Android Emulator: 2016

2016年6月1日星期三

Enjoy Epic Battles In Lords Mobile!

Lords Mobile is a game that ended up surprising me. We all know the saying about judging a book by its cover. Well I’m adding to that: never judge a game by its tutorial.

For whatever reason, the developer stocked the opening of the game with the players repetitiously digging through menus. There were a few moments where I got to watch a battle unfold, but they all played out on their own with no direct involvement required from me. Once those battle segments ended, it was right back to opening a menu, hitting “upgrade,” closing the menu, and utilizing the free instant upgrade ability to finish off the timer for that particular upgrade.

I was stuck watching the large battles unfold on their own.
The game directed me from menu to menu, upgrading so many buildings that I stopped paying attention to the specifics and just went straight for the “upgrade” button and then the “free” button to finish off the upgrade. This sort of chore is typical (though to a lesser degree) in many mobile strategy games, but Lords Mobile has taken it to an extreme. One or two examples of how to instantly finish an upgrade is fine, but a dozen or so back-to-back is boring, and less patient players than myself will likely check out of the game before they even get to play it.

Luckily I stuck around and discovered Lords Mobile’s saving grace: its Hero battles.

If you were paying attention during the large-scale fight sequences at the beginning of the game, you’ll have noticed that hero units lead the armies. Players can not only collect heroes, but they can take their group of heroes on side quests that involve battling waves of enemies and strategically utilizing each hero’s unique special abilities during real-time combat.

Loot collected from these battles is used to upgrade the heroes’ stats, and as the player levels up their account, the heroes themselves can level up further, allowing them to progress against tougher enemy groups.

I was surprised by how much I was enjoying the hero mode, when moments earlier I was halfheartedly tapping away at menus.

The hero battles taking place in real-time, combined with the need to frequently summon and aim special abilities at crucial moments, stands in stark contrast to my experience with the rest of the game. Because the hero mode is only a side attraction and not the main focus (building a city to compete with others in a multiplayer world), it’s not a completely fleshed-out experience. But I was happy to play it, as it not only gave me an active role in combat (which is something the larger scale battles lacked), but because it didn’t involve me mindlessly upgrading more buildings.

The rest of the game became busy-work once I discovered the hero mode. I’d check in with my town before jumping into tackle a few missions, and then check my town before closing out of the game. I was probably supposed to be analyzing my defenses, checking out what my neighbors were up to, and so on. But I didn’t care about that. I’ve done that stuff in so many games before Lords Mobile that the familiarity and repetition held very little interest. I just wanted to go tackle some more monster fights and collect more heroes.

Angry Birds Movie Could Be Just A Matter of Time

"Angry Birds" has officially transcended your phone screen — for now, at least. The Angry Birds Movie is hoping to become this summer's animated hit, with voices by comedians Jason Sudeikis, Josh Gad, Danny McBride, and Maya Rudolph, to name a few, all playing various kinds of big, fluffy birds, just like in the beloved smartphone game. With the movie hitting theaters on May 20, fans are wondering if, like the game, The Angry Birds Movie might be just the beginning much more – an Angry Birds sequel, perhaps? As with almost any popcorn movie being released nowadays, there's no doubt that Angry Birds was made with the idea of a potential franchise in mind. But will there be an Angry Birds 2? Well, it's not set in stone yet.

Sequels don't generally get the green light until after the original movie makes a nice amount of money at the box office, and it looks like The Angry Birds Movie is well on its way to box office domination. The movie, which opened in Europe, South America, Africa and the Middle East one week ahead of the US, made $43 million over the weekend. And Rovio Entertainment, the company behind the original "Angry Birds" game, boasted that ticket sales increased over the weekend thanks to positive fan reactions. "Strong critical reception and great word of mouth ignited the box office on Saturday as The Angry Birds Movie displayed huge increases from Friday," Rovio said in an online statement, according to IGN.

Should Angry Birds be as successful at the box office as the original game was at the app store, then Angry Birds 2 seems inevitable. In fact, Sudeikis, who plays the main character Red, has already casually mentioned sequels in interviews. "You have to take sequels into consideration," he told Collider in February when speaking about his character development. In that same interview, Gad even joked that the sequel would be "a full-on Angry Birds musical." So, at least we know the actors are ready and willing to appear in a hypothetical sequel.

It's unclear how, exactly, a potential Angry Birds movie franchise will build off the countless "Angry Birds" games. Despite there being countless "Angry Birds" games, each with different themes and gimmicks, Rovio has only released one official "Angry Birds" sequel, the newly launched game app called "Angry Birds 2." Considering the original "Angry Birds" was released in 2009, I think it's safe to say that should Angry Birds get a sequel, it will, happily, come much quicker than the game did.

Seven Knights Users Are Pumping Out From Japan

Netmarble Games said its mobile game "Seven Knights" has become the first Korean title to rank fourth on the Apple Appstore top-grossing chart for Japan.

Korea's largest mobile game company stressed that this is the best-ever performance of a Korean mobile game in Japan, one of the world's largest mobile game markets.

"With Seven Knights, Netmarble Games is gaining business knowhow in the Japanese mobile game market," said Park Young-jae, a senior executive at Netmarble Games.

According to its earnings report, Netmarble Games recorded 157.9 billion won in overseas sales in the first quarter, the highest in the company's history. Expectations are high that the popularity of "Seven Knights" in the Japanese market will further boost the company's overseas performance in the coming quarters.

As of May 19, the mobile title has also recorded more than 4 million cumulative downloads in Japan, about 100 days since its Feb. 5 launch in the market.

"We seek to break the record by clinching the top perch in the Japanese market with a Korean mobile role-playing game by providing localized services," said Park.

Park attributed the success of "Seven Knights" success in Japan to thorough localization.

"We have carried out an overall restructuring of the game from the way of training characters to user interfaces and business model in order to customize for Japan's gaming market environment," the company said. "After the launch, we have focused on adding new contents that we thought users in Japan might feel more comfortable with such as Japanese-style character decorations and Japan-themed battle arenas. We have also collaborated with makers of popular Japanese games such as the Guilty Gear series and BlazBlue."

Many mobile games such as Supercell's "Clash of Clans" have hit international markets based on the "global-one-build" strategy, which enables a quicker release in more diverse overseas market.

Netmarble Games, which has tested the global-one-build strategy with its "Marvel Future Fight," decided to redevelop "Seven Knights" for the Japanese market two years after its release in Korea.

Netmarble Games said the decision to focus on localization was to appeal to the unique nature of Japanese users, which is different not only from Korean gamers but also those in other parts of the world.

"Besides Netmarble Games, many Korean game companies have launched mobile games in Japan but with little success due to such differences," a Netmarble Games spokeswoman said. "Japanese gamers tend to opt for games made by Japanese developers, ones tailor-made for their unique tastes. So we rebuilt the gaming content to appeal to Japanese gamers and worked with Japanese dubbing artists for better character voices."

In Japan, Apple iOS holds about a 44 percent share of the mobile operating system (OS) market compared to Google Android's 52 percent. This shows that the market influence of the two mobile platforms is not as strong as in Korea, where Android is the dominant mobile OS on the back of the popularity of Android smartphones made by Samsung and LG.

2016年5月31日星期二

Phantom of the Kill - Release Date Confirmed

gumi inc, who already have released a few solid games onto Android such as Brave Frontier and Wakfu Raiders, have finally announced a general release date for their upcoming Phantom of the Kill RPG for mobile devices.

A few days ago, quietly, gumi released Phantom of the Kill into the Google Play Store. We had reported recently about the game showing up sometime in May. If you haven't downloaded it already, you can download the game for free. It is labeled as a Mature 17+ game. The game does include optional in-app purchases. If you are interested in checking this game out, the link can be found at the end of this article.

For those of you not familiar with this game, Phantom of the Kill is a 3D turn-based RPG that takes place in a dangerous fantasy world where the story revolves around a group of assassins on a quest to recover their lost memories. This game has a few notable people working on it, including Ghost in the Shell director Mamoru Oshii who was brought on for the game's development, mainly around the opening movie as its Editorial Supervisor.

The controls for this game are supposed to be simplistic enough where you are supposed to be able to play it with one thumb, if you need to go that route of course. The overall fantasy theme for this game blends both magic and technology together, which can be a pretty entertaining theme to play with.

So far Phantom of the Kill has been in a fairly limited soft launch in a couple of regions only. If you play a lot of RPGs, turn-based or otherwise, you'll probably see a lot of similar mechanics showing up in this game as well. Unfortunately there isn't an exact date for the global launch of Phantom of the Kill, only that it'll be happening next month (May 2016). We will post an update once we learn more. In the meantime, you can check out the trailer for this game below.

Marvel Future Fight Crossed 40 Million Global Download Stats

In celebration of the one-year anniversary of Marvel Future Fight, Netmarble Games released an infographic containing stats from the game’s first year. In Marvel Future Fight, players recruit a team of Marvel superheroes and villains and take them into missions to defeat enemies.

Since its release last year, Marvel Future Fight has been downloaded by 40 million players worldwide. According to the infographic, 18 million of those downloads were in Asia, while North America, Europe and South America each accounted for 7 million downloads. Overall, users have spent 10,023 years playing the game so far.

While the game offers plenty of characters to collect, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Captain America, War Machine and Giant-Man are the most popular super heroes, while Yellowjacker, Loki, Ultron, Kingpin and Venom are the most popular villains. Finally, Black Widow, Silk, Captain Marvel, Sister Grimm and Elsa Bloodstone are the top five female super heroes in the game.

The infographic revealed that players have completed more than 1.2 billion stages in the game since launch, with players completing an average of 3.5 million missions every day. Overall, players have earned over $35 trillion worth of gold in the game to date.

Marvel Future Fight is available to download for free on the iTunes App Store and Google Play.

Check out the infographic for more stats.

Phantom of the Kill - Release Date Confirmed

Phantom of the Kill - Release Date Confirmed

Top 8 Tips For CoC Newbies

Below, you will find my top 8 must-know Clash of Clans tips. Before you do anything else, read the rest of this guide to learn these tips!

Tip #1. Save Your Gems

When you start playing Clash of Clans, you begin with 500 gems. By the end of the tutorial, you end up losing nearly 50 gems by completing structures instantly as instructed by the tutorial. If you instead save your gems, you will be able to add extra builders at a quicker rate.

Here are the costs for each builder:

Builder 2: 250 gems (you add this during the tutorial)
Builder 3: 500 gems
Builder 4: 1000 gems
Builder 5: 2000 gems
While builders 4 and 5 are a long ways off, builder 3 is achievable relatively quickly if you save your gems. Extra builders allow you to construct more buildings at once and as a result are very helpful. With the new Clan War achievements and a trophy push, you can unlock the 4th builder within a few months of playing even without purchasing anything. The 5th builder will require a major Trophy push (to Champion’s League) or more time to unlock some of the other achievements.

Tip #2. Use Cheap Units

One of the biggest mistakes new players make is not considering the cost of the units they use to battle. While Giants are great, they also cost a lot more to use than Barbarians. At higher levels, Dragons are great, but they cost a lot more to use than Giants. There is also the time factor to consider. While Wizards are stronger than Archers, they not only cost more to make, but each Wizard requires 8 minutes. Meanwhile, you could create 4 Archers in less than two minutes (Wizards are a 4-supply unit).

As a result, when your primary goal is to save up resources, you need to make an effort to use cheap units that are quick to produce. The best units to make depends on your Town Hall level; see my Clash of Clans Town Hall Farming Guide by Level for more details.

Tip #3. Only Use Spells When Necessary

Just like units, spells are very expensive and take awhile to produce. While they can be very effective, you need to make sure that the battle you are fighting warrants the use of such a spell. You should know that the Rage Spell starts at 23,000 elixir and the Healing spell starts at 15,000 elixir; each time you use these spells, you need to be sure that using the spell will allow you to earn at least an additional 15k or 23k resources (spell depending).

Tip #4. Slowly Upgrade Your Town Hall

The Town Hall “loot penalty” is one of the most important things to know about in Clash of Clans, yet it is not a publicly advertised feature in the game. It is not even mentioned during the tutorial or anywhere in the game, yet it is extremely important to how the game plays out.

This penalty reduces the amount of loot you can get from enemies if your Town Hall is a higher level than your opponent’s Town Hall. If your Town Hall is one level higher than your enemy’s, you will only be able to steal 90% of the normal amount available for loot. If your Town Hall is two levels higher, you will only be able to steal 50% of the loot. For three levels, only 25%, and for 4 levels or more, only 5% of the total available loot. The penalty is reflected in “Loot Available” – you do not have to do any calculations on your own.

As a result, we recommend getting up to Town Hall level 4 and then sitting in this range while you max out your defensive structures, your army camps, and your research. You can even max out your walls for extra credit before moving on to Town Hall 5. Repeat this process for every level.

Tip #5. Start Matchmaking Early

When you first start playing Clash of Clans, you get a three-day shield. However, thanks to the previously-mentioned Loot Penalty, very few players will want to attack you even if you drop your shield. As a result, you can start matchmaking right away when you need resources with no fear of reprisal. You can skip around and look for a base with exposed resource collectors and use a handful of Barbarians, Goblins, or Archers to attack them.

Even if you do get attacked, low-level Town Hall players have very little to lose. You will only lose a tiny bit of resources that can be more than made up for with a single attack.

Tip #6. Use the “Next” Feature Frequently

When farming either resources or trophies, you should always be skipping around with the “next” button in order to find the perfect base to attack. It only costs a tiny bit of gold to jump to the next base, so make sure you have a good base before you spend all your units attacking one. Also, be careful never to spend every last bit of gold you have on an upgrade – you need to save some gold in order to be able to use the “next” ability to continue farming!

Tip #7. Put the Clan Castle in the Center of Your Base

The Clan Castle is perhaps the best defensive structures in Clash of Clans, but only if you place it in the center of your base. The way the structure works is that when enemy units enter the Clan Castle’s range (it has a very long range), the units will pour out of the Clan Castle and attack the enemy’s attacking units. Note that your Clan Castle troops are capable of hopping over your own walls.

If you place the Clan Castle outside of your base, the enemy can simply lure away the units inside the Clan Castle and easily kill them out of range of your towers. If you keep the Clan Castle inside your base, the enemy will have to take damage from both your Clan Castle units as well as your defensive structures in order to take out your base.

Generally, it is best to ask for Archers to keep in your Town Hall for defensive purposes. This works very well because Archers will often shoot at melee units from behind your walls, allowing them to shoot down Giants and Barbarians without taking damage. Very high level players may choose different units, such as Dragons or Golems, but this requires a clan where members will donate these troops.

Note that this tip really only applies to players at Town Hall 7 or above. At earlier Town Hall levels, you do not have enough buildings to actually prevent the enemy from luring out units in your Clan Castle. Town Hall 7 units can still be lured, but it is tougher. At Town Hall 8 and up the enemy will have to destroy some buildings or a decent number of units to force troops out of your Clan Castle.

Tip #8. Focus on Dark Elixir

Once you reach Town Hall 7 and beyond, your limiting resource will always be Dark Elixir. Through normal play, you typically will max out all gold and elixir-based upgrades long before you acquire enough Dark Elixir to max out your heroes and Dark Barracks troop upgrades. As a result, you need to place a priority on Dark Elixir above all other resources, saving your spells and hero units for when you stand to gain a large chunk of Dark Elixir.

Best Legendary Cards In Clash Royale

We're going to go over all the legendary cards in Clash Royale and give you my opinion on which of them are worth getting. Currently there are two ways to get legendary cards, you either buy them form the shop at 40,000 gold or you get them from a chest.

The super magical chest has the highest chance of giving you a legendary, but it is also really expensive at 4,600 gems at arena level 8. Instead of spending a ton of money on super magical chests I suggest you just stay patient and wait until the card is available in the store. I have had legendaries available in the store close to 10 times so far, so it is quite common.

Buying legendary cards from the store you can chose yourself which of them are worth spending money on. Basically a legendary card from the store costs 2,000 gems. In my opinion not all legendaries are worth spending this amount on gems on, at least not if you don’t have a clear plan on how to use them.best-legendary-clash-royale
You can’t just put all the legendaries in a deck and except to do well. Most good decks will only have one legendary cards in them, and it is very rare to see a good Clash Royale deck with 3 or more legendaries.

The order in which I rate the legendaries take into account how many different decks they would fit in. I think this is really important. If you are going to spend a lot of money on a card, it should be a card you are able to use in a lot of decks, not something that only fit in one specific deck. So let’s move down to the list, I start out with the worst card at number 5.

5. The lava hound.

I thought this card was good when I bought it a few weeks ago, but really, it’s not. I thought the reason I never faced this card in battles was that noone had gotten it yet, but I later found out that the reason was that the card sucks.

The lava hound is basically a flying golem that does no damage. Just look at his stats, 26 damage per second! That is really nothing, and even if he splits up into lava pups they tend to die so fast that they hardly do any damage either.

Yeah I know you can put him in front of other troops that do higher damage the lava hound will tank for them. This is the best way to use the lava hound, but even using that card this way it doesn’t justify the high elixir cost. The laval hound actually costs 7 elixir to play, which is too much. I’m not sure I would even have the card in my deck if it only cost 6 elixir.

What I tend to do when my opponent is playing the lava hound is to push the other lane with all I have, while I am just ignoring the lava hound. The lava hound is really slow and by himself he is not really a threat either. You can read more about how to counter the lava hound here.

4. The miner.

At fourth place we have the miner. The miner is not a bad card, it is just that the other legendaries are much better. Lately I have faced the miner a lot of times, and he has been quite annoying to deal with. Even thought the miner has a lot of health and takes a while to kill, he doesn’t do that much damage.

The biggest danger when facing the miner, is if he is backed up with other troops and work as a tank for them. This is what you should do if you have the miner in your deck. Basically you let the miner tank the damage from the tower while weak troops like goblins, spear goblins or archers are hitting the tower. Using the miner this way is great, as he has a lot of health and will take quite a while to fill.

The miner is fairly versatile as well. He can basically fill the role of the tank in many decks. The low elixir cost of 3 means that he is good value.

3. Sparky.

In third place we have Sparky. Sparky is a very interesting card and can be very strong when you are facing players who don’t know how to counter it. I think that was the reason we saw Sparky in so many decks early after the release. Everyone who had gotten the card chose to play it, as almost noone had learned how to counter it yet.

Now however, when most players at arena 7 and higher have gotten Sparky, we don’t see the card played as much. A lone sparky is easy to deal with, even 1 elixir skeletons can take it out together with your tower. Even so, sparky backed up by other troops is still a challenge.

Royal giant in front with a sparky on the back is probably the most popular combination with sparky these days. This combination is really hard to deal with, as anything you drop in front of the royal giant will be killed by the sparky. The way to deal with the combination is to distract the royal giant and then play troops in the back that will take out sparky. This is quite hard to do however, even when you know how to do it.

Sparky costs 6 elixir to play, but the amount of damage it is able to deal combined with the amount of focus your opponent has to spend on stopping it, justifies the high cost. I even have a whole article on just how to counter Sparky.

2. The ice wizard.

A wizard that only costs 3 elixir and freezes troops sounds like a pretty good deal, and yeah it is! The damage from the ice wizard is much lower compared to the original wizard, but when you add the freeze and look at the low elixir cost you realize you get a lot of value.

The other thing that is really good with the ice wizard is that it is such a versatile card. You can fit this card in almost any deck. I mean, what deck doesn’t benefit from some extra splash damage to both air and ground? That is slows down troops by freezing them is just nice bonus.

It might be hard to notice how much the ice wizard affects the games you are playing, as it is not taking a leading role in taking down tower or troops like sparky does. However, if you actually spend time reviewing your games and see what is going on in the confrontations, you will notice that in larger battles having the ice wizard on your side will change things a lot. A battle that would otherwise be about even with almost all the troops dying might change to almost all of your troops surviving with half health.

There is not really any good way to counter the ice wizard. He doesn’t die to arrows or zap, so you can’t counter him with any spells and get out even or better. Basically you just have to deal with him being there, any maybe add the ice wizard to your own deck as well.

1. The princess.

I remember from a few weeks back this guy in my clan saying: “I got the princess a couple of days ago. Before I got her I was around 2,400 trophies, but now after putting her in my deck I just got to legendary arena!” That his how good the princess is, it is an amazing card that will affect your games a ton.

She is more obvious than the ice wizard, but it’s not like she will take down towers and kill troops in no-time like sparky. She is not a big and tanky card like the lava hound either. What she lacks in size and damage however, she easily makes up for in having the longest range of any troop in the game.

The princess can stand far away on the other side of the map and shoot at troops across the river. If there are no troops for her to shoot at, she will walk over to the bridge and hit your tower from there. Your tower is not able to hit her back, so you are basically forced to play a card to stop her from slowly taking down your tower.

The princess is a huge treath to any decks with swarm troops in them, that would be goblins, skeletons, minions, etc. She will take out these troops in just a few hits, so you pretty much have to deal with the princess before you play these cards. Even if you are attacking the opposite lane of where the princess is, she is still able to hit your troops.

There is not really any good way to counter the princess and get out ahead. The best way to take her out from would be arrows at an even elixir trade. If you use fireball or poison you will actually loose elixir unless you damage other troops at the same time. What I like to do is to wait until she is targeting my tower and then take her out with skeletons or spear goblins.

Last thing, the princess is a really versatile card as well. She fits into almost any type of deck. Oh yeah, she only costs 3 elixir to play as well, what an amazing card.

Marvel Future Fight Crossed 40 Million Global Download Stats

Check out the infographic for more stats.

Best Tips for Geometry Dash

Geometry Dash is like a marriage of two of the most frustrating games you'll ever play: The Impossible Game and Flappy Bird. It's also a lot of fun, so let's dig in!

You start out as a hop-happy icon with the goal of making it through each level in one go. You get unlimited attempts to do so, but if you mistime a jump or mess up in any way, it's back to the start for you.

At certain points in each level, you'll enter a warp zone where your icon is suddenly flying a mini spaceship with the controls switching over to Flappy Bird or Helicopter Game-style gameplay. It's the ultimate game of trial and error but if you read this guide, you might just be able to get off to a smoother start.

1. Ignore the Secret Coins

Ignore the Secret Coins when you're still figuring out the course. You can come back later and get them if you want.

Throughout each level, you're going to see some secret coins that you need to go off the standard path to get. If you're struggling just to get through the level, forget about them. They only make things harder. Since you need to finish the level to collect them, they're only worth focusing on it once you know what to expect from the full level.

The secret coins are used to buy new player icons, and unlocking demon difficulty in official levels.

2. Turn off the music

Turning off the music can help you focus better.

Geometry Dash has a pretty awesome soundtrack, with each level getting it's own sick beat. You might find the music distracting, as there are parts where you'll find yourself tapping along to the beat, only to have a new section pop up that requires you to tap off-beat.

Turning off the music can help you focus in on the visual cues, which are infinitely more important than the music. Plus, as your attempts counter reaches triple digits, music that sounded awesome is going to start getting on your nerves.

3. Use practice mode as needed

Using practice mode is a great way to work ahead and figure out what you need to do.

Practice mode doesn't count towards you beating the level, but it can help you figure out how to get past a particularly tricky spot and give you a heads-up as to what's up ahead. You're able to drop checkpoints in practice mode, which means you aren't stuck starting from the very beginning each time and can take as many goes at a tricky new part as you want.

The only catch is that none of it counts because we're talking about practice, not a game. You need to switch back to the regular game mode in order to progress further in the game.

4. Take a break

Taking a break can help you de-stress and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Seriously. It seems counter-intuitive to think you'll improve by putting a game down, but it's absolutely required with games like this that are designed to frustrate you. Watch Rooster Teeth's Rage Quit episode for The Impossible Game for fine (NSFW language) example of how these style of games are designed to frustrate you.

What sets Geometry Dash apart from The Impossible Game is all the strobing colors and lights throughout the levels — pretty at first, but eventually they almost put you into a light, hypnotic trance. After a marathon session of Geometry Dash, looking away from the screen might give you that weird swirling vision you get with some optical illusion videos.

Come back to the game the next day with fresh eyes, and you'll likely find things way easier — and less frustrating.

5. Don't pay for the game until you really need to

Play the free versions before deciding to buy it.

Sure, you can buy the full game for $1.99 from the app store. But, before you do that, you should take full advantage of the option to try before you buy. Try Geometry Dash Lite, which gives you access to the first 10 levels of the game or try Geometry Dash Meltdown if you really want to punish yourself. But really, if you fall in love with this game, it's a good idea to support the developers so they can keep doing what they do. Plus, the full game comes with a level editor mode, so you can create your own devilishly challenging courses and watch your friends rage quit.

Warning: Cheater apps

There are some third-party apps that purport to slow down the game. Use at your own risk.

If you're really struggling at Geometry Dash, you may be considering a third-party cheater app. These will slow down the speed that your cube (or ship) moves through the level, which makes it easier to time out your jumps and gives you more time to react when you're treading into uncharted territory.

Here's the thing: you can't trust them. They exist outside the App Store and that means no one has checked them for malware. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Don't even think about them.

2016年5月27日星期五

Vainglory 1.18 Update Teaser

While the folks over at Super Evil Megacorp have done a great job simply adding heroes on a regular basis, I’ve been more excited with the various gameplay and system improvements that have been made over the last half a year. With Version 1.18, which was released earlier this week,Vainglory now tackles the always persistent problem of longevity and player motivation.

First on the list is a comprehensive quest system. Now, players can earn chests from accomplishing a wide variety of objectives from a simple play of the tutorial to winning a Battle Royale to even longer-term goals such as accumulating a certain number of kills across all battles. Players take on a handful of quests at a time, with new ones automatically added whenever a current quest is completed. Hundreds of quests are available at launch, meaning there’s plenty of new objectives to work towards beyond simply playing matches and earning glory and guild experience.

The other big addition is an overhaul of the chest program. As quest rewards, chests can offer cards, glory, honor, and even experience boosts. In addition, chests are also rewarded for rising up in account levels, with folks that had already reached the max level having a wealth of chests instantly unlocked for every level obtained. Again, it’s a great complement to the quest system and does an excellent job of simply providing players with added incentive to play.

While I’m a big fan of the addition of quests and chests, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the newest hero, Lance. Billed as a protector that works best with crystal or utility items, Lance is also versatile enough that players can even build weapon items with him to be more of a damage-dealer (especially with this Heroic Perk that lets players attack multiple targets with his basic attacks). Like every other heroic addition, Vainglory does a great job of introducing heroes with cool unique traits, and it looks like Lance is no exception.

Candy Crush Jelly Saga - More Level Added

King has updated its popular puzzle game Candy Crush Jelly Saga for Windows 10 on PC and Mobile. It includes a new episode with 20 more levels to complete.

Here's what's new with this latest content addition:

- 'Jelly update! Explore 20 new marvellous levels in our NEW Episode Marzipan Meadow! Making it 280 levels of Jellylicious fun! PS. Fun fact! Jelly dosen't wobble under water... did you know? Have a jelly good time! Don't forget to leave a review and let us know what you think!'

As usual, be aware that while the game is free to play, it does have in-app purchases.

6 Best Mobile Racing Games of 2016

Racing games are very popular on Android and iOS. Given the profound demand of these games, new titles are being released constantly. The popularity of these games is hidden in its ability to allow everyone experience the thrill of racing- whether an amateur or an experienced driver. Have a look at the best racing games for iPhone, iPad and Android 2016.

Asphalt Nitro – Right now, Asphalt Nitro is available on Android, but it will soon come to iOS (Read Android TV remote app on iOS). Crafted as a part of the more famous Asphalt 8, this new game occupies 28MB of space and is great on fun, quality and adrenaline.

Dirt Trakin - The game is an absolute fun for fans of dirt track racing. Designed with realistic features, the game contains names of real world drivers, realistic controls and two dozens of vehicles to choose from.

Racing with car - The game is free with in-app purchases and is available both on iOS and Android. You will love it as it offers an in-car view, just like in real life. While playing this game, you will be transferred to an endless racing mode in realistic environments.

Drag Racing Classic - How about a game where you can upgrade and customize your chosen cars? This is a nitrogen-fueled drag racing game where you have access to cars like ’69 ford Mustang, BMW M4, etc. By controlling the game’s Online Multiplayer Mode, you can challenge your friends or random racers.

Jet Car Stunts 2 - Meant for skilled drivers, the game is not for regular playing. It challenges you to drive jet-powered vehicles on abstract tracks. Within it, there is a lot of landing and jumping involved. There are over 100 crazy tracks in the game.

Race the sun - The game is in the air where you will be driving a solar powered glider through the infinite. While doing so, you will have to avoid collisions with the environment as you reach insane levels, according to Phone Arena.

Another Clash Royale replica!?

Recently I found a game that’s pretty much a ‘Clash Royale’ replica.

The game was titled Balls Warfare, now names itself Monster Warfare, you seeing the screen capture below? It’s basically a pixel-level duplication of Clash Royale – from play style, UI, troops to IAP, everything in an extreme accordance. The only feature that’s different from CR is that there’s a 3 vs. 3 mechanism and a real-time voice chat. The dev team placed battlefields altogether in parallel, at a certain phase of the game, all troops deployed are allowed to move horizontally into hostile territories.

Moreover, judging from the IAPs in Monster Warfare (golden mushrooms and lollipops) and all in-game art styles demonstrated, it’s a lot like Battle of Balls published by Giant Interactive. In other words, it’s probably the same dev team who created Battle of Balls did the creation of Monster Warfare.

Art style of Battle of Balls (left) and Monster Warfare (right)

Giant Interactive stated that, “The development group of Battle of Balls has already been dismissed, we never approved any project regarding Monster Warfare, uploading this game is an individual behavior. Above all, Monster Warfare’s similarity in IAP and art style is an infringement against Battle of Balls, we are now conducting investigations and any infringement of this kind will be cracked down.”

How Do Mobile Gamers Think About Android Emulators

Duowan.com has interviewed two pedestrians regarding their experience on mobile market and Android emulators. let's hear'em out!

David, born in 1980s, 20+ years of gaming experience, developer.

Q: When was your first contact with Android emulators? How was it feel?

David: I knew about Android emulators for a very long period. I am an insider of IT industry, I saw a report many years ago mentioning some students in India developed a software that creates a VM environment on PC to play mobile games. Back then I thought that was a brilliant idea. After all, there are still many people of my kind prefer PC than mobile platform.

Q: You just said that, you are an IT industry insider. So, the way you see it, where does the toughest challenge in making an Android emulator lie?

David: That’s true, I am a developer, so I’m going to explain technically. The biggest obstacle for all Android emulators lies in their compatibility and stability. Because, look, there’s a gap between Android on mobile platform and Windows on desktop PCs. So adapting to different hardware and software can really be a formidable task. For instance, I use an AMD PC so I can overclock it at my disposal, in the meantime, my PC can be really shakey. So when I run an Android emulator, it could go irresponsive or show me a flawing framerate. It’s a matter of underlying architecture and it takes months, even years or so to test and adapt. Recently I’ve noticed that many Android emulators support AMD hardware, including KOPLAYER, Nox and Droid4X. I’ve tested all of them in person, it seems KOPLAYER’s optimization is fairly OK.

Max, born in 1990s, pro gamer, a streamer on YouTube.

Q: I’ve been told that you are a e-sport gamer. So could you please tell me that, how did you get to know Android emulators and surrounding products like that?

Max: That’s correct, I am a e-sport player of MOBA. I’ve been doing live streaming for League of Legends. Mainly because that, although mobile game e-sports is in its early stage, nevertheless, it’s spreading. To be a pro streamer, I must gain initiative. Like, when you see a game is on the trend, you must at least go get your hands on it, play a bit, then you record your gameplays constantly. Same can be applied on mobile games, I must be one step ahead of others, upload a bit of videos. In this process, I stumbled upon Android emulators, which allows me to play mobile games on PC.

Q: So, what does an Android emulator mean to you?

Max: You know, MOBA games requires lotta APM, sometimes it’s irritating to play on my phone, I can hardly feel comfortable, speaking of recent trending games like Crisis Action and Ace of Arenas. Plus, for Christ’s sake, I need to record videos! Although I CAN make it on the phone, but its petty CPU is getting fried, and the outcome? Resolution’s not anyway better than minecraft. So personally, I would stick to Android emulator for my streaming.

2016年5月25日星期三

Slither io. Can Really Keep You Busy!

where you cast about for any inane thing to distract you from the throbbing pain.

And boy, did I discover a great inane thing: "Slither.io."

Playable in your web browser, or through apps for Android and iOS, "Slither.io" is a kind of souped-up, massively-multiplayer version of that old dumbphone game "Snake."

You start out as a little worm, collecting orbs to slowly grow your size. Run over your own body all you like, but collide head-on with another player's worm and you explode in a flurry of extra-huge orbs. There are speed boosts, a leaderboard showing the 10 largest worms in the space, and attractive (if simple) animations.

This game is incredibly addictive, with simple rules and controls that produce tense, exciting gameplay.

Worms zip and churn, conniving to cut off or encircle one another, desperately seeking those juicy, extra-large death orbs. When you're tiny, and one of the giant worms slithers past bloated on the remains of its enemies, it's as epic and terrifying as Godzilla wandering past through the streets of New York. You just hope you're too small to catch its attention. And when you do grow big and powerful yourself, you'd better watch out. Everyone else will be coming for you.

Though "Slither.io" derives its look and feel most directly from the old "Snake" games, it's more closely an evolution of the browser game "Agar.io" which follows similar rules. But "Slither.io" is better looking, easier to learn, and a lot more fun.

Fair warning though: This is one of those games with no victory. You just grow and grow until you die. And then you probably start over again from scratch, frustrated you didn't grow even more.

A Game That Tops 75M Downloads in 3 Months - 'Color Switch'

Color Switch is a new reflex game that already has shot near the top of the most-downloaded games in the App Store, crossed 50 million downloads worldwide.

The idea of the game is simple: The player taps the ball and tries to pass it through obstacles, with the ball changing colors along your path.

To cross each obstacle, the ball and the color you're passing through must be the same. Crossing the wrong colored obstacle ends the game.

The game is beautifully designed with cyan, magenta, yellow and purple obstacles set against a black backdrop. The obstacles come in all shapes and move at different speeds, becoming more difficult as you move through the course.

This game provided the most fun and addicting experience of any game I've tried in many months. While it took me a little while to get the game mechanics down -- a quicker tap makes the ball jump up the screen quicker, while a lighter and softer tap will make the ball move slower or not at all -- before long I was beating obstacles I couldn't get the hang of some five minutes earlier.

With each bad tap, I wanted to try again and prove to myself I could top the high score, providing for an addictive experience that will keep me coming back.

When I look for games, I like to find ones that are easy to pick up, addictive and not time consuming. Color Switch checks all of those boxes, and is a game I can play when I have a few quick minutes to burn.

Color Switch has become one of the most popular games for good reason. Though it can be frustrating at times, this is easily one of the best games on the market.

Blizzard is Going to Do Its Utmost to Sanction Racism

At the recent Dreamhack Austin event, "TerrenceM" Miller had a great run on Hearthstone, ultimately finishing second behind Keaton “Chakki” Gill, but his performance was marred by incessant slurs directed at him by viewers on Twitch chat. It was nothing short of appalling, both because of the behavior of so many spectators, and the failure of the moderation team, which went largely unsupported by event organizers, to control the situation. In a statement released today, Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime called upon gamers to do better, and pledged that Blizzard will as well.

Morhaime's statement in full:

"We’re extremely disappointed by the hateful, offensive language used by some of the online viewers during the DreamHack Austin event the weekend before last. One of our company values is “Play Nice; Play Fair”; we feel there’s no place for racism, sexism, harassment, or other discriminatory behavior, in or outside of the gaming community. This is obviously a larger, societal problem that affects us on many levels. We can only hope that when instances like this come to light it encourages people to be more thoughtful and positive, and to fully reject mean-spirited commentary, whether within themselves or from their fellow gamers.

To help combat this type of behavior during live events, we’ve reached out to players, streamers, and moderators, along with partners like Twitch, DreamHack, and others, to get consensus and collaborate on what to do differently moving forward. To that end, we’re investigating a pilot program that Twitch has in the works to streamline moderation and combat ban evasion. We’re also updating our esports tournament partner policies with a stronger system of checks, balances, and repercussions to provide a better chat experience around our content.

We believe these are important steps to take to help address the related issues, but we acknowledge that they only address part of the problem. This is ultimately an industry-wide issue, and it will take all of us to make a real impact."

It's tremendously sad that this sort of intervention is required—doubly so because the Bob Ross marathon demonstrated how much sheer joy and fun a streaming audience can share—but the grotesque treatment of TerrenceM at Dreamhack leaves no doubt that it's necessary. If game publishers, streaming platforms, and sponsors are serious about giving esports mainstream legitimacy, then this kind of thing simply cannot be tolerated. And for the sake of human decency, must not be. Morhaime is correct to note that the entire gaming scene, which has largely ignored the excesses of chat so far, needs to take the issue seriously. Hopefully this will be a good step in that direction.

'Shadow Fight 3' Comes as A F2P This Summer!

Shadow Fight 2 was a fighting game with light RPG elements whose main feature was, as you might have suspected, the shadowy silhouettes of its fighters. The upcoming Shadow Fight 3 is moving away from the 2D graphics of the previous games and, instead, featuring 3D characters that, as you can see from the trailer below, aren't shadows anymore. The developers didn't want to completely abandon their trademark art style, so the game will still include several Shadow fighters. At the same time, they wanted to leverage the latest technology to provide a more colorful game to players. How that change will be received by players remains to be seen.

Like the previous Shadow Fight game, Shadow Fight 3 tries to blend RPG with a fighting action game and a character customization system. You'll have three factions to choose from - Legion, Dynasty, or Heralds - each with its own fighting style, plenty of collectibles for those with a collecting urge, dynamically generated quests, and more. There's even a Shadow Fighting Mode if you feel like playing the game in the form of its earlier incarnations. The game will be F2P and should release for iOS and Android Fall 2016.

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