Questions That Count: Online Only Consoles

Question: How do you feel about a console that is online only?

There sure has been a lot of talk lately about the possibility that the next Xbox system will require an internet connection to be used, at least to some degree. The original rumor said that it would require a constant internet connection to be usable at all, even to play single player games. A new rumor says that isn't exactly true. I'm sure we'll find out the truth on May 21st. In either case, we're curious what YOU think about the concept of an "online only" console.

Feel free to participate in the discussion on our forums as well!

Would you purchase an online only console if it were the next Xbox, Playstation, or Nintendo console?

Questions That Count: Introduction

Hello, fellow gamers!

The video game industry is a constantly changing landscape. In the past few years the way we play video games has transformed in many ways and the upcoming years are likely to bring even more variations to the way we think about games. As developers, we are also gamers, and many of these changes we are excited for, but others we're not so sure about. However, as developers, sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. With this in mind, NinjaBee would like to hear what you, the gamers, think about the various ways the environment of video games is changing.

Therefore, we have created a new forum, which will be used to collect those answers. We will be posting big questions, and want to hear your answers. We will try our best to read and respond regularly so that we can make sure to understand what types of changes the gaming community is welcoming with open arms, which could be done better, and which they would prefer to abandon all together.

If you have your own questions about the industry feel free to post them. If we like them, or if they get enough attention, we’ll merge them into an official topic. We appreciate your cooperation, and look forward to hearing what YOU think about the video game industry’s many emerging trends.

Join our team!

Want to join the NinjaBee team? If you're skilled in public relations and marketing, understand the business of video games and want to work with incredible people then this might be where you belong!

To apply, please submit both a resume and cover letter to jobs@wahoo.com.

PR/Marketing Specialist

Description

The PR/Marketing Specialist will lead all aspects of promoting, advertising, and marketing our games and the NinjaBee brand. Major responsibilities include developing and implementing strategic PR and marketing campaigns, writing press releases, building press kits, creating promotional materials and securing media coverage for all NinjaBee game products. The PR/Marketing Specialist will also be responsible for expanding the studio’s social media footprint and influence, managing NinjaBee’s presence at industry events and tradeshows, and growing the sales of NinjaBee’s PC games through NinjaBee.com and other game portals. Experience with video editing software is a plus.

Responsibilities

1. Writing press releases.
2. Organizing press tours.
3. Actively managing and growing company social media footprint through Facebook, Twitter and other social networks.
4. Maintaining and managing the company blog.
5. Developing and implementing strategic public relations and marketing campaigns.
6. Planning and executing company presence at industry events and tradeshows.
7. Preparing press kits and promotional materials.
8. Making changes to the NinjaBee website using content management tools.
9. Managing the creation of new merchandise.
10. Assisting with office management duties.

Required Qualifications

1. Bachelors degree in Communications with emphasis in public relations, marketing or advertising.
2. Very strong written and verbal communication skills; comfortable with writing press releases, blog posts and other public relations/marketing copy.
3. Experience in using social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.
4. Strong skills in Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
5. Fun, enthusiastic, outgoing personality with a “Can Do” attitude.
6. Must love video games (or be willing to love video games).

Desired Qualifications

1. Proficiency in Adobe Premiere Pro or other video editing software.
2. Proficiency in Adobe Creative Suite: Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Soundbooth.
3. Experience in website development and design.
4. Previous experience in the video games industry.

Unveiling new game at PAX East!

With PAX East just days away NinjaBee is excited to announce that it will be unveiling its next new game, Nutjitsu, at the show! An in-development build of the title will be on display at the indie developer’s booth (#599). 

In addition to Nutjistu, NinjaBee will also be showing an early build of the recently announced Wii U version of A World of Keflings, as well as the Windows 8 version of the same game, which released last Wednesday.

Check out the full list of goings-on at NinjaBee’s PAX East booth:

Playable demos

• Nutjitsu

• A World of Keflings (Wii U)

• A World of Keflings (Windows 8)

Win cool stuff

• Play any demo and get a free copy of A Kingdom for Keflings on PC (While supplies last)

• Nutjitsu High Score Contest: Win 1600 Microsoft Points (Winners picked twice daily)

• Indie Passport: A chance to win a bundle of amazing indie games from Tribute Games, NinjaBee, Run Jump Dev, Rain-slick Precipice of Darkness 4, Signal Studios, Devolver Digital, and Nine Dots.

Merchandise

• NinjaBee and Keflings Shirts

• Beanie-style Kefling Plushies

A World of Keflings Comes to Win 8 Today, Wii U Later This Year

OREM, Utah – March 13, 2013 – The Keflings are spreading like rabbits. A World of Keflings, the popular city-building game that first made a splash on Xbox Live Arcade, arrived on the Windows 8 Games Store today, becoming the latest of a handful of XBLA titles to release on Microsoft’s new operating system.

“With the current generation of consoles coming to an end, we saw opportunities to bring what is perhaps our studio’s most well-loved game to many, many more players,” said Brent Fox, Art Director at NinjaBee. “With that said, we’re proud to announce that in addition to today’s release on Windows 8, A World of Keflings will be coming to the Wii U later this year.”

“Both of these new platforms offered us huge advantages and were ideal marketplaces for a light-hearted city-builder,” Fox said. “Windows 8 gave us the chance to make the game mobile and add in very smooth, natural touch controls. The Wii U has allowed us to significantly enhance the game’s visuals and, with the Wii U GamePad, explore new ways to interact with the game and its characters.”

As an Xbox game on Windows 8, A World of Keflings makes use of the power of Xbox Live to enhance the gaming experience. By signing into Xbox Live, gamers can play as their individualized Xbox Avatar, compete for high scores on Xbox Live Leaderboards, and unlock 20 all-new Achievements. Even gamers who have already earned full Gamerscore from the Xbox 360 version of A World of Keflings will be able to earn an additional 200 Achievement Points when playing on Windows 8.

A World of Keflings on Windows 8 also provides intuitive touch controls and a new picture-in-picture feature allowing players to quickly explore the map while keeping an eye their avatar’s progress.

The game is now available for purchase in the Windows Games Store for 6.99 USD and supports both Windows 8 and Windows RT. The DLC offerings for A World of Keflings are not yet available on Windows 8. A World of Keflings on Windows 8 does not include multiplayer or Avatar FameStar functionality.

A World of Keflings for the Wii U will release later this year.

About A World of Keflings

The sequel to the hit XBLA title A Kingdom for Keflings, A World of Keflings is a city-building game featuring tiny, obnoxiously cute characters called Keflings who need help building their kingdoms. Players play as a giant and take a journey to three kingdoms (Ice, Forest and Desert) making friends with Kefling characters along the way, helping them complete tasks, and building and customizing elaborate kingdoms for the Keflings. Players teach Keflings to harvest resources like wood, stone, magic crystals and wool, and build up a booming economy of production, resource refining and building construction. The game contains no antagonist or conflict, resulting in a pleasant, play-at-your-own-pace city-building adventure.

A World of Keflings first released in December 2010 on XBLA. Since that time the game has added three new themed kingdoms (Alien, Candy and Graveyard) as DLC titled “It Came From Outer Space,” “Sugar, Spice and Not So Nice,” and “The Curse of the Zombiesaurus.” The XBLA version is also one of a select group of games to support Microsoft’s Avatar FameStar program.

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The Friday Review: The Cave (XBLA, PS3, WIIU, PC, MAC)

The Cave
-review by CJ

The Cave is a puzzle adventure game. Although it plays from a side-scrolling perspective, it is not the platformer that it appears to be. You'll be doing plenty of running around and jumping, but this is never intended to be part of the game's challenge. Although there are a few secrets to be found by exploration (these secrets are pictures that fill in parts of a character's story-line), for the most part you will visit every nook of the game by necessity in order to complete the puzzles.

When the game starts you choose three characters out of seven to play through the adventure with. These characters each have a unique ability, unique story, and will each have their own unique level that you will play through. These unique levels are the best part of the game, each one is very creative, tells the story of one of the game's characters (which are darker than you might expect), and features the best puzzles in the game; although, unfortunately, that isn't saying much. This is one of the four very distinct issues that I have with this game, that I will detail in the "Cons" section of the review. The overall feel of the game was surprisingly dark. I was hoping to play this with my daughter, but after the first couple of minutes I was glad that I had tried it out by myself first, due to the darker nature of the game and some minor language.


PROS:

-Polished. If there's one thing I can always say about a Double Fine Productions game, it's that it is polished. Things work as expected, and look good doing so.

-Humorous! Another staple of Double Fine is their sense of humor. There were several times I laughed out loud while playing The Cave, and I wanted to play through the other characters so that I wouldn't miss any of the fun. To be honest, this was probably the only reason I even finished the game.

CONS:

-Seven characters to choose from. This is just a bad number, and it almost feels like a cheap trick to give the player a reason to have to play through the game a third time. Since you can only take three at a time, the first and second play-through you can have three unique levels to try out, but the third time through will be almost entirely repetition. Because of this I highly suggest leaving the Knight for last, as his level is the first one you'll come to, meaning you won't have to play through the entire game a third time to get to play through each character's area.

-Easy puzzles. The utter simplicity of nearly every puzzle of the game meant that I felt like all I was doing was running errands. I realize I'm saying this at the risk of sounding pretentious, but on my first play through I only had two "What am I supposed to do now?" moments, and only one of them was because I couldn't solve the puzzle, the other was because of the poor world design(more on that below). What's even worse is that even though each character has a unique ability, these were never used in tandem to solve a puzzle. In fact most of these unique abilities were only useful within the levels designed for the specific character.

-Problematic world design. Because of the way the game is set up, you'll be doing a lot of repetition on replay, and possibly a bit of head scratching on your first play through (I certainly did). The entire game world exists as one whole, including four levels that you'll play through no matter what characters you choose, and seven levels that each belong to a specific character, and will only be accessible when you have that character in your party. But the game doesn't explain this. This means that on your first time through you will likely come to areas that you can't figure out what you are supposed to do to proceed. It's because you can't proceed because you don't have the right character to do so. But it doesn't tell you that. I spent nearly an entire hour on my first play trying to figure out how to get into an area before I finally discovered that there was another direction I could go. But even so, I left feeling like I had missed something. Luckily when this happened again later I figured out what was going on, instead of being stuck again for another hour.

-Three characters, one player. Since each character is controlled individually—and often times are needed in different areas of a level, and then all in the same place, and then in different spots again—you'll be doing a lot of monotonous running back and forth. This would be easily solved with a "call" button that brought the inactive characters to the currently select one automatically (if possible).

SUMMARY: Despite its major flaws, I had fun with The Cave, but this was due entirely to its humor and storytelling. I spent a good deal of time frustrated with running around the same completed areas for the third time while moving characters from one puzzle to the next, and never felt the satisfaction of having solved a complex puzzle. If you think some great humor and well told stories are worth suffering through menial tasks and repetitive gameplay, then try out The Cave, otherwise, you may want to set your sights elsewhere.

The Friday Review: FTL (PC)

FTL
-review by CJ

After hearing much hype and praise about this little indie title, I finally gave it a try. I immediately fell in love with it. Soon afterwards my heart was broken, and I went into a bit of a decline, despising the game and angrily griping about the unapologetic difficulty and archaic design choices. Four hours later I found myself still playing, and continuing on that roller coaster that is a love-hate relationship.

I find myself in an awkward position with FTL. It's abusive and unstable, yet satisfies my gaming needs on so many levels that I find myself making excuses for it, and loving it despite the fact that it clearly doesn't love me. Because of FTL's unique play style, I'm having difficulty defining pros and cons, so instead I'm going to just list features. You decide if they are good or bad. I certainly can't decide.

FEATURES:

-Real time space battles. With the ability to pause. The spacebar (pause) will become your best friend in this game. At first battles are completely manageable in real time, but that will likely change as you progress. Assuming you are able to.

-Feel like a real star-ship captain. You order your crew around, assign them jobs, and watch as they level up and get better at their jobs. Then get killed by boarding enemies, and lament their permanent loss. Manage power levels to increase your shields, charge your weapons, boost engines, power up teleporters, stabilize oxygen levels, upgrade cloaking, or... watch as the local ion storm depletes your power reserves and forces you to make impossible choices. Weapons or shields? Engines or oxygen?

-So many ways to win (or lose) a fight! Seriously, I have put dozens of hours into this game and there are still strategies I haven't tried (but I'm anxious to do so); however, here are just a few that I have successfully pulled off: Wear away at their shields and hull with laser guns until you win (boring, but effective); Bombard their ship with ion cannons, deactivating their shields, engines, and oxygen supply, then watch them slowly die from asphyxiation (slow, but very effective); Max to shields and engines (which gives extra dodge percent), and everybody but the pilot board the enemy vessel and attack their crew (exciting, but difficult to pull off). Shoot their shields down, then use fire-beams to set half their ship on fire, then repeat with the other half (cruel, hilarious, and very effective).

-Randomized...everything. What enemies will you run into? What items will be for sale at shops? What results will you get from aiding a civilian ship being overrun by giant spiders? What crew members will be available for hire? Will you fly through friendly territory, enemy territory, vast nebulae, or long forgotten sectors of the galaxy? What weapons will you find? Will you ever get a cloaking device? I don't know, and neither will you until it happens.

-Save and quit. Or just quit. Or restart. No save slots, checkpoints, or retrying the last battle. If you die, that's it, game over. Try again. Not only does your crew suffer permadeath, so does your spaceship, and you can only load the last game you quit from the main menu, which save is then deleted as soon as you load it. This is what gives the game it's excruciating difficulty, and is in my opinion an archaic design choice. The one time I was close to the end and my game crashed (effectively killing me and forcing a restart) I got very sulky and angry and wouldn't play again for a whole day. But I still went back... I always go back.

-Unlockable ships. As you play through the game you may run into special encounters which, if properly handled (assuming you have gotten the correct randomized equipment/crew members to be properly equipped ARG), you can unlock additional ships. These ships all offer different starting equipment, weapons, and crew members, which means a completely different experience. This adds massive replay potential to the game.

-Unimpressive story-line, but great experiences. Don't expect anything out of the overarching story-line, just enjoy each encounter and the real story that unfolds as your crew journeys through the stars, battling constantly for survival, and making tough choices along the way.

-Simple graphics. 'Nuff said.

-Music is odd. It is at times almost silly, but rather catchy. I often find FTL's tunes still stuck in my head hours after playing, but I would prefer something with more sense of suspense and action.

-Mods. There are quite a few fan-made mods out there that can make the experience much less frustrating, and I'm not ashamed to say that I have at times taken advantage of these. I do still enjoy the original game, however, and respect it as one of the few truly challenging modern games.

-And more. Like any decent game you have to play it to get the full experience.

SUMMARY: I would have a hard time recommending FTL to anyone, knowing what terrible fates await them, except that at the same time I feel like it is a unique experience that every gamer should have, and few games will give you as much sense of accomplishment with success. The most important thing to note is that, win or lose, FTL is fun.

The Friday Review: Mark of the Ninja (XBLA, PC)

Mark of the Ninja
-review by CJ

Ever wanted to play a good ninja game? I don't mean a game that's good and has "ninja" in the title, but a game that actually tries to create atmosphere and gameplay that would be considered ninja-esque? A game where stealth is your greatest asset, combat is swift and brutal, and enemies are either oblivious to your presence as you pass them by in the shadows, or grow more fearful of you the more of your handiwork they find while you remain unseen? Well now you can, because Mark of the Ninja is just such a game.

After playing Mark of the Ninja for just a few minutes I knew I was going to love it. A 2D action platformer barely begins to describes this game. Although stealth is the name of the game in almost every situation, Mark of the Ninja supports any mixture of 3 distinct play styles: Stealth, Combat, Terror.

STEALTH: If you want to pass by your enemies unnoticed and unmolested, you can. It is possible to complete every mission without killing a soul. There's even an outfit you can unlock that doesn't allow you to carry a sword, but silences all movement completely to facilitate this method. Distraction items can be used to divert enemies and guards carrying important items can be pick-pocketed instead of assassinated.

COMBAT: If you want to be able to go toe-to-toe with your gun-wielding adversaries, you'd better be prepared. Stealth will still be the quickest and easiest way to dispose of guards, but if you gear up for combat you won't have to run and hide if you are discovered. Another suite of armor is made specifically for this play style, granting extra health, combat prowess, and health regeneration from silent kills.

TERROR: As Batman could tell you, fear is as great a weapon as anything made of steel. Enemies that find the bodies of their fallen comrades will become suspicious, and cautious, but their fear will also start to grow. As your ninja skills improve you can unlock more gruesome ways to kill guards, which will horrify their fellow guards enough that they will shoot at anything that moves, even each other. Once again, there is an outfit that increases the success of this play style.

PROS:

-Flexible play styles. Mark of the Ninja has so much to offer in styles of play—with so many different traps, accessories, and outfits that accommodate different play styles (more than the 3 mentioned above)—there should be something here for everyone.

-Replayability. I found myself replaying many levels (which you can easily switch between), to try different play styles, find all the hidden items, or just for fun as often as any other reason. There is even a New Game + mode that allows you to restart on a much harder difficulty with all of the skills and items you unlocked in the previous game.

-Intriguing Story. Although on the surface the story seems to be a simple one of revenge, it takes some interesting twists that are never fully explained or understood until the final level where the player decides between endings. It's easy to simply replay this last level to see the other ending, which is another plus in my book.

-Polished. From the tight controls to the incredible visuals, or the simple fact that I never experienced a single bug, this game shines.

CONS:

-New Game + difficulty. Although I appreciate the addition of a new game + mode, and added difficulty, I didn't like one of the features of this mode: hampered visibility. This made the NG+ a bit too difficult in my opinion, and I didn't play it for very long before I gave up. Luckily I can still enjoy the original mode, so this is a fairly minor quibble, and others may enjoy the extreme difficulty.

-Some of the later levels lack the fun of the earlier levels. Specifically the levels that take place in a desert town. These seem to lack the ingenuity and creativity of the earlier levels, and some areas of these maps were nearly impossible to get by while I was doing a "No Kills" run through, requiring numerous retries. I eventually found myself just running through them to finish quickly, rather than taking my time enjoying them.

SUMMARY: Mark of the Ninja is the first game I've ever played where I really felt like a ninja. Lurking in the shadows waiting for the perfect moment to strike has never felt so good, or been so rewarding. Watching enemies succumb to fear rather than running around blathering about how they're going to find you was refreshing. I highly recommend this title to anyone who ever wanted to play a good ninja game.