What's Your Gam3? #13

Welcome

Welcome to What’s Your Gam3? #1 My aim with everything I do is to introduce you to new games! As I continue to improve the newsletter, all feedback is gratefully received. Now, let’s see what has happened this week.

What’s That Gam3?

You can join me live as I play new games on Twitch! Alternatively, you’ll find edited versions of my playthroughs on my YouTube channel. [Don’t forget to follow and subscribe].

AI Arena

TLDR: 

• Train your AI

• Battle AI fighters

• Get deep into AI learning

• Experience frustration and joy watching your fighter

• Specific audience

How to play

• It plays in browser

• Currently it requires specific discord roles and/or exclusive access

Game Loop

• Your aim is to create an AI fighter to battle in a platform battler
  

  

• You are initially given a “blank” fighter

• They have an affinity, water, fire, electric

• It also has a weight

• Being blank, the AI doesn’t know what it is doing in the fight, tending to run off the end

• In the training mode, you can fight against a stationary dummy, your AI, or a well-rounded model.

• Whilst training against the dummy you chose when to collect data.

• Once the training is over you have to use the data to train the model.

• There are a lot of options to configure when deciding how to use the data far too deep for this review

• The AI inspector is used to see how your fighter would react in specific situations
  

  

• After training you can send your fighter in simulations this can highlight areas you need to focus on

• It takes some time, but when you are happy with your model you can send them into ranked matches against AI trained by other players

• Win, draw, lose is added to the leaderboard and changes your position and elo.

• The more wins the better, {obviously}

Game feel

• The elephant in the room the game is frustrating at times, very frustrating.

• However, it is oddly satisfying to overcome that frustration as you slowly improve your AI model

• The training takes a lot of time, and you’ll often find yourself throwing away full session as they haven’t improved the fighter how you expected
  

  

• Having a huge range of configuration options is good for those looking to get lost in the detail, but gives a very steep learning curve

• It does slowly teach your real-world AI learning

• The training is fun to play, even if you are a button smasher like me, you do need to be mindful of when you are recording data

• The controls, animations, and graphics are clean

Rating

• This is a tough one, I would recommend it because I enjoyed it, but the recommendation would be to specific people, I don’t see it having blanket appeal

• It is keyboard-smashing fun, if you are like me you’ll get frustrated, leave, and then come back to try again

• Once your model is trained and you don’t want to tweak it any further the game does kind of end, as you are just running simulations
  

  

Web3 integration

• The team has been running Play 2 mint tournaments for nearly a year at this point. You win an NFT which is a mint pass for when the full NFTs are released

• They are also releasing a token as rewards for the fighting.

  

For more information follow their Twitter to keep up to date.

Petopia

TLDR: 

• Top-down roguelike shooter

• Destroy fruits

• Upgrade equipment, heroes, and skills

• Cute graphics

• Crashes and bugs

• Currently nothing special

How to play

• Available on google play and app store

• Play for free

Game Loop

• You start as a fox with a gun

• There are two game modes to choose from adventure and campaign, the game loop is relatively similar across both.

• You load into level 1

• The map will be walled in with various obstacles across the map

• Vicous fruits will spawn to attack you.

  

• Each fruit type has a different attack, with warnings shown with red outlines.

• Your primary attack is your gun, which you control the fire of.

• The gun has a limited magazine and takes time to reload.

• As you run around the map dodging fruits you also have 3 special attacks.

• A fire dash, a grenade, and an aoe attack surround the character.

• Once you defeat all the fruits of a level you collect gold, hearts, and equipment before moving on to the next level

• You also receive XP. As you level you get to choose 1 ability from a random pool of 3 abilities

• These abilities range from hero stat increases to balls of fire that circle you throwing out fire grenades.
  

  

• You play until you clear all levels or you die.

• Between each game, you can equip and level up any equipment. This equipment provides stats boosts.

Game feel

• The game loop and mechanics are very common across mobile games, without offering anything unique

• The graphics and animations are acceptable but the sounds is lackluster

• You hero feels sluggish as you run around the map.

• The maps have a low level of variation.

• Some of the map obstacles are too “flat” making it unclear they are obstacles.

• The gun’s limited magazine and reload time can leave you without anything to do for a few seconds, without really adding any strategic depth.

• Even though each run gives different abilities on level-up, this did little to reduce the repetitive feel

• They have implemented several progressions and upgradeable to encourage players to keep returning.
  

  

Rating

• Noticeable bugs and crashes

• Terrible sound

• Repetitive gameplay

• Nothing new to the genre

• Torn between Didn’t enjoy, would recommend avoiding, and Too early to tell

  

Web3 integration

• Nothing yet and couldn’t find what the plans are.

For more information follow their Twitter to keep up to date.

What’s on the timeline

Control Your Excitement

Building with the community is one of the big drivers within web3 space, however, building in the open can cause problems.

“Wen game?” is a constant message in-game discords, and it can be tempting to push a version of the game out as early as possible. Whilst this can be exciting, it can hurt the project’s first impression. As much as you can add caveats that it is an early build, a lot of people don’t take that into account as much as they should.

It has also got harder as the space has gotten busier with new games coming out all the time. If the first impression is underwhelming, it is really hard to get the attention back from those players.

I would always recommend patience, wait until you have something that will give a good first impression and direction of the work.

Secret Phrase: FirstImpression

What's Your Gam3?

Catch up on all previous episodes on YouTube.

This week there was no guest, but instead, we discussed the Gam3s Awards. Was very enjoyable just chilling and chatting about games. We will be back next week with more games!

Don’t forget to join us next week!

WYG?: Gam3 Changers - OG co-founder of Gam3sgg - Live on Spotify!

Catch up on all previous episodes on Spotify.

Introduction

• OG, the co-founder of Gam3sgg, is the guest for this episode.

  

OG's Background and Career Path

• Early Career: OG started in marketing and social media, initially working at L'Oreal and then at Dubai Tourism.

• Transition to Gaming: Shifted focus to gaming, working on social media marketing for gaming companies like EA Sports.

• Projects and Tournaments: Involved in Rainbow Six League, League of Legends tournaments, and Fortnite activations.

Involvement in Web3 Gaming

• Entry into Web3: Began with a casual interest in crypto since 2018, but took a serious step into Web3 gaming in 2021.

• Joining Polkastarter: Reached out to Daniel, the co-founder of Polkastarter, a Web3 fundraising platform, and joined their team.

• Development of Gaming Department: Started with a Discord server, evolved into content creation on various platforms including Twitch and YouTube.

• Formation of Gam3sgg: Evolved from PGG, Gam3sgg is a separate entity focusing on Web3 gaming.

Objectives and Vision for Gam3sgg

• Primary Goal: To improve the Web3 gaming experience and educate people about it.

• Platform Evolution: Continuously adapting the platform to meet the needs of gamers, including features like the "Play Now" browser functionality.

• Community Engagement: Focused on driving engagement and providing rewards through features like quests.

Challenges and Solutions

• Balancing B2C and B2B: Addressing the challenge of providing quality content to gamers while also engaging in business-to-business activities.

• Monetization Strategy: Adopted a B2B model to avoid relying on advertising revenue and ensure a better user experience.

The Game Awards

• Reason for Hosting: Frustration with the lack of recognition for various Web3 games.

• Success and Impact: The awards gained significant participation and helped bring attention to different games in the Web3 space.

• Future Plans: Intention to continue hosting the awards annually.

Insights into Web3 Gaming

• Missing Elements: Believes that single-player, story-driven games are a gap in the Web3 gaming space.

• Regional Differences: Discusses the varying perceptions and acceptance of Web3 gaming in different regions, highlighting the potential in Middle Eastern and Asian markets.

Final Thoughts

• Future Excitements: Looking forward to upcoming game releases and the evolution of the Gam3sgg platform.

• Contact Information: Suggests following him on Twitter (@yoitsOG) and keeping up with Gam3sgg for the latest updates.

Thanks for making it to the end, that is all the new games for this week. Do you know any you’d want to hear more about? Let me know.

Remember to tell your friends about What’s Your Gam3? Otherwise, they’ll hate you for letting them miss out on all the new games.

Remember to play games you enjoy!