Minicraft Plus - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Minicraft Plus is a 2D survival crafting game updated and maintained by the community after Notch released his original version of Minicraft to the public. As such, it has a lot of Minecraft's features, but also some noticeable differences. You can find my initial thoughts on the game at 2:03:30 in the video above.

Worlds Adrift - Prepare to Be Bored, Dead! - MMOMG

I began writing up this post by detailing my short time in Worlds Adrift back in early July. I fully intended to drop a laundry list of complaints I had with the game, complete with links to forum threads showing how many others were aggravated by the same things. Upon browsing the Worlds Adrift site and forums, I realized that its developer (Bossa Studios) recently addressed a number of issues I had... though others have cropped up in the meantime and some of the larger problems still exist. As usual, I'm getting ahead of myself again - let's get the basics out of the way first!

Tale of Toast - An Acquired Taste - MMOMG

Back in May, my viewers and I lamented the mess that was SoulWorker and decided to find something else to play. We settled on the sandbox MMORPG Tale of Toast. While I stuck with it for the rest of the month, Toast isn't a game I can readily recommend to just anyone. Note that I'm not saying the game is terrible - in fact, Toast has a lot of positives - but I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start with the formal introduction and go from there...

MMOMG July '18 - Worlds Adrift

We're going to check out Worlds Adrift this month! It's still in early access, but so far looks amazing. Armed with a grappling gun, you explore the ruins of floating items and learn to build skyships!

The Elder Scrolls Online - Weeks 3 & 4: Building a Better Themepark - MMOMG

Welcome to my first installment of MMOMG - Text Edition! As mentioned in an earlier post, I'm reducing the number of episodic videos uploaded to my YouTube channel to focus on streaming and other projects. As a result, MMOMG is being converted to (hopefully) weekly write-ups available here on my blog. Now on to the content!

My month in The Elder Scrolls Online has come to an end and there's a lot to cover (crafting, questing and even a bit of PVP) before getting to my summary, so let's jump right in!

Crossout - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Build vehicles and battle other players in this post-apocalyptic shooter!

Aground - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Explore and build on a mysterious island!

Aground is a survival crafting game with an emphasis on progression and quests. You're a crash survivor in the middle of a storm that sets about making a shelter. You quickly meet another survivor, and working together, begin gathering supplies. More characters can be found as you play, allowing you to build a thriving settlement with a farm, workshop, market and more.

AdventureQuest 3D - Weeks 3 & 4: Epic of the Bush People - MMOMG

I know, you probably thought this video was never coming. 

My throat has been kind of messed up, so I kept putting it off in hopes that would change so I could record my voice. It turns out that between being sick and streaming 6 nights a week, this video wouldn't be getting done any time soon unless I tried something different. This is what I came up with, and I think it does the job while also showing off a fun time I had with my viewers.

ASTA Online - Week 4 - MMOMG

My month in ASTA is over, and my curiosity from last October is well beyond sated. I'm looking forward to this month's departure from MMOs. I'm sure it'll come with its own set of challenges, but at least there's a lot of variety.

Dead In Bermuda - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

A challenging game with a colorful cast and an equally diverse blend of genres.

Dead in Bermuda is what happens when you mix Darkest Dungeon, the Dead of Winter boardgame and the Lost television series all together. A plane crashes on a mysterious island and eight survivors must now find a way out of this mess.

Mysterious Island - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

A hybrid of RPG and survival with impressive AI and charming characters!

Mysterious Island is an adventure RPG available free for a very limited time over at itch.io. You play as a band of colorful characters stranded on an island after their ship crashed. Exploring the island, you discover a mix of inhabitants - from friendly talking totems and helpful natives to dangerous animals and monsters led by an evil witch. Your goal is to build a raft so you can sail home, which means facing the island's dangers that stand in your way.

Eternal Senia - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Brave dangers and face fears to save your sister from a mysterious power!

Eternal Senia is an action adventure title with a large RPG influence and one heck of a story. You play as Senia, a girl that's ventured to the mysterious Tower of Eternity in hopes of tracking down your sister - a priest that went on a secretive mission and has been missing for the last three days.

Riders of Icarus - Week 3 - MMOMG

The third and final episode for Riders of Icarus, as I didn't have time to play longer due to the holidays.

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (Demo) - The Friday FREE GAME Feature!

Learn the business of running an RPG item shop and do some dungeon-delving of your own on the side! Capitalism, ho!

Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is an action RPG and business simulator hybrid. How does that work? Well, it all begins with a fairy loan-shark coming to collect on a debt! You play as Recette, who gets stuck paying off her father's loan after he went to fight a dragon. Tear (the fairy) suggests converting your home into an item shop as a way to make some money.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep48: Cornerstone, The Song of Tyrim

Legend of Zelda Windwaker meets Dark Souls in this action adventure game!

Cornerstone, The Song of Tyrim is an epic adventure of exploration, combat and crafting. You begin on the docks of a small island with no real idea of what you're supposed to do. The game provides you with some tutorial popups to teach you the necessary controls, and you're left to explore as you wish.

The game makes use of some physics, allowing you to pickup and throw objects, break things into crafting materials, or use them to interact with the environment (such as placing mines or setting things on fire with a torch). You can even use the environment to kill enemies - I shot the ballista on my ship to take out a guard and kited other guards into some laser-shooting flowers! I felt like a number of strategies were available for getting through an area, which was awesome. Additionally, the island is packed with little hidden areas and shortcuts along with a number of puzzle-type obstacles to get from point A to B.

For the most part, the controls were fairly tight for keyboard and mouse. Controller support exists, but you have to map the buttons before launching the game. Being that this is a demo, I can excuse that. It's just nice to see that the game's challenge isn't about fighting with the controls. The art style is cartoony, bright and whimsical, obviously inspired by the LoZ series. I'm not sure if there's really a story in the demo, but I feel that it was intentionally focusing on decent gameplay instead of throwing lore and background in your face (perhaps taking a cue from Dark Souls here as well).

I was a bit skeptical when I saw the claims of Windwaker meets Dark Souls, but having tried the demo I have to say they're going in the right direction. Sure, the demo is unpolished (it crashed a few times and there were a few other glitches) but overall I was impressed. I'll be keeping an eye out for Cornerstone, The Song of Tyrim to see where it goes once it releases on Steam.

The Friday FREE GAME Feature! Ep30: Blocaria & Inexistence

Time for another double feature! We've got 2D survival crafting in Blocaria followed by Metroidvania platforming with Inexistence.

I don't have anything special to say about Blocaria. It's buggy, laggy and apparently abandoned. The developer hates if you call it a Minecraft or Terraria "rip-off", but had no problems using the same crafting recipes and even music from the Mojang hit. This game was supposedly rebuilt and renamed to Paradigm (not the point-and-click adventure title of the same name), but good luck finding it - the developer's website doesn't exist anymore.

Inexistence is a Metroidvania platformer with light RPG elements. You play as a reluctant hero attempting to rescue your sister. The game defaults to a controller if you have one, which I prefer for platformers anyway. The controls are very responsive and intuitive which is great. Gameplay feels like they took the best and most memorable things from Super Mario, Metroid, Castlevania and even the classic TMNT game and blended them into an (S)NES-talgic delight. Unfortunately this is only a demo (with the first two levels and a boss fight) but it's enough to give you a fair idea of how the game handles. I enjoyed the Inexistence demo quite a bit, and it seems to have been greenlit on Steam with an expected release to be coming very soon.