Hello everyone! It’s been too long since my last post so I wanted to share with everyone what I’ve been up to most recently. In addition to my game design projects, I am currently working with Gamelyn Games on a new game that will feature Mecha combat. So stay tuned for that. But also (and the reason for today’s post) I have recently gotten involved with a separate firm who has been promoting their new card game, Qetchup.

Initially, the plan was to play the game and write an extensive review. For various reasons, we had some difficulty doing so and the end result was I was asked to be a part of the project as a consultant and help rewrite the rules and offer input to improve aesthetics and playability. So far, I like how everything it turning out.

Then this was dropped on me: Qetchup was just awarded the 2014 Game of the Year award by Creative Child magazine…and this was without the improvements that are coming in the revised edition I have helped them to create.

Release details on the new revised version are vague so far, but I was told to expect a holiday-season release if all goes well. I’ve recently finished the rules copy and we’re still going over visual improvement here and there but everything that has developed so far I am quite pleased with.

As for the game itself, it is very much a family/children’s/educational game. Very light on strategy and quick-playing. Your hardcore boardgamers probably won’t care much for it, but in a classroom setting it would be a grand slam. It is essentially a draw-one-play-one set-collection card game with various bumps and twists. Your goal is to complete a 5-card healthy “meal” and rid yourself of the rest of your hand. There are a few ways to do this, but there are also ways to disrupt other players’ progress.

I’m looking forward to seeing the final product and if you have young people in your life that you’d like to get involved in games, this is worth checking out when the new edition becomes available.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

This game. This freaking game…

Shovel Knight is amazing. This game is what you get when you combine:

The fantastic music and boss design of Mega Man
The platforming challenge of Ninja Gaiden
The artifact collection and combat of Zelda 2
The overworld features and map encounters of Super Mario Bros. 3
And the treasure-seeking and pogo-jumping of Duck Tales

all inside of a single game that stays within the aesthetic design boundaries of classic NES gameplay (much like Mega Man 9 and 10 did).

Shovel Knight is retro done right. Too often do I see games that are labeled as “retro” that just get the whole idea upside down. A retro game isn’t using as few pixels as possible for your characters and doing as little as possible with comparatively unlimited technology. Good retro-style games create a brand new experience that evokes the sights, sounds, and feel of the classic games it is meant to imitate (or in this case, I think a much better word is “honor”)

There is nothing wrong with this game that I could find, just that I wanted more. The gameplay was absolutely outstanding, the controls were tight and I received no grief about using my usb controller (it just worked), it was challenging and frustrating but never unforgiving (no “lives” to worry about, you just lose some of your money, which you can recollect from where you died), and this game has charm dammit. Loads of it.

Shovel Knight is a nostalgia feast that won’t make you feel like you’d be better off just playing the old games you want to fondly remember. It’s the kind of game that makes you want five more sequels and a special release on an actual NES cartridge (likely impossible, but still.)

I have not been this impressed in a very long time, Shovel Knight gets top marks, go try it! (Oh, and it’s multi-platform too. So much love.)

http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/

Hello everyone!

I have been swamped with projects right now (none of which seem close to completion but I just have to keep moving forward) but I did want to announce that Magnum Opus has shipped! Thank you again for your support, everyone. If you missed out, copies can be ordered directly from Game Salute right here.

I will also be at GenCon 2014, no booth or anything but I will be around wearing my GUGames badge. Come say hi!

Thanks everyone!

I have a confession to make:

When I was very young, two of the earliest video game sequels I was ever exposed to were Super Mario Bros. 2 and Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. Due to this, for a long while I thought that it was common practice, or even a rule, that game sequels had to be dramatically, if not fundamentally, different from the previous installment.

Sometimes, I will think about these things and ponder the implications. I’ve taken to casually referring to this as “Contemplating the Weird” things about gaming in general. I do this with board games and video games and all kinds of games. It’s something that my brain has begun to do rather involuntarily as my roots have spread as a designer.

So, now that the explanation is out of the way, let’s get back to the topic… what if this was, in fact, the de facto rule-of-thumb for videogame sequels? What would Super Mario Bros. 3 have been like? Sure it was a massive improvement on the formula from Super Mario Bros. with the overworld map and storable items but it was a logical progression of improvement. We all know the story by how of how Super Mario Bros. 2 wasn’t really Super Mario Bros. 2 etc. etc. So maybe Zelda 2 is a better example for this.

Zelda 2 is easily my favorite game of the Zelda franchise. I know painfully well that I am in the minority there, but it is what it is. I enjoy action RPGs and the only Zelda game I consider to be an “RPG” at all in the loosest sense is Zelda 2.

So what if Zelda 3 wasn’t a throwback to Zelda 1 and was rather a departure even further from it…it might have looked something like this:

 For those who don’t know, this is not a screenshot from a real game. This is an image that circulated around as part of a Zelda 3 NES prototype urban legend/hoax. But look at it…it has combined elements from Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 but looks like it probably handles more like Star Tropics, doesn’t it?

What if this was real, and just how the creators of video games chose to design and there was no such thing as Madden after Madden after Madden that are practically the exact same game with cosmetic changes. Or [Insert series of Console FPS games] or [Insert series of JRPG games]…

…Or Super Mario Bros. or Zelda?

How much different would the world of Video Gaming be if what I believed was true as a child, actually was the case, and it was totally normal–by design–for game sequels to be this dramatically different from all games before it in the series. What if the next Final Fantasy game wasn’t a turn-based RPG but was an action-platform RPG instead?

I would play the hell out of that game.

I wasn’t really going anywhere with this. But I guess that’s why I decided to call this post “Contemplating the Weird” and hopefully it will stimulate your mind and help you go on to create more unique and exciting things as well.

 I’m going to try something a little different today. That’s right, a tech review! As a gamer, I do enjoy many different gadgets as well (don’t worry there’s a tie-in to gaming for this anyhow)

I got a Pebble Smart Watch last Christmas and I have been using it long enough to the point where I feel comfortable giving it a full honest review.

Let me start by saying that I tend to buy watches that last. My last two have been Casio Waveceptor watches, that are powered by a solar-receptor face and receive daily time corrections by satellite. These are great watches and they still work great to this day. But I’ve been wearing my Pebble every day since receiving it (unless I am going to go do yard work or something, then I will wear my elder of the two Casios that I have)

For those who don’t yet know, the Pebble Smart Watch is, well, a Smart Watch. In the same respect that one has a Smart Phone. It is Bluetooth connected to your android or iOS device and is capable of sending notifications that are displayed on it’s ePaper (think first-gen Kindle) screen. The screen allows it to be highly power efficient. I have never had the watch die on me, but I am told that it lasts a week, sometimes more, on a charge. And the charger is magnetic–no plugs, so it can remain water resistant. Very cool.

Every time I get a text, email, phonecall, or notification (that I tell the platform I want to see on my phone, e.g. facebook or twitter updates) the message will appear on my watch screen and it will vibrate briefly to let me know something appeared. I can use the buttons on the device to scroll up and down or dismiss it entirely. This is especially useful when driving, I can ostensibly glance at my wrist to see if something is potentially important rather than digging my phone out and devoting my attention to it which is much more dangerous. If it is a phonecall and I don’t want to deal with it right now, I can dismiss the call to voicemail straight from my watch.

I was a little disappointed that they released a model with a metal band after the holidays, I would have much rather had one like that than a resin band, but it isn’t so bad, really. At $150 for the base model ($250 for the “steel”) though it really isn’t a big detraction. When people ask about mine I find myself telling them pretty often that most people, myself included, have spent more on watches that do a whole lot less than this. It is pretty unobtrusive too, I don’t feel like I have a small TV on my wrist, it’s very compact.

There are more features I’d like to see and I can understand that this technology is still largely in its infancy, but on the whole, this is a really great product and I recommend it highly.

Oh, and the watchfaces. The glorious customizable watchfaces. The watch can store 8 “apps” which range from a screen that will tell you the time, date, and weather conditions all at once, or one that will roll RPG dice for you (see? I told you I would get back around to gaming on this!)

PROS:
– $150.00 Price Point for the base model
– Highly efficient ePaper screen, long battery life
– Magnetic charger
– Water Resistant
– Great variety of watchfaces and apps, tons of nerd-candy to be found– including games!
– Awesome solution for “screening” communications that come to you- at a glance
– Vibration-based notification function is always noticeable no matter what you are doing
– Intuitive interface, good integration with phone (Android is my platform, I’m sure it’s similar with iOS)
– Too dark to see? It’s backlit, just shake to make it glow.
– Bluetooth tethering is highly reliable, best experience I have ever had using the protocol

CONS:
– Vibration unit only. No speaker in the watch. (This is my number 1, biggest disappointment with this product)
– Not a touch-screen (not incredibly necessary, to be honest)
– Most communication is only one-way to the Watch, very little watch-to-phone functionality
– The Pebble Steel may be a little overpriced at $250. a $50 markup for the metal band seems more appropriate; but I haven’t handled one myself to say for sure if it is worth it.

MAYBE WITH THE NEXT MODEL?:
- Give me a speaker so my watch can make this sound when I get a message (in addition to viberation)
- Solar screen or kinetic charging would be nice
- Headphone jack to play music over bluetooth? (might cause waterproofing issues, so I can understand either way)
– If color ePaper screens ever get fully developed, this is a perfect candidate. (In contrast to the Galaxy Gear, which to my knowledge is a color LCD screen and has poor battery life)

SHOULD I BUY IT?:
If you have a smartphone, wear a watch every day, and tend to buy things that you want to last…then yeah, this is a pretty solid bet. If you tend to buy your watches off the bargain rack because you are paranoid about losing or damaging them, then maybe stay away because $150 is certainly a non-trivial expense. I buy my sunglasses at the dollar store because I have a 3-year-old at home…so I get it. But I stopped getting cheap watches about ten years ago and this is my third one since then, so this is a really good investment in my opinion. Awesome especially if your job requires a lot of communication via email or phonecalls. Makes things worlds easier to just look at your wrist; it’s a bigger benefit than it might sound like.

So apparently this happened: Nintendo declared that the Wii U has “flopped”.

This, really disappointed me. Especially from them.

The problem is not with the Wii U as a platform. The problem Nintendo is having right now is the same top reason why I haven’t had any interest in getting a PS4 or Xboxone at all.: Software.

If these companies would make a stronger effort to have a non-trivial amount of quality titles available at launch (or heaven forbid, after an entire year) I think they just might see an increase in sales.

The trouble (in Nintendo’s case) isn’t with the hardware itself. They have a very unique opportunity with their platform and they just aren’t using it to its full potential. Once that happens, they will be fine. What concerns me is that they seem to be going back to the drawing board on it instead of just putting out games that people want. Nintendo isn’t experiencing any of the backlash from privacy problems, hardware failure, can-I-use-used-games-or-not snafus, et al. Their problem is the singular fact that their software library for a console more than a year old is simply embarrassing.

“4 players plus 1 with a touchscreen that has access to information the others don’t” is an amazing formula for success. (And that isn’t even touching in the idea of more than 1 tablet being used at a time, which I thought was a natural progression for them, expecting the tablets to be sold a la carte eventually.) People with very real talent have been throwing them ideas for free with regards to software that would bring them success, but seemingly aren’t listening.

The Wii U is not a failure, or a flop, its sales are poor because it currently lacks what people look for in a video game console: a healthy library of good games. Nintendo: Please, be honest about the problem, and let’s examine the cause: Is it licensing? Slow first-party development? Uncooperative third-party developers?

I honestly expected to see amazing things by now. A new Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game maybe, Tactical shooters where the tablet-holder is a squad commander directing the other soldiers where to go and what to do based on the information only they have, Spaceship combat simulators with crews of 5 and the captain on the tablet with privileged information for his or her crew.

Honestly, middle-schoolers have more imagination. Hold a focus group, I guarantee there will be grand-slam pitches. The money is in the air guys, all you need to do is reach up and grab it. We still believe in you, don’t give up (and please don’t make people regret the investment they have already made in this hardware, that will probably cost you more customers in the long run.)

When playing Hearthstone (or any TCG), one of the most frequently made mistakes you can make is indicating to your opponent in some way that there is a way for them to defeat you on their next turn. This has afforded me a few narrow victories I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten if my opponent hadn’t tipped me off to it. Don’t give away your information!

(Posts should be getting more frequent, the Holidays are bonkers.)

Very recently, Blizzard dropped two big bombs on the Diablo 3 community and there’s a lot of noise about it.

They are, respectively, the closure of the Auction House (both in-game gold and real money) and the announcement of the first expansion (with more to come hopefully), Reaper of Souls.

These announcements have been awarded with a lot of comments (over 6000 so far about the AH situation alone) and it’s time for me to weigh in on my thoughts about both of these things, and how they affect my expectations for my experience with the expansion.

I’ve been fostering something of a love-hate relationship with Blizzard since pretty much the point Activision got involved with them. Note that this is a correlation and not necessarily a causation, but World of Warcraft lost its appeal to me in a big way, They made some decisions that I strongly disagreed with in regard to Diablo 3, the only thing they have done recently that I have really been on board with was the mod support for Starcraft 2–but that fell short of my personal expectations when I discovered that the tools they included were incredibly cumbersome in my opinion and they apparently prohibit the use of any third party tools to help with that.

ಠ_ಠ

Anyway, let’s get to specifics here instead of getting into detail about that. Here’s my take on the Auction House situation:

Let’s rewind back to pre-release. They announced the Auction House and people freaked out. Everyone was so worried about the game “turning into” World of Warcraft (by what logic, I don’t know) but I was in the vast minority that seemed to understand a big driving factor toward introducing a Blizzard-sanctioned Auction House in the first place:

People are going to buy and sell items and gold no matter what the EULA says. Rather than fight a losing battle, make a safe-haven for people to make these transactions that both is easy to use, and benefits the developer directly.

It’s capitalistic as hell, but it makes a ton of sense. I can’t imagine how much grief Blizzard went through during the Diablo 2 heyday when people were getting scammed constantly, spammers took over in droves, and duping everywhere. Cut that middleman out, use the cut to improve your own game, and everyone wins, right?

Well, no. Apparently Blizzard got a new flavor of grief, now people bitching about the Auction House ruining the game and claiming that people “had” to use it to perform well. Which may have some merit to it as an argument, I guess. But I have never not once had to buy items with real money for any reason. The only real-money transactions I have made were for gems and only due to the fact that I had no other use for the money held captive in my Battle Net Balance at the time which was mistakenly put there rather than my paypal account.

Long story short, the AH is going away and they aren’t listening to any arguments to the contrary. I see this affecting the game in three huge ways:
1) Advertisement Spam (already a huge problem) will increase significantly
2) People will now complain about not being able to trade effectively.
3) People will be driven to third-party online sales sites, which will: not prevent purchase and sale of items at all, will send money overseas to “goldfarm” operations and less for Blizzard themselves which could be allocated to more frequent and significant developments and improvements to the product.

The way I see it, if players don’t want the Auction House, there is a perfectly acceptable option in the console edition of the game. Furthermore, Hardcore/Softcore segregation is not difficult to do, so why shouldn’t a AH/No-AH segregation plausibly exist to allow both camps to exist in harmony?

They established a very well thought out system with a specific purpose and now are scrapping it for the wrong reasons. Their new plan for Loot 2.0 is going to help make the game a better experience, we’re told, but Loot 2.0 and an AH are mutually exclusive by nature, of course. Right?

I understand it is in their best interest as a business publicly to listen to the majority of their players (fine time to start, guys.) But this is really just a disappointment in a big way. Instead of fixing the broken turn signal in your car, you’re ripping out the steering column and throwing it in the garbage. Fixing the smaller issues with the balance, loot drops, and spam would make the market self-correct. Adding options to participate in a separate realm without the Auction house would make the game more acceptable to those who disagree with the existence of the Auction house, and yet allow it to exist for those who enjoy that experience.

But, if Blizzard is listening to my advice on this, I’ll eat my hat. So let’s move past that now that I have said my piece and share what my expectations are as a player given this new shift in player experience. I expect none of these to be fulfilled, but if I remain silent I’ll have no right to complain later.

Reaper of Souls Requests/Anticipations/Expectations/It’s-Only-Fair-Since-Everything-Else-Has-Been-F**ked-Up-Now-Anyway

1) Now that the Auction House and cash-transaction filter is going to be removed from the game, the plausibility of certain barriers which existed as a security measure need to come down. They are as follows:
– Always-connected Play, and
– No modding
After the Auction House is dismantled, the excuse of protection of the money that is flowing through the game is officially null. With that gone, now is a perfect opportunity to continue listing to the majority and allow people to play single-player without an internet connection (because Lord forbid someone’s internet should go out, or the Blizzard servers should suffer an outage, or that someone might live somewhere that internet access is spotty or absent completely), and it’s time to let people do what they wish with modded game modes. No, I am not asking you to allow people to make mods to use on Blizzard Servers nor do I expect any permissions granted for anything that could be described as a hack. I am talking about the game overhauls that still make Diablo 2 one of the best gaming experiences there is. Median XL, Nezeramontias, Eastern Sun…all amazing Diablo 2 Mods. You have a framework in Diablo 3 for these kinds of experiences and more. Let people use them and don’t threaten to ban them for doing something that is not only harmless but now won’t affect your bottom line negatively in any way since the incentive to lock people onto your own servers (the auction house) is going away.

2) More Diablo 2 flavor.
One of the bigger complaints about Diablo 3 was that it deviated so far from aspects that made the first two installments so enjoyable. Stat selection with no way to undo changes is outmoded, and a skillpoint-free system streamlines the game, okay, I get it, but I miss finding gear with +1 to all [class] skills. Give us some more of the things that we loved from Diablo 2 or something similar to them. Socketable Runes, Jewels, Charms things that made Lord of Destruction such a necessary and fantastic addition to D2 Vanilla need to make a comeback. Even if you don’t want to upset the balance of the Gems that exist already, then add new types of sockets (Gem Only, Rune Only, etc.). I thought you were on a really great path with the Nephalem Cube in beta, but that went away really fast. I’d like to see crafting more dependent on materials than gold. The Horadric Cube was such a brilliant and unique addition to Diablo 2 and the artisans are a great addition for Diablo 3, but something still feels hollow about it. Like I’m not crafting things myself.

3) A worthwhile Collector’s edition
This isn’t really a gameplay thing, I guess…but the Collector’s Edition for Mists of Pandaria, and Heart of the Swarm were, to put it nicely, disappointing. I’ve seen more importance placed on the in-game glitter lately than effort toward creating a tangible bonus to really make people want to pay that premium.

4) A reasonable venue to trade things (the hard way) since we’re not going to have any other choice (according to the EULA)
I don’t know what your plans are beyond the very specific “On March 18, 2014 the auction house will be shut down” statement, but I’m sure you realize people are still going to want to buy/sell/trade with one another for other in-game items and gold. It would be very nice if there was an elegant trading method available to players to exchange things within the game. A chat channel of some kind where items can be easily linked is a good start, but I think you can do better than that, even.

Whatever it is, please don’t just leave people to their own devices. Then all we’ll ever see is advertisement spam from both players and the goldfarms. This will make people hate you and this game, and as much as I don’t agree with a lot of the decisions you have collectively made recently, I really don’t want to see that happen. I want to enjoy this game, I want to see other people enjoy this game and I want to see it live in perpetuity the way Diablo 2 does to this day.

Help us help you. Seriously.

Rogue Legacy. Rogue freaking legacy.

So, let me break this down, a 2D sidescrolling platformer roguelike action RPG with randomly-generated metroidvania castles and long-term upgrade progression of your skills, equipment, and character classes– of which you get to choose a new one each time you die.

It’s a mouthful, and it’s amazing.

I finally finished Rogue Legacy a couple weeks ago and despite the fact that it is outrageously difficult and time consuming, I had a blast. The gameplay is as smooth a silk and the story is light but actually kind of fun to expose over time by finding different journals throughout the game.

This would be a perfect candidate for the 3DS, or some other mobile platform. But suffice it to say that this is the first modern game that actually got me to sit and play all the way through at my computer desk with a controller (which I usually prefer to do from the couch, but for this game I didn’t care.)

This game comes highly recommended if you ever enjoyed any part of Metroid, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or [insert randomly-generated roguelike RPG], it ever scratches a little bit of the Diablo itch in certain ways.

It’s a lot of fun, $14.99 is the list price on Steam, I think I got it for 5-ish during the summer sale. I suggest adding it to your wishlist and waiting for a discount, but $15 is still a quite fair price for the amount of fun this game offers.

I wish there was more for me to say about this game, but there really isn’t that much to it. It’s a lot of common, classic components arranged in a very elegant and polished way. (There’s even a sad clown that runs a carnival inside the castle.)

Go play it!

So…Blizzard has been busy lately (they always are) but three major things have happened since I last mentioned them: 1) An expansion to Diablo 3 has finally been announced (thank goodness.) 2) The World of Warcraft TCG (formerly produced by Upper Deck, then by Cryptozoic) has been discontinued. and 3) Blizzard has debuted their own online eTCG, Hearthstone.

For those of you who don’t know, an eTCG is a new format that has actually been around for a while now, but was really popularized when SolForge hit the scene on Kickstarter. It’s a trading card game, like Magic the Gathering or World of Warcraft TCG, but made online, where you can play the game, collect and ostensibly trade cards (we’re still waiting for this one, SolForge…) but NOT like Magic the Gathering Online where imaginary digital cards cost exactly the same per-pack as physical real-life product and the game isn’t tied to a real-life product that can’t be hotfixed (a particular card too abusable? They can nerf it.)

My initial impressions of HearthStone  are mostly positive overall. I really hope this game makes it to Android soon because I would play the hell out of it on the go. It is basically WoW TCG “lite”, you have a hero, class-specific cards, and each hero has a special power you can use once per turn. Unlike most physical TCGs, you have only a 30-card deck, and your resource “pool” increases by 1 automatically every turn, rather than having to play resource cards or “land” from one’s deck. This is a very nice feature, and a modern solution to the long-time trouble of getting “mana-screwed” while still retaining a strict “X resources per turn” model (which I actually enjoy very much as a core concept in a card game)

So I’ll just kind of rehash what I think are the strengths and weaknesses of what I see and you can see for yourself when it launches. If I understand correctly, the final game will be free to play, and you can buy cards only if you really want to.

Good:
– Getting one resource per turn up to 10 automatically so you don’t have to fuss with playing them from your deck. I am really glad card games are going in this direction and even though I liked the way quests functioned in WoW TCG, it really does streamline things.
– Also, playing online with people is great because it’s really difficult for me to get out to draft usually. The Arena mode is a brilliant interpretation of this format and doesn’t require you to play all your games in one sitting.
– The lights and sounds and overall feel of the game is very warm and inviting. The little touches have really been polished and it goes a long way.
– The card crafting system isn’t something I have tried yet, but in theory I think it is really brilliant. Have a ton of common cards you can’t use any more of? Disenchant them into “dust” and spend that dust to create specific cards that you don’t have yet.

Maybe not so Good:
– Faction division in the cards is simply not present. As a Human Mage, I can play Troll and Orc “minions” all day long. That feels wrong, or at the very least, thematically awkward.
– Also, why did they have to change all the keywords from WoW TCG? They kept the art, so why not preserve all the nomenclature that most of the players already know? “Defender” is now “Taunt”, “Haste/Ferocity” is now “Charge”, “When ___ enters play” is now “Battlecry” (okay that one is a better solution…but you get my point.)
– All heroes have the same health total. I hope that is something they change in the future when they have more variety in the heroes you can use, each with different powers, etc, because I’m sure balance is absolutely critical in this infancy stage of the game. But as it is right now, (coming off the WoW TCG probably isn’t helping this perspective) seeing Warriors and Priests with the same health total feels weird.
– I am also not quite a fan of the scarcity with which one can acquire new cards just by playing. Sure, they have a daily quest you can do for a 40 gold reward. But it costs 100 gold to buy a 5-card pack, and 150 gold to play in the arena. Even Solforge lets you get 3 reward packs a day and enough credit to buy about 3-4 more. Sure those packs are usually only 3 cards apiece (unless you get lucky and get a premium 8-card pack, and I am not sure how or why I seem to get them sometimes) but still, that’s a lot more overall and it feels much more rewarding. I know you want people to pay to play but dial it back just a little, guys? Even just tweaking it up to 50 Gold per quest would be a dramatic improvement, and the 5 gold for winning 5 games thing…It’s better than nothing but it is so little that it’s like a cruel joke. Maybe another 40 per 5 wins would help tip that balance.

Bad:
– The death of WoW TCG directly after a very successful expansion release. I get it guys, you’re a for-profit company. I understand. You wanted to kill the TCG to drive people toward Hearthstone because eTCGs are THE FUTURE. But seriously…dick move, man. Both could have lived together in harmony, and you had a perfect opportunity for random inserts with codes to give you Hearthstone cards, or better yet to CRAFT THEM. I feel bad for Cryptozoic because they were doing an awesome job with it since they took over the mess that Upperdeck left behind, and then they get the shaft. At least they have an ace up their sleeve. Hex looks like it is going to be wildly successful.
– (And another thing, can you freaking greenlight Cryptozoic to release Clash of Champions already? ffs man the game’s been ready to go since, like, last year.)

[/rant]

Haven’t seen any gameplay videos of the Hearthstone Arena, yet? Why not Fidasaind, the caffeinated gamer? Who visited me last weekend to give it a shot while he waits for his beta key to arrive!