Publishing: The Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening in HD on mobile devices – Kickstarter

Explore the Great Pyramid and SOLVE the Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening in HD on mobile devices and more!

Jeff and Karen Tobler, along with Charlie and Marta Tobler, their son and daughter in law, are “rebuilding” the Giza Sphinx and Great Pyramid — one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — in enhanced HD resolution in newly rendered, breathtaking environments. The adventuring family has turned to Kickstarter to fund their epic Historical Egyptian adventure re-make.

MOSELLE (SAINT LOUIS), Missouri, Nov 1, 2017 — Old World Studios announced the launch of Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening. Husband and wife teams, Jeff and Karen Tobler, along with Charlie and Marta Tobler, have turned to Kickstarter (https://riddleofthesphinx.com/kickstarter-launch) to fund this epic Egyptian adventure.

Riddle of the Sphinx is an epic adventure game that takes the player through the compelling archaeological ruins and history of ancient Egypt while uncovering age-old mysteries surrounding the Great Pyramid and Sphinx.  Players of all ages will have access to amazing life-like 3D environments in this larger than life archaeological adventure game.

Set within and around the ancient Egyptian monuments, Riddle of the Sphinx is backed by years of extensive research and painstaking recreation of the existing Giza Plateau, Great Sphinx, and Great Pyramid — one of the existing Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Major levels of the game involve exploring real-life archaeological finds, then taking those discoveries to the next level. Players assume their role as close friend and confidant of famous archaeologist Sir Gil Blythe Geoffreys as he excavates the site of the Sphinx. The tale begins as Sir Geoffreys realizes he has unwittingly unleashed an ancient curse while translating a key scroll. Sir Geoffreys dies, and the scroll mysteriously disappears. The player’s task is to locate the missing scroll, finish Sir Geoffrey’s translation, and solve the time-worn puzzle before . . . well, we won’t spoil the intricately woven plot.

What took the ancient Egyptians half a million workers and decades of grueling manual labor to complete, Jeff and Karen originally completed in just under 6 years. But now, they are utilizing the latest in 3d rendering software to create absolutely stunning settings for the game’s epic storyline, bringing an even more realistic immersive experience to exploring the Sphinx and Great Pyramid, as well as the huge scope of historical discoveries including hidden corridors, lost tombs, and secret chambers that tie to a larger mystery… a riddle.

“One aspect of Riddle of the Sphinx that intrigued me was the age-range of players who were impacted. It surprised us that parents were playing with their children, older house-bound players could ‘escape’ through the game and even long-distance engaged couples played over the phone. It was really encouraging that Riddle of the Sphinx was the tool for people to share time with each other and create lasting memories. We are excited to see new relationships forged and more memories made with the new real-time 3d version,” said Karen Tobler, Co-Creator of Riddle of the Sphinx.

“Riddle of the Sphinx is the ultimate Egyptian adventure game with realistic megalithic monuments, lost tombs, hidden corridors, and sacred artifacts pointing to solving the Riddle of the Sphinx… it’s a game where everyone can become the adventuring archaeologist that we all secretly want to be,” shared Jeff Tobler, co-developer of Riddle of the Sphinx.

Old World Studios is offering unique Kickstarter pledge rewards to backers of the Riddle of the Sphinx: The Awakening.

For more information visit https://riddleofthesphinx.com/ or their Kickstarter campaign https://riddleofthesphinx.com/kickstarter-launch

The Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/riddleofthesphinxgame/

About Old World Studios

Old World Studios is the adventure game division of LifeTree Group, LLC (originally Omni Creative Group, Int’l). In 1994, the husband-wife team, Jeff, and Karen Tobler began work on Riddle of the Sphinx, a project that started as a means to virtually explore the Giza Plateau, Great Sphinx, and Great Pyramid. The story grew to include the fulfillment of the many theories, lore, and myths of secret chambers, hidden corridors, and lost treasure associated with the Great Pyramid — the response was phenomenal! Riddle of the Sphinx and its sequel The Omega Stone continue to be sold and played worldwide.

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Preview: Ama’s Lullaby (PC) ~ Explore and Hack

Kickstarter Page

Today I want to talk about a game that has still a Kickstarter running. The name of the game is Ama’s Lullaby and I have to thank the developer for notifying me about it since this game shows some great promise. This game is an adventure and puzzle game. But, enough stalling, let’s take a look at the currently released material. And as usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the article. 

 

What is this game?

Ama’s Lullaby is a point-and-click adventure game taking place in a cyberpunk environment. In the shoes of Ama, a high potential teenager, you will explore an off-world colony created by machines. By using her laptop’s command-line based system you will be able to hack any network of the city. But every action will have consequences, and Ama will become an easy prey once her identity is unveiled.

That’s the 50-word description the developer gives. As a student in network engineering and a big fan of adventure games, this premise interests me a whole lot. I’m going to be honest, right away. I wish there was a demo of this game already. I want this game in my life, like right now.

From what I have seen in the trailer footage, this game has quite interesting gameplay. But I’m going more in-depth in the next section of my article.

My thoughts

The game features very pretty pre-rendered environments. That was something that caught me off guard when I saw the teasers. If this is the alpha stage of the game, consider me hyped. This game is going to look amazing if it has the quality from the teasers throughout the game.

What amazes me more, is that this game is a one-man project. I have a lot of respect for people who create their own games and use mostly or all original assets and content. Speaking from own experience, it’s not easy to create a game from scratch. It requires a lot of work and a lot of dedication.

I admire the honesty of the creator on the Kickstarter. He tells the whole story of the development of the game. He admits trying to get this game from the ground once in the past, but he didn’t succeed. Admitting failure isn’t always easy to do, but the professional way he does it is worth its weight in gold.

In any case, let’s talk about the game again. Something that looks really interesting is the hacking mechanic. In this game, you can also get hacked. And that’s something that made me smile. That mechanic is going to make the game for me. Since it adds that dash of realism to the game that I miss in the hacking mini-games I played in the past.

This game is going to have dialogue trees. This is something I expect more in a RPG-game. But, it might give some interesting puzzles in this game. There are also going to be fight scenes. Here is me hoping that the game doesn’t rely on QTE (quick time events) for the battles.

The game draws its inspiration from Bladerunner in a way. Fun fact, the game is going to be released in 2019. That’s the year the movie was set in too, in a similar ship. Also, taking inspiration from any movie with my favorite actor Harrison Ford is a plus in my book.

Kickstarter

So, at the moment of writing, the game’s Kickstarter is still running. In 12 days, the Kickstarter will be closed. So, if you are interested in seeing this game before everybody else OR supporting this game, go to the Kickstarter page right now!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1005143815/amas-lullaby-a-point-and-click-game-in-a-cyberpunk

 There are also a lot of updates written by the developer and more video’s to see the progress of the game. So, go and have a look to that! I’m keeping an eye on the game as well. Since this game looks really interesting. I can’t wait to see where this game goes. If there is interesting news, I’ll tweet it out! Here are the links to their social media:

Facebook & Twitter

If you still have any questions about the game, go to their social media and ask a question. The developer will reply to your question.

To wrap this article up, I think I have to say in conclusion that this game has a lot of potential. Since it’s a point-&-click adventure game. And those aren’t made often. I can’t wait to see more of this game. Since what I have seen so far, is really good. All the concept art and trailers are getting me hyped!

So, that’s everything I wanted to say about this game. I hope you enjoyed reading this article as much as I enjoyed writing this article. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then; take care and have a great rest of your day!

Review: Delver (PC – Steam) ~ Thou Shall Explore!

Official website – Steam store page

As a kid I always dreamed of running around in caves and dungeons to explore for loot. I even wrote some stories about it. And my favorite genre of gaming has a lot to do with it. I love myself some great adventure games. But does Delver deliver? How good is it actually? It’s really cheap on Steam and is it worth buying this game while it’s developing? That’s what I’m going to answer today while playing the new October 2013 update. This review might be shorter than my usual reviews since this game has no of every element I usually use to review. We shall see how it turns out. Anyway, let me know in the comments your thoughts about this game and/or this review. 

Let’s “delve” into this!

The game starts off on a path right to the dungeon. The cool thing is, as you die, you don’t have to start completely from square one. You can buy things from the stores. Of course, that depends on how much gold you have obtained from your last run. But here is a flaw in the game that surely will be patched in a future update. I don’t see how much gold I have left. So yeah, that’s annoying. 

The game has a small story, if I can remember correctly. At the start, there are two diary entries you can collect. Yet, starting a new game, I noticed that it’s just some hints. So, according to what I know, this game has no real story. And that isn’t a loss since this game benefits from this. Since each floor and dungeon is randomized.

The game is all about exploring the dungeon. And not about that you should save a princess or something. The goal is to get to the bottom floor and get an orb. With this orb you can escape again. Honestly, I haven’t yet been able to return with the orb.

Great, greater and greatest!

While it adds to the atmosphere of this game, this can become annoying. Like you see in the screenshot, the game is pretty dark. If you are in a well lite room, you might not see many things because of the light. I truly advise playing this game in a somewhat darker room.

The controls are excellent. I never felt that it was the game’s fault of a death. Deaths are permanent! So if you die, you are dead. No respawning, no loot drops. Nothing, only your gold. And this makes for a great challenge. Once you have some great stuff, you don’t want to die. You fight on.

Something I also really like is how the loot works. You don’t get better loot from the stronger enemies. No, you can get a better sword by killing a simple bat. Speaking about bats and flying enemies, there is a problem with them. Their hit box seems to bite a bit off. This causes some moments where I clearly hit the bat yet, it took no damage.

A great addition to this update is how the game now displays status effects, and it’s timer. When you drink a random potion, you now know what it means when the game tells you “you feel warm”. Also, the leveling up system is a great thing. I feel that it’s more fine-tuned than before the update. And I really like it. The stats aren’t overly difficult. They are straight forward. For example, a weapon will say that it can do from 5 to 10 damage. So, if you level up your attack stat, you will easily do the most damage possible with that given weapon.

Managing the inventory is a joy. You need to be on a safe spot since the inventory, like Minecraft, doesn’t pause the game. And dear developer, when you pause a game, the music should stop as well. Anyway, the dragging around of items is a blast. And the ability to pick up items while being in the inventory screen and drag it into it. Great!

Not that easy!

Here is another complaint. The picking up of items from the ground with your action key is a bit frustrating. I had several moments where it didn’t pick up at all. Since there seems to be a set region to be able to pick it up.

The fact that you don’t regenerate health is great. It makes the game more tense. I had many moments where I needed to hide for enemies.

But let’s leave it at that for the gameplay. I haven’t covered it all, but hey, if you’re interested, go check out the game. Okay, let’s look at the length of this review… Wow, I have talked more about it than I expected, and I have a few things left to say. Okay, less stalling more reviewing!

The artwork of this game is beautiful! I really like the art style they went with here. Retro graphics and great animations give this game a different look and sets it apart from all the others. This game really sucks me in to its great gameplay and the visuals actually convinced me to buy the game.

The length might not be that long, but the replay value is extremely high. Since it’s always randomized. In addition to that, the game is a challenge. A real challenge. You can be in luck and get pretty deep into the dungeon. (If needed, this is a moment to get your mind out of the gutter). Or you can have though luck and die really soon.

Advice that I would give the developer too is that there should be more music tracks. The sound and everything is amazing yet, I think there are a handful of music tracks, and it would be a lot better if there were more.

So, I’ll leave it at this note. Let’s go to the conclusion!

Conclusion

The good:

+ Unique gameplay.

+ Great artwork.

+ High replay value.

+ No annoying story to bother you.

+ Great challenge.

+ Randomized dungeons.

The bad:

– More music would be great.

– There are a few kinks to work out with the flying enemies.

– Picking up objects is a tad bit frustrating.

Conclusion:

In my reviews I don’t cover every single thing about the game. Like in this review I didn’t talk about the AI, map system, magic and so on and so forth. With the intention that if you are interested, that you try it out for yourself and that there are still things to learn about the game while you play it. Like the traps.

This game really benefits from playing it yourself. I really like it and often in study breaks for college I play a quick round of Delver. Like a floor or 5… I really need to pay attention with it since when it sucks you in, it won’t let you go easily.

With some more work, this game will become a gem that everyone should play. I truly had trouble finding bad things about this game. But the things I found are flaws that can be patched. And the music is great, yet more music would be lovely. Thanks for reading and until the next time!

Score: 90 / 100

Review: Beastie Bay (Android) review ~ Let’s go exploring.

Wiki page of this game

Alright guys, let’s go for a game on a platform I never expect to create reviews on. I wrote a review on this game before, but that was rather summing up the good and bad parts in a list. But I’m going to expand on my forum review of this game, and I’m going to give it a proper full review now that I played it even more. This game is free on the Android Market and the App Store and is made by the Japanese developer KarioSoft who is also known for great games like Game Dev Story. This game really took me many times back to my tablet. Is this game my guilty pleasure or is it actually good and fun to play? Let’s dive right into Beastie Bay.

What is this game?

Saying that this is an adventure game, I would tell you that you are correct. You would be right too if you said it’s a simulator. But I would also agree if you say it’s an RPG. This game covers multiple genres quite nicely.

The gameplay is extremely well and is actually pretty deep for a mobile game. At the start you get the basics explained and from there you can discover the game on your own. I love it how games do that, leave things up for the community or you to discover.

But one complaint I have is that the controls to place buildings are a bit uneasy. Even the cursor pad you get doesn’t help that much since it can get annoying to work with. You have to play the game to understand what I mean here, but the controls are the best they can get, but they don’t 100% work.

But for a mobile game it’s impressive how they get all these controls on a touchscreen without cluttering up the UI too much. I’m blown away that I feel like my complaint is such a nitpick that you actually can overlook it.

But back to the gameplay. You need to survive. It wasn’t too clear at the start to me that you needed to place your farms close to your allies and other villagers, or they don’t get harvested. Did I lose a lot of wood because of that? And here comes one major complaint with this game.

When your island grows, you can set shops for villagers of nearby islands to come and buy things. But if that villager finds wood, it doesn’t go to your resource pile. Nope, it goes to their shop. For that reason, I have to recruit a lot of new allies to just surround them with tree farms. This is something that the developers easily could improve on.

Explore the seven seas.

I like exploring as much as the next guy, but in this game, it’s extremely limited. You actually give orders to the AI to explore a certain area. And actually, it works. When you encounter an enemy you can start fighting the enemy in a sort of Final Fantasy-ish battle.

This is extremely fun and adds more depth to the game. But here we bump into the “not so free” part of this game. To remove level caps in the game, you’ll need a lot of golden coins. You barely ever get them in the game, sometimes by just playing, but you can get a lot by actually buying them with real hard cash.

But if you are in for some grinding, there is a way how you can get many coins easily, but that’ll take up sometime. And I’ll leave that up to you guys to figure out by yourself.

The story is actually not present in this game. You are stranded on an island together with your ally, and you go and explore and try to survive. And somehow, this game doesn’t need a story. This game is pretty fine how it is.

The gameplay might be simple, but it’s not easy. Some dungeons and area’s will get difficult really quick.  Also, some parts of the game really made me scratch my head in confusion since I didn’t understand how the game wanted me to do.

How good is it really?

With KairoSoft, I notice a sort of tradition. The graphics are extremely well done. They are borrowed from their other titles, but it’s how you recognize them.

But then the music. I swear that there aren’t more than 5 to 6 tracks in the whole game, and you need to listen to one track over and over again. This gets old extremely fast. The sound effects are over the most line the same for many actions and something’s could have used some sound effects in my opinion.

Also, the shops are crazy expensive and the game has so many menus you easily get lost, and you might have to make a to-do list.

In addition to that, trying to capture creatures is a big guessing game which bait they might like. In addition to that, it’s so rare that they actually like that bait, you end up with almost never recruiting allies.

The day and night cycle is actually a pretty nice touch. It made me often rush to a dungeon since I wanted to try to catch a certain creature or defeat one since they gave a lot of XP.

The game is pretty lengthy too. You won’t finish this game in one sitting. I actually advise you to play this game in short bursts, like no longer than an hour or two. Since playing this game for long times can get you bored. This is a game meant to be played in short bursts.

So, I have been talking for quite a while about a mobile game, it’s time to wrap things up before I go running in circles.

Conclusion

The good:

+ Addictive gameplay.

+ Very varied.

+ Extremely well-made controls, with some slight flaws, but they work.

+ This game can be hard here and there but with dedication you will get there.

+ Amazing graphics.

The bad:

– Music and sounds.

– Grinding.

– The difficulty goes up way too fast.

– Sometimes the game is a bit overwhelming.

– Most upgrades and shop items are way too expensive.

Final thoughts: 

This game isn’t for everybody. It’s a game with some flaws. Plus, you need to be able to look over ads. It’s a great game and surely worth a play in my eyes, but it isn’t a big game you would be putting your PS3 down for.

Yet, this game is excellent to play while on the road or waiting for the doctor. You easily see that the developers put their hearts and souls into this game, and they deserve your download.

And that’s everything I wanted to say about this game for now. I want to thank you so much for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in a future article but until then, have a great rest of your day and take care.

Score: 70/100