Author: littlemute

Realm of the Mad God

The character models sort of look like clothed scrotes anyway.

I was flipping through Google Chrome apps and saw this bad boy dubbing itself (as far as I can tell)  as a MMO fantasy shooter(?!).  The first part is bad, but the second parts (the shooter + fantasy bit) was too good not to check out.  It plays like Smash TV and has all the generic fantasy tropes you can imagine.  Of course it’s free, but you can buy shit in game as is the M.O. for every MMO these days.

After playing for a good 40 minutes or so it descended into tedium for me soloing around–especially since quests are for everyone on the map and can get gobbled up faster than you can get there to even see the enemies.  Sure I appreciate the permanent character death when you get shot from all sides, but it started to get tedious.  Then, out of nowhere, I got on what I’ve only heard described as a “RAPE TRAIN” and that made all the difference.  A rape train is a truly massive conglomerate of players, probably 100 – 200 at a time that run along a road way in a map zone as fast as they can shooting everything everywhere.  You can’t even see the enemy mobs that pop up before they are destroyed, let alone grab any loot that drops (you can’t see the ground— there are too many players on scren) unless you get off the train.  As there are  many high-level characters on the train, the mobs that spawn are superlative and give mass amounts of experience– but if you get off the train you can find yourself totally overmatched weeping all alone as you are surrounded and your 50 pixel character tossed into the permadeath pile.

Overall, an interesting game, it’s skill based and is completely unapologetic if you are fat fingering and get stuck between some rocks and killed.  Along with the perma-death, the fact that you can get GOOD at playing the game physically can be appreciated.  The game would be completely overlooked if it wasn’t in the browser, but it is, and it makes a pretty cool pick up game.

Mraakbowl Finals: Goatseed 2, Skinny Dippers 1

We got to see a lot of this action during the game.

Ah Nuffle.  How you tease and cajole with your spins of the dice and then crush with impunity at your fickle whims.  Chaos had their way with the Skaven in the Mraakbowl final and the dice chose Khorne  and the gang over the children of the Horned Rat— by a landslide.  Though the score was close, the butchers bill by the end of the second half was fairly ridiculous, with only four Skaven players, including a Rat Ogre who couldn’t seem to get himself up off the pitch for most of the game, were able to watch in dejection as one of the Goatseed beastmen ran it into the endzone slow-like surrounded by his stinking, frothing brethren.  The Skaven had a few opportunities to get the ball back, but just couldn’t get the luck when they needed it.  The game almost went into overtime when, on the final turn of the game, a beastman blocked a gutter runner so his team-mate could waltz into the endzone without having to dodge and it came up double skulls and a block result.  Without a reroll, it would have been another half of beatings for the Skaven (and only Nuffle knows what the score would have been).

Hopefully the league was a good time had by all (well, we did have our newb whipping boy in the coach of the Dust Pumpers) and let’s do another one!

Final Standings

  • 1st Goatseed (Chaos)
  • 2nd Skinny Dippers (Skaven)
  • 3rd Atlantis Falcones (Amazons)
  • 4th Mad Dragons (Norse)
  • 5th Avalon Avengers (High Elves)
  • 6th Undead (Dust Pumpers)

Best Scorer

  • Slit Slut – Skinny Dippers

Most Casualties

  • Julius – Avalon Dragons (yes a friggin’ HIGH ELF)

Most Running Yards

  • Athena – Atlantis Falcons

Best Tosser

  • Athena – Atlantis Falcons

Mraakbowl Finals!

The Skinny Dippers (Skaven) and Goatsee (Chaos) made it into the finals of the Mraakbowl.

The Norse team (top seed) was knocked out of the running after a hard fought 4-2 shoot out with the Skaven. While the Norse are arguably the worse team in Blood Bowl, their coach is arguably the best coach in this league to have brought them so far.

The Amazons, in contrast, are one of the better Blood Bowl teams, but just couldn’t stem the tide of Chaos, losing 2-0 in what amounted to a big frown from Nuffle on all of Amazonia and the inevitable questioning by the coach of the dodge skill’s existence if his ladies can’t dodge worth a damn.  Chaos, on the other hand, was dodging up a storm with everyone on the team as if they had greased themselves up with pig-fats.  Shockingly, none of the Chaos team made the leaderboard for most casualties inflicted, a sad state of affairs that will likely be rectified during the Mraakbowl Final.

Stay tuned to see whether or not Nuffle favors the Horned Rat or He who sits on a Brass Throne atop a Mountain of Skulls.

Bulldogs funded!

some sort of ewok/ badger style alien...

Looks like my first Kickstart backing has made it’s mark and is going to press shortly.  While this one worked out, the Kickstart system is essentially ‘pledge to buy it before it exists’ which is a huge risk of something totally sucking ass.  You don’t get charged until the funding goal is met so you’re covered if it doesn’t make it’s funding (and most projects on there don’t).    I think a few lessons from watching this and some other projects–have your shit close to done, if not totally done, so you can show off pieces to people and let them know that “hey this is not just an idea, this is something real, we just need funding to publish it or get through X phase.”  Artwork is also key at the funding stage.  If you can put together some good comps that spark the imagination in people, the cash is probably going to flow pretty well.  One kickstart I saw had a description of “I don’t want anyone to steal the idea” which is silly because HUNDREDS of people have had the same idea and will probably not get it executed.   Needless to say, that had no funding at all.

So I’m looking forward to seeing the Bulldogs book and will be checking Kickstart for good stuff which I’ll post.  The awesome thing is that this system totally circumvents the current publishing system while allowing people to not have to take out big loans or self-fund their (good) ideas.