Creation Tale Part 2

Here's Part 2 of my creation tale.

But the very nature of the Substance is growth, and growth leads to mutation, and mutation is unpredictable. The power of each God sprang from the strength of their followers faith and the number of their followers, whereas some Devils were cut off from the energies of mankind's beliefs. These Devils were the closest to the Nothing, which abhorred the aberration that was the first world, and so the Devils and Nothing conspired against Substance. The Devils created a leak in the atmosphere of belief and magic that surrounded mortals and Substance, and so the residual build up of magical energies pooled in the Nothing, and from this pool arose a new race of Gods. The Major Gods. The Major Gods are not by any means more powerful than the Minor Gods that the mortals followed, they are major in that their strength is independent from Mortals, they do not need belief or followers to be powerful. The absence of reliance on belief makes their power levels unpredictable, as well as their morals. If a Minor God descended in the eyes of it's people it becomes a Devil, but a Major God can be Malevolent and remain a God. It is not possible to kill a Minor God, but if all of their believers were killed, their power would wane so low as to be less than that of a mortal, and they would no longer truly exist unless belief in them began again. Only an immense amount of power can kill a Major God.

While these Major Gods were still but infants in the ethereal pool, the Nothing latched onto them, denying them of any choice or moral independence. It commanded them to attack the First World, and destroy all Substance. And so the Major and Minor Gods warred upon, above, and below the First World, causing great destruction to the world and great amounts of death among Mortals. Truly, the Hells and Heavens ran full.

The Substance grew desperate by this war, for even if the Major Gods lost, the destruction of the war could very well destroy it's beautiful world. It went to the two beings closest to it, two Minor Gods that chose not to fight. These two Gods were beyond love, their bond was greater than anybody ever knew. In desperation and sadness, Substance asked something of them that only they could do. In grim acceptance, they settle on their task. They pushed against one another. They fought against each other in a manner that included blows and weapons, but went far beyond that. Their love and aggression and hate and passion pushed and pushed against one another, until the two opposing forces crumpled upwards, and a magnificent, tall mountain peak was formed at the highest plain of the First World. This magical Mountain Peak was powerful enough to breach the division between planes at it's highest summit, allowing access to Time itself.

That's the end of Part 2 of my creation tale. Bye.


- By Ashton

Creation Tale Part 1

Hello. I've always loved fantasy and myths and legends, and almost every myth has a creation tale. All creation tales share key elements from culture to culture, and here's one I've written.

In the beginning, there was only the Nothing.

Out of the Nothing, in a spontaneous event, the first world came in to being. There was Nothing surrounding the Substance.

Substance craved to thrive, to grow and create, and so from the surface of the empty world sprang life, and there were Mortals on the Substance, surrounded by Nothing.

As the Mortals themselves grew, they developed beliefs. Mortals believed in Gods, like those that lorded over the weather, or the forests, or war. The beliefs of the Mortals blossomed into reality and so there was the Substance surrounded by Nothing, and Mortals and their Gods upon it.

These Gods could create heavens, ethereal places for the weak spirits of Mortals after their passing. But with Heavens, comes Hells. Some of the Mortals Gods were malevolent and lorded over their hells, but some became true Devils; cut off from all positive energies towards mankind; and some Devils sprouted out of those evils themselves. And so there was Nothing, Substance, Mortals that ruled the World, Gods that ruled the above, and Devils that ruled the below; the below and the Devils being the closest to the Nothing.

And so became two planes, the Material, and Immaterial. Up until this point, the only creatures that lived and died in the universe were Mortals. When a Mortal died, if he did right by the universe and his God, his soul moved on to his God's Heaven. If a Mortal did wrong by the universe, or was corrupted by a Devil, their soul moved on to the great Hells. Mortals that worshipped no God or Devil also moved on, if they were rightful they became Heavenly energy, or if wrongful, Hellish. Heavenly energy could be used by any being of Substance, as a powerful magical fuel. Heavenly energy is never destroyed, and if it is expended on either plane, it is merely transported back to the other plane, to be drawn on again when needed. Energies also flow freely between the planes, like great rivers. Heavenly energies brighten everything. Grass grows greener, the air is sweeter, and water is cleaner. It helps to rise the sun and keep the seasons turning. It's also possible for Heavenly energy to coalesce into a being, normally as a result of more than one Mortal soul finding common bonds in one another, and becoming a new being. These beings are very powerful, but cannot stay long on either plane before they are swept back away with the tide. Only the most powerful of souls can coalesce on it's own from it's energy source. Some choose to dally in the events of Mortals, while some retire to a Heaven, finding their own small place to rule. These beings became known as Vitans. Hellish energies could also coalesce, as the result of a large amount of evil souls binding. They become Greater Demons, more powerful than Lesser Demons that sprout from the Hells themselves, or are created by Devils. Hellish energies bring great darkness to worlds on the material plane. Fire is a neutral element between Substance and Nothing, but Hellish energies often corrupt it into a force for Nothing. Hellish energies cause many destructive forces, and are drawn upon by Devils and Demons and evil Gods or Mortals.

That's the end of the first part of my creation tale, there's more to come. Bye.

-By Ashton

Music

Hello. Today I'm writing about music.

I love music. I listen to it all the time, most of the time with my earbuds while I'm doing some sort of task. I also play music on the cello, which I do for school. I like pretty much every genre of music, although I like rap and country the least. My favorite bands are probably Twenty One Pilots or Panic! At the Disco. Currently I only have Twenty One Pilot's album Blurryface and Panic! At the Disco's Death of a Bachelor, but I plan on buying their other albums when I get a chance as well. It's been a while since I had a favorite band that was still making music, so it's exciting to have favorite modern bands like this. Panic! At the Disco is unique in that their songs have an old fashioned quality to them, that's mixed in with the new. One of my favorite songs by them is called Impossible Year and that is very much like that. Interestingly enough even though rap is one of my least favorite music genres, Twenty One Pilots incorporates rap into almost all of their songs and is definitely an example of having a very unique style. Their musi. Could be considered a mix between rock and rap and some of my favorite songs by them are Tear in my Heart and The Judge.Their music is considered alternative but I also listen to pop, rock, and symphonic.

My favorite symphonic pieces are almost all written by Michael Giacchino. Michael Giacchino writes soundtracks for movies, most often working with J.J. Abrams. The soundtracks he's written that I listen to most often are Star Trek 2008 and Star Trek Beyond. I also love the Man From U.N.C.L.E. Soundtrack, that's composed by Daniel Pemberton. One symphonic piece I like to listen to in particular is Hans Zimmer's finale, written for the finale of the Lone Ranger movie. It's ten minutes long and is based around the William Tell Overture. Another soundtrack I have get is the score from the Transformers movie. It's written by Steve Jablonsky, and it's very good.

I also really like to listen to rock music from the nineties and early two thousands. My favorite band from that time is definitely My Chemical Romance and I own everything they've written so far that's available on iTunes. Twenty One Pilots and Panic! At the Disco may be my favorite bands right now, but My Chemical Romance has been my favorite band for a long time and I always come back to listening to their music at one point.

Those are my main musical interests. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 18

Julia and Carson began walking the remaining distance back to the tram station. Carson was of a medium height and build with scraggly hair that looked like it would have been just as messy before all this. Julia would have been a good bit smaller than him, but in her current state she found herself towering over him and nearly twice as wide. He had brown eyes and a wide smile and did not stop talking. He talked about what things were like before this had happened. He talked about his childhood, his schooling, how he had obtained his position as a programmer here at the installation. He began to mention his wife, a child, before he slowed down and droned off.
"We have to get to them."
"Your family is here?"
"Yes. My wife and I, we didn't want to be separated across so many miles so she works here too, also in IT. She had off today and was spending time with Matt back in 1..."
Julia could see the distress on Carson's face. His eyes were red and his face flushed, and he kneaded at his face with shaking hands.
"He's only four years old. What the hell has happened." Carson looked at her, where her face would have been.
"You're Dr. Summers aren't you? I recognize your voice." Julia kept walking.
"All of this is because of you isn't it. All the shit going on down in that hole. Don't bullshit me Summers I know."
"...we didn't mea-"
"Of course you didn't mean for it to happen. You couldn't have. But my friends are dead. Dead or worse. And that could happen to my wife and child. So what. Happened down there."
"We used the Heliogel. We caught the Dark Node; the experiment was a success. But somehow the dark node changed the Heliogel. It sent out some sort of wave of energy, the whole place started to shake and the containment tank glowed brightly and... Shrieked. There was some sort of explosion and I was knocked out. When I woke up..."
"All your friends were dead? Yeah. The feeling is familiar. And then you put on one of those suits to get out of The Hole and have worn it ever since for protection. Am I correct?"
"Yes." Julia neglected to mention her true situation, about her crushing sense of loss, how she had truly died. She was just a husk now, a program of her former self somehow running inside of a mechanical suit. Just as inhuman as the things she had been trying to survive from.
"Alright well what are we going to do about all of this?"
"First we find anybody else that's still alive. Your wife. Your kid. We don't even know if the Heliogel has spread past 1A .
"Then why has nobody come for us?" Julia had no answer.
"We have to keep looking." Julia and Carson arrived at the tram station without further incident. They didn't see any more creatures, but no more survivors either for that fact. They stepped aboard an empty tram, and were speeded off into the darkness.


- By Ashton

Pokemon Go

Hello. Today I'm blogging about a new iOS game.

Pokemon Go was recently released in the U.S. and a few other countries on smartphones. It's already the most popular app on the App Store and top grossing app on the App Store. I did a blog a while back in anticipation for Pokemon Go, and now that I actually have it, I'm writing a review. I love this game. In Pokemon Go the game tracks your location by giving you an a avatar on a GPS type map. If your phone buzzes while you have the app open, you know that a Pokemon has spawned right near you. The game contains the first 133 Pokemon, the first generation of Pokemon that Nintendo released. Each Pokemon corresponds to an elemental type, of which there are 18, such as water, fire, or grass. The type, CP, and rarity of the Pokemon determine how often and where it's going to spawn the most often. For instance, water Pokemon are most often going to spawn around lakes and rivers, whereas a small town would have a lot of bug and normal Pokemon. When a Pokemon spawns on your map you can tap it to try and capture it. Doing so utilizes your camera, showing you a 3D image of the Pokemon displayed onto real world surroundings, as if it was actually there. You can use pokeballs to try and capture it, and your success rate depends on whether or not you hit the Pokemon, it's rarity, and your timing. You can also turn off the camera which does make it a little easier to aim, but makes it less fun. If you ever see grass rustle on your map, you should make an effort to go to that place because that means there's a Pokemon in that area.

You can also tell what kinds of Pokemon are in your area using the lower right tab. The tab shows the shape of Pokemon near you. If you've seen it before it will be colored in and you know what it is, if you haven't, it's greyed out. Under the shape will be 3 or less footsteps. 3 footsteps means that it is 150 meters or less away. 2 footsteps means less than 100 meters, and 1 footstep means it's 50 meters or less from you. If it doesn't have any, it will probably appear on your map any second. Across the map are small blue towers. These towers indicate a pokestop. A pokestop is a public place such as a gym, church, fire station, restaurant, or monument, that you can stop at to get items. Items include pokeballs, incense to lure Pokemon to you, lures that lure Pokemon to a specific pokestop, and eggs. You can put an egg into an item called an incubator and once you've walked a certain distance the egg will hatch. Every five minutes or so you can use the same pokestop again.

There are also larger towers called gyms. Once you've reached level five you pick one of three teams, Instinct (yellow), mystic (blue), or valor (red). If a gym is the color of your team it means your team has captured that gym and you can fight your Pokemon against the other team of Pokemon controlling the gym, in order to train and level up. If the gym was the color of an opposing team, if you beat all six of the controlling Pokemon, you've claimed that gym for your team until a different team takes it again.

Pokemon Go is an amazing game. It's ridiculously fun, constantly updating, social game with more features and Pokemon on the way. It's also addictive in a way that's actually healthy because the game requires you to get up and walk and some players have walked miles in one day just to play the game and have fun and meet new people. I highly recommend downloading Pokemon Go.


- By Ashton

Dark Souls 3

     Hello.  Today I'm blogging about one of my new favorite games.

     I've gotten a LOT of new games this summer.  I got The Witcher 3, Dying Light, and Rocket League by using some Best Buy cards my grandparents got me.  I'm getting No Man's Sky in August, and I've gotten Dark Souls 3 in celebration of my first job.  There was a period of about two weeks before I got the game where I was researching things about it, like gameplay, tips for beginners, and lore.  I found the lore and the basic story structure of the games the most interesting.

     The creation myth of the world of Dark Souls is very interesting.  In the beginning, there was no heat, no cold, no life, no death, no light, and no dark.  No opposites existed.  Above the ground all was grey, and immense dragons lived outside of the cycle of life and death.  Underneath the ground, unthinking humanoid creatures roamed with no purpose, will, or soul.  Everything changed when the First Flame appeared.  The Fire sprang up underground and four humanoids claimed four powerful Lord Souls from the fire.  The Witch of Izalith claimed the Soul of Life, Nido The First of the Dead claimed the Soul of Death, and Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight, claimed the Soul of Light.  After these powerful Gods left the flame a fourth humanoid appeared, The Furtive Pygmy.  He claimed a unique soul, the Dark Soul.  He split the Dark Soul into thousands of pieces, and each one inhabited a humanoid, creating mankind.

     The three lords ruled over these humans, and before long they rose up to war with the dragons above.  Seathe, a scaleless dragon, betrayed his kind to Gwyn and told them that the dragon's stone scales were the secret of their immortality.  With this knowledge, Gwyn and his knights struck down the dragons with bolts of lightning, and the Age of Fire began, and opposites took form.  Powerful kingdoms rose up ruled by Gwyn and The Witch, and humanity and these Gods were at peace.  This peace would not last, for as all things must begin, so must all things end.  And so the First Flame began to die out.  With the First Flame dying, the power of the God's souls would too, and they would die with the Fire.  Humanity, each possessing a part of the Dark Soul, would come to rule the Earth in the upcoming Age of Dark.  The Witch of Izalith sought to solve this problem by creating a new First Flame, but her experiments in pyromancy were ultimately a failure.  Instead she created the Flames of Chaos, and demons were born.  Gwyn traveled downwards with his knights to the Kiln of the First Flame, and there he linked his soul to the Fire, kindling it once more, and burning him and his knights into oblivion in the process.

     With the Age of Fire extended and Nature's course broken, a horrible curse settled over mankind.  Whenever the Flame would begin to die again, the Curse of Undead would arise.  Humans would begin to be born with the Darksign.  Humans with the mark had the Curse of Undead could never die, and would only reform at Bonfires that had sprouted over the world after the Linking of the First Flame.  The sign was a curse because one could never die, and after dying so many times they would turn into Hollows.  Hollows had no memories of their past lives, and roamed the Earth with no thought or purpose, only to kill those that had not yet became as they were.  Each time this occurred mankind would spiral into Chaos and a knew champion would rise and Link the Flame, averting the Undead Curse for a few more centuries.  This was a twisted cycle, and humanity would never know the true Age of Dark that they were meant to inherit.

     I LOVE this lore of the dark souls series.  In the games, you are the champion called upon to Link the Flame and end the curse, and always there is a decision to make and a struggle to break free from this twisted cycle.  Dark Souls 3 is rumored to be the last in the series, and I'm extremely excited for the end of this game.  I highly recommend purchasing this game if you like RPGs, fantasy, and a challenge.  Bye.

Ocean City New Jersey

Hello. Today I'm writing about our recent family vacation.

Every summer my family consisting of my mom and dad, me, and my siblings Alex and Katie, have a week long vacation in Ocean City New Jersey. We've been having this vacation for as long as I can remember, even though I've been assured that I haven't been there every summer of my life. While I'm there I see my Grandma, Aunt Robin and Uncle Dave, and my two cousins, Andrew and Isaac. It's also a family reunion on my dad's side. Going to Ocean City for vacation has been a long standing annual vacation on my dad's side of the family, so as you can imagine there are many many traditions to uphold yearly. For the most part we always rent out the same beach house. Our current one we've been using for at least three years, and I remember changing from our previous one because it was getting a little small for the growing families. The trip to Ocean City is filled with nostalgia and I find those kinds of car trips very fun when you know you're going someplace fun. We get up a little early and pack up the car with our clothes, beach chairs, and bikes. Among each of our backpacks there are small things to keep us entertained during the quiet moments at the beach house or while sitting on the beach. There are normally many books, but I think I won most books packed this year at seven. We normally stop at a toy store called It's a Toy Store on the way there. It's a house that's been converted into a toy store and almost every inch of the walls and ceilings have been covered in toys or posters or statues, and there are many toy racks in the rooms. It's a very dorky place, and me, Alex, and dad enjoy it the most. Normally we'd eat lunch at a place right next to the toy store, but they were closed so we ate at a large diner a little ways down the road called May's Landing Diner which was very good. There's a bridge that takes you over to Ocean City, which is a peninsula off of New Jersey. I saw the first seagull of the year there, and you could see all of us getting very excited.

We all had a huge amount of fun at vacation this year. We upheld a couple traditions but also did new things that were tons of fun. We went to Atlantic City north of us and went in the Apple Store, where my dad got a keyboard for his iPad. We went to a Red Robin and ate large burgers before going to see Finding Dory, which was very good. I rode rides with my Mom, Alex, and Katie, and they were as exhilarating as they are every year. More than those other things I just enjoyed being there. On the boardwalk. On the beach. In the ocean. At the beach house. But above all of those other things I enjoyed being with my family, especially the ones I only get to see a few times a year.

That was this year's Ocean City vacation. Bye.


- By Ashton

Waffle House

Hello. Today I'm writing about my new job.

I've been looking for a part time job since last fall. At first I was very hesitant to work in fast food, I wanted to work in some sort of retail store. I applied to a LOT of different places, Food Lion, Target, Walmart, Big Lots, Walgreens, CVS, everywhere. Most places did not even call me back or contact me in any way after I filled out the online application. A month or two ago I had finally stooped down to applying to McDonalds, and it was looking like that was a possibility. I still need a lot of hours driving in order to get my driver's license, so I was out one day driving with my mom when we stopped at Waffle House. We ate their for lunch and it was pretty good, and mom pointed out a Now Hiring brochure on the table. At the time McDonald's was looking like I was going to be hired, but I had to try applying there too just in case. I applied online and within a day, someone had called me asking to schedule an interview there. It was the fastest I'd ever been contacted by any place I had applied to, and of course I accepted the interview. I went to the interview and it was mostly just a couple questions you would expect, mostly just clarifying things I had on the online application. The interview went very well, and they scheduled a second interview. The second interview was mostly about what I would be doing there at Waffle House. The manager said that he would like to make me a Door Corp, which is someone that comes in on the weekends and greets people, seats them, and cleans tables after they leave. Eventually he said he would make me a Grill Op, which is a cook. I thought that sounded great, and he wanted to quickly get me to start my classes so I could get started working. The only problem was that the classes were only on Thursdays and Fridays, during school hours. Unfortunately I had to wait until school was out to take those classes so I could start work. The Thursday after school was out I showed up to the Waffle House in Inwood for my interview in my black pants, black shoes, and white dress shirt. The classes were very boring and we sat in a very small, cold, back room filling out huge Waffle House books and watching cheesy information videos. I was very glad when it was over on Friday. Last Monday was when I was first working on the floor at the Waffle House I had applied to. I was getting paid of course but I wasn't getting any tips because I was shadowing another server in her section, so I took my own orders, but it was all in her section and she taught me a lot about how the restaurant worked. Tuesday was also a day where I was shadowing, and I quickly became sufficient at taking orders and calling them out to the cooks, which is the hardest parts about being a server. Last Thursday I had to go to the Inwood Waffle House one last time in order to get my Red Star Certification, which is what you need to be an official server at Waffle House. I got my certification easily enough, and showed up for my first real day working that Saturday at 6:30. It was pretty busy compared to the other two days I had been working there, but according to my coworkers it was slow for a weekend. I served twenty tables over the course of seven hours, and I did side work in between like filling up the ice containers, working the dishpit, and cleaning off tables. At the end of my first work day I was very tired and a little stressed from all the busyness, but I had come out of it with $59 worth of tips, and that was awesome.

Having a job is really great and although it's going to be tiring and sometimes stressful, it feels good to be doing it. Bye.


- By Ashton

Leap Day

Hello. Today I'm reviewing another mobile game.

The game is called Leap Day, and I'm reviewing it for iOS. The game is titled Leap Day because every day there's a new jumping puzzle level consisting of 15 parts. It's a very innovate game in that it literally produces more content for you play every day. Theoretically you could keep playing it and every day it would be new. You play as a small yellow creature with a green nose and the ability to jump once or twice in midair. The levels are scrolling platformers. There are walls on either side of the screen that limit your horizontal movement, but the level progresses by traveling upwards. Your character walks from left to right on the screen, turning back around when he comes into contact with a wall, or dying if he hits a hazard or monster. You tap the screen to make him jump, the character can double jump off of the ground. If it falls off of a platform, it can make two jumps because it didn't use a jump to leave the platform. It can also jump onto and off of walls, and off of monsters it jumps onto. Each level is comprised of 15 parts. In each part there are obstacles, hazards, and monsters that make it hard to finish that section. If you pass over the red banners at the top of the section, then you can unlock a checkpoint in case you die in the next section. To unlock a checkpoint you jump into a room through a door that opens up off the right side of the level. In the room there are two chests, if you jump into one chest you can buy the checkpoint with 20 fruit. There are fruit located throughout the entire level that can be dangerous to acquire, they function to keep track of your score. If you don't have twenty fruit, you can bump into the second chest which will unlock the checkpoint if you watch an add. If you jump into another room next to that one, you can bump into a chest to buy the premium version of the game for only a few dollars. The premium version is the same except when you jump into a checkpoint room there is only one large chest that will unlock the checkpoint for free. The checkpoints are numbered 1-15, starting at 15. The screen that shows all the levels is a calendar, with a level every day going all the way back to when the game was released. If you pass checkpoint 10, you earn a bronze trophy for that level on the calendar. If you pass checkpoint 5, you get s silver trophy. If you finish the level, you get a gold trophy, and if you finish the level and collect every fruit you get a crown with an apple. After completing checkpoint 1, you jump above a banner platform with black and white finish line colors. You jump up onto a late red button on an enormous trophy to complete the level. The trophy will total the percent of fruit you found, and if you found them all a crown and an apple will sprout from the trophy. Each level has a different back ground behind the obstacles, like a forest, or a castle, or even space. Every level is filled with countless hazards like spikes, sawblades, or fire. The number of monsters in each level is staggering, with things like purple crawlers that spit at you or large electric octopi.

I highly recommend getting Leap Day free on the App Store if you're ready for a daily dose of fun. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Julia took an indeterminate amount of time to rest. She did not know if she slept or not. It may have been 5 minutes, it may have been 5 hours, she'll never know. The unending darkness outside the window and the absence of any working clocks inside the building gave her no help. She proceeded with her plan.

Julia walked at an average pace, but took care to be more quiet than normal. The first ghast, as she had taken to calling the creatures, since the cafeteria was hunched over in an office space. She opened the door connecting to the hall to see if it was a survivor, and the sound made it lunge. Their bodies seemed to be fragile, even if they continued to live after suffering grievous wounds. This one was so resilient there wasn't anything left of its head except black goo on the wall before it finally died.

Julia was numb to the horror by now, killing the ghasts seemed like nothing more than a dangerous chore. It wasn't human bodies she was killing, in her head they were just animals. Julia passed by and killed 3 more ghasts. She was happened by her fourth, curled up in the corner of another office. She held it against the wall with her hand on its shoulder and raised her dripping right fist. Then... It cried out in pain?
"Please don't kill me please don't kill me please don't kill me please don't." Julia let go and stumbled back, surprised. For what seemed a long while, the man curled up in a tighter ball in the corner. Julia issued her first real words since she had... become this.
"Are you okay?" The voice sounded scratchy, like hers, but filtered and changed through the suit's exterior speakers.
"I-I.. Uh yeah I'm... Alright."
"What's your name?"
"Carson."
"Well Carson, you're the first one I've found in this hell."
"Oh."
"Care to leave?"


- By Ashton

Dungeons and Dragons

     Hello.  Today I’m writing about Dungeons and Dragons.  

     The past couple years or so I’ve had a growing interest in D&D.  I had seen a couple YouTube videos, listened to some podcasts, and browsed a few websites online that had me very interested.  It was a game like nothing I had ever really seen before and a storytelling medium that I hadn’t ever seen before either.  However, it never really came up in conversation with my nerd friends and I never ended up voicing interest in it.  Playing it would require a couple expensive books, at least three people, and a large amount of time, which were all things that initially dissuaded me.  Recently, I’ve been very lucky to find a group of people willing to play with me.  It came up among conversation with one of my oldest guy friends and before too long I had a group of people including: that friend I talked to, one of his friends, my girlfriend, her Dad, and one of my newest guy friends and possibly his Dad.  From what I’ve seen and heard it’s always the most fun to play D&D with good friends or people you’ve known for a long time. Don’t be dumb like me, don’t hesitate to ask your friends, your girlfriend or boyfriend, and your family if they’re interested in playing because you may be surprised.  Another thing to mention that may be helpful is that the expensive couple books you need to play are probably available online.  I downloaded the Player’s Handbook for fifth edition D&D to my phone as a PDF for free, and I don’t doubt that the other books are available that way as well.  

     Here’s a small summary of D&D for those of you that don’t know what it is.  D&D is a game where a group of at least three and up to twelve or so friends can sit around a table with some paper and a pencil and weave together epic tales in a high fantasy setting.  D&D has no pieces or game boards (although you could easily use a map to represent where the characters are at any moment) instead you play with just some paper containing the details about your character, a pencil, and access to a couple rulebooks.  D&D is a roleplaying game, but it doesn’t require a ton of imagination as you may think.  The backstory for a character might be as short as saying your race, class, where they come from, and their motivation for adventuring, or it could be as long or detailed as you like, with many different influences from their past affecting the character’s choices in the game.  Each player has their own personalized character, with their own race, class and backstory, and no two characters are exactly alike.  One player instead of having a character will be the Dungeonmaster.  The DM describes in detail the different places characters may go and what happens to them, they’re the general orchestrater of the storyline, however players can greatly affect the story as well by making drastic or unexpected decisions that could greatly alter your small band of adventurers, or the entire world you’re inhabiting.  As the adventure goes on your character gains experience points and starts to level up; doing so can cause their ability statistics to go up, and their access to more powerful skills.  It’s this way that not only does the story constantly progress, but so does the power of your character and their personality development.  

     It is possible for your character to die in a tragic fall off a cliff, or in battle with a group of demons, but it isn’t the end for the player.  In a high fantasy world like D&D it’s entirely possible to have your character magically resurrected, but a player could easily just join the same group of remaining companions as a new character, in the same storyline.  I’ve created two characters so far that I’m interested in playing at some point.  Eogis is a Blueveined Tempest Knight.  Being a blueveine means that you’re human, but you have a noticeably large or glowing blue vein that flows with magical blood.  You gain magical powers from it, but the vein spreads as you age and will kill you long before you reach sixty.  As a Tempest Knight, Eogis is proficient with weapons like swords and battleaxes, but also fights with the powers of lightning and thunder.  He’s haunted by a great monster that killed his family and the order of knights he was trained in, so he’s started adventuring to maybe find this beast and kill it, but he’s a protector to all the races against monsters, and ultimately a force for good.  My second character is Ignatius, a Phoelarch Untouchable Blade.  A Phoelarch is a humanoid that’s descended from the phoenix, giving him bright orange skin, feathers for hair, and the ability to burst into light and fire.  If he dies, he leaves a small black egg which will eventually hatch into a Phoera, a bird similar to a phoenix wit all his memories and his personality.  As an Untouchable Blade, he is very skilled with using one handed slashing weapons, and has learned skills like parrying an attack, and counterattacking, making him a very quick and useful force on the battlefield.  He’s come from the Plane of Fire, hoping to find adventure and something to fight for.  

     As you can see, the possibilities for your character are endless.  D&D is very unique that way, it put’s unique characters in a unique setting and let’s them do whatever they want, creating an epic fantasy tale that could last for a day, or months.  If you’re at all interested in playing, I recommend reading the Player’s Handbook online and of course, don’t be afraid to ask those around you if they’re interested.  Bye. 

Chapter 16

Chapter 16

There were a few moments of silence before all hell broke loose. All of the bodies starting yelling and screaming. They were whooping and shrieking, it all sounded like some sort of demented zoo. Then they charged Julia. Julia ran as fast as she could towards the far exit, metal feet slamming on the ground. At the same time, she pulled her pick off of her back and half turned- preparing to strike. The things moved like animals, long lanky limbs propelled them forward, almost as if their hands and feet barely touched the ground. In her minds eye Julia gritted her teeth and squinted her eyes when she swung at the first thing to reach her. The metal serrated pick tore through it's skin like rice paper, and blank and white goo poured from the lower chest wound. Thin black tubes fell from the thing's wound where its intestines should have been. The creature did not even flinch, it kept moving forward just as fast with the black tubes animatedly reaching towards her and the tentacle at its back attaching it to the spire moving freely.

Hopelessly she turned back towards the exit and tried to find more of what little speed the suit would run. It wasn't a body, but she felt the exertion as if she had lungs and the wear and tear on her joints wracked her head. The door was close now. The things were all very close, and raked at her sides and head with long fingers. They looked almost completely normal, but she could only guess at the literal corruption that filled their deceased bodies. Light shone from the other side of the door, like the light at the end of the tunnel. She was incredibly grateful that the door wasn't high security and didn't require a handprint, she just had to hit the release button and the door would slide open quickly. Ten feet. Seven. Three! She slammed her metal fist against the panel beside the door and it slid into the wall with a woosh. The sound from the things behind her was unbearable. She darted inside and slammed her hand against the door, only letting one in with her. Only one.

She reacted numbly, but fast enough. Foregoing the pick in her right hand, she slammed the thing into the left wall, turning the pick around in her right hand she began slamming the top end of the pick into the thing's head. It shrieked and pawed at the wall and at her arm and torso, it was the same one she had earlier injured, and the internal tentacles attacked her stomach. They started making small tears in the metal, and she even felt pain. Finally, the screaming stopped when the pick smacked through the creature's forehead with a thock. More black goo and light blue colored brain tissue poured from it's broken skull. The tentacle that was attached to it's back stopped straining towards the door where the spire was, and instead fell limply to the ground. Julia slouched standing up in weariness, and looked towards the door. All of the bodies were lying on the ground again, the spire pumping more evil into their veins.

Julia stumbled, exhausted through the hallway and into the next one. She found a bench there, and sat down to rest. In her mind, she closed her eyes and sighed.


- By Ashton

Hello. Today I'm doing another blog on Bastion, because that game is seriously amazing. Obviously there are gonna be a lot of spoilers, so if you're interested I highly recommended. He king it out on Playstation, PC, or iOS.

The narrative says so much about human civilization. The Caelondians came east and invaded another people's land, fought with them, and attempted to obliterate them. No side is without fault, Ven, an Ura, set the device that created the Calamity to backfire, destroying the entire continent. After the damage from the Calamity was done, Zulf still convinced his people to attack the Bastion for no reason other than hatred towards Caelondia. There's so much hatred and racism. This game speaks about what would happen if we let hate and war and greed go to far. We already have a Calamity, nuclear weapons are just as capable at destroying a people as the Calamity, and with an equal chance for worldwide destruction. It tells a story that is a vibrant colorful adventure, but shows us where our ways will lead us if we do not become better.

The ending of the game is very interesting. The Bastion was meant to be a safe haven for all the people of Caelondia, but was not finished before the Calamity, leaving it the size of a small island. However the main functions of the Bastion, were completed. In the game, an Ura you bring back to the Bastion named Zulf finds Ven's journal and learns that the Calamity was a Caelondian attempt at the destruction of the Ura. He breaks the Monument in the Bastion, and sets off to find what's left of his people. To restore the Monument and set things right the Kid has to find energy crystals called Shards. When he's about to reach the last shard, Zulf tells him that what's left of the Ura is assaulting the Bastion. The Kid beats them back, but not before they've severely damaged the Bastion. Another shard is needed to complete it. The Kid carves a path of destruction through the Ura, fighting as hard as he can to retrieve the last shard. Necessity forces him to nearly complete what the Calamity was built to do. When he finally does, there are two things left between him and his way back to the Bastion. The first, is Zulf, lying nearly dead in the snow. It's at this point in the game that you are presented with two options, you can abandon your weapon and try to save Zulf, or you can keep your weapon and leave him to die in the snow. He's betrayed you, but you know it's the right decision to save him. The second thing between you and the way back to the Bastion, is a veritable army of Ura. You slowly plod towards the skyway that will take you back, with Zulf on your shoulders. Bullets and crossbow bolts assail you from every direction from the Ura soldiers. You know you aren't gonna make it, but you keep pushing. All of a sudden they just.. Stop. They spare your and Zulf's life. With you're last strength, you ride the skyway with Zulf back to the Bastion.

With the last shard the Kid completes the Bastion. The Monument is ready. It descends down inside the Bastion and creates a staircase down to it. It has two functions, and Rucks and Zia want the Kid to decide which to do. You can use the Bastion to reverse time to before the Calamity occurred. All the death and destruction the Calamity caused, and that the Kid has done, will be undone. The only thing is, there's no way to know whether or not the Calamity will occur again. There's no way to test a machine that rewinds time for everyone. On the other hand, you can shatter the cores and shards that power the Monument, creating an immense amount of energy that makes it so that they can fly the Bastion, wherever they wanted, indefinitely. Sometimes the easy decision, is not the right one. It would be easy to choose Restoration. Easy to undo all the death and pain and absolve yourself of all blame. But to do so would be restoring a society rapt with greed, racism, and hatred. Who knows if doing so would even stop the Calamity? The right decision is Evacuation. Destroy the cores, fly the Bastion and instead of trying to erase the mistakes of your people, work to seek redemption. Work to make something out of this shattered world.

There's my narrative and moral analysis conclusion on Bastion. The week after the next, I'll write about my own ideas for a continuation of the story post-Evacuation. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

In the half-light Julia puzzled what to do. She could make her way towards the outside of the ring that is 1A, get to the tram station. It was directly across from where she had entered and would only take a couple minutes to reach. Hopefully it would still be in working condition, and capable of taking her to Installation 1. Installation 3 was communications, if she had to contact the outside that was the surefire way to do so. She could get to Installation 2 and then 3 from getting to 1, but what if they were still people in 1A? People that are trapped and helpless like she was? She shuddered and thought about what she had to do save herself. If other people were there, maybe she wouldn't have had to...

Julia cursed herself as she stomped heavily around in 1A. Eventually she would have to get used to her new weight and metal form, right now she was not the quietest. Julia had decided she would go around 1A one time before returning to the tram, that way she could look in nearby offices and rooms for anybody that might need help before she left for Installation 1. She wasn't happy about the potential danger she might be facing and the loss of time, but she couldn't leave people here to die... like she had. 1A was in bad shape. She could see Heliogel creeping along the walls. Sometimes it splayed out randomly like veins, other times it conformed strictly to lines or circles. In some places it bubbled up in wrinkled parcels of blue-white light. It didn't seem to be doing the structure of the building any favors either, the walls were wrinkled and torn to the outside in some places, and the floor occasionally rose or fell. Julia entered the Mess Hall to the left of the tram station.

The mess hall had high ceilings that went all the way up to the roof of 1A. The flat surface had rows of skylights strew across it vertically. On top of the skylights were small snowflakes, and blackness. She could not discern whether the blackness was the night, or something worse. It was unbearably dark in the cafeteria. She switched on the lights on either side of her head and gazed at a spot in the center of the room where her light did not hit the far wall. Heliogel oozed upwards and downwards from the floor and ceiling to form a knotted bulging shape in its midsection. It twitched and moved. There were no little parcels of light this time, only blackness. Julia's second discovery was worse. Along the floor, almost as if they had just stopped and fallen out of their seats, were bodies. They all lay down and inky tendrils shot out from the pillar and wrapped around their faces and skullcaps. The tendrils writhed on the ground with complete and utter silence. Towards the base of the pillar she saw different shoes and lower legs being pulled into the mass. Julia calmed herself and was almost grateful she did not have breathing to control. She shifted uncomfortably. If she needed to defend herself she could shoot grapple hooks from her palms. Wouldn't do much to a person, much less the things that she saw down in the Hole. Attached to her back was a medium sized climbing pick. She went over her options. If she backed out of the cafeteria and went back to the station, she could either take a tram or continue to look for people in the right side of 1A. She knew that the people on the ground were meager in comparison to the amount of people working at 1A, and that there could very well be more survivors. If she did explore right, she would either have to backtrack once she reached a certain point, or go through the cafeteria again to reach the tram. Julia was half way across the cafeteria, almost closer to the left side entrances than the tram station. She looked towards the left and started moving quietly. Julia had to pass near a body on the floor to reach the far end. Almost past it, metal feet moving quietly, quietlyyyyyy... Not quiet enough. Every body in the room sat up.


- By Ashton

Bastion part 2

Hello. Today I'm writing more about one of my favorite games, Bastion.

Today I'm writing mainly about the entire plot and ending of Bastion so skip this blog if you haven't finished the game or are interested in playing it. Like I said in my last blog, the Kid and Rucks are two Caelondians. Caelondia was a society that existed in the west of the continent. It was rich and successful and turned almost entirely into a sprawling city, surrounded by the Rippling Walls. What you aren't told early in the game is that the Rippling Walls isn't a simple border or way of keeping out animals, it was the main defense in a war against the other society on the continent, the Ura.

Long ago the Caelondians migrated across the boundless sea to the west, from the Motherland. When they got to this continent, they spread fast westward and pushed farther and farther into Ura land without permission and sometimes violence. The ever rapid expansion and resource depletion is what sparked the Ura-Caelondian war, 50 years before the Kid's time. The war was over before too long, and the Ura lost. After the war, Caelondian expansion slowed down but relations between the Ura and Caelondia were nonexistent. There were almost no Caelondians at all underground in the Tazal Terminals where the Ura lived. Ura refugees from the war living in Caelondia were not permitted to return to their homes so they would not disclose city secrets. Racism and discrimination was rampart against the minority and Caelondian's lived happily in their "perfect" society.

It's revealed late in the game that this racism and hate lead to the game's starting event: The Calamity. The Calamity was a plan developed by the Caelondian Mancers. The Mancers were a group of scientists that worked to protect the city. They believed that the answer to never having another war was to completely eliminate the opposition. The Calamity was meant to wipe out the Ura, killing thousands. However the Mancers were nowhere near close to developing something capable of this, until they recruited a brilliant Ura living in the city, named Ven. Ven was forced to create the Calamity, an instrument he knew would be the death of his people. When Ven was finally forced by the Mancers to set it off, he made it backfire. The Calamity ripped through the entire continent, killing almost everyone.

It's these events that lead to the main themes of the game, genocide, war, hate, and redemption. It has parallels to American expansion, the nuclear bomb and many other real-world problems. Next blog I will discuss these points and the very end of the game. I highly recommend checking out Bastion.


- By Ashton

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Julia stumbled forward in disbelief. Looking at the Hole she saw the 4 catwalks that led to the elevator, twisted and broken from the elevators collapse into the hole. It unnerved her immensely to see all the Heliogel. It slithered out of the hole and intertwined with the catwalks, some strands were as thing as a spiderweb, others as thick as her torso. The lip of frozen ground she was standing on was only a few feet wide before the ring of Installation 1A jutted upwards.

Windows were rather sparse on this side, but what ones she could fine were too dark to see inside. The only doors were the large bay doors at the entrance of each catwalk, so she began to trek through the light snow towards the nearest one. She looked upwards towards the dark, deep blue sky. Against the Antarctic sky she could see the black hexagons that made up the dome covering the Hole and Installation 1A. Near the center, they broke and exposed the installation to the 6-month night sky.

Julia could not see any of the corrupted Heliogel up on the dome, but she couldn't imagine how anything else could have damaged it so. She shuddered at what she thought could drip down on her. The tear in the dome explained the light snow coming down. She sadly thought about how if her head wasn't inside this suit, the cold would quickly kill her. She finally made her way to the large bay door at one of the catwalks. It was hard to orient herself, but she believed it was the same one she had used to enter the hole with the investors and tourists. Julia stepped inside 1A.

It was very dim, so she switched on the lights on her head. Strands of Heliogel crept up the stairs and wandered throughout the halls. Julia had no idea what to do, her whole plan was that here would be people up here that could help her. What was even the point? Technically, she was completely dead. Her body and brain had been either obliterated or absorbed into those... things down in the Hole. What's the point of looking for help when you are already dead? No recorded incident of somebody living in a machine past their death has ever been recorded. She had no way of knowing if she could permanently stay in this suit. Or if she wanted to. With grim resolve, she began to explore Installation 1A.


- By Ashton

Bastion: Part 1

Hello. Today I'm writing about a very good game called Bastion. There will be only a couple spoilers in this blog, only about the basic premise of the game.

Bastion is available on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, but I played it on iOS. Bastion is an absolutely amazing video game, and has become my current favorite. The game is isometric, which means you look at the character top-down as if you're in the sky. Bastion is excellent in every category, but what ties it all together is its narrative. Bastion begins with a child sleeping on a cot, on a floating ruin in the sky. Below is a broken, burning landscape. The narrator is excellent and sounds like an old man. Bastion begins like this: "Proper story's supposed to start at the beginning. Ain't so simple with this one. Now here's a kid who's whole world got all twisted, leaving him stranded on a rock in the sky. He gets up."

That's how your journey begins. As The Kid gets up (The Kid is the name of the main character) he starts running along what's left of The Rippling Walls. Ruins of the walls soar into the sky into place under his feet. The Rippling Walls were the walls that protected Caelondia. The Kid lived on the walls, working to protect the city-state. When you begin the game, you have no idea what has caused The Calamity. You only know that is was some massive event that has tore up the world and left a sole few survivors. Imagine putting an orange in a blender and pausing time halfway through. That's what his world is now: lava and water careen over a broken and jagged landscape on the surface, and what was left of Caelondia float in the ruined skies like spiderwebs. The Kid makes his way to The Bastion, a place that Caelondians built as a safe haven in case of something like this. There, he meets the only other Caelondian survivor that made it to the Bastion: Rucks, the narrator.

The game is based around finding large stones called Cores. Cores are huge sources of energy that can restore the bastion to its former glory and eventually, maybe they can use The Bastion to do something about The Calamity. Maybe they can rebuild this world. Bastion is an excellent game and is probably the best game available for iOS I've ever played. The artwork is incredible and bright, it's the only post-apocalyptic game I've played that wasn't all brown and gray. The gameplay is incredible and the combat style is very fluid, you're always dodging or pulling up your shield; timing the perfect hits on your enemies. In the end, all aspects of it are simply incredible. It even has it's own soundtrack which is very good and available on iTunes. I loved this game so much, I plan on doing at least one more blog on it examining the story and moral dilemmas in the Bastion universe.

I highly recommend purchasing Bastion for any platform. I've played through it almost 3 times and I find new things that surprise and amaze me every time. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 12 and 13

Chapter 12

Julia looked around. It took a while to get used to being a climbing suit. She couldn't smell, but her hearing was amplified and so was her sight, although she felt like her sight lagged behind when she turned her head. The rocks on top of the suit... Hurt her. She didn't stop to ask how. She looked over at the neurotech booth and saw through the dusty thick window her body slumped in the chair. It wasn't a pleasant sight. She trained herself, lifting rubble off of her new container with her chubby hands and fingers. The slamming and grotesque sounds from behind the door drew to an end. Before the door fell open. Julia didn't even hesitate, she stood up and reached her arm up to the rock wall of The Hole. A grapple hook shot out from just beneath her palm and the industrial alloy cable pulled her up with no problem. She could hear them, oh God she could hear them. She was a good 30 feet off of the ground now, and she chanced a look down. She could see directly into the neurotech booth from a broken ceiling. The things were disgusting, lumbering black masses with white boils and sometimes patches of bare human skin. They didn't see her up on the wall, instead they ripped through the door and tore away the meager barricade. Julia could of sworn that she saw her own eyes open, before they tore her apart.

Chapter 13

Julia would have cried, if she had the ability to do so. She heard the sobs in her mind, and the suit made her tortured sobs burst through the suits speakers in staticky echoes. Julia's machinated pain echoed from the Hole. She kept pulling herself up, hook by hook from the climbing suit's hands. It was extremely dark, and the only light she had were the small pinpoints attached the Hole's walls, and two beams of light she turned on from under her jaw. She didn't stop to think how it was possible, but she still felt physically tired after an hour of the climb. She did not need to breathe, but she made the noise anyway without any voluntary effort. After what she could only guess was over two hours, she came to the lip of the Hole. The sky wasn't pitch black, it was a shade of blue that wasn't dark, but the total absence of sunlight made it very dark and she saw only by plinking bits of light from 1A and the lights on her suit. She didn't know what disturbed her more, the absence of any human life or rescue attempt for what had happened in the Hole, or the black tentacles oozing out of the hole with her, penetrating the walls of installation 1A.


- By Ashton

No Man's Sky

Hello. Today I'm writing about an upcoming game.

June 21st a PlayStation 4 game comes out called No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky may be one of the most anticipated games of the year and has a lot of expectations to meet. It's a science fiction exploration game. Alone, you explore the vastness of the galaxy, starting at the edge and working your way to the center. By "vast" I really mean vast. The game has 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 planets. It would take everyone on earth 10 years if everyone discovered 500 planets per minute. The galaxy the creators developed is entirely procedurally generated, so even the creators don't know what's out there, and they've sent out their own digital probes to explore the galaxy looking for errors and glitches.

Every planet belongs to its own solar system, with other planets, surrounding a star. Everything about every planet is also procedurally generated so there are different color skies, ground, and water. What's even more amazing is that these planets harbor life that's different on every single planet. The amount of different flora and fauna is even greater than the amount of planets, and every time you discover something new it goes into your database and you earn money. Your spaceship and equipment are just as diverse, and you'll never see two things exactly alike. Everyone playing the game will be in the same galaxy as you are but its so big that you may never see another player. To keep it so that the galaxy seems populated, a robot police race guards planets to protect wildlife and from too many minerals being mined. There are also trading posts in space where you can protect them from pirates, or be a pirate yourself. At trading posts like this around the galaxy you can buy ships and equipment like laser guns.

In No Man's Sky you can do whatever you want, but one major goal is to get to the center of the galaxy, where something awaits you. You can upgrade your ship to be able to carry you greater and greater distances at a time in order to get to the center. Every so often on a planet you'll find a totem that will take you to another planet, somewhere closer to the center.

No Man's Sky looks like a very good game, and I've preordered it for PS4. I highly recommend watching trailers for the game if you're interested. Bye.


- By Ashton

Hello. Today I'm writing about two books I've read recently. Here it is.

For school I was recently assigned a book report over Spring Break. You are supposed to read a book that matches your lexile score. Most books have a lexile score lower than my level so I went on the lexile website to look up some adult horror books, figuring that those books would have a high enough score and also keep me entertained. Unfortunately the website is so school-oriented that it didn't have any horror books on it scarier than Goosebumps, so I asked my teacher if I could go ahead and read The Silence of the Lambs. She said it was fine, so I picked up the book at a Barnes and Noble and dove into the world of Clarice Starling, Buffalo Bill, and Hannibal Lecter.

Clarice Starling is a student of the FBI. She's assigned to help catch Buffalo Bill, a horrible serial killer that kills and skins his victims. The murder victims are spread out and found in different rivers all over America, and they have little to no leads. In order to catch this killer Clarice has to consult someone that might be the most dangerous man in America, Hannibal the Cannibal. The Silence of the Lambs was an extremely good book and you are tense with action the entire time. The way Thomas Harris builds his characters is amazing and Hannibal and Buffalo Bill will leave you shaking. It's the best crime/horror novel I've ever read.

(SPOILERS)

Red Dragon is absolutely chilling. Red Dragon is the first book in the Hannibal series and Silence of the Lambs is the second. I read Silence of the Lambs first and read some about what had happened to Will Graham, the main character in Red Dragon. In Red Dragon Will is a very smart consultant of the FBI that has helped them catch serial killers before. He's asked to help them again when the Tooth Fairy appears, a killer that murders entire families. One of the conflicts in this book is wi himself. Will is tortured by the fact that he can catch these killers because it's so easy for him to think just like these horrible people do. Red Dragon is a terry flying start to the Hannibal series and shows the beginning of Hannibal Lecter. The Tooth Fairy killer is equally disturbing, and in my opinion worse than Buffalo Bill.

Since I've finished these two books so quickly I'm going to read the entire Hannibal series as my assignment and I may blog about he final two books, Hannibal and Hannibal Rising. Bye.


- By Ashton

Towerfall: Ascension

Hello. Today I'm writing about a very good PS4 game.

I'm writing about Towerfall: Ascension. Towerfall is a 2D fantasy pixel game about archers, towers, and monsters. There are two main game modes. The first is quest mode. In quest mode you fight monsters to save Towerfall in 12 different towers, with up to 3 other players helping you as 3 more archers. In a tower the area you have to fight fills the entire screen. Most of the edge of the room is walls, but if you exit through an empty space, you come out on the other side. For example, if you fall through a hole at the bottom of the screen, you'd fall through a corresponding hole at the top of the screen, or if you shoot an arrow through a hole in the left side, be careful it won't hit you coming out the right side. There are other things in a tower that you can use, such as jump pads that make you jump higher, hanging objects that will kill you if they fall on you, and torches that light your passing arrows on fire.

Each tower in quest mode has at least five waves of monsters. Monsters will appear through purple portals for each round. Most monsters can be killed in one hit by numerous methods. Most commonly, you'll either shoot them with an arrow, or jump on their heads, but hey can also be killed by explosions, falling objects, or from the shockwave that generates when you respawn. In quest mode you have gems at the top of the screen that are the same color as your archer, that's how many lives you have to beat the tower. You are instantly killed by any kind of damage but if you get the shield power up you effectively have 2 health. Power ups are found in chests that spawn randomly. Other archers can only kill you by shooting you, in quest mode you can't be killed by another archer by being stomped on the head. If you complete all the ages in a tower you beat the tower and unlock more.

The second mode is called Versus mode. Versus mode is where you fight against up to three other players. You play in towers just like in quest mode, but the tower room changes each round. There are still power ups and things like jump pads in the terrain, but you don't get lives like in quest mode, instead the round ends when only one archer (or none) are left alive. One fun thing about Towerfall is that your arrows don't come back to you and aren't unlimited, so after you shoot an arrow you have to retrieve it from where it landed, and other archers can pick up your arrows. The power ups are very diverse with ones that change the area, lava walls, and many many different kinds of arrows. There are also many different variants you can put on Versus, such as max treasure, big heads, infinite drill arrows, and many more. There are three different lengths you can choose for a match, and three different gamemodes. In Last Man Standing you have to be the last archer alive, in Headhunters you have to have the most kills, and in team death match you have to outlast the other team of archers.

Towerfall: Ascension is an amazing game, especially when you are playing with other people. I highly recommend it for PS4.


- By Ashton

Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Julia hastily made her way over to the neurotech booth. It was up against the bottom of the wrecked elevator so the roof of the booth caved in slightly. She picked up a broken piece of rebar and pried the jammed door open. Julia slid onto the cold metal chair with the neuro sensors attacked to the back head rest. From the neurotech booth she could access any device with software in a short distance. She opened the main computer and found the signal for the only functioning climbing suit, the one she had saw. Julia had the computer run a diagnostic on it for brain scan capability and waited patiently, blocking out the horrifying sounds coming from the door into the base. After several agonizing minutes the computer finished its diagnosis. Julia could not inhabit the climbing suit unless it was filled with... Heliogel? It had only been a few weeks since the material Heliogel was even entered into the system, why would she possibly need it in the climbing suit and why did he computer think that she did? She didn't have time for questions, the sounds from the door were getting louder. She could try scanning herself into the suit without Heliogel but for all she knew that could leave her completely incapacitated, retarded, or dead. The best thing that she could do was to follow the computers instructions. Julia thought that the booth might have the range to control one of the arms in the lab room. While controlling an arm she could fill the climbing suit with Heliogel that had not been tainted or transformed from this dark node explosion.

Julia exited out of the diagnosis and searched for the signal for one of the arms. She could only hope that one of them was still functioning and able to reach the climbing suit. A faint signal was picked up and with a glimmer of hope Julia scanned herself into the arm. Again she felt the odd out of body experience and was suddenly back in the lab room. The cameras on the arm had been damaged and she could not look at the dark node enclosure, but she could see one entire wall coated with pulsating Heliogel. One of the Heliogel tanks on the far wall had been breached by the explosion, and it's interior had turned into a mix of grey black oil and the light blue sacs of light. Julia didn't want to think about what would happen to her if she used that for the climbing suit. The other tank seemed to be fine, it had no breaches and the gel inside appeared as its normal, black oily self. That didn't mean that Julia trusted the Heliogel by any means, but it was her only option. She inserted the syringe arm into the tank receptacle and filled the arm. With her cameras she could see up through a gaping hole in the ceiling of the lab and it appeared as if the arm could just reach the climbing suit kiosks outside the base. She finished filling up the arm and maneuvered it through the wrecked base, up to the kiosks. She could see the waste line of a climbing suit and she could tell from the surrounding rubble that this was the last functioning one that she had previously seen. Nervously, she entered the thin syringe through a slit between the back metal plate and the waistline, and filled the suit with Heliogel.

Julia was near frantic when the arm had finally finished filling the suit, the door sounded like it could give away any second. Heliogel had filled the suit to the brim and had completely colored the viewport on the head black, but that didn't matter, she would be using the durable cameras on either side of the head to see. As soon as the computer stated that the climbing suit was ready for a brain scan Julia locked the booth door and moved a large filing cabinet up against it. While she was piloting the suit, her body would be completely vulnerable to those things trying to get to her. She didn't want to think about it too long. Julia sat down in the neuro chair with shaking hands and laid her head back against the head rest. Without too many more thoughts she activated the scan and felt herself flowing from her body and into the climbing suit across the top of the base.


- By Ashton

Super Tribes

Hello. Today I'm writing about a very good iOS game. Here it goes.

I recently got an iOS game called Super Tribes. It's recently released and independently developed, and still very impressive. The game is also free and only has one in-app purchase, which is the ability to play as the 5th tribe, the other 4 come with the game. Super Tribes is a turn based strategy game where you play as 1 of 5 tribes. The tribes are Vikings, Ninjas, Samurai, Romans, and a tribe that looks like Native Americans. The game is laid out over a large square, flat world made out of 256 square tiles.

Every time you start a game the world is completely new so the game has infinite replay value. You start off as one tribesman with one very small village and a very small portion of the world visible to you. The goal is to expand your tribe and advance its civilization as much as possible in 30 turns. On the world you can set it to have at least 1 enemy tribe, to as much as 3 enemy tribes. You can battle the enemy tribe and defeat their units, capture their cities, and destroy their trade routes. The basis of the game is city expansion. Every turn a city creates a certain amount of resources, which is what you need in order to do anything in the game except move your units. The bigger the city and the more population it has, the more resources you'll gain each turn. There are many ways to increase your cities' population. You do this by gathering resources near the city, or by building buildings near the city. You can gather fruit, hunt animals, fish, mine, and farm. You can build lumber houses, sawmills, ports, smitheries, windmills, and more. When your cities population exceeds the number of white bars it has below it, it levels up and gets bigger and starts generating more resources for you. You can gain new cities by discovering small villages. These villages don't belong to the enemy tribe and you can capture them and they'll happily join your empire and become one of your cities. You can also get a new city by moving one of your units onto an enemy tribes city, unless they kill that unit on their turn, the next turn you can capture it for your own.

Almost everything you do in the game raises your score, and you win if at the end of 30 turns your score is higher than the enemy tribes'. You can also connect your cities together using roads, and for each city connected to your capital (your starting city) the capitals population goes up 1 and you score points. You can connect cities to your capital across water by building ports, which will automatically create trade routes connecting them. Everything you can do in the game by buying that science. You start out with one way to raise the population of your city, but all the other ways and all the other things you can do, such as sail or climb mountains or farm, has to be bought using resources. The more cities you have the more expensive the sciences get. At the end of the game your score is totaled from your sciences, army and conquests, cities and other categories.

Super Tribes is an amazing, free iOS game and if you're a fan of turn based strategy, I highly recommend it. I also recommend buying the 99 cent in app purchase to help the developer. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Julia stared in horror. The eye twitched, unblinkingly, for a few minutes before more black sludge dripped down over the window in the door. She began to hear the thing slamming against the door, faster and harder each time, as if more creatures were joining it. She didn't have time to think about what had just happened, she only knew she had to get out of this place. Julia turned to look at the elevator in the center of the circular building. It was devasted. The cables were strewn about and the entire thing was broken almost in half, leaning against the wall of The Hole. It was a wonder that the thing hadn't fallen through the cracked and broken floor, that the things underneath her hadn't found a way to her. She stared forlornly at the far wall where the kiosks of climbing suits should be. Tons of rubble had fallen and 5 of the 6 suits were completely crushed or broken. There was one that looked nearly untouched, standing outside its kiosk. Unfortunately it was blocked by the rubble, there was no way she could get it out and put it on. Maybe if she was inside of it she could get out of the rubble but? Julia looked over at the neurotech booth next to the broken elevator. Julia was a scientist but she thought it was impossible to transfer her consciousness into the suit with its limited amount of software. SLAM SLAM SLAM. The door started to buckle. She had to try.

The Runelords

     Hello everybody.  Today I’m continuing my break from my story because I just finished a book series that would like to write about.

     Last summer I went to the Martinsburg library and got the first book in the Runelords series, called The Sum of All Men.  It was an amazing fantasy book by David Farland  written 1998.  As soon as we went back to the library I acquired and devoured the second book, Brotherhood of the Wolf.  After that I was saddened because the library had no more books in the series, due to them being lost and never replaced.  However for Christmas my grandparents came to my rescue and bought me all of the rest of the books except the last.  The series is split with the first four books centering around Gaborn Val Orden and the last 5 books starring Fallion Val Orden.  I recently finished the first half of the series and that is what I’m writing about today.  

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE RUNELORDS SERIES IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE FIRST 4 BOOKS AND ARE INTERESTED IN THE SERIES PLEASE DONT READ THIS.

     This was an amazing fantasy series.  Anybody that knows me knows that The Belgariad and The Mallorean by David Eddings will always be my favorite fantasy series but this one offered some very interesting and entertaining viewpoints of the fantasy world.  One of the biggest differences between the two is pacing.  In The Runelords the pacing was very very good.  Some fantasy series get ridiculously boring because everything is very drawn out and prolonged and story progression just does not happen.  For no reason.  Other series (liked Belgariad and Mallorean) are very fast paced and you learn about the characters through their actions and not chapter long deep self reflection.  The Runelords offers a very good mix between these two pacings because it takes it’s time with events that are important and lengthy such as battles or traversing beautiful landscapes, but instead of focusing on a single character’s lengthy, lengthy, perception of boring events, it quickly shows different viewpoints from different characters that invigorates and immerses you into the story.  

     The Runelords also has very good character building and writing.  The main character, Gaborn is not the extremely powerful, confident character you seen in some fantasy stories, but he is also not the extremely innocent farm boy with a destiny trope (i.e. Garion, Frodo.)  A huge part of the series is about learning how to be a king, a king to the world if necessary, and learning how to deal with the power, responsibility, and consequences that come with your decisions.  One of my favorite characters is Borenson.  Borenson is truly a tragic hero.  He comes from a poor, fatherless background and rises to become a huge man, a knight of the king’s guard.  In these four books he has to deal with some truly harrowing sacrifices and is one of the characters that suffers the most throughout the series.  Whether or not he comes out on top is still left to be seen because although he settles down with his wife at the end of the first four books, he reappears in Fallion’s story…

     That was my review for the first four books in The Runelords series, I highly encourage you to pick it up now if you are a fan of intense, high quality, fantasy.

The Last Vikings

Hello everybody. Today I'm taking a break from my story to review some more iOS games. Chapter 10 will be up sometime next Sunday.

This game is called The Last Vikings. It's currently my favorite iOS game and the game I play the most frequently. The story is that during the great Viking era where Vikings were unchallenged and extremely powerful, the empire unexpectedly fell for no reason. Eric, one of the last Vikings vows to find out why the Viking empire fell and to bring it back to its former glory. You are Eric, the leader of the last Vikings. The game centers around 2 forms of combat, and managing your Viking camp.

There are 6 areas in the Viking camp. The first area is a treasure hoard where you keep all of your loot and money. The second area has options and credits in it as well as the tunnel of time. In the third area you manage your weapons, Vikings, and heroes. There's a camp in the fourth are with a bonfire where most of your Vikings gather and oftentimes a merchant will sell special deals there. The fifth area is the boatyard where you can build new longboats for your Vikings, and the sixth area is the port where your longboat waits to be boarded to go on some nice raids. Loot consists of materials like wood, cloth, nails, and rope, and money such as gold and hack silver. You use materials to build everything and often gold along with it. The second area is nothing special really just credits and options, except for the time tunnel. You can click on it to get a humorous explanation from a pixelated version of the games creator that the tunnel of time can be used to watch ads from "the future" in order to gain some extra materials or stamina. At first this sounds very bad but all the ads are only 30 seconds long and even though they give a decent amount of loot, they aren't really worth it. The game never ever forces to watch an add it's always a choice and watching two 30 second adds will quickly bring your stamina for raids back up to full. All in all its probably the best way I've ever seen a game developer handle putting adds in his game.

The third area is probably the most interesting because that's where you manage most your camp. As you go on raids you can randomly get different weapons that automatically go to this area in your camp. You can equip 4 weapons, each one with different stats in the 3 categories, damage, evade, and critical. You generally want to equip one kind of shield because they are for the most part the only weapons that have anything in the evade category. After your shield it's probably best just to use your three most powerful weapons, making sure they have the highest total stats, but are also diverse from each other. It also might be a good idea to have a bow, even though I don't think there's a tactical advantage. Now you can imagine that on some of these raids some Vikings are gonna die so this is also where you can hire new recruits that automatically become Vikings romanizing around in your camp. On raids you often get recruits that balance out how many you lose, this is just backup system with each recruit only costing 50 gold each (a low price.) The last thing you can do there is manage your heroes. Hero's are powerful units that fight for the Viking cause. Not all of them are actual Vikings, but they are all powerful made-up or mythical Heroes from ancient times that are fighting on your side. Heroes have their own damage, evade, and critical stats that affect your raids.

The fourth area is nothing special it's just a campfire where most of your Vikings will wander around. Every Viking you have will be wandering around somewhere in the 6 areas in your camp, besides the heroes. Occasionally a merchant will appear in this area offering special deals for heroes or weapons, and sometimes giving you free loot. Most often you buy these deals with hack silver. Hack silver is a currency that is much much rarer than gold and you can use it to buy much more powerful things. You can get it randomly on raids, by finding a strange hay creature and a little girl on some raid locations (don't ask, I don't know either), or by playing every day to get your daily reward. Let's move on to the fifth area, the boatyard. Every 5 raid locations you get the option to buy a new longboat that looks different. Each new longboat can also be upgraded to add one more boat seat then the last. When you unlock these boats you still have to pay for it with gold and materials. When you buy a boat it starts off with only one seat for one Viking, you have to upgrade it to add one more seat each time and every new ship can be upgraded farther before it reaches its max allotment.

The sixth area is simply the area you use to being your raids so let's begin an explanation of those. You have 5 raid options. The first is PVP where you can raid another player's stash of loot. The second is a weekly event world-wide you can participate in to earn rewards. The third is just receiving your daily reward. The fourth option sails you to Barry the Zombie Ship. Barry the Zombie ship is a large talking zombie dragon figurehead on a ghostly ship filled with dead Vikings. He throws up three chests into the ocean that you can open with rising amounts of hack silver accordingly. One gives you materials, one gold, and the last gives you a random rare weapon or hero you would normally have to get on a raid.

The last raid option is the main game. Clicking on it reveals a map of locations strung along a route. As you progress in the game more and more locations reveal themselves on the route. Locations with sharp corners on them are outposts that you can start your sea raids from, circular locations have a defense totem on them that don't permit you to start from. When you are sailing in the ocean to a location you can tap and hold the row button at the bottom of the screen to send a bar going back and forth, you can release the row button on different different colored sections to do different things. There are three degrees of speed sections to land on, an orange section that gives you more ammo, and a purple section that activates your hero's special power. After you release the row button to activate a section you can hold it again to get another, rinse and repeat. Your hero sits at the front of the longboat and each one has special powers, some of which help with these ocean raids. Now speed is obviously important to get to your location as fast as possible, but you'll need to frequently pick up ammo to shoot down objects people are catapulting towards your ship from the beaches. If anything hits your ship, no matter what it is, fireballs from dragons, rocks, arrows, chickens, it will kill a Viking on your ship. Your hero is always killed last and if it is then you lose and Odin destroys one of your locations so you have to retake it. To survive always use the fire button to shoot down objects before they hit your ship. When you pass a location in your ship you hit attack to land there. If it's a new location the villagers will hide behind a barrier that you have to damage, doing damage based on your hero and weapons, multiplied by how many Vikings you have left on your ship. Whether there's a barrier or not you get gold, materials, and either recruits or a weapon from these raids.

Once you've destroyed a barrier at a location you can fight a battle on land. You don't have to sail there to do it and from a siege tower you lead a small army of your Vikings lead by heroes. You can upgrade the tower to increase your Vikings combat stats, the amount of Vikings your bring, and the amount of heroes you can bring. There are 6 waves of enemies, the last one is a boss. While you're traveling between waves you stop a bar at the top of the screen on certain sections that will increase that combat stat, the same way you row during a sea raid. After all 6 waves if you're still alive you get your rewards and loot.

That's my favorite game, The Last Vikings. The story leaves a little something to be desired but that's common in iOS games, still better than many others, and it could be added on in future updates. You can also expect continuing updates because it's a new, active game. The pixel art is INCREDIBLE, the best I've ever seen in an iOS game and that with the amazing gameplay more than makes up for the lack of substantial story. I recommend picking up The Last Vikings right now on the App Store. Bye.


- By Ashton

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Julia stumbled through the dim halls, slowly making her way upstairs before she started to hear something. Thum thum thum, it sounded like footsteps coming from around the corner, from where she had just came. It got louder and faster, like the person was getting faster as they drew nearer. She made a few more drunken steps up the stairs in front of her and past the emergency doorway that led up to the ceiling of the installation at the bottom of The Hole. When she reached the top she turned around slowly as the sound got louder and faster THUM THUM THUM THUM.
"Why are you running so fast?" Julia warbled in a shaky voice. Then it came around the corner. It was alive. It wasn't human. Julia's senses barely registered what she was seeing, it was a mass of the grey-black Heliogel. It formed a human-like shape with overly large feet and tubes of different sizes and shapes ran throughout a mass or sacs full of it in liquid form, rooting plates like crusty food, and knotted tangled muscle shapes. A football sized group of the glowing white bubbles pulsed on its lower right abdomen. Julia screamed in terror. The thing was running so fast it slammed into the far wall, and stickily pealed itself off the wall with creeping Heliogel crawling up its surface. She didn't even know it it oriented itself it just started stumbling as quickly as it could towards her. In a numb panic her brain suddenly surged with adrenaline and she slammed her hand on the emergency shut button. It was so close running up the stairs and as the heavy door shut closed 8 or 9 fingertips were caught in the bottom. They separated from the hand and crawled forward like worms before crinkling up and dying, like the worms were exposed to sunlight. They turned bone white. Julia was terrified and she stumbled back before she looked up into the thick glass window in the door. Embedded in the thick black mass that acted as a head was an eye. A human eye. The pupils were dilated but it blinked and twitched. Blood and black oil leaked from the corners.


- By Ashton

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Julia woke once again. She had drifted off after just a couple more minutes, after her brain had been telling her to just lie down and wait for help. Now it was totally dark. She had fallen back inside the office and it appeared as if the door had been pushed close, held only partially open by her foot resting against it. Julia stood up slowly, trying to regain her senses and pushed open the door.

"H-..hello?" Her voice quavered and echoed. The hall was dark except for a fluorescent light, swinging by its remaining cord from the ceiling. The other source of light was what really bothered her. All around her Heliogel seeped from cracks and crevices in the walls. It hung from the ceiling like vines, oozed from the floor like moss, and pulsating holes dotted the gel intermittently, spurting out more Heliogel in a more liquid form. The worst part of it was that every 20 feet or so, small domes of pale blue-white light would pulsate from the growth. It appeared the same as the fragile domes that had emerged from the Heliogel when it was capturing the dark node. She hoped that it was only an after effect, but a part of her knew that the dark node was still down there; chugging along in its happy case. For all she knew it was moments away from another explosion, possibly even worse. Julia also knew that the heliogel had displayed nothing like this in her experiments and limited testing. It always generated in amounts that generated structured, very ordered shapes. Nothing like this dark vomit all throughout the hall of different textures and shades. And it certainly didn't grow to any volume larger than what was administered. Another thing she noticed was that she was alone. Besides the slowly spinning light and parts of the gel pulsating, nothing was moving and there were no bodies on the floor. She supposed grimly that the rest of the group could have woke up and evacuated through the elevator, but why leave her? She doubted that they hadn't seen her, and doubted even more that her friends wouldn't of noticed her absence. Julia had been incapacitated, sure, but their had to of been enough strong people left to carry her. She looked back down the hall to her right where the beam had fallen on the man's arm. Nothing. The gel was for the most part not infecting that area and there was still not any sign of human flesh. Julia stared at the floor unbelievingly.
"How could they of t-taken him and not me..?"

- By Ashton

Online Colleges Report

I'm writing about several colleges offering video game design and development programs. As I was researching I discovered that many of these programs, and many of the very best and affordable programs, were through online programs because teaching online is a very versatile and easy method when it comes to virtual jobs such as game design and development, so I based my research on these online programs.

Let's look at Baker College. Baker College has an online game development program that is very cheap that offers a bachelor's degree. The tuition is $8,100 a year. It has a very high placement rate at 97%. The program teaches you to create and produce games that you can play on computers, consoles, the Internet, mobile phones, other devices, and even arcades. You can either work alone or with others to develop the visuals, story, and gameplay of the game. After that outline is done you or your team create the animation, audio, and programming. Next you test and debug the game before finally producing it. The program is updated regularly to whatever the industry needs, so you will learn whatever the game industry is looking for at the time. The program also provides a strong foundation in software engineering and program technologies. After that strong foundation has been lied down the student learns game modeling, to animation and programming, and then finally their senior project.

The next college is Daniel Webster College. Daniel Webster College has a bachelors program in Game Design and Development. The program teaches you the skills required to go into jobs like game designers, game developers, graphic designers, storyboard artists, concept artists, and animators. The tuition is $15,630 a year.

Next is the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. The tuition is $17,020 a year. They have programs in Game design and Game programming. Their game design program is something I'm very interested in because it involves the more creative and artistic side of making video games. You start with fundamentals like drawing, color, design, then move on to develop the skills you need in animation game design, scriptwriting, storyboarding, and character design. It also shows you video game programming, production, artistic concepts, and game play strategies that produced games that people enjoyed around the world. You'll learn to make games and your own game levels that you can make into a portfolio of your work. After graduating the program promises the opportunity to enter jobs like a 2D Conceptual Artist, a Storyboard Artist, a 3D Character Builder, 3D Object Modeler, Interactivity Designer, Background Artist, and Gameplay tester. "As a prerequisite for admission to The Art Institute of Pittsburgh — Online Division, students must be a high school graduate with a minimum, cumulative, final high school CGPA of 2.5 or higher, or hold a General Education Development (GED) Certificate, or associate's degree or higher. Students must exhibit competent drawing and design skills by submission of specified portfolio criteria. Drawing and design skills will be assessed using department standards and will determine placement in drawing courses." Based on that criteria the only main thing I need to work on is my actual artistic skill.

The next college is Southern New Hampshire University. They have a program called Game Design and Development for $960 per course. It gives a strong background in core IT concepts. Throughout the program you learn about game genres, platforms, interface design, game theory, game marketing, e-collaboration, and e-commerce. You also learn how virtual game environments create experiences through rule design, play mechanics, game balancing, social game interaction and the integration of visual, audio, tactile and textural elements. The university boasts several benefits such as Affordability, Convenience, Efficiency and Flexibility, Expert Instruction, Networking, a Simple Application Process, Student Support, and Transfer Friendly Enrollment. For Affordability it might actually be one of the cheapest I've seen for a Bachelors degree in this area but the number of courses I'd have to take is unclear and each one is 960$. The program is convenient because you can take the classes 24/7, being an online course. It's efficient and flexible because you can complete the entire program at your own pace. It claims to have expert instruction from instructors with relevant, real-world experience. The networking is interesting because it says that you can "Tap into our nationwide network of alumni for internship and career opportunities." Which is very interesting. The application seems pretty simple, it's just an online application and there's no fee. It says that there is student support with "Count on the ongoing support of dedicated academic and career advisors specialized in your area of study." It's also transfer friendly with the ability to transfer up to 90 credits if I was coming from a different school. The program would also allow me to go into an IT oriented job, and jobs in that area are predicted to grow 22% by 2022.

Next up is The Academy of Art, offering a Game Development program. The School of Game Development provides you with an array of skills required for the gaming industry. Whether pursuing a career as a game designer, game programmer, 3D modeler, concept artist, or UI/UX designer, you get hands-on experience creating a professional-quality art and game design or programming portfolio, and you can also collaborate with other students to produce fun and memorable video games. It costs $835 per unit, 3 units per class.

The website for The Academy of Art also provides useful information on all of the jobs you could go into after this program, or indeed all the other programs I've listed. The first is Game Designing. Game Designing involves balancing gameplay elements, creating in-game economies, improving systems, contributing features, participate in testing, as well as creating immersive worlds that evoke emotion in the player. Job duties include: creating design-centric level layout, creating game scripting, and assisting teams to polish various gameplay aspects. Skills needed for the job include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of gameplay balancing, and a collaborative and positive attitude.

The next job is a UI/UX designer, or a user interface/ user experience designer. For this job you dictate exactly how the player interacts with the game itself, using knowledge of game features, design, motion graphics, and user paths. Duties include: producing sketches, flow charts, mind maps, and prototypes, working with production teams to smoothly hand-off deliverables, and optimizing interfaces for efficient deliver alt of information. Skills include: excellent oral and written skills, understanding of user methodologies and use bases, strong design and and human-computer-interactivity sensitivity.

The next job is a Character Concept Artist. In this job you create and design characters for interactive games, imagining the visual look of characters using contextual details. Duties include: creating original character designs, evolving designs from concept to production, and communicating ideas and thought visually. Skills include: Strong Knowledge of Anatomy, excellent oral and written skills, and the ability to present and critique objectively.

Next is a 3D character modeler. As a 3D character modeler you build compels character models, organic meshes, and work with a team to rig, light, and texture your characters. Duties include: Modeling and texturing the game, readying assets, building and iterating organic meshes, and working with other teams to maintain a consistent story and vision. Skills include: Low and high polygon modeling skills, strong problem solving skills, and excellent oral and written skills.

In conclusion there are many online colleges and programs offered. There are many benefits and opportunities in online colleges and taking the online route is a god way to get a jumpstart on learning and also lets you be flexible and have a job on the side. The field of game deign and development is also obviously growing and the medium of online classes obviously works very well with teaching the skills needed for this industry. I think that this selection of colleges is wide enough to apply for more information for each of them and decide which one is right for me.


- By Ashton