, you buy the next" and we pass the discs back and forth. If they could just be added as "family" that would change things.

So I'd have to imagine they'd limit it somehow so groups of friends didn't get together to pool games. If not, woo hoo!! actual benefit of being disc-less with M$

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/08/2013 at 04:13pm

Good point scrypt, yeah Steam doesn't have used games but at the cheap sale prices its not like that effectively isn't the same thing as buying used. Sometimes its an even better deal that used. That said, I don't anticipate Microsoft adopting the Steam pricing model here. I don't know, I guess I just don't hope for the best with Microsoft.

Any kind of launch is precarious because I am not certain how Microsoft could be 100% ready for the demand on day one. It's possible, I just don't see how.

That said, Blizzzard handled Starcraft 2 and Heart of the Swarm flawlessly on day one for me.

I didn't own a previous XBox, not that it matters here because nothing will work on the XBox One from previous systems save your physical movies(kind of an interesting aside, the only thing that ports forward is physical media and mp3s. Aren't those supposed to be dead formats? :D ) The more we hear about the system the less interested in it I am. That said, if it was $50 I might consider it. Well, even then I might not. It does everything I can do now already so I guess I just don't see the point. For me, I imagine others will love it.

jdodson Admin wrote on 06/08/2013 at 05:46pm

XBox One is now an officially support Platform on Cheerful Ghost.

http://cheerfulghost.com/platform/xbone

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Server Support & Moderated Events

A few days ago I launched a few new features for Cheerful Ghost events that I want to talk a bit about.

moderated events

All the events created with Cheerful Ghost events to this point can joined by anyone. This is a pretty awesome default and will remain so, but occasionally we all might want to create an event that we want to be bit more selective with. Intro moderated events. Moderated events allow the event creator to approve people to join the event that request access.

server support

In the past Cheerful Ghost has run game servers that last a month or so and as such events now support that use case. You can now put in your Server URL and Server Password into the... Read All

Have you ever wished Tristram was more.... metal?

This is playing on repeat while I code.

Iam8bit Opening Night

Will any fellow Happy Haunts from the Southern California area be attending the opening night for the new Iam8bit exhibit?

Mrs. Slim and I will be attending and would be happy to meet up with anyone else who can attend. Admission is free on opening night. :)

Details here: http://iam8bit.com/the-gallery/

Like most galleries I imagine they probably have a no photography rule, but if allowed I'll snap some photos to share with all of you after the event. :)

Mine Of Steel

I want someone to remake The Dark Knight in Minecraft. Not just the trailer, the whole film. Its cool, I can wait.