CasinoRPG – a free-to-play game that merges role-playing, tycoon and city building with casino game favorites like poker, blackjack and slots from Goldfire Studios, who were successful in their Kickstarter appeal for the project – has entered its open beta phase.
Since the campaign, the development team has expanded. James Simpson, founder and CEO of GoldFire Studios, spoke on the benefits of the Kickstarter platform;
Kickstarter is so attractive for indies because it offers a true win-win. The community has a unique position to participate in the development, while also providing us the backing needed to bring our creations to life.
CasinoRPG features an open, persistent online world running in-browser thanks to HTML5 technology. The uniqueness of its blend of genres means that players of CasinoRPG are able to use their virtual winnings to build casino empires, design luxury apartments and follow a vibrant story throughout the sprawling cities. These cities are then built, designed and managed by all of the players in the game, connecting the gambling side with the tycoon, city building and role-playing elements.
Luke Simkins, Chief Technology Officer of GoldFire Studios, commented on the team’s experience and the advantages of releasing games for play through web-browsers;
We’ve faced many technical challenges working with such new technologies, but we’ve come a long way and are ready to show the world what the web is capable of. We’ve barely begun to tap the possibilities of the web as a legitimate gaming platform…the future of browser gaming is very exciting.
GoldFire Studios, being the only game studio in Oklahoma City, sees staying local as part of its culture according to Simpson;
We’ve chosen to stay here in Oklahoma City rather than go to one of the coasts. Tech startups no longer have to be in Silicon Valley to succeed, and we hope to prove that with CasinoRPG.
You can visit the official CasinoRPG website to apply for a beta invite. And check out the gameplay trailer embedded directly below.
The launch trailer for Total War: Rome II has been released, heralding the strategy giant’s arrival on store shelves today. A few days ago the game’s worldwide activation time was announced by SEGA and Creative Assembly. Sure enough, Rome II went live on Steam just a few hours ago.
The award-winning Total War series returns to Rome, setting a brand new quality benchmark for Strategy gaming. Become the world’s first superpower and command the Ancient world’s most incredible war machine. Dominate your enemies by military, economic and political means. Your ascension will bring both admiration and jealousy, even from your closest allies.
Check out the game’s launch trailer below, where death and loss is ever-present in Rome’s political and military landscape.
Here is some good news for those of you clamoring for more information on Silicon Studio‘s Bravely Default (or Bravely Default: Where the Fairy Flies as it is now dubbed). Those who are planning on picking up the game will be getting the “enhanced” package, which features extra story events and an improved interface, allowing for a more fluid experience.
Square Enix recently sent out a tweet on the official Bravely Default Twitter page to make the announcement:
The overseas edition is based on "for the sequel".
Of course “for the sequel” is just a Japanese term for the more enhanced edition of the game, so those who have had to wait this monstrous delay for the anticipated RPG can rest easy knowing we have the best version on the way.
Over the weekend it was confirmed that Media Blasters will be giving Ladies versus Butlers! an English dub. Currently the series is tentatively set to be released sometime in January 2014 though an exact date has not been announced.
To go along with the anime‘s English dub announcement, the company also released a potential cover art which can be seen to the right, and in the comments on their Facebookpage they also confirmed that when Ladies vs. Butlers! is released, it will include all six of the extra bonus segments which were included in the Japanese release of the anime.
As you may or may not know, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was launched worldwide last Tuesday. Since then Square Enix’s revamped MMOhas been experiencing numerous server and log-in issues which have also placed limitations on the game’s character creation system.
In an effort to address fans, the game’s producer, Naoki Yoshida, has written numerous answersto questions concerning what Square Enix is planning on doing to rectify the issue.
“To ensure as many players as possible can log in and create characters on existing servers, our development and operations teams are monitoring server load and population around the clock, placing and removing restrictions with even the slightest fluctuation in numbers in order to maintain near-full capacity on each World. We are still experiencing maximum concurrent connection numbers of over 230,000 users. This number, however, has taxed some of our instance servers, and is causing unexpected down time here, as well.”
The company has also said that they are working on adding new Worlds to the game to try and provide more areas for gamers to spread themselves out and if everything goes well, a worldwide maintenance is set to occur on Wednesday which will increase the number of worlds for gamers to play on. Because of these issues all players will also be given seven days of free trial time regardless of whether or not they’ve previously played the game.
As people look away from Marvel and DC Entertainment to provide them with their comic book fix, indie developers are starting to grow in popularity. Smaller developers like those featured on ABC’s Comic Book Heroes (check our review here), and Titan Comics are starting to take the world by storm.
Titan Comics’ A1 Anthology series has been widely well-recieved and pretty popular among comic book readers around the world. This week, the fourth installment will be available for purchase. A1 Anthology #4 will include three different stories, all penned by Dave Elliot and W.H. Rauf. The latest installments of the following books will be featured;
WEIRDING WILLOWS There’s a dinosaur from Hollow Earth loose in the Weir and she’s eating Farmer McGregor’s sheep! Can Alice and Frankenstein’s Monster stop her – before McGregor puts down this purple T-rex for good?!
ODYSSEY What do you get when you cross soldiers, superheroes, supervillains with a truckload of guns, in a children’s hospital in Iraq?! This month’s ODYSSEY, that’s what!
CARPEDIEM: NINE IRON
Grab your woods and irons, and join the CarpeDIEm agents as they battle a haunted putt-putt golf arena – where deadly surprises wait in every hole!
You can pick up A1 Anthology #4, next Wednesday, Sep 11th for a moderate $3.99. If this is the first you are hearing of the A1 Anthology, then check out the gallery below that features some of the covers and pages from the book. If you are planning on grabbing the book, or have ready any of the previous installments, then let us know what you think in the comments below and be sure to stay tuned to Capsule Computers for all the Titan Comics news as it becomes available.
Kingston are one of the world leaders when it comes to data storage and one of their newest devices, the Kingston MobileLite Wireless, seeks to bring further strength to that reputation. With the space available on mobile devices still rather limited and in some cases being unexpandable such as with the iPad, this device could be the solution to your storage problems.
The MobileLite Wireless is a fairly unique and innovative device. It is essentially a wireless portable hard drive that uses a Wi-Fi connection to stream data to up to three Android and Apple devices simultaneously. While the device doesn’t contain any storage within itself, the owner uses their own USB flash sticks, SD cards or hard drives (my 1TB Seagate portable hard drive worked just fine) to provide the storage and content, meaning the MobileLite Wireless serves as a link between your files and your portable devices.
In the box you will receive a slim micro USB cable for charging the device, a micro SD card adapter and a handy starters guide as well as the device itself. The MobileLite Wireless is sleek, portable and functional, all three very important factors for a device of this nature. Weighing in at under 100 grams and being only slightly larger and more dense than an average phone, carrying the device around with you won’t prove to be an annoying task. The dark grey and black colour scheme also looks great and means the MobileLite Wireless won’t stick out awkwardly amongst your other devices. The fact that it doesn’t need any wires to connect to your mobile devices is also a huge plus, as you don’t have to worry about having the correct cables or even having them at all. The ports on the side are placed well and the three led indicators provide a simple way to let the user know the status of the device. The left most light indicates battery level by flashing in different colours depending on it’s amount of charge, the blue central light indicates the wireless capabilities are on and the final blue light indicates you have a bridged connection to the Internet. Battery life comes in at just under 5 hours of continuous use but all functionality will still work when charging.
In terms of the MobileLite Wireless’ most core functionality, streaming content to an Android or Apple device works very well. It handles streaming data to up to three different devices at the same time, it’s fast and it feels just like those files are on your device. The MobileLite Wireless uses a Wi-Fi connection to connect, which means most devices will be capable of connecting without problem. You won’t have any problems with range either as you can get around 50 feet away from the device without any connection problems and you don’t have to lose your device’s Internet capabilities when you are connected to the MobileLite Wireless’ own network as the device can connect to a Wi-Fi network itself and serve as a bridge. Those who are security concious will be pleased to know you can place a password on the local network to stop just anyone from accessing their content.
The MobileLite Wireless also has some nice additional features that deserve a mention. By pressing the power button quickly as opposed to holding it down for three seconds to turn on the wireless capabilities, the Mobilite Wireless can serve as a charger for your phone or other devices capable of being charged with a USB connection. Charging drains the life of the MobileLite Wireless pretty fast and it isn’t the most efficient charger but it can save you in a jam if your phone is about to die. I got about a 40% charge to my phone on a fully charged MobileLite Wireless. It also serves as a standard card reader which will no doubt be handy for some users.
In terms of functionality with your content, one cool feature is the ability to copy your photos straight to the storage inserted into the MobileLite Wireless, which means you can instantly share that content with up to two other people and you now have a backup of those photos while clearing space on your device, all without the need of a computer. For those users of social media, you can also post photos to Twitter or Facebook directly from the device as well as e-mail them as long as you have the MobileLite Wireless connected to a network. The fact that you can stream content to three users at once with everyone having their own access to the content is perfect if for example, someone wants to watch a movie while another user listens to some music. As touched upon before about the photo sharing, you can also share other files from your mobile device simply by placing it onto the MobileLite Wireless storage.
To access the content on your SD card or USB storage device you must first download the free MobileLite Wireless application which is available from the App Store and Google Play. The app itself is simple and well designed. It features a small tutorial at the start and accessing your files is as simple as folder navigation with a drop down list. Photos can be viewed as thumbnails or a file list, tapping on music begins playing it and it all works as one would expect. Both the picture viewer and music player provide all the basic neccessities, but don’t expect anything extra like photo filters or music equalisers. The music player does however features repeat and shuffle functionality. Videos also work fine but will need an external app such as VLC player to play larger files due to the limitations of Androids default video player. This dependency on the app for accessing your content may be a problem for those who prefer to use thier main media player but will suit the majority just fine. I did have one small glitch where I couldn’t see all my photos in portrait mode but could just fine when I flipped the phone into landscape, but this was a rare occurence.
You can also copy files between your mobile device and the SD card, however this is a fairly slow and clumsy experience when it comes to anything but small, single files. Transfer speeds are rather slow. I tried copying a 4GB file over and came back some time later to find it was only a quarter of the way complete. Functionality for copying multiple files outside of folders doesn’t appear to be present and copying photos has its own problem as you can only transfer photos from the file list view, which means you only have access to the file name and not a thumbnail. You will have to click the file name and load up the photo first to see what it is you want to transfer over and then return to the list and select to transfer it from there. This missing functionality seems like an oversight as a quick tap of the screen or settings button while viewing the photo from the photo grid could have easily brought up the option. While this isn’t much of an issue as the device’s nature is obviously more inclined to streaming as opposed to file copying, it is an available option that doesn’t work well.
Overall, Kingston’s MobileLite Wireless is a fairly unique device and performs all the tasks it claims on the box to a high standard of functionality and simplicity. It may serve a rather niche market with its feature set, but at an attractive price point and the bonus of doubling as a portable USB charger and card reader, it serves that market well. The required app works well and is easy to use but has some room for improvement in terms of functionality for transferring files from your devices back to the MobileLite Wireless. If you are aware of its capabilities beforehand, you will not be dissapointed by this nifty device.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
Over the weekend at Dragon*Con FUNimation chose to announce who will be voicing who when they release Jormungand later this year. The full cast list, as well as those working as members of the crew can be found below:
Main Characters:
Jonah – Micah Solusod
Koko – Anastasia Muñoz
Supporting Cast:
Alan – Tyson Rinehart
Amalia – Lydia Mackay
Black – Mark Stoddard
Chen – Jerry Russell
Chequita – Clarine Harp
Curry – Kent Williams
Edgar – Andrew T. Chandler
Karen – Shelley Calene-Black
Kasper – Eric Vale
Lehm – Christopher Smith
Lutz – Greg Ayres
Mao – Patrick Seitz
Miami – Gwendolyn Lau
Mildo – Caitlin Glass
Poe – Sean O’Connor
R – Ian Sinclair
Scarecrow – Robert McCollum
Schokolade – Brittney Karbowski
Tojo – Christopher Bevins
Ugo – Cris George
Valmet – Carli Mosier
Wilee – Akron Watson
Crew:
ADR Director – Christopher Bevins
ADR Engineer – Cris George/ Kenneth Thompson
Line Producer – Christopher Bevins
To go along with this announcement the company also released the below preview trailer focusing on the main characters escaping from an pursuer in an explosive car chase.
Over the weekend FUNimation has announced what characters will be voiced by what voice actors when they release their English dub of Maken-Ki! in North America. The list of voice actors can be found below:
Takeru – Ian Sinclair
Haruko – Monica Rial
Himegami – Chloe Ragnbone
Inaho – Tia Ballard
Furan – Brittney Karbowski
Kengo – Scott Freeman
Yuka – Jamie Marchi
Azuki – Morgan Garrett
Uruchi – Cherami Leigh
Chacha – Anita Neukar
Kimi – Alexis Tipton
Minori – Caitlin Glass
Aki – Heather Walker
Gen – Robert McCollum
Tomika – Eileen Dover
Akaya – Eric Vale
The company has also released a bit of a preview of the dub in a minute long trailer for the series which can be seen below. Currently Maken-Ki! is set to be released on November 12th in a Blu-ray and DVD combo pack, leaving C3 the only Funico stream left without a release date.
After doing an arguably poor job announcing Atelier Totori Plus’ release in the West, considering the game was only announced for release after it had already been available for purchase for two days, Tecmo Koei has been doing a bit of a better job with their next enhanced version of an Atelier game, Atelier Meruru Plus.
After announcing that the game would be released sometime in September back at E3, today it has been announced that Atelier Meruru Plus: The Apprentice of Arland will be released as a digital download on the European PSN this Wednesday. Whether this means Atelier Meruru Plus will also be released in North America this week is currently unknown, but we have reached out to Tecmo Koei America for comment.
