Kickstarters, Early Access, Free Stuff And Existential Despair.

Last Friday I sat down to do a grab-bag post, then ended up writing about some TV shows I'd been watching instead. I guess that means that, at the time, I must have had several things I wanted to talk about but now, just a few days later, I have no idea what they might have been. 

I haven't thought of anything new worth posting about since then, either. I've got nothing. Still, that never stopped me before. 

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is barely a month away from going into Early Access. Visionary Realms released a forty-seven minute Q&A video that's literally a black screen with a woman in the bottom left corner and a man's head floating over her right shoulder like some kind of ghost-balloon.

I have not watched this video. It is not a thing you watch. 

I did try listening to it instead, leaving it on in the background while I did other things, but I found it impossible to remember anything either of them said even thirty seconds after they'd said it so I gave up. Here it is if you want to try.

Fortunately, some unfortunate staffer at MMOBomb somehow managed to get through the whole thing to pick out the salient points for the uncommitted. They are few. Perhaps the only really interesting note is that there will be an announcement about a Steam version of the game sometime next week, which is now this week, so I look forward to that.

I was very unimpressed by the little I saw of the game in the open weekend a while back but even so I'm still willing to pay a small sum for what will most likely end up being a couple of years of non-subscription access during the EA period. I'm waiting for details of the specific EA packages and confirmation of the cost involved, something I would like to know before the current Pledges go away.

As it stands, you can still pledge, which automatically gets you full EA access. The lowest cost Pledge is $50. It's hard to imagine the basic EA access will be more than that but it could be less. Also, if there are going to be separate clients/logins for the Visionary Realms client and the Steam client, I would probably want to play through Steam so I'm doing nothing until I hear more about how that's going to work. 

Noiramore Academy's Kickstarter has reached 50% funding with ten days still to go. Developer Ink Rose was kind enough to leave a comment here a few days ago, the second time a dev has dropped by to comment on a Next Fest post this time around, the other being Mendoka, creator of Spire Horizon Online. And they say no-one reads blogs any more!

If anyone's on the fence about whether to give Noiramore Academy a look, something I highly recommend because it's a very classy piece of work indeed, the demo is still available. Spire Horizon Online's isn't but the MMORPG is set to release in early December and the single-player version is out already.

Ink Rose also has a series of devlogs on YouTube, detailing the ups and downs of game development along with a lot of technical info about the making of Noiramore Academy itself. I think these would be of interest to anyone who finds the process of game development intriguing, mysterious or both. She certainly has a better idea how to make a video enjoyable to watch than Visionary Realms, that's for sure. 

Once Human, like a lot of free-to-play games, gives out quite a few codes for free stuff. Starry, the developer, already throws a ton of freebies my way through the in-game mail but while I was looking something up the other day, I happened upon this website, which handily collates the out-of-game codes in a simple and straightforward table with expiry dates.

I cut&pasted the October codes into the relevant field in the UI last night and they all worked pefectly so I pass this on to anyone playing the game as a public service. There are some useful consumbales to be had but mostly what I wanted were the Butterfly's Emissary Crates, aka lockboxes.

As I've said many times, I freakin' love lockboxes, provided I don't have to pay for them. The codes got me four and I already had a couple from inside the game and last night I opened them all, which was great fun. 

It would not have been such great fun if I'd had to pay for them. I did get that excellent pair of sunglasses from one of the in-game crates, which is why it counts as a drop in my vocabulary, but the rest of them were total duds. I do not consider one grenade or one molotov cocktail to be much of a prize. Or indeed any kind of prize, unless it was booby. 

You can buy these crates for in-game currency too and you'd think if I like them so much I'd be doing that but the chances of getting something good (The odds are visible if you care to look for them.) aren't good enough to make me want to spend even my imaginary money on them. Then again, I haven't spent it on anything else either so maybe I should just get some crates and have a little crate-opening party. That's always a fun session.

In other Once Human news, I dinged 30 today so now the hunt for T4 mats begins in earnest. In the last Season I found a few really excellent, safe scavenging spots that let me gear up into T5 pretty much without having to fight anything but in this season, the extreme heat in the third Map, where all the mats I need are hiding, is such that I can't stay there long enough to get much foraging done. 

I looked it up and apparently I need to go slaughter some alligators in the Wish Land zoo to make gear with bonuses to heat resistance. And right after I spent a whole session finding and culling seals to make the best cold resistance kit, too. Reminds me of the old days, when you needed two backpacks just carry all your resist gear.

Scary Bear Soundtrack is a Canadian indie-pop band, originally out of Nunavut and now based in Ottowa. I first came across them maybe a decade ago and I check in on them periodically to see a) if they're still going and b) if they've put out anything new.

They are and they have. A little while ago they released what Bandcamp calls a "Digital Album" but which I would call an E.P. (It has four tracks.). It's called Everything Is Falling Apart, which seems to be a common sentiment these days, albeit not one I necessarily share. 

They seem to have gone a bit prog, not necessarily a bad thing. I may well include a track from that in a future music post but for now I want to point up something I found quite curious about one of their earlier releases, the 2019 album Boomerang Kids.

There's a track on it called Investment Plan, which I just found out is an evolution of a 2013 demo called We Had A Plan. I heard the demo first and even though it's rough as all get-out and sounds like it was recorded through a sock from the house next door, I prefer it. I mean, I like Investment Plan a lot, but We Had A Plan has a bleak, heartfelt feel to it that the relatively slick studio take can't quite match. 

It reminds me of the "Better in Beta" mantra. I do think it also applies to demos, at least sometimes.

Here they both are. Decide for yourself. 

Also have a read of the lyrics, which are reproduced in full in the YouTube description. They're very good, if deeply depressing. I have a thing about songs like this, of which there are quite a few. Both the way it's structured and what it's about. It reminds me quite strongly of Lloyd Cole's harrowing Hey Rusty, one of my favorite songs of all time. Then again, he's never happy.

That's it. I'm done.