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