 What's up everybody I'm the Mangus, you're awesome and yes it's been a while. I've been out of the loop for about a month so I'm going to try and catch you guys up on what's been going on as I myself try to get caught up. Today I'm going to briefly cover the predecessor stress test, what's been going on with Fault, Overprime's new gameplay videos, the various updates for Ethereal, and finally a bit about what happened to Project Stamina and how that has affected Revenblade. I'll be working on more in-depth explanations with individual videos on these topics Let's start with the predecessor stress test. Long story short, they got an F on that test. If the stress test were the SATs they'd be turned down by an online community college. Something went wrong with their back end support and most people weren't able to play the game at all. There are two schools of thought about this debacle. Some say that these things are to be expected from a game in alpha state development while others are both pissed and disappointed that they didn't get to play. I fall somewhere in the middle. I think people need to understand that if they agree to play an alpha state game then they need to realize that they are volunteering to provide assistance to the developer. Too many people seem to think that the alpha tests are conducted so that they can just have fun early access to the game and that simply isn't true. You're there to work for the devs. On the other hand, the fact that the ass blew out of predecessor and they couldn't get it back up and going is indicative of major back end problems and probably means that Omata Studios is further behind in development than I originally suspected. Lest we remember though that the very first predecessor alpha failed pretty hardcore and they were able to recover from that so hopefully we can look forward to something from them soon. Moving on to Fault from Strange Matter Studios. Nothing really big going on here. It's still a stable playable Paragon successor. They've added some items and made some gameplay updates. Nothing exciting like roster additions. Just slow, steady improvement. No news is good news in this instance. From what I hear the toxicity of the players has been holding strong which sucks like 30 goddamn dicks but I'm not sure what the developer can really do about that. Fault remains the most stable and accessible Paragon successor if you're willing to pony up the 20 bucks. Haven't heard much from Overprime of late but they did release a couple of gameplay highlights. One featuring Murdock going on an absolute rampage and another with their version of Kalari. It looks like they've been hard at work improving the map's aesthetics but for real Overprime always had a pretty good looking world to play in. It's just even better now. You can see bushes on the map that function like Shadow Wells however the Shadow Wells are still there. It also seems that Kalari has received some new and altered abilities. I'm hoping that this activity is indicative of a Steam release coming sooner rather than later because most people's opinion about Overprime is that they really don't give a shit what goes on with it until it hits Steam or console. Ethereum had quite a few updates while I was gone. I unfortunately picked the wrong time to have a massive real life crisis because in my absence they released the combo cinematic and gameplay trailer began their Kickstarter and released videos showcasing full gameplay from testing sessions. The cinematic was edited and voiced really well but I feel they leaned a little too hard into the lore at the very beginning. You gotta hook people in with some action first and get them hungry for more. The Kickstarter fell well short of the $75,000 goal that they set meaning that Undyne gets nothing from it and anyone who bought into the Kickstarter just will not be charged nobody lost any money there. They still have the NFT route for funding the game and there's nothing preventing them from using alternate means of crowdfunding in the future like Indiegogo or maybe even what's called Patreon. Speaking of the NFT funding, they used the money that they got from that to purchase a mocap suit to help smooth out their animations. Unfortunately, the company they ordered from hasn't been able to deliver the suit. Fortunately, as a way of apology, the manufacturer hired the mocap actor for God of War's Kratos to perform some actions for them. Seems like they made out for the better in that deal. Undyne has also been releasing full gameplay and highlight videos of playtesting with an emphasis on showing improvement as they go along. Now, Project Stamina. The company that I believe was by far the most stable and well organized basically imploded about a month and a half ago. This took me by complete surprise. Several members of the team left the project. Most of them were department heads and there were some private conversations posted to the Discord that were not flattering to the game's producer. The Discord was taken completely offline for a while and the future of the project was brought into serious question. I'm still trying to get to the bottom of all of this, but it's been a little difficult. I have spoken with the Discord mods, but they don't have a huge amount of info. I reached out to some of the team members that left, but they're all under NDA and can't tell me much. Kaidmon, the producer, reached out to me and offered to conduct an interview, which I will gladly take advantage of, and will hopefully clear some things up about what happened and give us some indication of what the future of the project looks like. My main concern is that I'll only be getting one side of the story, but I guess that's better than nothing. Long story short, Project Stamina is still a go, but I don't know how far they've been set back. One silver lining to be found in all of this is that many of the gigantic fans discovered Revanblade, a third person arena brawler that I've covered on the channel quite a bit. It seems like a good fit for gamers that enjoy a fast paced Stamina based game. That's all for now, folks. I'll try to dig a little deeper into each one of these updates. However, I'm currently trying to get my daughter's college tuition paid for, and that of course takes top priority in my world. I do apologize for the extended absence, and hopefully I can make up for that in the months to come. I hope you enjoyed the video, but for now, this is the man who's signing off. You guys have a good one. Man go.