Games – Page 3 – Ciaran Laval

April 27, 2015

Fantasy Faire 2015 – The Hunt Involves A Book Of Champions

The Hunt at Fantasy Faire 2015 is known as The Lost Land and features a HUD driven two part adventure. The basic story comes from The Book Of Champions and tells the story of Princess Flora, whom The Bard Queen helped as a child by sending ten champions to protect and teach her.

However the Unweaver was undaunted by this and sent as his proxy, Ayaz Ata, the Winter King, to steal Princess Flora away from The Fairelands. This is where you come into things :

Your task, brave hunter, is to find the Champions. They are scattered throughout the Fairelands. Take what path you will, but find them all. Hear their memories of the Princess so that she might be restored to memory and returned to the Fairelands.

Just who are these Champions? Well the page I linked to does gives us some guidance : Ala, the Priestess, Duban, the Doctor, Britomart, the Warrior, Sun Wukong, the Rogue, Arduinna, the Ranger, Gassire, the Musician, Muromi, the Water Spirit, Perkūnas, the Poet of Strength, Razia, the Artist Archer, andBisclavret, the Animal spirit.

The page I linked to above, has bigographies on these champions which may well assist you in locating them within The Fairelands.

Now to get started with The Hunt you will need to purchase a HUD, they come in two formats, one is priced at L$250 and the other is priced at L$350. In terms of completing the hunt, there’s no difference, but the more expensive model comes with a costume that is in theme with the hunt. 100% of proceeds from the sale of these HUDs goes to Relay For Life.

Part 1 Of the hunt involves finding Orbs and and saving the ten champions. This involves hunting, touching, clicking and watching videos via the HUD. I’m not giving away any spoilers when I say that there are ten champions, ten orbs and ten shopping regions at Fantasy Faire.

Part 2 of the hunt involves visiting the cold snowy lands of Ravenshold, which is a special region just for the hunt.

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April 21, 2015

UNIA From MadPea Games – The Trailer And Ziki Questi Ate My Sandwich!

I’ve been taking a short break from blogging these last few days. A combination of getting ready for a lot of blogging, The Mighty Villa making it through to the FA Cup final and having trees cut down in my back garden have distracted me somewhat.

However, last Saturday I was invited to a blogger preview of MadPea Productions forthcoming game, UNIA. Alas a combination of confusion (the launch had been delayed by a week) and being forced against my will to go to the pub (no really ….) meant I missed the preview. This led to Kess Crystal sending me a photo of two people sitting in a diner, with the message :

at the end of the tour Ziki Questi and Kiana ate your tuna sandwiches in the UNIA diner 😛

Charming! The incriminating photo will be stored in my file of incrimination. However, what of UNIA I hear you ask, I mean after all, that’s why we’re here! Well the game is scheduled to launch on April 27th. Originally it was set to launch on April 20th. However the good news about the delay is that it gives people longer to enter a photo contest, details of which can be found here.

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April 3, 2015

Remnants Of Earth Sci-Fi Roleplay In Second Life Attracts The Attention Of Kotaku

I took a brief look at Remnants of Earth back in February when I boldly went in search of Science Fiction action in Second Life. However it’s worth revisiting again because it’s now being discussed by a wider audience, even beyond the Second Life blogsphere.

Remnants Of Earth is a cyberpunk roleplay game in Second Life and was recently covered by Hamlet Au over at New World Notes : Remnants of Earth, a User-Made MMO in Second Life.

However now news of the world has gone beyond Second Life, thanks to Hamlet Au’s post, Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku has noticed it : Players Built An MMO Inside Of Second Life, And It Looks Wild.

The article consists mostly of screenshots from the Remnants of Earth website, which is an impressive website on its own, although be warned, it is quite bright and has some flicker.

So first of all, just what is Remnants Of Earth?

Remnants of Earth is a cyberpunk-fantasy role playing game within the metaverse of Second Life, with a heavy basis around classic pen and paper RPGs elements, like; dice rolling, stats, monster fighting, story driven events, MMO-like adventuring, and gathering. RoE is the first second life pen and paper table top game in SL, while still keeping the core features of any other roleplay sim. Players can interact with NPCs and other players to accomplish goals, and even engage in heated PvP faction wars. We even have a full crafting and mining system! Think of RoE as a fully functioning table top game in SL, like Dungeons and Dragons, or ShadowRun.

The world is extremely photogenic and has a definite cyberpunk feel to it. However as I haven’t engaged with the world properly, therefore I am unable to review the game mechanics.

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March 28, 2015

Free Wilma On Escapades Island

Estelle Pienaar used to review games in Second Life on her blog : Second Life Play Instinct. Then her blog went quiet, so quiet indeed that I did not notice her Resurrected post back in February :

Well, here I am – writing another post almost one year after my last one. You might ask what I have been up to? I didn’t want to review SL games and experiences any longer, I wanted to do create games myself. Interactive adventure games that are non linear, that build a real relationship between the player and the non-player characters.

The result of Estelle’s work can now be seen in the shape and form of a new interactive adventure game entitled “Free Wilma”. Estelle blogged about the game when it launched earlier this month :

Prepare to embark on an interactive adventure game in Second Life. Situated on Escapades Island, a place of childhood dreams and mayhem, the play scenes of this point and click game will immerse you into the world of an anarchic children fantasy. Solve a series of little quests to finally save the elephant Wilma, who is held hostage by the biggest mouse ever: Modsno the ferret.

“Free Wilma” is based on a new game system in second life that breathes life into the NPCs (non player characters). The characters will react differently to the player depending on the game progress. This feature caters to a more immersive experrience than traditional linear Second Life point and click games.

I’m not going to review the game, I haven’t finished it for a start, but the concept is an interesting one. To play the game you will need to buy the Hud for 180 Linden Dollars, which isn’t very expensive in real terms but obviously some people like to try before they buy.

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March 10, 2015March 10, 2015

SL Go Linden Dollar Payments Option Starts To Generate Interest

OnLive

First of all, for the purposes of full disclosure, I am a paying customer of SL Go from OnLive. I pay a monthly fee of £6.95 for unlimited access, other than the times when there’s server maintenance going on, which will be happening around now on the server I was logged into.

I also like OnLive because they provide a press pack with icons! I like this a lot and wish more companies provided such icons for stories on their products. Now that being said, let’s move on to the big news, the news that new customers of SL Go can now pay with Linden Dollars : SL Go – Now, Pay with L$ :

For a limited time, if you sign up for SL Go with a NEW USER account you can buy weekly subscriptions in-world using Linden Dollars (L$). There is a private sign up booth where you can create your free SL Go account, and then pay for subscriptions using L$. Each week is only L$650, and you can buy up to 4 weeks at a time. Also, you can return and renew or extend your subscription in-world at any time.

This is a very interesting development. Inara Pey covered this yesterday : OnLive announce pilot L$ payment programme for new SL Go users. Inara’s post is worth reading because Dennis Harper of OnLive contacted Inara to provide some extra information.

An important point to note is that the option to pay for the service using Linden Dollars is only available to new users. This means I can’t use that option :

Sorry, but existing users with monthly subscriptions will need to wait for this feature. It is much more complex to transition an account from US Dollars to Linden Dollars. We will be bringing this feature to you soon.

Paying for SL Go with L$ has been one of the most common requests we have received in our forums and chat rooms. We are very excited to offer this now to new users. We hope this makes it much easier for you to be a part of our growing SL Go community.

However if you’ve never used SL Go before then this is an option that may appeal to you because this is far from the only time that Second Life customers have requested the option to pay for services in Linden Dollars, rather than cold hard cash.

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