Stately Play

Tag: Multiplayer

Switch port of Divinity: Original Sin 2 out now

September 5, 2019 David Neumann 8

PC/Mac, Xbox, PS4, Switch So, I haven’t pulled out my Switch much over the last month. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve played with it at all since July. This isn’t for a lack of want–I would love to be playing Slay the Spire on my handheld pretty much all day, every day–but a matter of logistics. Our house was struck by lightning at the end of July causing all sorts of issues. It blew up our Apple TVs, all of our routers, and, for some odd reason, the two Switch cords that were currently plugged in. That’s it. So, our three Switches are down to only one working cord and I just haven’t gotten around to buying more, thus my Switch sits powerless while my kids fight over who gets to charge theirs and when. News from last night, however, forced me onto Amazon and we now have two new cords in the mail. An incredible RPG, Divinity: Original Sin 2, just arrived on Switch and there’s no way I’m not spending the next few weeks in the world of Rivellon.

The Thinking Person’s Shooter – Eximius Inbound

May 21, 2018 Alex Connolly 2

PC • Though age hath wearied my nerves and reaction time isn’t what it once was, the siren song of the shooter still manages to kindle the old fascination. Eximius: Seize The Frontline is aiding and abetting this month, due to running headlong into Pandemic Studios’ luminary Ken Miller’s proposition that FPS players don’t want to think, and RTS players don’t want to die. If the idea of commanding, ahem, and conquering appeals — and why we aren’t enjoying a glut of these hybrids is one of gaming’s more mystifying vacuums — then give this a look-see.

Armello is coming to iOS next week and, yep, it’s pretty good

March 6, 2018 David Neumann 13

iOS Universal, PC/Mac/Linux, PS4, Xbox One • Sorry I was AWOL yesterday, but unbeknownst to me (and for no reason I can ascertain) my two younger kids had off school yesterday. This allowed me to do real-life things with them like fix my attic stairs and teach them a slew of new curse words. Today’s a new day, however. The new attic ladder appears to be functional and I can’t wait to get a call from the school’s office today informing me that my kids decided to share their new vocabulary words. Oh, I also got a chance to play Armello on both my phone and iPad and it’s good. Very, very good.

Battle of Polytopia going multiplayer

January 16, 2018 David Neumann 105

iOS Universal, Android • The end of every game of Battle of Polytopia is an exercise in building self-esteem. I finish each game feeling great about how I did and then see my score is several hundred thousand points behind anyone on the leaderboards. Hooray for me! The only thing that would be more gut wrenching would be your friends personally crushing you in-game. That’s what we have to look forward to as Battle of Polytopia gets updated with multiplayer in February.

Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

Cardboard Critique: Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire

October 17, 2017 Zac Belado 6

Tabletop • Games Workshop has been in the business of creating miniatures and games for more than 30 years. Earlier in their history, when this writer was much less grey, the company was known for creating a wide series of miniatures board games that served as entry points into their Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy universes. Some were great fun, while others were wild, crazy and unbalanced (and still a bit fun). Nevertheless, the company took efforts to attract gamers into their orbit and keep them there. GW underwent a change in focus for many years, purging almost all of those gems from their catalogue and putting their time and money solely into miniature games. It seems there has been a change at Games Workshop, however, and they’ve been quietly releasing a series of miniatures board games for the last few years. Many of these were not priced to appeal to mainstream gamers, focusing on the GW fanbase instead. With their latest miniatures board game, Warhammer Underworlds: Shadespire, however, GW is taking a direct aim at competing with the mainstream products from their main competitors, Fantasy Flight and Cool Mini or Not.

Outstanding word deck-builder, Paperback, adds asynchronous multiplayer

August 8, 2017 David Neumann 17

iOS Universal, Android • Paperback is one of the better board game apps released in the last couple years, but not because of the app. I mean, the app is fine and works great if all you want to do is build words against the AI, but it falls short in one area that Stately Players demand in their board game conversions: multiplayer. Originally released with only pass-and-play capabilities, last night the app was hit with a stealthy update that adds what we all wanted, asynchronous multiplayer.

Digital Boardgame Armored Freedom Hitting Steam EA

March 23, 2017 Alex Connolly 3

PC/Mac • Aristotle’s ontological legacy can be summed up in a single, irrefutable truism: Man can never have too many mech games. No such state exists. Such sagely observation continues to ring through the ages. The battlesuit-besotted have a lot to look forward to. Tetragonworks’ Phantom Brigade (which is utterly ace), Valkyria Chronicles-dated-Armored Core Dual Gear by Orbital Speed Studio (also ace), Harebrained Studios’ Battletech (should be ace) as well as a bunch of other titles like Bombdog’s Chromehounds successor, MAV and the tungsten-tough isometric magic of Stellar Jockeys’ Brigador. And so on and so on. The god of iron and autocannon continues to smile upon us, as Armored Freedom gears up for Steam Early Access.

I want to offer the excuse for the gorilla that it was already wounded, but that's overkill even for a healthy gorilla.

Multiplayer Manifesto

March 21, 2017 Kelsey Rinella 3

Much of our hope for this site was that it would attract readers smarter than us to generate superb discussions in our forums. From these, we would harvest ideas for articles. I kind of shot myself in the foot by misconfiguring our emails for a few months (though we think that’s fixed, so if you tried to sign up for a forum account and didn’t get an email, try again!), but today we have such an article.

Colt Express gets major update, multiplayer actually works

December 13, 2016 David Neumann 7

Kelsey took a look at Colt Express last week and thought it was a pretty great rendition of a board game with one huge flaw, the multiplayer system was broken. While online play existed, the ability to create or join games was enough of a mess to prevent him from playing even one multiplayer contest. It was bad enough that Asmodee decided to pull back their December releases to ensure that multiplayer hijinks wouldn’t be an issue going forward. Today, Asmodee took steps to correct what’s already out there and Colt Express has been updated to make multiplayer a little more palatable.

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