Month: December 2019

Star Citizen, the ambitious PC space sim from Wing Commander creator Chris Roberts, has reached yet another significant funding milestone. The game’s public funding page shows that Star Citizen has eclipsed $250 million in funding since the campaign began all the way back in 2012.

$9 million alone came in during November, which makes it the biggest month ever for funding in Star Citizen’s history, according to PC Gamer. The uptick in support for Star Citizen no doubt surged due to the hype leading up to the game’s fan event, CitizenCon, which took place at the end of the month.

CitizenCon brought a lot of big news about Star Citizen, including the announcement of the newest planet, microTech, and a new 20v20 multiplayer mode for Star Citizen’s FPS game, Star Marine.

In other news, Star Citizen is free for everyone to play through December 5 as part of the game’s latest “Free Fly” event. This event allows players to fly every ship in the game (of which there are more than 100) instead of only a limited selection like in previous Free Fly campaigns.

Star Citizen supporters can spend money on things like ships and ship upgrades, as well as various subscription packages and extras like ship and weapon skins, among other things. The game, which spans a single-player campaign, a persistent, shared multiplayer universe, and a head-to-head PvP game, is playable in various stages of development for backers.

Star Citizen is the most successful crowdfunded project of any kind in the history of crowdfunding. The game started its life on Kickstarter back in 2012–where it was enormously successful–before launching its own website to continue accepting funds from fans. The game originally had a $500,000 funding target, so the $250 million it’s made now is 500X what it originally asked for.

Yet another popular video game is having its music transformed into soothing tunes to help you sleep, study, or just relax. The “Prescription for Sleep” lullaby series expands with a new album themed around Yacht Club Games’ side-scrolling platformer Shovel Knight due out on December 6.

The album, Prescription for Sleep: Shovel Knight, features calming, light, jazzy music performed by Metal Gear Solid and Bayonetta composer Norihiko Hibino (saxophone) and PersonaQ’s Ayaki on piano. They form the group Gentle Love, which also contributed to the previous Prescription for Sleep albums.

This album is notable for being the first time that Yacht Club has collaborated with an outside company for a licensed arranged album. The album also includes music for the new expansion, King of Cards, which launches on December 10. If you want to hear music from the new expansion, the new Prescription for Sleep album is the only way to do so right now.

You can buy the Shovel Knight album through Bandcamp and other digital stores like Spotify, Tidal, and Apple Music. The producers at Scarlet Moon Records are also creating 1,000 physical CDs featuring a number of extras including liner notes, interviews, and comics. Go to the Bandcamp page to learn more.

There are 20 tracks in all on Shovel Knight: Prescription for Sleep. You can listen to a teaser for track six, “Of Devious Machinations,” in the embed above.

Other video games to have Prescription for Sleep albums have included Celeste and Undertale. Scarlet Moon also released an album titled “Prescription for Peace,” which is an tribute to the late Nintendo president Satoru Iwata and renowned Japanese musician Eiki Oshimi.

The Shovel Knight, Celeste, and Undertale Prescription for Sleep albums are marked down 20 percent on Cyber Monday.

Prescription for Sleep: Shovel Knight

1. Steel Thy Shovel
2. Strike the Earth!
3. High Above the Land
4. An Underlying Problem
5. No Weapons Here
6. Of Devious Machinations
7. The Donor’s Despair
8. The Requiem for Shield Knight
9. A Cool Reception
10. End of Days
11. The Fateful Return
12. The Alchemist’s Haven
13. Waltz for One
14. Alchemy
15. Magic Mirror
16. La Danse Macabre
17. Cruise Control
18. Troops, Form Up!
19. Some Blasted Hill
20. A New Dawn

Kingdom Hearts III is due to receive a major piece of free DLC, called Re:Mind, before the end of February 2020. The new downloadable content will come with new playable characters, including Aqua, Roxas, and Riku, as well as new Keyblade transformations and fights. Now, thanks to one fan who attended the Kingdom Hearts Orchestra performance in Osaka, we have some more details about what the DLC will add.

These details, which were tweeted by a Twitter user called Melanie and then compiled by Eurogamer, are focused on some of the ephemera around the new playable content, including new difficulty options and photo modes. While the tweet below mentions a release new month, Melanie clarifies later in the thread that it might actually just be a trailer that’s being released in December, as a final release date cannot be nailed down just yet.

Photo mode lets you pose the characters from the game in any setting you want, adding props and changing backgrounds, which sounds like a lot of fun. Slideshow mode, apparently, will let you link photos together, complete with transitions and background music–what you’d expect from the name, basically.

Fast Pass Mode and “Black Code” both concern the game’s difficulty, with Fast Pass being designed to let you rip through the game as fast as possible. It lets you one-shot kill enemies and stack more attractions, so that battles end faster and you can play through the story quickly. Black Code gives you granular control over your difficulty, changing how much health you have and potentially making the game harder in numerous ways. Melanie does not have further details, as they apparently went by very fast.

Re:Mind will likely contain new boss encounters when it finally launches, and sounds substantial considering the fact that it’s free.

Get the best Pokemon in Sword and Shield by EV training.

The Vatican may be getting its own Minecraft server thanks to a Jesuit priest who plans to launch a potentially friendlier place for people to play.

PC Gamer reports Fr. Robert Ballecer was a student of technology in Silicon valley before he was ordained. Since then he’s used his knowledge to help connect more people and help out other leaders of the church who may not be so familiar with IT and tech trends.

Minecraft has been the focus of his efforts since Ballecer hosted a poll on Twitter a few months back. He asked followers what server they’d prefer out of Rust, Ark, Team Fortress 2, or Minecraft and Mojang’s crafting game came out well ahead with 64% of the total voting tally.

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Black Friday sales (and deals) are slowing down, but Cyber Monday savings are beginning to stack up, especially for HDTVs. It is an excellent time to shop for a new Samsung TV, and since Samsung is one of the premier TV manufacturers, we have gathered the best Cyber Monday Samsung TV deals for you. Read on to find whichever one is right for you.

Cyber Monday Deal: Samsung 55-inch QLED 4K HDR Smart TV for $698

• Get it at Walmart for $698

This excellent Samsung 55″ is normally $998, but right now you can save $300 and score it for just $698 at Walmart. Sporting a QLED 4K screen with HDR, Smart TV functionality, and four HDMI connections, you’ll get everything you need to watch and play in ultra high definition.

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After one whole month since launch, Disney has revealed the Disney Plus December 2019 lineup, with tons of new movies, shows, and Originals set to release in the final month of 2019.

In the list below, you’ll find everything that is coming to Disney Plus in December 2019.

December 1:

• Glory Road
• Marvel Rising: Chasing Ghosts
• Garfield: The Movie
• Marvel Rising: Heart of Iron

December 3:

• One Day at Disney

December 5:

• Thor: Ragnarok

December 6:

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