Gwent beta

Hi, my name's Dave and I'm a gwentaholic lol 

When I saw the beta for Gwent I got super excited (having loved it in the withcher 3) and downloaded the game asap! I've been playing an awful lot lately! I'm really enjoying the challenge of playing against other people, some of the decks they build are outstanding! 

Scoia'tael is my favourite deck to use. Still mastering the best card combo to suit my play style, I'm diggin the monster deck aswell.

What I think is truly great, is the artwork and animation for the cards! They look fantastic! Leveling up and rank matches are pretty well set, can't say I have any gripes with play, except people who forfeit on the last or second last card... just play to the end, gah! 

Destiny Reforged

       Destiny Reforged is the remastered version of the original, first edition Born of the Phoenix novel. The biggest change is the trim size of the paperback. Born of the Phoenix trim size is 6" x 9", it's createspace's recommended size, so being my first novel, I decided to run with it, though, when I received the books in the mail, i did consider them to be abit large for a paperback, and thus the seeds for the re-vamp were planted. Destiny Reforged trim size is 5" x 8" which feels much more agreeable in-hand!

      The cover is the next big change, as well as the new title. Being the first book in the series, I felt that having its own title would be a lot better. Destiny Reforged reflects the new path of fate Ravage and Patsy travel after their encounter with Akella, Melody and Crystal. The book has a new illustrator, Adam Isailovic. He does some awesome work! You'll find quite a few illustrations inside the book. Ever since reading the old 'choose your own adventure' books when i was young, I've always loved pictures in books! So I'm thrilled to be able to have illustrations in my novels!

      And that sums up the changes in Destiny Reforged. To get your hands on a copy of the paperback, follow the link below.

https://www.createspace.com/7103032

         

Misanthropy cover!

      Misanthropy is really coming along nicely! I'm thrilled with how the book cover turned out! Adam did an awesome job! Can't give the guy enough praise! We'll be working on the next project soon as well! I have the next three books in the works, Born of the Phoenix is going to be a very long series! Writing has been great lately, words are flowing so easily! Now that most of the main characters have been introduced i going to narrow the book vision, in that they'll be more focused on specific people, like Ravage & Patsy and Akella. I'm itching to get started on Akella's origin story!!!! Crystal will have her own book in the future as well. Zoe, I really wanna do her origins, but I think I'll write it as a novelette. I want Tairrie to be a more prominent character as well, I really like her origin so i'll also write that as a novelette. Nancy Nadonya, the legendary Josai fairy, you can expect to see more of her in the future!
      Sydney Supanova will be upon me before I know it, a lot to plan for that! I learnt so much from my first year, this year it's going to be exciting!  

Custom Magic the Gathering decks (^_^!)

      I've only just started playing magic the gathering. The only thing I don't like about it is that I don't have many people to play it with, or time to play. There's a shop in Penrith where they play every saturday but I haven't gone there yet. Mostly because I'm busy on saturday's with getting Misanthropy finished and spending time with my girlfriend and or sleeping in and playing the playstation. 

      A few times I've tried to get my gf to play magic with me but she hasn't been too interested. So, to make the game more fun for her, I jumped on http://mtgcardsmith.com/ and made her a custom magic deck, mostly with cats, because she loves kitties!

      Cardsmith is a good site. I made a lot of my 'token' cards for my other decks on there, much easier then trying to track the cards down or buying them on ebay.

 

Mortality of characters

      Should a protagonist die?
It's a question many authors struggle with. Personally, I think it's an important part of activating the reality wheel in a narrative. It can honestly be annoying when a hero overcomes every outrageous obstacle or battle unscathed, eliminating fear that the character might actually not survive a horrendous encounter. Killing heroes creates an atmosphere of uncertainty. Can they defeat that monster? Is this quest too much for them? Will the dragon eat their face off?!? It's one of the reasons I've stayed away from the traditional 'stop the apocalypse' or 'save the princess' story arc. I find the domino effect style a lot of fun when writing. Events triggered by the protagonists actions give the narrative a much better flow than a story trying to wrap everything up nicely with a bow to accomplish its preconceived end goal. Sometimes there's nothing worse than predicting a story's ending! 

      This is concept art for Crystal's appearance in Misanthropy. Adam's been doing some great work drawing the characters! He's working on colouring the cover at the moment, though I won't be revealing it until just before the book release.

Onechanbara Chaos PS4 review

(!^_^)/~Onechanbara! It was a whole lotta fun!

      Most of the games I've been playing lately have been rpg's. Games like the witcher, fallout and darkest dungeon. While these games are great and immersive, they require a lot of hours, especially the way I play. With all the writing I've been doing lately (and stupid day job) I just don't have the time for my favourite rpg's, enter Onechanbara! It was abit of a impulse buy. The cover reminded me of Lollipop chainsaw, which I really enjoyed playing. I realise there's a stereotype surrounding it which is unfortunate. It was a fun zombie slaying sparkle colour comedy dialogue adventure, and Onechanbara was much the same!

      The enemy designs were pretty cool and the boss battles enjoyable. It didn't take long to finish, only a few hours, which I liked because I didn't have to grind or search for hidden items or anything. I just turned it on and jumped straight into monster slashing action! The characters were easy to use and the moves rather satisfying, especially the finishing moves where you absolutely rip the monsters apart! The quick time events were very smooth and it was the first time i've used the touch pad  for a QTE. Combat was very fluid, graphics were solid, I didn't notice a single glitch which was fantastic! Ultra smooth gameplay. I thought the switching character mechanic to be very useful and fun, weapons were cool and so were the transformations and combos.

      Overall, it was a simple, fun game that was a pleasure to play! It get's a Dave score of 8/10 for its enjoyment factor. 

Jobee & the swirling waves

      Misanthropy has a new artist! http://skavenzverov.deviantart.com/ His artwork is fantastic! This is his drawing of 'Jobee the sea goddess' You might remember her from the first book, she'll be returning for Misanthropy! There are several other illustrations which will be inside the book and I'm pretty excited to see the cover, he's working on it at the moment!

Wading through the bog

      One hurdle every introvert faces is the difficulty of accomplishing feats alone. There are times solitude is a blessing, no-one around to complicate a situation. No other voices or opinions to lead you astray. Though, when you have no allies to turn to for aid, paths and threshold guardians can be difficult to defeat.

      I've come to realise the struggles of self published authors. Marketing, publicity, promotion - I know not of these things. I'm a world builder, a story teller, my strengths are in imagination, not business. These topics need some research!!! It would be nice to have someone to talk to about these things of which I know nothing, but, as an introvert who doesn't much converse with the other humans, I will press on alone. (Though, I do muchly feel like I'm trying to lead Artax safely through the swamp of sadness.)

      Well, I'm off now to send Akella into a haunted forest (^_^!) So far, Misanthropy is on schedule for its Jan/Feb release.

Misanthropy update

 

      Misanthropy continues!!!! Though, progress has slowed some lately. Work has been hectic, but, I have no wish to bore you with such humdrum details of the daily grind. I've been thinking about quitting work again so I can purely concentrate on writing buuuuut it's unlikely that'll happen anytime soon, (dang it!)

  

     The illustrations are continuing to roll in, which is great! Here we have some progress shots of Patsy & Hobson. Not 100% sure how many pics will be in the novel, maybe between 6-8.

      Well, back to writing now, Ravage & Patsy are currently travelling through a ravine in the southern outskirts of the Fornen swamp, what will they find?!?

Resident evil Revelations 2 review

There were a lot of things i liked about RE-R2, the enemies, the graphics, the weapons, the gameplay mechanics - all very splendid! What I didn't enjoy, at all, was constantly switching between characters (stunning enemies with the flashlight then taking them down with Claire - for example)
After a few hours I felt like I was playing 'the babysitters club'. Innovation is good, right, moving forward and evolving, changing things up.... but my heart lies with the early res evil games, RE2 and RE4 the BIG favourites of the franchise. That, was survival horror. If you walk down a dark hall, all alone, it can be creepy, if you have someone with you - less creepy. If you're in the middle of a boss battle and your stupid AI partner keeps getting in the way - that's really fucking annoying! Ever since RE5, I've found having a 'sidekick', REALLY ANNOYING!!!
Why do I need a buddy? Can't they let me play the game alone?!? This is why I now prefer Dead space over res evil, because they give you the real deal. Sadly, I'm not sure if they're going to make any more DS games, sad times. I hope they do!
I didn't finish RE-R2, I got bored/annoyed with the AI sidekick.
Raid mode was the game's saviour! Wow, I really, really enjoyed raid mode! It was fun,
Excellent gameplay, annoying sidekicks, final verdict 6/10.