Mobile Game Review – The Elder Scrolls: Blades

Ah The Elder Scrolls, it feels like I can’t go more than a couple of hours without booting up one of the franchise. I’m forever playing The Elder Scrolls Online, last year I 100% completed Skyrim and I’ve gone through Oblivion, Morrowind and even Arena. Yes, The Elder Scrolls is a franchise that I can’t pull myself away from. So occasionally, I turn to my mobile for a spot to get away from Bethesda and their affiliated partners, such as ZeniMax Online Studios. Let’s go to Google Play and install a new action game. Blades? That sounds fun… Oh no, it’s another title in the huge world of The Elder Scrolls and now it’s on mobile.

Review – The Magic Circle

A parody of gaming auteurs, The Magic Circle presents itself as an incomplete game that you are playing while it is under construction, right down to the hovering cameras of the admins floating around openly discussing the development process. A black and white fantasy world filled with monsters and wonders, and placeholder objects, unrendered models, floating production notes, object interactions filled with placeholder text, and pieces of an old game spliced together with the new content.

I have not finished this game… but I still have some thoughts…

Energy: Slowing Games Unnecessarily

Have you ever been bored and downloaded a random game, be it from the App Store or Google Play? I do this a lot. At the moment, I’m playing a daft game where you summon all the chickens, akin to the little girl who wants you to look at all of them. I’m also playing some castle defense game, where I just summon as many monsters as I physically can to take down the enemy. As such, I’m pretty set in that I have games to play – And I find them amusing. Sometimes though, I yearn for a new game… And I love strategy, puzzles and more. It’s also here I find the most deadly sin of all; energy systems.

Mobile Game Review – Piffle

A cute character dressed in an even cuter cat costume? Check.
A bunch of balls to throw at brick-like enemies, with a hopes to bash them down? Check.
The bunch of balls you collect are also cute and fluffy? Also check.

Well then, this should be a rather cute review of Piffle, shouldn’t it? Check!

Elite Dangerous RPG – In Depth Part 1

My mind wonders how you go about fitting a vast expansive game like Elite Dangerous into an RPG. Well, the people at Spidermind Games successfully ran a Kickstarter for the book 2 years ago and this year during UKGE, I met some of the team behind it. They talked to me about their current Kickstarter for the Elite Dangerous Battle Card game which you should all take a look at and we will review in full later this year. However, this article is the first in an in-depth look through the RPG. Spidermind Games were very kind to give us the books in PDF and a copy of the core book in hardback that we will be giving away as a prize.

My intention here is to cover the core book its contents and add a healthy dose of opinion here and there. I won’t be including the Espionage, Exploration, Military and Trading supplements, but we may tackle this separately if there is enough interest.

• PDF Version (£20.00)
• Hardback (£40.00)
• Other products available via the ED RPG Store

Review – Hidden Folks

Here’s an old idea made new, another game derived from a series of puzzle-books, but this time instead of choose-your-own-adventure games, this time it’s a hidden object game a-la Where’s Wally (that’s Waldo if you’re across the Atlantic), the classic red and white master of hiding in plain sight, the must-have test of your children’s observation skills and patience.

Hidden Folks seizes the concept and turns it into something that is both addictive and strangely adorable. Layers of interactivity, vast scenes in which to seek tiny details with dozens of similar-looking items scattered everywhere, it’s wonderfully simple, and drives you back day after day for just one more game.

Review – Layers of Fear

October means horror games, and it doesn’t matter how much I love horror, I really have no stomach for horror games, I’d play Amnesia in twenty minute chunks, Little Nightmares gives me the shivers, and I’m stuck on Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder… but it’s also very creepy so I’m glad I’m stuck.

But when I tell you that I have just finished Layers of Fear, don’t think that it just didn’t grip me as much as other horror games, it certainly had me on edge, but I found that I was taken in by the narrative that was unwinding as I stumbled through rooms and corridors, and the difficulty was moderate enough that I could get through a single playthrough with a minimum of effort, but to play again will prove a lot harder.

Video Game Review – Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney 6: Spirit of Justice

Religion and science doesn’t usually mix, but in this title, they could be the combination that literally kills you. In the latest iteration of the Phoenix Wright franchise, we’re back with a vengeance – and this time, defense attorneys are in as much trouble as their clients. From religious ministers hellbent on making sure you fail, to divination seances designed to make your clients look guilty, this might be Phoenix’s toughest trial yet.

Temp Worker Assassin – Review

Greetings from a beach somewhere in Valencia (Spain). Just before I left the UK I got the chance to play a few games. So it’s come to that time where we must cast an opinion on it. We did a little preview piece which introduces the game, it’s being shipped out to Kickstarter funders around December 2016. The print and play version I received consisted of

• 4 Starter deck cards of 10 cards each
• 5 Turn Marker cards to indicate Monday to Friday
• 23 Department cards
• 34 Target cards
• 60 Stationary cards

Video Game Highlight – Saboteur

Technology and the way games are published and made is very different today from how it was 30 years ago. You could say the same for any other industry, however the games industry I think has moved way faster than any other. Recently there has been a resurgence of games programmed by very small teams or a single developer with the re-birth of the indie scene. This may have something to do with the fact that computers are a much more consumable commodity and of course owe a little something to distribution services and easy ways to pay, like Steam. Thirty years ago these people were dubbed bedroom coders and I need you to imagine yourself back this far. Put yourself back in the year 1985 and in the mind of the then 18 year old, sole developer and self confessed college drop-out heralding from Taunton named Clive Townsend.