Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 7 - Part 6

Could it be, we've finally found the end of scenario 7 of the Keepers Campaign. Watch the epic finale and see us move onward into the next scenario.

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This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
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~ DaemonVirus

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 7 - Part 2

Uh oh, we're getting close to the end of what I have already recorded from months ago. I'm going to have to start recording new videos again soon with my continuation of this fantastically amazing game!

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This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus

Hammerwatch With The Wife

Hey everyone, this video is a little late as it was made back in December, but it's definitely better late than never... right? Carley agreed to play some Hammerwatch with me for not the first time, believe it or not. We've had fun with this game before and I definitely look forward to continuing to play this again in the future.

~ DaemonVirus


Back to Livestream page

=== Mobile Game Review -- Hustle Castle - Management - 7.5/10 ===

I started playing Hustle Castle some time ago and couldn't have been happier at the time when I first started because everything was so similar to Fallout Shelter. Hustle Castle really had a similar vibe right off the bat, but I did enjoy the different style of combat which gave me more of a "tactical" feeling about the game that I didn't get from Fallout Shelter.

At first, I thought Hustle Castle had a better combat system... but as I've played more and more, I've slowly realized that it just doesn't hold up that well. The combat slowly turns into more and more of "who has the better items of the single best strategy" sort of thing. In a perfect world, without a way to outplay an opponent with skill, there needs to be a way to counter each strategy... but that just isn't the case with this game. Quite simply, if you try to do more fun things and change up your build, you'll just lose to whatever the strongest strategy is, which is usually some sort of silly continuously resurrecting some really powerful tanks. The only way I've found to reliably counter strategies is to just be stronger than your opponent and/or have better items.

There is a little bit more which can be done with the combat in Hustle Castle which MAY be able to sway thing in your favour by upgrading spells and bringing them into combat with you. There is a selection of spells including one to damage a random enemy, one to heal your most damaged character, and one to increase the damage of all your troops for a few seconds. These spells can be very powerful when used properly, though I still tend to find that the combat relies much more on how powerful your units are rather than any sort of strategy involved.

Of course any time you leave the game for a while and then come back to it you'll get a lovely update on any attacks which have been done against your castle and the result of them whether it was a win or a loss and you can even watch the combat replay if you want to see exactly how the fight went.

All of these combats are found through the world map which allows the player to continue along the "campaign" trail with each area unlocked having a selection of opponents who can be battled whenever you wish. Once you defeat another player on the map one time, their castle will disappear and be replaced some time later with a new one from another player. After some time, an option will appear which will allow an opponent to be "re-rolled" with another player who may be at a higher/lower/equal level.

Besides the campaign and battling other players there are a couple other options available to keep you busy in the game including a portal which opens up every once in a while which gives increasingly difficult levels of battles that can be done to gain more soul shards which can then be traded in for rewards such as epic items and resources. I have personally found the portal to be quite fun while it's open and then the game slows down a lot with not as much to do while it is closed.

If not busy doing portal fights there is an arena system which lets you put your best combinations of troops up against those of other players in a tournament-style system where you earn more points depending on who you choose to fight and win against. So far I have only managed to be in tournaments where I can perform reasonably average, but I've never been able to win because there's always another few players who have really powerful combinations of units or who are at a much higher level.

Winning one of these tournaments rewards the player with a chest which would have....... I'm not really sure, seeing as I've never won, but I assume there are some pretty good rewards in these things. However, competing in these tournaments does provide another type of resource which can be traded in for more epic and unique items.

Speaking of chests, there are a bunch of different chests which can be earned in Hustle Castle which have varying types of rewards inside of them including resources and items which can them be used to equip your characters whether that is for fighting or for making more resources faster.

Opening chests is also a very simple and kind of fun process of hitting the next open button which continues to open more chests as long as you have another chest to open. I don't know what it is about opening chests of random rewards that's so much fun even when 90% of them don't have anything useful in them.

Moving away from the combat system, there is some castle management which needs to be done while you're not out fighting monsters or other players. In this game, that comes down to building what rooms are available and upgrading them whenever possible. The castle rooms produce resources as time goes on which can be used to construct more rooms or upgrade existing ones depending on what is available at your current player level. One one hand, this is nice because there is a clear build path, but on the other hand I don't like it because there's no customization or learning curve to it besides "I better make this because it's available to me." Definitely ups and down on the castle management depending on how much customization and learning you like in your games.

My personal thoughts on Hustle Castle are quite mixed. I really like how well made the game is and how fluid the combat system is as well as the simplicity of the castle management. As far as a long-term game goes... this one falls flat just like all the other idle-simulation type games out there. Once you get far enough into the game you start having to save up so much resources that the player loses interest in waiting before being able to do things again. There's a great start to this game which really gets you into it, but with the usual idle-roadblocks I found myself losing interest. Granted, usually I lose interest because the wait is too long and there isn't really anything to progress to after a while... only this time my loss of interest wasn't because I didn't have anything to progress to; I lost interest because I hit a wall where the only solution was either to spend real money, or to wait days or weeks before being able to upgrade enough to make any real progress.


Summary

Gameplay: Being the most important part of a GAME, I thought the actual gameplay was quite fun right off the bat up until I wasn't able to progress any further without waiting for really long times due to needing resources and upgrades and training times before being strong enough to get past certain areas and boss fights.

Sound: There's not much of note to the sound design to this game. All the noises fit well without being annoying and the music is nice to listen to, but playing the game without any sound doesn't really make any difference to the enjoyability especially when only logging in momentarity to collect resources and then turn off the game.

Replayability: As the game went on, my interest in continuing to open the game went down and down with the increased upgrade and resource colletion times.

Bonus: If you enjoyed Fallout Shelter, this game has some similar aspects which will feel familiar and fun.

SCORE: I'm giving Hustle Castle 7.5/10. It's better than many other idle-type games out there with having more to do and being more interactive. The biggest downside for me is that it continues to suffer from the same problem as all the others where wait times get way too long without spending real money which I feel with this type of game would just go to waste.

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 6 - Part 6

Looks like we're starting to get overwhelmed by this silly teleportation point right next to our starting town. We might have to give this location up and move somewhere else. Another short part for you this time.

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This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 6 - Part 2

Our adventure continues with part 2 of scenario 6. This is a large map and we're not in a great position right now, will be be able to pull through without restarting?

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This campaign and more can be found on my Age of Wonders page.

Check out more of my stuff!
- On YouTube
- On Twitch
- On Twitter

~ DaemonVirus

Livestream Night! =12=

Hey everybody, I'll be going live tonight with an attempt to win my first regular run of Runers followed by some State of Decay 2. Come join me and chat, hangout, or lurk. ^_^

www.twitch.tv/DaemonVirus1

I'm always open to suggestions if you have any ideas which might improve my stream.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

Age of Wonders -- Keepers Scenario 4.3 - Part 1

Alright, so this is the first time I'm doing this and I expect this to be a continuing thing in the future. New special posts for each video upload!

If you've been following with the rest of my uploads for Age of Wonders so far, you'll notice that this is THE THIRD time I've restarted this scenario. Obviously things haven't been going so well with this one if we've been stuck on it for so long. As it turns out... dragons are difficult to keep up with and kill when they're being produced in large numbers.

Hopefully this time is the last time we have to restart this level. I'll be skipping some of the gameplay so that you don't have to watch the same early and boring things going on AGAIN. Enjoy!

- You can find a directory of this video and more on the Age of Wonders page.

- Check out more of my videos directly on YouTube.

~ Kyle Welykholowa / DaemonVirus

=== Crazy Taxi Tycoon - Mobile Game Review, Idle Action - 5/10 ===

     Welcome to Crazy Taxi Tycoon. If you're interested in finding a good idle game where you actually have to do a little bit of something to progress through the game... this one isn't an awful option. While not the most amazing game I've played, it's also not a terrible game.

     The gameplay of Crazy Taxi involves looking at a space which cannot be moved and clicking on icons as they come up. Every time you click an icon, one of your cars is sent to the customer who is then driven to their destination. The more crazy the taxi is during the drive, the more bonus money you get at the end of each trip. As this is an idle game, there is also a little bit of income which is made while the game is turned off based on how upgraded your taxis are.

     Once you have upgraded your taxis enough to unlock all the drivers for the area you are moved on to the next area where you are able to make more money than the previous area. There are many different drivers to unlock throughout the game, all of which have different personalities and things... though that doesn't really come into play at all as you mostly only see each person once and assign them to a car, then continue on with your day.

     As with most other idle games, there is some form of bonus currency sort of thing which you get for special events or watching videos or just for time passing. In this case, you get scratch cards.

     From these scratch cards and from upgrading vehicles, you can get driver's licenses which can be used to upgrade each driver once you have enough of them for a certain character. This makes the then upgraded character make more money.

     This game isn't awful; it's actually very well programmed and it looks quite nice. The thing that bothers me about this game is that I'm not captivated by the gameplay. There doesn't really seem to be any reason to make money offline except that every once in a while you have to put the game down and go do things in real life. Playing the game isn't really much different either; tap icon, car drives itself to the locations, you make money and move on. There really isn't much else for me to say about this game. I'm not trying to be hard on Crazy Taxi, but there just isn't much here. I suppose if you like following stories then you might be interested in seeing this game to the end.

     For this reason, I'm giving Crazy Taxi Tycoon a 5/10. It's not an interesting game, but it is well designed and I can see other people liking it even though I don't. For people who have similar interests as myself, I wouldn't recommend this game. For other people who are interested in mindless games and not quite as strict on whether a game is engaging or not, I would say to try this game before you take my word for it.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Campaign Clicker - Mobile Game Review, Idle Clicker - 5/10 ===

     Continuing my rampage of playing through games and reviewing them brings us today to Campaign Clicker. I'm always on the hunt for a good idle game I can open up every once in a while, make some progress and leave it until the next time I'm free for a while. This game brings a new option to the table one where the game resets itself every 24 hours. You get bonuses based on how well you did during the last "campaign" whenever a new campaign begins. On one hand, I love this idea, but on the other... if you don't have time to check up on your game pretty often, it sort of defeats the purpose of being an "idle" game in my opinion.

     Throughout each campaign you can either run as a republican or democrat and you can pick your candidate from a list of people whom you've unlocked. This is really just a cosmetic difference and if you're actually interested in politics and platforms and things, each candidate will have different speeches they run through during the campaign which you can read... or skip... or just not pay attention to whatsoever because it makes absolutely no difference.

     I don't mind this game, but as I'm not interested in politics (especially in the United States) I found my attention and interest in this game dwindled VERY quickly. I don't have a lot to say about this game because I wasn't interested in it long enough to get very far into it. In fact, I didn't make it through one 24-hour campaign. It has all the building blocks of an idle clicker game where click and bunch, then upgrade your abilities so you can click better and even to get more during the times when you're not directly playing.

     Personally, I don't think politics and games make a good match. I'm sure there are some instances where there are some really good games, but on the list of idle clicker games, this one ends up as a 5/10 for me. It's not engaging enough or of an interesting enough topic to keep my attention (I actually find the subject matter to be rather off-putting). I'm also not really a fan of the idea that I HAVE to start over again from the beginning every 24-hour period. If you want to give this a try, it seems like it works well with no bugs or issues, but if you're looking for something more interesting I'd recommend to give this one a pass.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Caught Red-Pawed ===

     Alright, so Isabelle is down for a nap and I'm sitting on the couch playing Dying Light on the Xbox and into the living room from the kitchen runs Furgle and he immediately picks up the doll I had left on the floor for Isabelle to play with. I looked at him and said "What do you think you're doing?" He immediately sits and looks at me, but doesn't put down the doll. 

     So here I am thinking he's adorable and waiting for him to put the toy down, but no... he keep holding onto the toy as though it's his own to play with now.

     I got up and slowly took the toy from him by pulling gently and he let go very gingerly in the cutest way possible. I don't know what we did with this dog, but wow is he ever adorable with pretty much everything he does. Him doing things like this is why I can never stay mad at him no matter what trouble he gets into.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== World Kindness Day ===

     I'm honestly unsure how I feel that we have designated a World Kindness Day. That makes it sound like we're never nice to each other on any other day... or that we need some kind of excuse to actually be nice to the people around us.

     Don't get me wrong, I think it's great for people to show respect to others and I wouldn't want to take something like that from the world, but I do question whether it's something we should truly need. Wouldn't the world be perfect if we could all be nice to each other all the time?

     Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of people who are driven by a desire to be successful in some way; whether that means being rich, or powerful, or whatever else a person wants which would make them feel like an accomplished person. And when these factors come into play, we end up with a lot of people who would much rather treat others quite poorly for their own gain.

Well, here's hoping we can find some balance in the world.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

=== Age of Wonders - Game Review, Turn-based Strategy - 10/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
If you like turn-based strategy, whether it's in a table top game or a video game, Age of Wonders is at the top of the list.

Released: October 31, 1999
Price: $6.49 CAD
Genre: Turn-Based Strategy

     Age of Wonders was released back in 1999, so we're getting pretty close to the grand 20-year mark in age. For such an old game, you might think it would look pretty aged and unable to hold up to present-day gaming. In my opinion, this game is a classic that is still plenty of fun to play and has a great art-style that still looks great even to this day. If you go back to the original pictures of this game before it was released, the art is so simple and would easily have gotten old pretty quick. Thankfully they decided to go in a bit of a different direction which I think looks like someone painted it by hand; this sort of painted-looking art-style is definitely my favourite. Of course the visuals are important when deciding whether or not to play a game, but there's so much more to talk about.

     The gameplay is turn-based; if you're really into board games, this will feel just like playing a board game where everybody takes a turn one at a time to plan out their strategy and execute their plan of action to the best of their ability. There are some options such as having the map already explored, whether or not to have your leader as a playable character in the game, and whether the turns are taken simultaneously or one at a time. Personally, I prefer to have to explore everything on my own, have a leader, and have turns played one at a time; though every once in a while I change it up for fun.

     Games can be a little as 2-players all the way up to 12 with each player playing a different race; each of which have different advantages and disadvantages. Each game revolves around capturing cities and other landmarks, then using the income from those sources to create the right mixture of units to eliminate your opponents. If you've ever played a turn-based combat game, you may already understand how each attack has a chance to hit or miss. If you really enjoy the strategy of combat, you can choose to control each battle yourself, or have the game automatically generate an outcome for you. Obviously this speeds up the game to have it decide on an outcome for you, but the system has a certain way of doing its calculations which can sometimes give you a completely different outcome from controlling the battle on your own. One example is if you're trying to protect a unit that is low on health, you can choose to have that unit run away on your own, but the computer-generated outcome will run that unit headlong into battle even on 1 health point.

     Throughout the game you also have to choose what spells to research to help tip the scales in your favour. Your leader and additional heroes which join you during the course of the game may or may not have the ability to cast spells. These leaders and heroes have an amount of spell points which get refreshed at the beginning of each new turn and from this they can cast spells which each cost a number of spell points. Choices of spells can change the state of the overworld map, enchant units to make them stronger, or can be used in battle to turn the tides in an otherwise unwinnable situation.

     If you can't tell, I absolutely love this game and could go on and on about all the great qualities forever, but unfortunately at some point I have to acknowledge the grit of the game. There are some points which can be a little bit painful either due to the age of the game or due to design. Depending on how much time you have, you may enjoy watching all the animations. Some days I like having a relaxing time watching the animations go on, but they can be a little bit slow sometimes which makes an already long game take even longer to play. You can be playing just one map for an entire month without proceeding to the next scenario. This is why I tend to play while running a program which speeds up the game. My only other real gripe about Age of Wonders is that it has a habit of crashing while playing in any kind of windowed mode. This usually isn't a bad thing as I prefer to play on true fullscreen anyways, but there is another problem where if you tab out of the game and tab back in, it likes to either crash or not open back up... which can make it difficult if you have other things going on while you want to play some Age of Wonders. This makes you have to plan sessions to play rather than just opening it up whenever for a bit while doing other things.

     Overall, even with the negatives of this game, I have to give Age of Wonders 10 / 10 because it's just so amazing for me. I highly recommend getting this game and playing through it if you're into strategy. The Age of Wonders games are my favourite turn-based strategy series so far (though I haven't managed to start playing the new Age of wonders III yet).

     If you're interested in seeing some gameplay, you can head over to my Age of Wonders Gameplay page or you can watch my videos directly on my YouTube channel TheDaemonVirus.

~ Kyle Welykholowa

My First Starcraft Cast! - DaemonVirus (Zerg) vs Robertoss (Protoss)

     Hey everybody, this is the first Starcraft cast I've ever done, so it's not exactly AWESOME quality. It's a pretty straightforward game, but it was certainly fun for me to play.

     I wanted to be recording a new song this week, but instead I'll be editing and posting some of these coming up... seeing as in a couple days I'll be getting my wisdom teeth removed so I probably won't be able to sing for a little bit.