Category: Games
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Bit by bit, Wil Wheaton has been sharing pieces of the concept art for his upcoming RPG show, Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana. Today he released the entire image in its enormous glory.
Titansgrave complete concept art | WIL WHEATON dot NET.
In fact, this image is so large, you could probably use it for your desktop if you were so inclined.
I am so inclined, Mr. Wheaton. I am.
Great desktop. Or best desktop? I’m sure I’ll come back to you one day, Wapuunk.
Titansgrave: The Ashes of Valkana premieres on Geek & Sundry this June.
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For Amber’s birthday she mostly wanted to hang out with friends. When our friends hangout we play Ingress. At Ber’s request, I planned a small bit of multi-layering downtown the night before. The operation went by smoothly and everyone had fun in the nice weather.
Everyone even wore blue shirts to support the Resistance! Totally unplanned!
The group’s first hack
Danny levelled up
Yup, that’s a portal. It’s normally not on so it’s called “Intermittent Fountain”
Creepy shriner statue? Definitely a portal.
Not sure why they walked over there
Parental units can be agents too
At the medical school
Abstract art portal
Group photo
back to hacking
D’awww
Multi-layered fields. They stayed up about a day before a frog took out the southeast portal. The other half stayed up longer!
The western view on the scanner
The eastern view on the scannerIn Louisville and interested in Ingress? Comment here, we can meetup and I can help get you started with the game. It’s something I enjoy.
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One of my least favorite things is when game reviewers spend all their time on rules. I tried to avoid that and instead wanted to share why I like this card game. Hope you enjoy the short video.
Cameo from Bagheera, too!
Find out more about Urbion on Boardgamegeek
We bought Urbion at Funagain Games in Eugene, Oregon.
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Providence Park is the home of the Portland Timbers, a Major League Soccer team. But we actually attended a game for the Portland Timbers 2 (lovingly called ‘T2’,) the first game they’ve played in Providence Park. T2 is the USL team under the Timbers, which puts them in the same league as our new hometown team, Louisville City FC. The T2 and LouCity won’t play each other unless they both make the championship game, but we figured we needed to scout them out just in case.
We got great seats and the park is really beautiful. We could actually hear the players shouting on the field and not miss a thing. The T2 lost to the Orange County Blues, but it was still fun.
Before the game we also did this really fun Ingress mission.
Most missions are travelling along a path, hacking the portals and visiting waypoints. This mission you had to actually capture or upgrade all the portals along the way. But when we visited, all but the southern portal were heavily linked and modded. Amber and I spent nearly all of our weapons capturing the portals in the name of this mission.We were so excited to get the southern portal, Multnomah Athletic Club, because it was blue. All we had to do was upgrade it! No fighting! And the mission would be ours! But the problem was, it was high enough level already there was nothing for Amber to upgrade. I wouldn’t let this stand. So I used a Jarvis virus to turn it green — and we went back to XMPs. We took it down again and we both completed the mission.
Our reward —
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It’s been awhile since my last pinball session. That’s probably a good thing for my budget, but apparently it’s been wearing on my soul. Amber needed a nap one afternoon and I got antsy pretty quickly.
https://twitter.com/alexjgustafson/status/593896678731558912
Thankfully, I was only a few blocks away from Level Up Arcade in Eugene, Oregon. This place was awesome. The closest thing we have to it in Louisville is the Zanzabar, but they mostly have retro machines and the majority of their clientele annoy me. Level Up was clean, had good music, an awesome beer selection (I got Ninkasi Total Domination IPA) and some really great machines.
I started off with Star Trek and Simpsons Pinball Party, since I never played either of these and they’re my best fandoms. Both were really good machines but I played poorly. I started to get the hang of Star Trek on the last ball of my second play, but with so many machines there I felt like I needed to move along.
Star Trek pinball machine
Simpsons Pinball PartyLord of the Rings pinball is probably my favorite machine of all time. I love all things Tolkien, but I think the pinball game is very well assembled too. The missions are well put together, lots of fun mechanisms (I like Bashing the Balrog especially) and the light layouts do a great job of keeping things clear. Amber doesn’t even like pinball, but she played this machine a while back and said she knew what to aim for (like a boss.)
Lord of the Rings: The Best Pinball Machine Ever Perhaps even better though is that I hit a nice groove playing this machine. My first game was a dud, but I got lucky with a match at the end for a free game. On that second game, I played several multiballs, but not the Two Towers, and got enough to earn a free game. (Love that knocking sound.) On my third game, another dud – but got another match! On game four I played all the movie multiballs and just barely failed the Destroy the Ring mission. And got a knock for another free game. 🙂 My fifth game was another dud, but at this point I had been playing LotR for 45 minutes or so and I’m sure someone else was ready for the machine. So I walked around a bit and snapped photos.
Mario and Luigi (not pictured) greet you from the street
Classic arcade games
Terminator Salvation arcade game
4-player pacman
Level Up Arcade pixel artwork
Wall of pinball machines
Star Trek Voyager sit-in arcade gameI wanted to play that Star Trek:Voyager game really badly, but Amber was up and I like her better than Voyager. I highly recommend Level Up for anyone in Eugene though.
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The Ingress Recruiter Badge Level 4!
That’s a text my mom sent me yesterday. My wife, dad, and mother-in-law have sent me similar messages. Leveling up is a common mechanic to video games but my mother doesn’t play video games so I’ve never had the chance to see her excited with new powers gained and an ever-climbing amount of experience points.
Ingress has changed that.
Some agents shun the Recruiter badge because it can feel a little forced. No one wants Ingress to go the way of Farmville and annoy the friends of its fans into playing. I embrace the badge because I can immediately see the value in having a network of friends that have a similar stake in the game. My parents live in another state, and I honestly look forward to swapping keys with them to pull off a big operation one day. My wife’s best friend lives in town, but she frequents very different areas from my wife and I and that can prove valuable too.
A group that already knows how to work together socially is incredibly powerful in this game.
And if you treat the Recruiter badge like a Farmville — spam all your friends and family with links — I can assure you it will not work. The signup flow from your recruitment email isn’t that great and it’s definitely not convincing.
Here’s how you can rock the Recruiter badge and your friends and family will thank you for it.
Play the game for a while first. Show them what fun you’re having, and ask if they want to come out sometime.
That’s it. No pushing, no explaining. Have fun and ask them to join in on your next afternoon. You can promise drinks afterward if that’s your thing.
One of the reasons I think the Recruiter badge is done well is that you don’t “score” any of your recruits unless they hit Level 3. This is easy to accomplish if you go out with them, neutralize a few portals for them, let the new player capture them, and setup a few small fields at a local park. That might be underwhelming your Level 16 greatness, but I promise a new player will get an endorphin hit for throwing those links. If you get their account setup, say “Do the tutorials” and let it go… it’s less fun for everyone and they might give up before they hit level 3.
And that’s your fault if they do, and you don’t deserve to call yourself a recruiter.
Ingress is all about the meta-game agents play behind the scanner. Embrace that in your own social structure, and I think you’ll have fun earning that Recruiter badge the slow way: one agent at a time, one jaunt at a time.
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Ingress 1.75 is ready to go on Google Play and it offered this awesome changelog:
What’s New
Version 1.75.0
* Bug fixesBut there’s a much better breakdown of the changes here:
Ingress APK Teardown [1.75.0] || Fev Games
Biggest change for my usage? Sharing profiles got better. So of course I had to test it out 🙂
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Since I started playing Ingress I’ve found myself walking down streets I’d never normally walk, staring at buildings I’d never looked at before, and finding details that bring joy to the few who are willing to notice. But there’s a moment for every Ingress player when they start appreciating cemeteries.
The St. Louis Cemetery in Louisville, KY The backbone of Ingress is walking around from portal to portal. Portals can be nearly anything that is interesting, unique, or brings value to a community. Artwork and murals are popular portals, and nearly every church is a portal. But sometimes a bar in the right neighborhood is a portal too — or maybe that stone pig outside of the BBQ restaurant is a portal even if the restaurant is not.
Cemeteries are valuable to Ingress players because they almost assuredly contain multiple portals. With so many beautiful sculptures, and the way so many cultures venerate death — it makes sense that agents battling each other over the future of humans’ minds would be concerned with how we treat a hallowed ground.
In the real world, I want little to do with cemeteries after my passing. I don’t like asking for anyone to take care of me now, and I certainly wouldn’t expect it after I’m dead. Cremation just makes more sense to me. But I’ve taken a few walks through cemeteries for Ingress now, and I really do like the peace they project.
Since I go in there to hack portals, I also get drawn to specific works less than the idea of “cemetery” as a whole. The various crosses and simple rectangles are nice, to be sure, but when someone has built a pavilion of ionic columns surrounding a life-sized sculpture of himself — with an angel on its roof, no less — it’s hard not to take a look while in you’re in the neighborhood. I guess that’s why they built it that way in the first place.
Their memory will be honored with my level 8 resonator.
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We rearranged the house to accommodate more players.
He was upset because his lack of opposable thumbs made board games too difficult.
Jamie is fluxxible
Just ignore that generic minion
This is Pete’s silly face
Tsuro of the Seas and Munchkin Bites
7 Wonders with Leaders and Cities expansions—
Alex "Gus" Gustafson 