Hearthstone: A Card Game for iOS

Hello everyone! 

I had a crazy week finishing up costumes and then an amazing weekend at Wondercon and now I'm ready to write. I'm pushing for two posts this week but we will have to see! 

Today I want to talk about Hearthstone! 

If you don't already know what this game is, it's a new game that was just released last week for the iOS. It's made by Blizzard and has a lot of similar art and tone from the Warcraft games but is essentially a card game. 

The best comparison I can make is it's very similar to Magic the Gathering except it's a little simpler. I say this without hesitation because it doesn't hurt the game at all. While being slightly simpler than Magic, it doesn't lose any intensity. I played through the tutorial journey quickly and had no problem figuring out the mechanics and gameplay (mostly because I'm a regular player of Magic so I understood the concept) since it's an easy set up and doesn't give the player too much information all at once. You have 7 missions (I think this is correct and I would look it up but the server is down for maintenance..) and they spread the knowledge through those missions so that you can not only get the feel for the game but absorb the rules and how to play in increments. 

I won't go too into detail about how you play but here's a short synopsis: You are a hero (much like a planeswalker in Magic) and you have minion cards and spells. The goal of the game is to defeat the other hero by attacking them. You get one additional mana every turn and each card costs a certain amount of mana to use. Cards have various skills and attack/defense points and what I found kind of cool is that your minions lose life. What I mean is, instead of them having a set attack and defense number as other minions attack it the defense number goes down like hit points.

After completing the introduction missions and the final boss you are then available to sign in to Battlenet and play online. I had a difficult time logging in because..... I made my battlenet back in 2006 meaning that my password was some random combination of words that 15 year old me thought was hilarious but 22 year old me is shaking my head at. I was unable to recover this password because apparently I used a pseudonym as well.. Back on topic: Playing online is really fun! You play against people who are generally around the same level as you so you have somewhat of a fighting chance. You gain experience whether you win or lose (gaining more when you win and less when you lose) and you get "achievements" throughout (ie: playing 3 games online gets you a small prize) as well as collect new cards for your deck. Each hero deck you have has cards for that deck and each hero has a special skill. As you play with a deck you collect more cards for that deck to make it more powerful.

I only played online for a little while but it's definitely a great game and on the iPad it's just so accessable. You can also download on your computer (mac and pc) with ease. I definitely recommend this game as it's really fun and easy to pick up. It's FREE as well which is a huge plus. I'm a fan of some good games coming to iOS devices (with obvious exceptions) and look forward to more stuff like this being playable on my tablet. 

Thanks for reading and let me know what you think in the comments below! 

Upcoming!

Hey everyone! 

I just wanted to let you all know that I recently finished working on a YouTube show that should be airing this summer. It's called Team Jinja! You can find it on our channel RoyalWe. Be sure to subscribe as before the season starts we will release a couple of videos and shorts. 

Currently we have some videos up of us playing video games and being goofy which is always fun. 

That's all I can say for now! 

Check us out! 

Animal Crossing: Part 4 - Welcome To New Leaf City!

Hi All!
This week's entry I'm going to be talking about Animal Crossing: New Leaf City.

Now as you already know I am a big fan of this series! This is the latest game in the series and in my opinion the best. It has all sorts of new features and visually new things so let's get into it!

The beginning of this game is just like any other. You are asked a bunch of questions, arrive in town, but wait- you're the mayor! A cool and interesting new way to play is you control the fate of your town. You character is given duties that involve keeping the town beautiful, adding new buildings and decorations to your town (which...I mean... thank god), and hosting major holidays. The whole town is your oyster!

Another great aspect that I love is the dream suite. The Dream Suite allows you to venture to another persons town in your dreams - therefore you can't muck up anything. This feature is useful because if your friend wants you to see something of there's (ie: the way their house is set up, a new project, or a special flower/fruit) you can go view it while they aren't playing. The Dream Suite is also useful in that you can get ideas, see strangers towns without having to be their friend (the Dream Suite uses a "Dream Code" that is still specific to a town but makes the player anonymous).

Something interesting that's come out of the Dream Suite are these "Horror Towns". I started reading about them a couple of weeks ago and it's really interesting. It started in Japan as just a way to set up your town so that it's spooky. Usually the bulletin board will have some message or story about what happened and then you get to explore the town and see scenes from whatever horrible story it is. I ventured into a couple (I'm very prone to being spooked..) thinking, oh how scary could they really be? TURNS OUT PRETTY SCARY! I mean, I never jumped or anything, but I definitely on more than one occasion walked into a room in one of the houses and went, NOPE. Also, you can make your character have a greeting and I ran into a lot that were something like, "I was just so lonely..." and in the Dream Suite the voices of people kind of echo and sound very eery. Overall this is a really really cool idea that people have adopted in their towns and I urge you to check it out. 

The animation in this game does change a tiny bit. Your character's body is a little longer now, which doesn't seem very important but after being so short and squat for all these years it's definitely refreshing. Nintendo is very much of the mindset that if it's not broken don't fix it, well Animal Crossing is definitely one of those titles where you see that. Minor changes are expected and the look of the game is so great that there's no reason for them to have to change much. I think that mentality hurts and helps Nintendo.. but I digress. 

This game is great because it's suitable for all ages (as were the last 3) and I wouldn't say it improves the series necessarily but it's definitely the best game out of them. The game has morphed little by little through each game and I love how it turned out. I play this game religiously and definitely addicting. 

If you haven't tried this game yet- do it. It's totally worth your money and has given me just about a year of enjoyment. 

Look out for next week's post where I talk about WOMEN IN VIDEO GAMES!

And don't forget to subscribe and leave comments below.