So, recently Nintendo announced that it was going to start developing games for mobile devices. This is a very good thing, since most mobile games as of late like to follow the candy crush formula; being a hard game that is meant to eat at your wallet with micro-transactions to make the game easier- or in some cases, to make the game playable. Hell, Pokemon copied the Candy Crush formula to a T with their match 3 game Pokemon Shuffle (which uses the same engine as Pokemon Trozei, another match three game that is instead a pay to play).
So, Pokemon Rumble World is a new addition to their 3DS line-up, and it is a free version of Pokemon Rumble. Basically the idea is that you play as toy pokemon in a hack and slash, and capture other pokemon, with your goal being to collect all 700 pokemon.
The game mechanics are simple: you move around, and attack with the A and B buttons. The elemental attack dynamics are the same as in pokemon; fire does more damage to grass, steel and bugs, grass does more damage to water and rocks, et cetera. Each attack has a different effect as well; some with an increased area of effect not tied to its damage.
Keep in mind, all further mechanics discussed are based on a first impressions look of the game. Some mechanics aren't entirely explained, so these are from my understanding of them.
When you defeat a pokemon, they will be lying on the ground. Walk over to them to capture them. You'll be told their attack value, which is likely randomized. The chance for whether or not they are capturable appears to be entirely random. You could end up capturing all the pokemon you meet in a zone, or none at all.
Once you finish with the tutorial, you'll be given the choice of three balloons: water, fire, and grass. These balloons will take you to different zones attatched to the types of pokemon mentioned. Though it is not exclusively grass or fire types in these zones; there are some assorted ones in there too. Even the ones specifically marked Hoenn can contain pokemon from Kanto. When they say you can capture pokemon from a specific region in the zone, they mean from the specific game.
But anyway, after completing a zone, the balloon that was used goes on a timer. As soon as you reach rank 5, the timer increases. The Hoenn balloon appears to take an hour to recharge, while the element balloons take half an hour. This may not be set in stone, it is possible the times are longer as you continue on; after all, they want you to spend your gems on everything.
Gems are the premium currency, the ones you don't get through normal play in the zones. You can get gems through streetpasses, and daily challenges. You can get more from completing special conditions in the challenges as well (such as break 10 objects, which is a relatively easy feat as you'll tend to do that anyway). But otherwise, you'll have to buy them to get more. And you will need more, as there are a number of items in the game to use gems on. Such as extra lives and more balloons (which means more playtime before putting it down). However, given the nature of the game, playing the game totally free is not that bad an option, beyond requiring a bit of patience. The game isn't hard by any stretch, you can easily cheese the stages and never die. The only hard thing seems to be capturing rare pokemon, or a specific pokemon. I'm hunting for a Ralts and its evolution line, and am looking forward to finding it, but not so much trying to capture its line.
Here's one downside to capturing the pokemon: everywhere you go (at least in the beginning) each new pokemon is likely higher level than your current highest. Meaning, once I finally get that Ralts, it will more than likely be outstripped with power incredibly fast. Of course, I can go back to the zone where the Ralts are, and get a new one that is more powerful. but then I'd just be doing that over and over and over again. If the Pokemon max out in power, then there isn't a lot to worry about. But, if they don't, then that means you'll likely replace your favorite with someone who is not your favorite, simply because they are way more powerful, which isn't very fun. You have no connection to something so easily replaceable. But again, this point may be moot if the powers plateau instead of continue to climb linearly.
Also, you can pick up multiple copies of a pokemon in a zone. However, once you leave the zone, they are all automatically added to your bank of pokemon. I have to micromanage it after every trip to get rid of the weaker copies to keep the number semi-reasonable. It'd be better if they gave you a list afterward and asked "Which of these would you like to keep?" and save some trouble.
So, what do I think of it? I think it is fun; but then again I love pokemon, So I am biased to give it a good shot. Someone who is not a pokemon fan may feel lost in the large number of pokemon availible, the various attacks and effects as well as the element wheel... The game doesn't explain all of this, just the very basic fire beats grass deal. Unless you're a pokemon fan, you wouldn't likely guess that steel beats fairy, or that dragon beats dragon... or that Charizard is not a dragon.
It's a fun game for pokemon fans, and free to try and play. There is no harm in giving it a shot.
Reviews, art, comics, and videos by Fixer Sue. A "Fixer Sue" is a character inserted into a story to repair problems seen in the plot line. Usually used by fan-fiction writers to force their one true pairing, I use it to describe what I do in reviews: I don't just say that something could be better, I say how it could.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Wednesday, April 8, 2015
Five Nights at Freddy's
The Hollywood Reporter had an article on April 7th, 2015, declaring that Warner Brothers has plans to create a movie called "Five Nights at Freddy's." The high-concept of the story is that it is a haunted and dark version of Chuck-e-Cheese. Now, that may sound like any other Warner Brothers horror film like Ouija (Stiles White, 2014), but this news is kind of a big deal. But some context for those who are not into horror, or watch Lets Players on Youtube:
Five Nights at Freddy's is an indie horror game, created by one man, Scott Cawthon. Before Five Nights, Scott had made mostly Christian or Family Friendly games, mostly sidescrollers with pre-rendered 3D models. His last game before Five Nights was criticized for having characters that look like creepy animatronics, and Scott had a small epiphany: he thought he could make something a lot scarier.
Thus he created Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game where you play a night guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, trapped in the building with 4 deadly animatronics (5 if you count a kind of unexplained mystical one). You play through 5 nights at Freddy's like the title suggests, each one getting harder than the last.
Your entire goal is keeping the animatronics out of your security room. To do this, you have cameras to check on where the animatronics are, and buttons to close two blast doors. But, using the cameras or closing the doors costs power, which you have a limited supply of. If you run out of power, you can no longer close the doors, and it is game over. If one of the animatronics manages to get in, it is game over. Each game over is accompanied with a jump scare of the animatronic in question getting right in your face and screaming.
It doesn't sound like much, and it really isn't. It is an incredibly low budget indie game. Yet, the game was successful enough to warrant two sequels: Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which is technically a prequel, and Five Nights at Freddy's 3, set thirty years after the first game. Five Nights has had an entire trilogy, in the span of a year and a half, and the creator has raked in a TON of money for it.
You might wonder why this game became so popular as to warrant two sequels within months of each other. The answer is simple: people on youtube playing the game. There wasn't much marketing for Freddy's beyond putting the game up on Steam (think of it as a version of amazon focused on delivering games digitally), but some Lets Players (people who, as the name suggests, play games for an audience) played the game enough for it to reach memetic status, and it spiraled into a devoted fandom.
That's pretty much the brief history of Freddy's, minus the backstory about a serial child murderer who keeps returning to Freddy's, and the stuffing of the children into the animatronics, and someone's frontal lobe being bitten off by one of the animatronics (surprisingly that guy is still alive). Yeah the series is pretty messed up, but pretty tame compared to some of the other horror films and TV shows out there (Criminal Minds comes to mind for people worse than the Purple Man, the serial murderer so named because he appears in game as a pixelated purple man). It sounds like something bog standard for a horror film right?
That is exactly why this is so interesting and important. Five Nights at Freddy's was created by one man for very little, and now it is a franchise. Even if they also make the movie for very little money, it is a guaranteed success for two reasons:
1. Horror films always make money. Ouija some how made several times its budget.
2. There is a large, devoted fanbase for the series, that will almost certainly go see the film, regardless of its actual quality.
Five Nights is what is known as a "presold idea," a film property already in the public's consciousness that does marketing by generating hype rather than selling the idea to the audience.
As for the budget of the film... The budget would be quite minimal from my (fairly knowledgeable) calculations. There is one primary set, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. There are only 3-4 necessary characters (the security guard, the purple man, and both phone guys (they give the game's tutorial and some backstory)). The animatronics could be done with costumes and not CGI. Altogether, if they were aiming to spend as little as possible, the film could be done with less than a million dollars.
And of course because the film is quite likely to be successful for so little, there is bound to be a sequel the year after. They very well could make the game franchise into a film franchise.
To recap: Five Nights at Freddy's is guaranteed to make money, they don't need to spend a lot to make it, AND it is a franchise. All this was made possible by one guy making extremely simple PC games. This is what is interesting: this is the power of the internet, horror, and presold ideas.
The funny thing is, I predicted this like a month ago, right down to saying Warner Brothers would do it. It's not future sight, it is just knowing the market. It wasn't a question of if, but when.
And that's the story all about how an indie game maker earned a metric ton of money. It simultaneously gives one hope that they too could one day do that as well, and saddens that it takes horror to do it that easily.
(Note, I'm not discounting Scott Cawthon's difficulties in making the game, I'm sure the programming and animation were difficult in some fashion. But it really doesn't seem that hard when his release schedule was August 2014, November 2014, and March 2015. Film makers would squeal for that kind of release schedule)
To sign off, I'll say this: Five Nights may be the only horror film I'm actually interested in seeing. and I have not played the games, nor do I like horror films. At all. Let that speak for how powerful a marketing force this indie game has become.
Five Nights at Freddy's is an indie horror game, created by one man, Scott Cawthon. Before Five Nights, Scott had made mostly Christian or Family Friendly games, mostly sidescrollers with pre-rendered 3D models. His last game before Five Nights was criticized for having characters that look like creepy animatronics, and Scott had a small epiphany: he thought he could make something a lot scarier.
Thus he created Five Nights at Freddy's, a horror game where you play a night guard at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, trapped in the building with 4 deadly animatronics (5 if you count a kind of unexplained mystical one). You play through 5 nights at Freddy's like the title suggests, each one getting harder than the last.
Your entire goal is keeping the animatronics out of your security room. To do this, you have cameras to check on where the animatronics are, and buttons to close two blast doors. But, using the cameras or closing the doors costs power, which you have a limited supply of. If you run out of power, you can no longer close the doors, and it is game over. If one of the animatronics manages to get in, it is game over. Each game over is accompanied with a jump scare of the animatronic in question getting right in your face and screaming.
It doesn't sound like much, and it really isn't. It is an incredibly low budget indie game. Yet, the game was successful enough to warrant two sequels: Five Nights at Freddy's 2, which is technically a prequel, and Five Nights at Freddy's 3, set thirty years after the first game. Five Nights has had an entire trilogy, in the span of a year and a half, and the creator has raked in a TON of money for it.
You might wonder why this game became so popular as to warrant two sequels within months of each other. The answer is simple: people on youtube playing the game. There wasn't much marketing for Freddy's beyond putting the game up on Steam (think of it as a version of amazon focused on delivering games digitally), but some Lets Players (people who, as the name suggests, play games for an audience) played the game enough for it to reach memetic status, and it spiraled into a devoted fandom.
That's pretty much the brief history of Freddy's, minus the backstory about a serial child murderer who keeps returning to Freddy's, and the stuffing of the children into the animatronics, and someone's frontal lobe being bitten off by one of the animatronics (surprisingly that guy is still alive). Yeah the series is pretty messed up, but pretty tame compared to some of the other horror films and TV shows out there (Criminal Minds comes to mind for people worse than the Purple Man, the serial murderer so named because he appears in game as a pixelated purple man). It sounds like something bog standard for a horror film right?
That is exactly why this is so interesting and important. Five Nights at Freddy's was created by one man for very little, and now it is a franchise. Even if they also make the movie for very little money, it is a guaranteed success for two reasons:
1. Horror films always make money. Ouija some how made several times its budget.
2. There is a large, devoted fanbase for the series, that will almost certainly go see the film, regardless of its actual quality.
Five Nights is what is known as a "presold idea," a film property already in the public's consciousness that does marketing by generating hype rather than selling the idea to the audience.
As for the budget of the film... The budget would be quite minimal from my (fairly knowledgeable) calculations. There is one primary set, Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. There are only 3-4 necessary characters (the security guard, the purple man, and both phone guys (they give the game's tutorial and some backstory)). The animatronics could be done with costumes and not CGI. Altogether, if they were aiming to spend as little as possible, the film could be done with less than a million dollars.
And of course because the film is quite likely to be successful for so little, there is bound to be a sequel the year after. They very well could make the game franchise into a film franchise.
To recap: Five Nights at Freddy's is guaranteed to make money, they don't need to spend a lot to make it, AND it is a franchise. All this was made possible by one guy making extremely simple PC games. This is what is interesting: this is the power of the internet, horror, and presold ideas.
The funny thing is, I predicted this like a month ago, right down to saying Warner Brothers would do it. It's not future sight, it is just knowing the market. It wasn't a question of if, but when.
And that's the story all about how an indie game maker earned a metric ton of money. It simultaneously gives one hope that they too could one day do that as well, and saddens that it takes horror to do it that easily.
(Note, I'm not discounting Scott Cawthon's difficulties in making the game, I'm sure the programming and animation were difficult in some fashion. But it really doesn't seem that hard when his release schedule was August 2014, November 2014, and March 2015. Film makers would squeal for that kind of release schedule)
To sign off, I'll say this: Five Nights may be the only horror film I'm actually interested in seeing. and I have not played the games, nor do I like horror films. At all. Let that speak for how powerful a marketing force this indie game has become.
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