 What's up everybody, I'm TheBangooz, you are awesome and it's time to take a look at everything that happened in our little 3rd person mobile world in 2019. I'm going to keep this short and sweet because these videos are all kinds of repetitive. It's still a good way to find out what happened to these guys or even find out about some new stuff. I'll answer 4 questions about each game. 1. Does the game use Paragon Assets? 2. Have I played it? 3. When is the alpha? And 4. What are the plans for console? I'll also quickly summarize the games and go over significant things that happened this year and voice my concerns for each project. I'll be going in order of when I found out about each and that order will be Visionary and Phoenix Rising, Beta Buff and Core, Beta Studios and Predecessor, Undying Games and Ethereal, Project Stamina with their as-yet unnamed game, Strange Matter and Fault, and finally Solive with Project Prime X and Over Prime. Visionary games were the first company to attempt a Paragon-inspired game. They will not be using the Paragon Assets and have instead opted for creating their own IP. I have not played this one however we did see some gameplay all the way back in 2018. I have zero idea when the alpha will be. They have always planned for PC release followed by an attempt to bring the game to the PlayStation Network. There was no news for this project in 2019. I talk to their representative every week and their project is still going however they prefer to keep things under wraps until they have something significant to show to the community. I'm still very optimistic about Project Phoenix Rising however the lack of any kind of updates from them has me a bit nervous. Let's hope we get something tangible from them this year. Beta Buff was by far the biggest player in the field at the beginning of the year creating a game that is directly inspired by Paragon called Core. They will be using the Paragon Assets and plan to bring back all of your favorite heroes. I have not played the game itself however I was allowed along with many other members of the community to run around on a test version of their map. The alpha was scheduled for April 27th of 2019 however the game wasn't near ready at that time. Beta Buff has made clear their intentions of eventually bringing the game to PlayStation after it's tested on PC. 2019 ended up being a rough one for Beta Buff. After missing the alpha date they went very silent and opted to do like visionary and focus more on game development than marketing. This was followed by a bit of controversy over various members leaving the team. I'm a little concerned that they won't be able to recover from the rocky year they had. I did reach out to them before making this video and they assured me that the dev team is still strong and they are certain that when they do drop an announcement it's going to be a big deal. Omega Studios is another company that began working on a game that is directly inspired by Paragon with more focus on legacy style maps and gameplay called Predecessor. They too will use the Paragon Assets released by Epic to bring back the full roster. I have played this one both during their initial alpha and later as a play tester for more advanced versions of the game. They announced an alpha test in March of 2019 and met that goal. However, there were various problems with the game and it needed a complete overhaul. Not dogging them on this one that's the purpose of an alpha. We currently don't know when the next alpha release will be. Their plans for console are much like many of the other Paragon inspired games, refined the game on PC prior to looking into bringing it to PlayStation. 2019 was pretty good for Predecessor. While the alpha wasn't a massive success from the community's point of view it did provide them with valuable input to help them improve the game. They added several new members to the team and displayed the capability to create their own skins. The last time I played the game they had resolved many of the issues discovered during the alpha however there were of course still some bugs. My main concern with Predecessor is the lack of variety with their lineup. They opted to perfect 5 heroes and you could tell that there was a lot of work put into those 5 however it's going to get pretty boring pretty quick playing the same heroes over and over. Ameida continues to show promise and I suspect 2020 will be a big year for them. Undying Studios escaped my attention for quite some time with their game Aetherial Clash of Souls. Aetherial is a very ambitious third person mobile that plans to introduce several new concepts to the genre. They will not be using Paragon assets, Aetherial is its own IP and is not inspired by Paragon. I have not played Aetherial yet, hopefully that will change soon. No firm word of when the alpha will be, they've released some ballpark dates before and have overhauled the game instead. They also missed their projected estimate for the last quarter of 2019 due to civil unrest in Colombia affecting many members of their team. I believe we can expect something the first quarter of 2020 however this isn't official, just my educated prediction. Undying does plan to eventually bring the game to console after PC release but they will port it to whatever console has the biggest demand for the game. Since they've caught the attention of the old Paragon crowd and most Paragoners were PlayStation players, I imagine PlayStation will have the highest demand. Undying released quite a bit of information about Aetherial in 2019, voice lines, skins, concepts, and a new website detailing various mechanics. The one thing we haven't seen over is gameplay. While I'm not personally too concerned about that, many members of the community are, and rightfully so. It's hard to put your faith in a project if you haven't seen the game in action. With that being said, Aetherial remains my personal favorite out of all of these games on track. They've taken a very different path with their own electoral property and that has attracted the attention of people outside the Paragon community. With so many other companies competing for the Paragon fanbase, Aetherial is moving forward with its own supporters. Project Stamina, who currently have not released the name of their game, are attempting to create a spiritual successor to Gigantic using their own IP. They, of course, are not going to use the Paragon assets. They did use the minions as placeholders at one point, however, those have been purged from the system. I have played this one. I was invited to playtest a very early pre-Alpha build and it was incredibly fun. They haven't released any official dates for their alpha, however, I did talk in the most recent Patreon podcast about it being very possible that it will be in the first quarter of this year as long as people don't mind some placeholders. They do have their site set on console, however, they're open to developing for whatever system has the most demand for their game. Gigantic was a PC Xbox exclusive, so I imagine that they will probably lean more towards Xbox than PlayStation. I learned about Project Stamina fairly late in the year, but they still had several significant updates. They've done a few community update streams and have shown significant progress with the game culminating in the pre-Alpha playtest that I participated in. My main concern for this one is that it's pretty far from a traditional MOBA and that may turn many people off. I don't mind it at all, but I can understand why people will be freaked out about no lanes or item shops. I truly hope that this project gains more attention. My brief taste of it has left me wanting more. Strange Matter came out of nowhere with a hard right hook that shook the entire community in 2019 with Fault, a game directly inspired by Paragon that combines the feel of legacy with elements of monolith and employs its own unique item system. They are indeed using the assets released by Paragon. I have played this one along with many members of the community. They are currently in Alpha Stage with many testers being able to play and even having a weekend where they invited 10k people to test Fault. You can currently buy early access keys for the game and sign up for the Alpha on their website. Strange Matter has pretty much the same plan as everyone else when it comes to console, tested out and perfected on PC before moving it onto probably PlayStation. 2019 was the year of Fault. They did zero marketing for the game prior to announcing it in a playable form. Since then they've allowed many people to experience it and have used the data from the play testing and Alpha weekend to fix bugs and address balance. If I have any concerns about this one, it's the lack of polish. They opted to go for a functional game first instead of fine tuning UI elements and that may throw some people off. Fault has become the frontrunner for the Paragon successors and for good reason. It's fun as hell. 2019 was huge for them and 2020 will see them rise even higher. Finally we have Soul Leave with two games, Prime X and Over Prime. Prime X is a new concept with mobile-like elements that I don't quite yet understand. While Over Prime will use the Paragon assets to create a game directly inspired by Paragon with the help of Rocket Mania who created Over Throw Paragon back in 2018. I have not played this one yet but I have played Over Throw and it was pretty fun. I don't know when the Alpha for Prime X or Over Prime will be however you can play Over Throw right now if you want to. There are instructions in their Discord. I haven't heard anything about console plans but I imagine it's the same plan as everyone else. I don't know much about Over Prime just yet and what I do know about Prime X was a bit confusing. I have faith in this team though. Rocket Mania created a successor by himself with Over Throw even if it was never intended to be a sustainable game. My concern here is just that though. He was able to do some copyright related things with Over Throw that are going to be off limits when creating Over Prime. I'm also just concerned that it's just going to once again divide the community. They seem to be doing a great job so far though and I'll be happy to follow them if they produce results that can compete with the other companies. Well that's it folks. Hopefully that catches some people up on what's been going on with some of these projects. 2020 is going to be huge for all of these games so keep your ear to the ground and look out for big things coming our way. This is the Mangoo signing off. You guys have a good one. Mangoo!