Introducing: Onimaru

General Onimaru is Quince's top military man. You can think of him like Sun Tzu in that he's a master of the art of war. He is known for his strategic planning, tactical maneuvers, use of terrain to his advantage, his ability to discipline an army, and his ability to know the enemy.

 

Onimaru is actually an outsider to Flagstone, though he's won many battles in foreign lands and at least one on Flagstone soil against the former regime. Grave was just a boy then, and he lost his father that day. Onimaru claimed the Stormborne family sword as a war-prize, and were it not for the intervention of Mistress Persephone, Grave would never have received his family heirloom.

Many years later, Quince was able to recruit the General. There, Onimaru raised an army and due to his harsh style, the troops called him the Flagstone Enforcer. He also investigated unorthodox forms of military force, including the use of wild elephants and an experimental program to create clockwork soldiers with the help of the then-head of Flagstone Research & Development: Max Geiger.

In a fighting game, Onimaru won't rely on combos. Just the right strike at just the right time is more his style. All his moves in his (still in-development) Yomi deck are actually "Can't Combo" moves, and yet he's still a fearsome opponent.

In Flash Duel, he has one of the most interesting abilities in the game, Clockwork Soldier:

The Clockwork Soldier greatly restricts the opponent's movement. It puts the squeeze on them, letting Onimaru close the distance to them one way or another. This opens up even more potential interactions in the 2v2 and Dragon Raid modes.

In Puzzle Strike, Onimaru shows his versatility with Wartime Tactics:

This lets him reveal a puzzle chip from his hand, then get a one-time use of any other puzzle chip in the bank, as long as it costs the same or less as the revealed chip. Onimaru's tactics are so honed that this gives him access to a wide variety of effects immediately, without waiting the usual one or two turns to draw them.

General Onimaru is a formidable foe to anyone who would threaten Flagstone or its right to rule. That goes double for outlaw barristers and mutant stone golems who would sow the seeds of dissent with their illegal Fantasy Strike tournament.

Next time we'll meet Troq, a lowly foot-soldier in the Flagstone army.

Introducing: Quince

You can read about the original 10 Fantasy Strike characters here. And now there's a new set of 10! They first appeared Flash Duel 2nd Edition, then they will be in the online version of Puzzle Strike when we launch (no tabletop version available quite yet) and you'll see them much later in Yomi, too. Some will also appear even later than that in an upcoming customizable (but not collectable) card game.

For the next 10 days, we'll meet one new character per day, ending with the official launch of fantasystrike.com on Friday, February 17th, 2012!

Sirus Quince, Flagstone Chief Magistrate

Quince is the head of the Flagstone Dominion, a position he attained through political prowess, the right words, and a wholesome image. There are some who call him Tyrant, but who are they, really? A stone golem and an outlaw barrister? Quince ensures the protection of his people, and protection means sacrificing some personal freedoms. It also means having values--the right values--and stomping out those who don't. Sometimes that cuts the wrong way for an overzealous lawyer like DeGrey, or a bisexual like Valerie, or a scientist doing the wrong kind of work like Geiger, but society gains of course! That's what Quince would say.

Quince is cloaked in truth, but his true power comes from lies and illusion.

Here's one of Quince's cards from Flash Duel:

He often has a trick up his sleeve, and this card is just such a trick. No one else can keep a card even after everything resets for the next round. Quince might stash a 1 this way, because 1s are generally good in Flash Duel. They can be used easily as the strike part of a dashing strike. Rook likes 1s because he has an ability to make them unblockable, so against Rook, Quince would like to just get the 1 out of circulation. He could do the same to a 5 that Jaina wants, or a 4 that DeGrey wants. Quince's Political Prowess can remove one card per round, even, so multiple cards can be set-aside at once as the game goes on. This doesn't seem fair, but then Quince needs only the aura of fairness in his politics, not actual fairness. (He is actually fair in gameplay though.)

Here's one of his Puzzle Strike chips:

Some say Quince has two sides: the lies he tells with the mask of patriotism and the secret truth behind it all. They're just trouble-makers though, as you can see from this chip, Two Truths. Your opponent gets to choose which truth comes to light.

Next time we'll meet Quince's top military man, General Onimaru.

Fantasystrike.com is Launching!

Hey everyone, I'm excited to let you all know that after 2 years of development and testing of fantasystrike.com, we'll finally be launching the site on February 17th, a week from this Friday. You'll be able to play Yomi and Puzzle Strike online there, and someday other games too such as Flash Duel and a Fantasy Strike customizable (but not collectable) card game. But let's not get ahead of ourselves!

In case you're new to things, Yomi is a card game that captures the essence of fighting games such as Street Fighter. Each deck is a character, and there are 10 to choose from. The decks resemble poker decks, and that makes them pretty easy to learn. Your numbered cards 2-10 are normal moves, your face cards are special moves, and your aces are super moves. The game focuses on the mind-games that happen in high level play in real fighting games, but extracted into a turn-based form so you don't need any dexterity.

Puzzle Strike is a deckbuilding game, featuring the same characters as in Yomi (plus even more). It simulates a puzzle game such as Puzzle Fighter, where you try to clear out gems from your "gem pile" and send them to your opponents. If your gem pile fills up to 10, you lose, but the closer you are to losing the more you'll be able to draw each turn. You build your deck as you play, so it's the same genre of game as Dominion in case you've heard of that, except it's far more interactive and suited for tournament play. Also it has a pretty interesting 3-player and 4-player mode with no player elimination these days!

Online Features

Puzzle Strike and Yomi both have full rules implementation. They both have an interactive tutorial. We have a guide for both games (check it out!), leaderboards, ranked and unraked matches, and the ability to save replays and watch other people's replays. Even League of Legends didn't launch with that, ha!

Rankings

We're going to reset all the beta rankings when we launch. As you play, you'll level up through the "student" ranks at first. During this period, you can't lose any points, so you'll be sure to progress eventually. Also any character you play contributes to your student points, so it's up to you if you want to play several characters or stick to just one. Once you graduate to the "master" ranks, you'll have a separate ranking for every character though, and losses will make you lose points. Eventually this rank system actually converges to 100% skill-based elo ranking, but everyone gets to make progress along the way.

Tabletop vs Online Versions

The online version of Yomi is exactly the same as the physical one in the real world with cardboard cards. Same abilities, same 10 characters, and so on. For Puzzle Strike though, we've evolved the game and actually rebalanced it based on months (or now years, actually) of tournament play AND we've put up the full expansion that hasn't even been released yet in the tabletop world. So you have access to all 20 characters and all the puzzle chips from the base + the expansion in the online version!

Tuned for Serious Competition

Both Puzzle Strike and Yomi are fun on a casual level, but they each also have a ton of depth and strategy if you really get into them. Those years spent on balancing ensure that you can play them for years and still find them strategically interesting. There's a growing competitive scene and frequent online tournaments, so join in! (Casual fun is also allowed!)

Free To Play with Options to Pay

Each week there will be two different free characters in each game, on a rotating basis. As you play, you earn gold that you can spend to unlock your favorite characters permanently. Or you can just buy characters directly, and avoid any kind of grind. Remember that all characters are at full power instantly, and there is no painful period of playing a gimped character until you get runes or something like in other games. Anyway, you'll also have the third option of getting a subscription, which unlocks ALL the characters in all our games, as well as some other perks and access to beta features and even beta games at some point.

The Road to Launch

Over the next 10 business days, I'll introduce one new Fantasy Strike character per day, ending with the exciting launch of Fantasystrike.com a week from this Friday. These are the 10 characters from the upcoming Puzzle Strike Shadows expansion, which you'll be able to play at launch. First up will be head man at Flagstone, Sirus Quince!

Soul Calibur 5: First Impressions

I didn't follow the development of Soul Calibur 5 at all. I got the game and played it one evening so far, so I'm coming at this fresh. I thought I'd give my first impressions.

Overall, I like the game. It's fun, and it's simplified in a good way. So when I give you this long list of complaints, keep in mind I would generally recommend the game.

Button Config

Yeah, button config. Yes it matters. And it's the "wrong way." It's the bad way where you have to scroll through a list to change anything, and know the names of which buttons are which on your controller, instead of the good way where you press the button you want. This is a very real concern for running events, as it slows down events for no good reason. It's absolutely *embarrassing* that any company would release a fighting game in 2012 with the bad kind of button config. Seriously Namco, never ever do this again.

By the way, even though there are several default configs, none of them match what you'd want on the MadCatz TE stick, which is the standard. Have fun setting your kick button before every match (as you scroll through a list to do it). Letter grade on this feature: F.

Online

For some reason, it seems to default to searching for users with a good ping who in the "other" region, meaning they are NOT in North or South America, or Europe, Asia, or Japan? Wtf? I don't know, every time I start up the online I set this to North America. Another case of weirdo defaults, I guess.

After playing someone online, I think it's like only 2 clicks to get another opponent. This is great! I got an endless stream of a opponents who couldn't beat my Mitsurugi, without any clicking around in between matches.

As for the netcode, you know the thing you care tons about, it seemed great? I forgot that I wasn't playing locally, really, it all just worked. There was no

Click to read more ...

An Evening with Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal spoke last night as part of the California Academy of Sciences lecture series in San Francisco, at the packed Herbst Theater. Come along on my journey of contempt and redemption.

Expectations

My expectations of this presentation were extremely low. I remember her GDC presentation several years ago on the top 10 findings in games that year that covered such breakthroughs as some players "playing to win" and how they actually seek an even playfield of fair competition rather than wanting to buy in-game advantages. Another involved a bunch of data showing that a huge percentage of players spend a huge percentage of time playing World of Warcraft alone. It even used the phrase "together alone" as opposed to the phrase "alone together" that I used in my infamous article. Since so much of that presentation was rehashes of my own articles from YEARS earlier, I had to wonder what Jane is really bringing to the table here.

The Format

Rather than a lecture, the format here was actually an informal interview, so the host and Dr. McGonigal sat on stage with a coffee table between them. I think this format is good, and allows information to flow more freely than in a prepared lecture. There is more room for adaptation, for tailoring answers to go with the flow the conversation, and for the speaker to let their personality come through a bit more.

The host opened by having Jane discuss her controversial statements that the world needs to spend more hours gaming. She said that currently the world spends 7 billion hours (per year? I forget) gaming, and that she thinks it should be more like 21 billion hours. This is a delicate subject because it's so easily taken out of context and misunderstood. I think Jane was only able to explain part of why she believed this in her actual answer to this question, and the rest of why she believes it wasn't clear until much later. The first clarification is that she doesn't mean people who play games now should play them more, but rather than more people should play games. She would like everyone on Earth to play an hour a day of something. She includes even playing a word game on your phone while on the bus, so this isn't all about sweating bullets in Starcraft matches, or whatever. Ok, but why should people play an hour a day?

A Waste of Time

What follows was painful and boring. There was some promise in the initial part of the answer to the above question. The answer is that gaming brings about all sorts of positive emotions. She then listed the 10 positive emotions that gaming has been shown to elicit, from gaming research. Joy, awe, wonder, love, satisfaction, and so on. At this point I would have expected some sort of support for this, like some examples so we know what she's talking about. Instead, a lot of time was spent on this terrible "massively multiplayer thumb wrestling game,"

Click to read more ...