Don thy battle helmet! Equip your Armor! Brandish your broadsword…and mouse cursor too! Brand new releases have just launched in your favorite online adventure games. Enjoy a weekend full of fantastic fun (well, for you, not so much for the monsters you’re defeating!) in Artix Entertainment games.
AdventureQuest Worlds Become one of Lore’s Legendary Heroes! The all-new Legendary Hero Class has taken flight into the fight, adorned in the Legendary Hero Armor, Helm, Wings, and Sword! Learn the legend of the Druids in your next steps at becoming a Lorekeeper. Ascend into divine power with Aranx’s Featured Artist Shop items, and enjoy Class Point, Rep, Gold, and/or XP Boosts on the servers Sir Ver and Evil Sir Ver!
EpicDuel After weeks of fighting in the Dread Plains, plans for a powerful new weapon have been captured by both sides of the War. Now, Legion and Exile forces are prepared to unleash their power upon Delta V in the form of the Dread Domination Varium Package! We've equipped the Dread Desolators with technology of unknown origin in the form of the Improbability Gate Core, able to open holes in the fabric of the universe. These tears in reality have been weaponized to allow you to summon creatures and objects from other worlds to come to their aid and help vanquish their foes! Be warned, however, this technology is quite unstable: you never know what will come through!
DragonFable Help Wanted; Inquire Within! Cysero is looking for some help in his SuperStore. If you help out the Mad Weaponsmith, he might award you with some new items. But knowing Cysero, his idea of ‘help’ is significantly different than yours!
We created an official Facebook Page for our upcoming RPG/Puzzle/Battle game, BattleGems. Give us a like and follow to see sneak peak monsters and screenshots as we build this first free game designed to run on your iPhone, Android, Tablet, iPad, Web or game-ready Toaster. This week we have been focusing on monsters... like the dreaded Octobear! (If there is one thing I love about AE, is our crazy monsters) Our game will have a lot more monsters than people are used to seeing on mobile games. Due to the small storage space, most mobile games stick to just a few. We spent a lot of time figuring out how to cram hordes of baddies on your device while staying under the 50MB limit. So... have any more crazy monster ideas? Comment with your ideas!
As the summer weather gets hotter, so do the battles in your favorite Artix Entertainment games! Turn up the heat with OverSoul’s new Fire Card Series, fight fire with fire against Cerberus in AQWorlds, and scorch the battlefield in EpicDuel’s war. Check out the other new releases below for a weekend full of fun!
AdventureQuest Worlds Styx and stones will break your bones! Continue your journey through the Underworld and meet Charon the Ferryman. Traverse across the River Acheron, defeat the 3-headed Hydra in the Great Marsh of Styx, and then defeat Dage’s 3-headed guard dog, Cerberus. Get your Meme on with Meme Moglin pets in the game menu, and become Lore’s most powerful Shadowfire Emissary with our special 1-month Membership offer in-game that includes the Armor, Helm, Wings, and Character Page Badge!
OverSoul Bring the Fire to the battlefield with the Fire Card Series Deck! Wield the Fire Whirl that deals 400 Damage every turn for 4 turns, and the Meteor that deals 1,500 Normal Damage. Four new characters are ready to fight: Evil Jim (SG), Infernal Fiend, Necrosis Dezgardo, and Aqueous. Explosive special spell animations for Meteorite, Fire Whirl, and Inferno spells will ignite your fights!
EpicDuel This week, EpicDuel is bringing a truckload of new weapons and achievements to allow you to show off all of your hard-fought War battles. Also, watch the War Objectives change dynamically based on which alignment is in control -- Flood the Minetower with Legion guards, drape war banners over the Battle Arena, or move an army in to secure the Control Array!
HeroSmash Our long time heroes know seasonal and event rare items have year tags on them ('11, '12, '13, etc.), meaning they can return or disappear at any time and be replaced with a newer version. Tags help rare collectors prove when they got that item and to compare changes in each version. So what happens when regular appearing item gets replaced? This is where Prototypes come in; we decided to update the artwork and add Color Custom versions to shops. The old ones will be renamed ‘Prototype’ and labeled RARE! Case in point is this Freedom Day shop we updated the Canuck Crusadar art and made CC versions (along with gun mode corrections) to the Bottle Rocket Launcher while leaving originals intact… bugs and all.
AdventureQuest Classic Golden Giftboxes offer a chance at some of the rarest, most super awesome loot in AQ! This month you can get your hands on a sinister version of Black Wartexx and a Moonray/Sunray combo pet that changes types depending on your enemies resists, PLUS heals your mp! One of the permanent items you can obtain from the Golden Giftboxes are upgrades for all your Awe weapons into weapons of Awe!!! That isn't me be overly excited, you will now have a chance to upgrade your Awe weapons to their most devastating versions! Get the chance to access these powerful items for only 250 Z-Tokens! To kick off this exciting, new feature EVERYONE WILL BE RECEIVING2 FREE GOLDEN GIFTBOXES! We are also adding Unholy Water to Robina's Ranged Shop plus a slew of revamped items scattered around Lore! We have also released Uncle Krenos into the wild. Find him randomly with the Battle Monster button, defeat him and gain access to the epic Patriot Katana!
From the last sneak peak post, you saw that we are building Battle Gems, a fantasy puzzle battle game that will play on all devices including iPhone, Android, iPad, and Web. When we started designing the characters and putting them on the phone's screen... we realized just how little room we had to work with! So, we designed roughly square-shaped chibi characters that would fit well at the top of the screen with the monster. In the last 24 hours, Thyton has been drawing a storm of monsters & armors!
I am not sure what it is that makes us love video game art so much. But this is the most exciting part of the project... it feels like anything in possible. Well. I guess anything *IS* possible.
QUESTION: What armors and monsters would you like to see in Battle Gems?
Brand new releases have exploded into Artix Entertainment! Check out all the new fun in store for you all weekend long! And we have a new contest: the Bad Guys Good Battles Contest. Click here to find out more!
AdventureQuest Worlds Get your Robot on with Diozz’s Artist Shop showcasing 4 battle-ready Mechs with transforming pilot helms! Celebrate Freedom Day with Seasonal Rare fireworks and gear. Harness the power of explosive battles with the Undead Legion’s brand new Class, the Legion Champion. Test out your new power on the Challenge Boss Battle with the 3 headed AQ Classic dragon, Trigoras! Best of luck to you, hero!
EpicDuel Summer is here and it's time to charge headlong into EpicDuel's Dread War. If you haven't played yet, it's not to late to join the Legion or Exile forces to unlock new War Cores, regional rare shops, and collect tons of achievements!
HeroSmash Freedom, freedom... Freedom Day! This week Freedom Day Event returns with all new cool gear. We added another apprentice artist to the team, giving us much more creative minds than before. More projects are in the works: expanding Herospire and Skulldeep with arenas, and extremely hard versions of boss monsters to test your skills for great rewards!
AdventureQuest Classic Golden Giftboxes are here, offering a chance at some of the rarest, most super awesome loot in AQ! Every month, 2 items will be rotated out and will be gone forever! Get your hands on a sinister version of Black Wartexx and a Moonray/Sunray combo pet that changes types depending on your enemies resists, PLUS heals your MP. In celebration of the holiday, we are releasing a pair of mischievous moglins, Stars and Stripes, for Freedom Day! Also the Patriot Blade will be making its annual return, and be sure to check out Warlic's Magic Mirror to find the Lonely Ranger and Tontar Knight player faces.
This weekend, brace yourself for PART II of MechQuest's epic four-part finale. Your fellow Mecha pilots are bracing for the incoming attack from Lord Valoth, the supreme commander of the evil Shadowscythe Invaders. It turns out he is not here by chance... he is searching for a long lost and closely guarded secret. A secret which could save or destroy the universe. Hopefully you will find it first.
The original AdventureQuest was described as a "lunch break style game." That would make this new game we are creating, it's snack sized, ultra delicious brother. Do not worry if you are on a diet, it is 0 calories. If you are getting hungry to play... I need to warn you, this game is so addicting that we cannot stop playing it to finish it. This game will run on ALL devices from your web browser, iPhone, iPad, Android, Tablet, Toasters, etc.
A critical part of Project: Omni
This will be our first omni-game. That is, Battle Gems will run on ALL devices. The team and I are building this game as part of Project: Omni with the ultimate goal of learning how to turn our existing 2D games (and future 3D games) into something that will run on all devices. We have learned and built A LOT in the past month. I am really excited to let you know we now have a development pipeline for creating and animating our characters across devices! We used to use Adobe Flash for all of our design and animation, but we are now moving to an crazy mix of new software. Experimenting with different programs was a huge part of this project. As it turns out, there are a lot of good solutions for the problems we are facing. What is important is picking the RIGHT ones. I am really exicted about the prospect of making a game with painted characters (something we could not do with our older vector graphics.)
When will Battle Gems be released!?
We have a month's worth of hard work left on Battle Gems. We will be releasing this as a full, complete game. The team is aiming for 256 levels, 50+ pets, hordes of monsters and map full of exciting challenges. It will be free to play the whole game, with an optional and very helpful upgrade (think original AdventureQuest.) To stop cheating, we will be limiting the amount of turns per hour. Also, we are designing this game so that it will be possible to GET EVERY WEAPON, ARMOR, HELM, PET, ITEM IN THE GAME. *nods* That is right... no inventory space. We even found an interesting way to tie your item collection into your character's power. You can read about that more on future posts. I hope you will check back often and join the team and I as we create our first omni-game. Battle on!
If you haven't received your AQW character page badge yet, please post a link to your character page in the comments below!
It’s a good day for bad monsters! Instead of using weapons and magic, pit your creative talent and artistic skills against all the existing monsters and villains from your favorite Artix Entertainment games. And have a chance at winning awesome loot in the Bad Guys & Good Battles Contest!
Your Quest
Help Loremaster Maya! Create artwork or write histories for Artix Entertainment’s monsters and villains! Wining entries will help us build the AE Encyclopedia Lorepedia (currently on AQ.com)!
How to Start Your Adventure
Take a look at one of Loremaster Maya’s first Bestiary pages, then get out and hunt up a monster or villain of your own to observe! http://www.aq.com/lore/monsters/Frogdrake
Ideas for artwork submissions include:
Draw
Paint
Illustrate
Photoshop
Sculpt
Craft
Bake
Sew and Stitch
Carve
Balloon Animals!
Ideas for writing submissions include:
Details about where the monster/villain lives
Any unique behavior or identifying appearance details
What they’re good for after defeat
Any lore we already know about them (like the Bloodtusk Troll/Horc cultures)
Anything we DON’T know about them that doesn’t contradict what is already in-game
So long as your submission is a monster and/or a villain from your favorite Artix Entertainment game, then you’re one step closer to winning the contest!
Quest Requirements
Read ALL THESE rules before submitting!
This is not a suggestion contest, all of the entries must be based on monsters/villains that already exist in our games.
All artwork must be original—absolutely NO tracing and NO stealing someone else’s artwork.
Pictures must be at least 500px wide and in either .jpg or .png format.
All writing must be original. If you use any existing in-game lore in an entry, you must add original ideas onto it.
Written entries must be no longer than 500 words long.
Entry must be inspired by a monster and/or a villain from an Artix Entertainment Game (AdventureQuest, MechQuest, DragonFable, AQW, EpicDuel, HeroSmash, OverSoul).
You may use any form of media for your design (Pencil, Flash, MS Word, Notepad, cake mix, etc).
You can include other Artix Entertainment characters alongside your monster, be it your player or a popular NPC like Warlic or Cysero.
Post a valid link to your picture in the Comments section below in the Image URL field.
10. Include the text of your writing entry in the Comments section text field.
11. Only ONE Bad Guys & Good Battles contest submission will be judged per game account (although you CAN post more entries under each AE game account you own, so you can post one entry for your AQW hero, then another for your EpicDuel account, another picture for your DragonFable player, etc).
12. You can enter artwork, OR writing, OR both. But only one entry total per game account.
13. Your entry MUST include your Character Name AND which game your character belongs to. How else are we gonna award you if you win?
14. Your entry MUST include the name of the monster/villain you created.
15. Please please PLEASE only post once—it will take some time to approve your submission, so please don’t spam the Submit button!
16. You will be automatically disqualified if you do not follow all the rules.
17. We have the right to remove any entry that is unacceptable or inappropriate—so keep your entry safe for everyone to enjoy!
18. And, most importantly, have FUN!
Quest Rewards
Here’s your chance at wining awesome stuff in your favorite online game! The Bad Guys & Good Battles Contest prizes will be broken down by game, but since the Lorepedia encompasses ALL our games, we will award prizes in Artix Points!
Additional prizes may be awarded to those who go above and beyond!
Quest Turn-In
In the Comments field below, please include:
Your Character Name
What game your Character is in
What monster(s) and/or villain(s) you’re basing the entry on
A short biography and/or picture of the monster or villain
A valid URL link in the Image URL field or the text of your biography
Please make sure your URL link works online! Use a free online photo uploader like Tinypic, Photobucket, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Quest Time Frame
The Bad Guys & Good Battles Contest begins today, July 2, 2013. Submissions will be accepted until July 10, 2013, at 11:59pm EST. Judging will ensue the following week, and prizes will be announced and delivered around that time too!
Good luck everyone, and may the best Bad Guy & Good Battles entry win!
If you have been following the design notes, you know we are knee deep (more like scuba deep) in Project: Omni. It is not a single game, but an ambitious project with the goal of taking all of our games (new and old) to iPhone, Android, iPad, Tablets, Windows 8, Toasters, and all game-enabled devices. To learn how to do it, we are building a lunch-break size puzzle RPG. It is called Battle Gems. Probably one of the most addictive games I have ever played. A 7-year old sat at my computer to give it a try. Two hours later we HAD to publish a mobile version on the phone and give it to them so I could get my computer back and write this post. VICTORY! We ran into one "small" problem though. Our current Artix Entertainment logo is too big and complex. At a tiny size (like the logo on an iPhone app) it is just a squishy blob of orange and yellow.
See how much easier the black one is to make out?
I was told by the designers, "We need something that looks good in black & white. If you scale it way down, you should still be able to tell what it is just from it's silhouette." This was not the first time I was told this. We created a new version of the logo 2 years ago... it is the one that is hanging in the lobby of the lab.
But, it is so small and detailed that it becomes a blob too. So, yesterday... Cysero and I were "bad". Without telling the designer or artists what we were doing, we created dozens of logo concepts. In previous meetings we were told we should move away from the dragon as our symbol. WHAAAAAT!? No. Never. That is one thing I will not, and will never budge on. *In the voice of the Doctor*, "Dragons are cool." There was design that just struck me as.... OMG COOOOOOOOOL! (Many of my friends on Twitter and the 7-year old agreed.)
Designing a symetrical dragon logo is pretty tricky for one reason only. Dragon wings are A LOT like bat wings. So, um, I invite you to sing along with me... "Daaaa na na naaa na na naaaaa na... na... AE!"
A few people recommended putting the logo in our red/orange and gold colors. I agree. That is a terrific idea. We were building it in black and white so we could create a "shape." If you have an artist's eye, you can imagine how cool this will be when it is textured and shaded like the 2008 logo. Of couse, this logo is not final yet... I am looking forward to hearing if you like it. So comment and talk to me. Is this a symbol we will be proud to wear on our shirts and armor as we go out to create video games and save the world?
Summer rules! And so does the all-new game releases for your favorite Artix Entertainment games. Descend into Dage’s Underworld in AQWorlds, get your feet wet with OverSoul’s new Water Card Series, join your Dread War recruits in EpicDuel, and continue your fantasy adventures in DragonFable, MechQuest, HeroSmash, and AdventureQuest!
AdventureQuest Worlds Become a Legion Champion and descend into Dage’s Underworld! The entrance to the Underworld harbors monstrous personifications of Guilty Joys: Anxiety, Old Age, Fear, Hunger, Death, Disease, Sleep, Agony, and Grief. With the guidance of Aeneas the Warrior and Sibyl the Prophetess, find the Golden Bough, defeat each Guilty Joy, and make your way past the Elm of False Hopes to reach the river Acheron where Charon the Ferryman awaits! Dark and deadly not your thing? Add some pink, love, and DERP to your arsenal with Beleen’s Featured Artist shop!
DragonFable There will be several new war mini-games/quests. The final DF Birthday presents will be given out as well, so new Dragon Rider, access to older versions of DragonLord, etc. Don’t forget that this is the LAST weekend for the Ultimate Dragon Scythe too!
OverSoul Get your feet wet with the Card Custom Water Series Deck! Water Crash delivers 500 Piercing Damage, and Water Spring recovers 500 Hitpoints over 2 Turns. Can you also find the hidden grotto and unleash the power of the Quaztk Lord and Water Wing? Both new character ranks ups hold the new water cards!
EpicDuel The Dread War is poised to explode as we introduce 6 new War Objectives and evolving regional achievements! Ever wanted to capture the Minetower or own the Legion Arena? Now you can! We are also implementing a number of clarifying and balancing elements to increase the overall fun factor of the War! Also, since Summer is well underway, we're Spring cleaning by removing many of the seasonal-rare Botanical and Bunny items.
HeroSmash A bitter cold debate: Frostbite vs FrostBite! This week we had to deal with a mystery with one of the in game armors: Frostbite. The original found in Titans Threads was not working due to an overlap in file naming. We were able to bring back the armor but also correct the belt layer issue. Wonderp Bread has been working hard on monsters for Market Street which will drop Popcorn Tokens to be used to buy Movie Plex rares. Soon as testing is done we shall roll it out so all can enjoy.
AdventureQuest Classic It is pandemonium in Paxia as Xov and her drab forces move upon the clan's island! Check out the excellent new Moonray and Sunray mobs running around Lore, and we’ve also boosted base player HP! The END stat is still a multiplier to this base, so you're getting even more out of spending points in your END stat. Now you can go on the all-new Rare Item hunt without getting fatigued (hidden somewhere in one of the backgrounds in AQ). Coming soon: the Horn of Tera Suul in July’s Z-Token Package and the Golden Giftboxes!
MechQuest The Countdown Clock ticks down to 00:00:00! Are you ready for The March of the Shadowscythe? Pick up the newest Valoth's Epic series head and shoulder weapons: the Destruction models work together for combo specials against the Shadowscythe - this version available for a limited time ONLY. Then see Queenadent Odessa at the War Camp for NEW missions! You never know who you'll bump into out there...
See how much easier the black one is to make out?
