Dragonride or Die!

Back when WIMO was trying to figure out what our first VR game would be, the company initially polled the entire team to get some "one-liner" game ideas to chew on.

In case you didn't know, ideas are cheap and no idea is sacred. The magic is mostly in execution, but that said, if an idea lights up the right imaginations, it's a win.

We had easily over 200 game one-liner ideas that came across in a day. It was then up to me and my boss to comb through these ideas and find 10 one-liner ideas that would then be christened as our top "doable and best" ideas that we could then polish into "one-pager" game pitches or ideas.

One idea that really stuck out to me from the pack was jousting on the back of a dragon. I took that one and ran with it, fleshing out the pitch into a bit more of an elevator pitch with some market research analysis, a target audience, and all the other good things that go into making a PowerPoint slide that could be shown to executives and employees alike.

The goal of any "one-pager" is to win hearts and minds as well as show how a pitch could be a profitable idea. Long story short, the "dragon jousting" one-pager didn't make the cut into a full-blown pitch for several reasons, including profitability and difficulty in executing.

Sorry. Um, that whole backstory was a long-winded way of me introducing a game I researched while making that pitch: Dragonride VR. That's right. If you've ever wanted to ride on the back of a dragon in VR, there's a game for that!

I wonder how this dragon feels about the crossbow bolts that went into his back and wing?

While there is no jousting, there is some balloon popping with swords and a bit of hand crossbow action!

I don't think I would have purchased this game if it wasn't for research purposes. That said, if you're looking at cheap VR games and you find yourself scrolling through roller coasters, maybe check the price on Dragonride VR first. I mean, it's not the greatest thing you've ever played, but it's also not as bad as a few of the bargain bin coaster games on steam. 

There are several comfort modes for you to choose from here.

1- If you just want to be in a magical environment with dragons flying around you, you can sit in any environment from a number of vantage points and do just that.

These hand models are so stiff and weird.

2- If you want a roller-coaster-esque ride on the back of a dragon, you can do that with several different paths of differing comfort levels.

3- If you want to free-fly your own path as a dragon, they got you here as well.

I never could figure out what to do with these eggs

To me the archery mode and rhythm game both felt like afterthoughts to make this more of a game than an experience. The rhythm balloons are lifeless and strange feeling. And I'm not sure if flailing my arms from the back of a dragon is the immersion I'm looking for. 

Now, give me a partner to pvp against, a seasonal rank system, and a battle pass with exclusive dragons I can peacock to other players ... I'd be in dragon-riding heaven. 

Happy Dueling!

My Unplayed Steam VR Game List

So it was a pretty busy day yesterday. Monday's are always bad, but I literally had no time to play a game outside of doing my daily quests for Brawl Stars. That said, this is Blaugust and I need something to write about today, so what I'm doing is going through my Steam Library and seeing what VR Games I have that I haven't even had a chance to play yet.

Here's the unplayed list:

• Block'hood VR
• Dragonfist VR Kungfu
• Gorn
• Green Hell VR
• Half Life Alyx
• Raw Data
• Serious Sam VR: The First Encounter
• Serious Sam VR: The Second Encounter
• Serious Sam VR: The Last Hope
• Serious Sam 3 VR: BFE
• Serious Sam Fusion 2017
• The Talos Principle VR
• Tentacular
• Torn
• Traffic Jams
• Vacation Simulator
• Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Tempestfall

Out of those, probably the most obvious WHAT?! YOU OWN THAT AND HAVEN'T PLAYED IT?! would be Half Life Alyx. It's a AAA quality VR game and both of my sons have played it, but I've yet to give it a shot.  I've heard nothing but good things about it.

I mean, it looks super cool!

Green Hell VR is a survival game, so I definitely want to give that one a go soon.

Tentacular has been on my radar for a long time and looks amazing, so that needs to go on my shortlist.

I want to put my tentacles on stuff!

I really want to give this Warhammer VR game a shot . . . and soon. I can't believe I haven't played this one yet myself.

Ok, looks super cool just from that store screenshot

Gorn and Torn are both "orn" games, so . . . it makes me ornery that I haven't played either of those yet.

I've had Traffic Jams and Raw Data in my library for waaaaaay too long and not touched them. To be honest, most of these games are ones that came as a part of a Humble Bundle or 3 and I just haven't sat down to give them a shot yet.

Outside of those I have a whole bunch of VR games I actually have played but never talked about them on this blog:

• Ark Park
• Banter
• Dick Wilde
• DragonRide VR
• Electronauts
• A Fisherman's Tale
• Gadgeteer
• Hellsweeper VR
• Maskmaker
• Paper Beast
• Pistol Whip
• Racket: Nx
• Ragnarock
• Resonite
• RollerCoaster VR Universe
• SoundSelf: A Technodelic
• Space Pirate Trainer
• Star Shelter
• Subside Demo
• theBlu
• The Walking Dead Saints and Sinners

In other words, I'm dripping with VR Content I could talk about, but I just haven't actually sat down and put it all into words yet. 

Probably the biggest sins of omission here is Hellsweeper VR. I have so much to say about this game and put in some decent time on it. I really should have talked about it here on my blog before.

So, readers of the Friendly Necromancer, what do you think? Any of that you'd like to hear more about? Any games of the bunch you'd give thumbs up to?  Let me know, and I'll prioritize them.

Happy Dueling!

An Explosive Bloodmoon in 7 Days to Die

My friend Dylan has been hard at work in 7 Days to Die. Every time he logs on, he sends out a text to me and his progeny that the server is up and ready to rock. It's been a busy week, and I haven't been able to log on and play with him as much as I would like to, but when I did finally log on this weekend, WHOA, these guys (and specifically Dylan) had been hard at work.

The Russian Brutalist Architecture of Dylan's Boys.

I quickly jumped on the bandwagon and started reading a bunch of tech books and wiring manuals so I could try and catch up on my skills as "the intellect gal."

I was unable to lock my second rank in shock baton and learn the basics of making a few things in the workbench like my old favorite . . . the punchy turret! Dylan had never really used the punchy turret, so I introduced him to its awesomeness while we delved into a rank 3 mine and then later at the base.

Pink nails and a blue stun baton, the perfect backup for Dylan's Assassin

He liked punchy so much that we incorporated it into our base defense design because here's the thing, he had been holding back the blood moon with server controls. He did that because he wanted to have as many people logged on and playing when it happened.  

Punchy turrets are the best!

So our first blood moon last night was 24 days in instead of 7 days, and MAN, it felt like we had been holding back a giant poop of zombies. there were spitters and vultures and leapers and all manner of nastiness in this blood moon.  It felt WAY worse than our "first" blood moon.

It's always these birds . . . ugh

As it turns out we had been worried we were over-prepared for the night, but we had prepared just about right. They did break through a weak point in our defenses by going under a wall, but none of us died.  We did go through a ton of ammo though.

Loot bags everywhere and zombies in my sights.

The punchy sledgehammers worked great until the zombies toppled the steps they were sitting on top of. All in all, it was a pretty great night of intense action in 7 Days to Die.

Happy Dueling!

Building a Beastlord in BG3?

 A couple days ago I got the weird pull to start a new character in Baldur's Gate 3. Dylan and I have been distracted from playing BG3 (mostly because of 7 Days to Die) and I've been missing it a bit.

I really want to multiclass a Ranger and a Monk to kind of recreate my Beastlord in Everquest. Unfortunately, you can't play a Lizardfolk in BG3, but you can play a Dragonborn, and so a Dragonborn I shall play!

Let's turn that frown upside down!

This is Volt, the blue dragonborn. Yeah, the name is kind of dumb, but I've never been one to come up with fantastic names anyway. 

I love the blue and pink coloration on him!

To recreate my iksar beastlord, my plan is to equally multiclass him as a monk and a ranger with a Beastmaster focus. Back in the day when I worked at KingsIsle, at one time we were playing a D&D campaign over lunch. I believe it was the Storm King's Thunder campaign. In that campaign, I was playing a lizardfolk, pure ranger beastmaster build, and I found it a bit lacking. I'm hoping that by splashing some Monk in the mix, it'll be a bit more fun and survivable.

Since Volt is only level 3 right now (2 monk/1 ranger), he can't really summon any creatures except for a little 2 hitpoint crab familiar. It's pretty silly. If it was a little 2 hitpoint lizard, I'd be in heaven.  Crab will do for now.

Volt and Mr. Crabs

Now that I think more on it, I guess to really build a Beastlord from EQ, I'd need to make sure I get some kind of slow spell, which probably would mean going Cleric to level 5 with a Knowledge Domain, Ranger to level 5 with a Beastmaster Subclass, and I guess Monk to level 2?

Anyway, I'm kind of excited to see how he ends up playing. Ultimately I'll be stopping my progression when I reach that part of Act 2 where Dylan and I are playing because I want that to still be our main game and not spoil anything.

Karlach is so hot . . . literally

I've really loved how different the game is playing now that I'm controlling 3 other characters and am getting to know these new personalities a bit better.  The Gith is staying back at camp this time.  

Happy Dueling!

Thoughts on Roblox and Music Rights

I'm finding myself the past couple of days thinking, "Hmmm . . . what if I just gave the rights to my music to Roblox?" 

First off, since currently a lot of people are reading my posts for the first time thanks to Blaugust, Hi, I like to write music as well as play video games and write about them. I wrote a whole series of musical posts back in the day for Blaugust that really go into this in detail if you're super curious

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4

Since then I've released two albums through a distribution service known as DistroKid.

• Red Pinto Hatchback
• Rotted Leisure Rooms

And another album of old music through a local distributor named FountainAVM.

• An Ant Survives a Rainstorm (link to a music-specific blog of mine)

Ok, now that we're all caught up on that business. I had an email come through the other day from Distrokid that had an interesting proposition for me.

Deliver my music to Roblox?

Basically what that means is if you want to give rights to your music to Roblox, then kids (and most likely adults) around the world could use your music in their games Royalty free. It's not guaranteed that anyone will ever actually use your music, but it will be available if you check the boxes and grant permission.

I did some minor googling and found a Reddit thread where others were talking about this offer. The responses, while few, run the gambit of my thoughts and various points in my life. Here's a hot take:

Haha! I've felt like this before . . . maybe someday someone will discover my nine 90-minute tapes from my youth and I will have my validation! Until then, NO MUSIC FOR YOU! 

Here's another take:

Oo! Now there's the kicker. I actually do belong to ASCAP. That said, I've never uploaded my music to ASCAP, just the fact that I'm a songwriter. I don't think it'd be discoverable even if I checked the box.

And finally, we come to this gem:

Yup, and that's where I sit . . . pretty cool if you ask me.  I'd love to offer a couple albums of music to Roblox for developer use!

Either way, it's been an interesting thought.  If I were to do it, I'd probably make a second DistroKid account and put all my musical meme music on it without any kind of ASCAP tie-back.

Yeah, it's probably not worth the 20-40 bucks a year to even think about it. I don't know, what do you all think? 

Personally, I'd love to see more of my songs being made into rhythm game music! One of my favorite people in the world, Tipa from Chasing Dings, once bought a song of mine off Bandcamp and made a level in Audiosurf. I've also sequenced a song of mine and put it to a level in Synth Riders. Just imagine what those crazy kids in Roblox could do!

Happy Dueling!

Squad Busters Need More Modes

When I first started playing Squad Busters, I was kind of in love with it. Now that three weeks has passed by, I'm still playing, but the Honeymoon is over and I'm starting to think about what's next for the game.

The basic loop of the game is you play in a 10-person free-for-all and place 1st through 10th for the match. After this you are given rewards based on your performance and unlock progress to more worlds to play, more characters to play with, and a strengthening of your squad.  That's it, and that's ok because if that base game isn't fun, no one will keep playing your game.

When I was first playing the game, I was dominating! As I should be. Mobile game designers always look at the win-loss ratios of your first few game sessions. If you're not destroying things and feeling good, then the game has less chance to hook you.

I've got four 3-star heroes now and my squad is slowly growing!

I'm to the point now where I'm only placing in the Top 5 (the real goal) of the match every few games, and I'm starting to feel the pinch to spend real-world money for a little boost. Now, as long as I accept that I'm not always going to place in the top 5 and that I'm content to just accept lowered rewards for my gameplay, it's really no big deal. I can keep playing.

Hog-Rider's three-star evolution is looking pretty sexy. I need more sexy.

In the future as I unlock even more units and more high-level worlds, the chances are that the pinch will be felt even more fully as the divide between those who pay and those who don't grows. It is what it is and that's the life of playing free-to-play mobile games.  Now, to be sure, strategy can trump another player's wallet, but I'm not to that point yet. I haven't watched any YouTube guides at all. I'm sure if I did, I could increase my win-loss ratio, but I just don't know if I care that much about winning yet.

Fourth place . . . it's sufficient . . . I'm definitely not dominating though

What I really think is that this game is too new and needs more depth, more modes, and more ways to play. That's gotta be the goal, right? You want to keep updating your game and adding more synergistic systems and modes to keep people engaged. Here are a few suggestions I would make if I was on the design team.

~~

1- Give me a reason to build my base -- as you play the game, it gives you hammers to unlock little decorations you can put around your house. This is pure vanity and something really only you will see. I can't invite anyone to my house and the placement nodes for decorating are all pre-determined. It's boring and unneeded, but it is a hint at something better.

These are fun, but ultimately useless decorations that no one besides me sees in my base

You could swing a number of directions with this. You could make decorations become static daily reward spawners or sources for active buffs to help gameplay. You could also make bases something that other players could visit, perhaps even raid someday. Supercell could definitely mix Clash of Clans into this game if they wanted to, but it'd have to be executed differently since there's so much that goes into character building rather than base building. Hmm.

18 housing nodes . . . meh . . . this could be much cooler.

What I know is that it's currently the weakest point of the game and therefore the strongest candidate for something interesting.

2- Cooperative mode -- Everything in Squad Busters so far is competitive. Imagine if instead of competing for resources as things were destroyed, that instead we were gathering resources to BUILD something together.  The more we cooperate, the more everyone wins. Destroying stuff in the outskirts and then bringing it into the center to unlock a gem mine or cool statue would be really fun . . . and especially if I had a guild to do it with.

What if I was building up the center node cooperatively?

Cooperative modes and guilds go hand in hand for mobile games. It'd be a nice layer to add to the game.

3- Make Some Special Fusions -- it's pretty easy to understand that if I have 3 heroes of one type, they fuse into a stronger version of that hero. That's a no-brainer to understand, but what if I could fuse together 3 different types of heroes to make a special kind of mutant? I think it'd be pretty fun to combine a common Greg Woodsman with a rare Hog Rider mounted unit and a legendary Mortis undead unit to create a Headless Horseman Mega Unit.  In this way, you create special fusions that you have to learn -- you'd be on the hunt for making the right combinations, which would be a lot of fun.

The perfect Halloween DLC Special Fusion!

Granted, that's a lot of work for everyone (artist, designers, programmers) to come up with special fusion characters and combinations, but the fun factor would be amazing.

~~

I'm sure there's a lot more you could do with this game, and now it's really just a matter of "Will this game be successful enough that we see them develop it more?" I certainly hope so. If not, the game probably needs more teeth to keep me logging back in for more than a month or two.

Happy Dueling!

Just what you wanted, Wallace and Gromit!

I bet there isn't a day that goes by when you wonder to yourself, MAN, when's the next Wallace and Gromit video game going to come out! No? Ok, me neither, but that's ok. The stop motion Claymation hits generated by Aardman are super recognizable with their very distinct style. A better bet would be that you've seen at least one of the movies, shorts, webseries, or some-sort-or-the-other Wallace and Gromit and/or Aardman production, right?

Wallace enjoying a nice "spot of tea" as the Brits might say

For my family, it used to be Chicken Run. We had a DVD (or maybe even it was a VHS) of that movie and watched it on repeat with the kids when they were little.

While thinking over this article, which is actually about a Wallace-and-Gromit-themed course in Walkabout Minigolf, I stopped by the Aardman site to peek through the news section, and wow.  I had no idea there was a Wallace and Gromit AR game for the Quest 3. Nice!

Anyway, have I mentioned how much I love my little Ruff Talk VR group I hang with on Discord? The moment a new Walkabout Minigolf course is available, there's immediately a group of super cool VR enthusiasts (and just generally great people) ready to play through the new course. So when the new Wallace and Gromit course dropped on July 24th, I was ready to go for a great game of golf.

How many people can we pile into the bathroom?!

I came in 2nd place for the group . . . gah, just one stroke!

GG Gwanatu, GG!

The easy version of the course features all the fun gadgets one might find around Gromit's household. From Beds that get you out of bed to guns that shoot jelly onto toast.  One of my favorite gags in the house was the ball washer in the bathroom.

Put into the target and the ballwasher places it on the pillow

Since I shot under par, I was able to unlock the nighttime harder version of the course, which is actually very difficult.  What isn't too difficult, however, is the hunt for golf club clues that are scattered around the course.

Man, those sheep in the hard level really caused some damage around the house!

As per usual with any hard version of a walkabout course, there is an associated pick-up quest within the course. If you find all the clues, you'll get a new themed golf club to play with in the future. The club for the Wallace and Gromit course has all the elegant construction of a retro '60s sci-fi golf club. I like it, daddy-o.

The gadget club -- if it gets me more holes in one, I'll take it!

Overall I really like the courses in the Wallace and Gromit DLC for Walkabout Minigolf! The holes are fun, the hidden balls and the club are not too difficult to find, and the characters are both cute and hilarious. I won't spoil too much here, but make sure you ride the rocket to the moon! There might just be cheese up there.

Happy Dueling!