Monthly Archives: October 2014

I scream! You scream! We all scream for ice cream Steelsplitter! 4

This entry was posted in Banter and tagged kickstarter skins steelsplitter on by

As you may or may not have noticed, this week’s blog article is extremely late. In fact, it’s so late that we don’t even have one! We’re sorry! This isn’t because we’re horrible slackers, or too busy playing Prismata. We’ve been preoccupied by filming for our Kickstarter pitch video, which we’re incredibly excited to launch this month!

Proof that we haven’t been slacking miserably: Here’s Mike “Timex” McDonald, international Poker legend, filming for the Prismata video.

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Prismata’s Tech Trees: The stories behind Prismata’s craziest units

This entry was posted in Game Features Insight and tagged chrono filter new units ossified drone savior technology units zemora voidbringer on by

making prismata ma

 

Over the last couple of weeks we’ve introduced a variety of new units, from the utterly game-changing Apollo to the more subtle Auride Core. We’re aiming to release new units on a consistent basis, as it keeps the game fresh and players adapting, but there are a lot of considerations that go into creating units that are radical and seamlessly integrative.

I’ve already explained the significance of sniping, but what other game-changing mechanics are on Prismata’s horizon?

In this post I’ll explain the design philosophy behind four of our latest units: Ossified drone, Zemora Voidbringer, Chrono Filter, and tomorrow’s new unit, the Savior:

Unreleased until now, Savior enables burst attack and asymmetry.

The Savior provides a sudden burst of attack and can lead to asymmetrical game states.

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How we added tournaments to Prismata in 30 hours: a hackathon post-mortem 21

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One week ago we ran our Prismata tourney hackathon, in which we attempted to develop a tournament feature for our online game Prismata in only 30 hours. Overall, it was an excellent experience for us in which we were highly productive. In this article, we’re going to describe how things went, what we accomplished, and what we learned.

But first, here’s the highlight reel:

[youtube=http://youtu.be/hQE39nDg4RM&w=880&h=495]

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Coding huge multiplayer tournaments in 30 hours: the Prismata hackathon 12

This entry was posted in Banter Game Features News and tagged hackathon tournament tournaments on by

Edit: stream and publicly viewable docs are up, and we’ve blown up over at /r/gamedev.

This is a post about a game development hackathon that we’ll be live-streaming for much of the next two days. But this is no ordinary hackathon. We’re upping the ante by setting a hard deadline that could result in extreme embarrassment if things go horribly wrong. Allow me to explain.

Organized tournaments are a favourite aspect of many of the games we know and love, and Prismata is no different, being an excellent candidate for compelling and competitive tourneys. After the success of events like Alex’s Prismata Cup Hearthstone tournament, our fans have been begging us to host an actual Prismata tournament. So, at long last, we’re doing it. The first ever Prismata Open Tourney will happen tomorrow, Thursday October 16th, at 7pm Eastern time. We’ve recruited a slew of Hearthstone and poker pros to participate, including millionaire poker superstar Mike ‘Timex’ McDonald and Hearthstone number one Americas legend Jeffrey ‘Tarei’ Liu. The tournament is going to be epic.

There is just one problem.

Prismata currently doesn’t support tournaments. At all. There is literally no tournament feature in Prismata, and we’ve never worked on one before.

That’s why we’re adding tournaments, today. We’ll be designing, coding, and refining Prismata’s tournament features in a 30-hour hackathon that starts 1pm EST Wednesday and ends at 7pm Thursday—when the first Prismata tournament will begin.

Oops. We just did.

 

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Prismata Highlight Reel: “What the f*** is going on in this game?”

This entry was posted in Banter Highlights and tagged casting highlights replay replays stream on by

Welcome to the Prismata Highlight Reel—a new series showing off some of the most epic games we’ve played! These matches test the limits of what’s possible in Prismata, and show some of the most out-of-the-box play that we’ve ever seen. For our first instalment, we’ll count down the top three craziest games played by Elyot during the Twitch stream (be sure to follow us if you want to catch the stream live!)

3. “I have a 9-turn time limit to get something going!”

This was the very last game played at the tail end of a 7-hour-long stream by Elyot. He was up against poker legend Mike “Timex” McDonald in Blitz Mode (12 seconds per turn), but the game lasted more than 20 turns. What ensued was one of the most cutthroat games in Prismata history, with an absolutely unpredictable ending. (Hint: one player lost all of his Drones 10 turns before the game ended.) Watch the replay, and catch the #1 and #2 highlights below.

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2 New Units, 1 New Mechanic: Let’s see how you like the red dot! 2

This entry was posted in Game Features News and tagged new units snipe sniping on by

making prismata ma

 

You’re 10 turns into a game of Prismata. Both you and your opponent are pumping out attackers as fast as you can, but nothing seems to be enough to penetrate their Defense Grid. They buy a Wall, you buy a Wall. Tit for tat.

What’s the best move in this type of situation? To stop buying defense in favour of burst attackers? Risky! Switch your tech to a more offensive play? Inefficient! Wait for them to run out of defensive unit seeds? There isn’t a clear answer in situations like this, especially for new players who aren’t sure how risky each option truly is.

Until now.

 

Let’s talk about our latest two units, and the new game mechanic that’s going to change everything about turtle defense builds in Prismata.

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