How Randomness Contributes to Strategic Thinking by Ross Przybylski on 01/27/21 10:15:00 am The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
Input randomness influences your decisions (ex: the procedurally generated starting conditions of a board game).
Output randomness
influences the outcome of a player’s decisions (ex: the roll of dice determining whether an attack hits or misses). This distinction is used to build an argument that while input randomness contributes positively to strategy games, output randomness “in all its forms is to be avoided”. Statements like this that conclusively discount value concern me. There is more we can learn from randomness.
Final Fantasy Tactics Follow-Up Unsung Story Gets a Steam Page
It Only Took Six Years
Sometimes, name recognition goes a long way. After all, millions of people bought Ready Player Two last month on the strength of the first book in the series. Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians was a game that followed the same route to success, banking on the involvement of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno. The game raised $660,126 on Kickstarter all the way back in 2014, only to be put on hold by developer Playdek in 2016 and sold to Little Orbit in 2017, who proceeded to scrap everything created for the game so far and go back to the drawing board – albeit, keeping the original storyline in place.
Unsung Story Will Finally Make Its Early Access Debut
Unsung Story hit Kickstarter to fund a new strategy game that
Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, and
Vagrant Story developer Yasumi Matsuno would be involved with. It made $660,126 from 15,824 people. Now, almost seven years later, a playable version is about to appear for everyone. The
Unsung Story PC version will enter early access on Steam “soon,” according to Little Orbit.
There’s no definite release date for this new build of the game yet beyond “coming soon.” Little Orbit noted Kickstarter backers who opted in at a tier that included the game would get a Steam key for it “over the coming days.” However, it did say it will be around another year and a half before the full game appears, as the initial release will only include the four-hour long first chapter.
FFXIV Mahjong Tournament Guests Will Include Yoshi-P and Yosuke Saito
Final Fantasy Tactics,
NieR,
Final Fantasy XIV Producer Naoki Yoshida,
Final Fantasy XVI Director Hiroshi Takai,
Final Fantasy XIV: Heavensward Main Scenario Writer Kazutoyo Maehiro, and Shinnosuke Tachibana, the Japanese voice actor for Alphinaud Leveilleur. [Thanks, Famitsu!]
People can watch the broadcast at 2pm JST on December 29, 2020. It will be available to watch through the Japanese streaming service NicoNico. Commentary for the
FFXIV annual mahjong tournament will be available in Japanese. There is no information on the official Lodestone website about the broadcast potentially being available in English or any other language at a later date.
24 new Android games from the last week: The best, worst, and everything in between (12/07/20 - 12/13/20)
Welcome to the roundup of the new Android games that went live in the Play Store or were spotted by us in the previous week or so. Today s list is broken up into several segments, ranging from best, average, to mediocre. So whether you re looking for the best games of quality or are simply looking for the latest free-to-play gacha titles, you re covered. This week I have the newest release in the Drawn to Life action-adventure series, a gorgeous adventure game themed around Orwell s Animal Farm novella, and an enjoyable survival game published by Humble Bundle. So without further ado, here are the new and notable Android games released during the week of December 7th, 2020.