The Energon Pub

News Credits: 462 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 2:41 pm

Bumblebee's body design is the same one that was seen on the poster that first showed us CW Optimus Maximus way back when.

Also, stop with the darn '86 movie quotes! After 30 years it's not cool anymore, it's overdone.

News Credits: 6188 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:11 pm

Sabrblade wrote:Bumblebee's body design is the same one that was seen on the poster that first showed us CW Optimus Maximus way back when.

Also, stop with the darn '86 movie quotes! After 30 years it's not cool anymore, it's overdone.

Shush you.

News Credits: 6188 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:20 pm

Even more coverage is rolling in about the newly and fully announced Transformers: Earth Wars mobile game from Hasbro, Space Ape and Backflip - with new reveals too in the form of Windblade and Slipstream as playable characters! The interview with Space Ape founders John Earner and Simon Hadesnippeted below from Gamesindustry.biz also offers insights into the game type, the build the companies have been using, and the companies' commitment to the project and aesthetic choices. Check it out, and head here for the full thing!

The studio [Space Ape Games] has, so far, made its name as something of a specialist in what its founders call 'build and battlers', the mid-core asynchronous multiplayer genre established to such great success by Supercell and Clash of Clans. It's already had two successes in the genre: Samurai Siege and Rival Kingdoms, but now Earner and Hade are looking to take the next step with the attachment of a globally recognised IP in the shifting shape of Hasbro's Transformers for its new game Earth Wars.

"I guess you could say it's the modern take on classic Transformers, where the characters are bigger, chunkier and more colourful, rather than the [Michael] Bay-style, which uses more organic characters," says product owner Chris White when I ask if they're tying Earth Wars to the Bay-directed films. "It works very well for us because they're very readable when they're small."

[...]

"Talking to a lot of the Transformer fans we have over the course of development, it's amazing how many of them haven't played any games in this genre before," says White. "Whereas you'd expect everyone to have played Clash of Clans, they actually haven't, so we're introducing them to the genre for the first time. One really interesting thing we saw during development, when we were getting Transformers fans in, is that, as a developer you've obviously seen a lot of games, a lot of tutorials. You start to think that everyone must know how this works, that you need to teach the player something different. Actually, there's tons of Transformers fans out there that don't know the mechanics of the genre, or indeed any game.

"It's easy to be cynical, having played tons of games in the genre and developed a few of them, but then you realise that maybe in some areas you've actually gone a little too far with the innovation and you need to dial it back a bit and give people something they're more familiar with."

[...]

"Transformers is huge in Asia," Earner corrects me. "We have the rights to launch the game globally, we secured the rights via Takara to introduce the game to Japan, which is the only territory where Hasbro doesn't have the rights, but there's a long and productive relationship between the two. So it's not so much that we don't have plans for Asia, it's that Asia requires an extra amount of detail. We won't go live in those countries on day one because we want to put real time into it.

"A pleasant surprise for me, having spent a week in China last year: we always knew that China had become excited about what we call 'Bay-led' Transformers. Bay-led is a country or person whose introduction to the brand comes from the recent films. France is Bay-led, believe it or not, as is China. We suspected that, as a result they might not recognise some of the characters, such as Grimlock. But the mid-core player on the coast of China is also male, 28-45. They know this stuff and they love it, so we're extremely optimistic about it, but like you say, they're a different market, you can't just come at it straight."

News Credits: 462 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 7:26 pm

Whoa. Takara design in a Hasbro game. Neat.

News Credits: 11 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 9:00 pm

1/ Trailer looks like cr@p.
2/ App is not available. Only the BETA is available.
3/ Beta and final product will be geo-blocked and unavailable in Japan and China (and probably never released in those territories).
4/ Game is merely a pay-to-win, freemiun clone of Clash of Clans, complete with generic buildings and level design.
5/ The "artwork" "shared" by the company at this site, in this post is just some generic backgrounds. No characterart, or anything event remotely "Transfomers" about it.
6/ I give this 3 months before it tanks.

Wed Feb 10, 2016 9:38 pm

Well...the character models look nice....

News Credits: 54 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:14 pm

Ravage XK wrote:Doesn't look that interesting, the sort of game we have seen 100s of times before.

Will wait and see though.

Like every other game these days.

Originality is pretty much dead you can make a new game engine or think of one unique revolutionary gameplay effect but overall we are going to see repetitiveness in a lot of Transformers media.

News Credits: 54 · Wed Feb 10, 2016 11:16 pm

Sabrblade wrote:
Also, stop with the darn '86 movie quotes! After 30 years it's not cool anymore, it's overdone.

THIS

I honestly mean it I cringe when I hear You got the touch these days (The line not the song it's still fine)

I was the movie wasn't considered the staple role model on which everything Transformers should be based on.

News Credits: 6188 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 2:44 am

primalxconvoy wrote:1/ Trailer looks like cr@p.
2/ App is not available. Only the BETA is available.
3/ Beta and final product will be geo-blocked and unavailable in Japan and China (and probably never released in those territories).
4/ Game is merely a pay-to-win, freemiun clone of Clash of Clans, complete with generic buildings and level design.
5/ The "artwork" "shared" by the company at this site, in this post is just some generic backgrounds. No characterart, or anything event remotely "Transfomers" about it.
6/ I give this 3 months before it tanks.

I see your positivity, and assure you there is more art - we're just waiting to post it.

The app is available, but we're discussing semantics at this stage, really.

Let me counterbalance with:

http://www.seibertron.com/games/gallery.php?id=167

Deadput wrote:
Sabrblade wrote:
Also, stop with the darn '86 movie quotes! After 30 years it's not cool anymore, it's overdone.

THIS

I honestly mean it I cringe when I hear You got the touch these days (The line not the song it's still fine)

I was the movie wasn't considered the staple role model on which everything Transformers should be based on.

And that's why the designs are based on both G1 (where Devastation made its cash) and the recent Generations lines! I think it's a nice touch (heh) really, and the game looks very pretty from where I'm standing.

Also, the music they're using is from the Roll Out album that will be released in April, rather than G1-esque stuff.

News Credits: 11 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 4:05 am

Thanks for the extra pics. They are not bad, but the game itself is still donned to failure. Why play this when clash of clans is so huge? And the audacity of the devs to basically say "we've dumbed down clash of clans for transformers fans because they don't understand how to play (such) mobile games" is also gob-smackingly naive.

News Credits: 15 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 4:35 am

"Transformers is huge in Asia," Earner corrects me. "We have the rights to launch the game globally, we secured the rights via Takara to introduce the game to Japan, which is the only territory where Hasbro doesn't have the rights, but there's a long and productive relationship between the two. So it's not so much that we don't have plans for Asia, it's that Asia requires an extra amount of detail. We won't go live in those countries on day one because we want to put real time into it.

Why can't the rest of us have the extra amount of detail? :-(

News Credits: 11 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 4:38 am

The "extra amount of detail" is nothing. He's using corporate-speak to say "we've got to wait to bring out a Japanese and Chinese version, which won't rely have any thing extra, except more money to all of the middle men companies that have to be dealt with."

News Credits: 19 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 5:10 am

Those Bludgeon pics are nice but a bit oversimplified and blocky.

The Windblade and Slipstream pics just remind me that I hate jet Transformers whose wings don't even try to compact in robot mode...

As for the game, I have tried to get into mobile games (and am developing a simple fun lil one myself) but for the most part they're just not for me. I'd quite happily buy another Devastation for my PS4 though but it looks like the follow up to that game has switched franchises to the Ninja Turtles but happily has the multiplayer co op I would have liked in a Devastation sequel at least.

News Credits: 3 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 8:56 am

primalxconvoy wrote:1/ Trailer looks like cr@p.
2/ App is not available. Only the BETA is available.
3/ Beta and final product will be geo-blocked and unavailable in Japan and China (and probably never released in those territories).
4/ Game is merely a pay-to-win, freemiun clone of Clash of Clans, complete with generic buildings and level design.
5/ The "artwork" "shared" by the company at this site, in this post is just some generic backgrounds. No characterart, or anything event remotely "Transfomers" about it.
6/ I give this 3 months before it tanks.

Download the APK for the Beta and play it before you whine any more. The *actual* Beta of game looks awesome and plays well so far.

News Credits: 11 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 9:04 am

Kyleor wrote:
primalxconvoy wrote:1/ Trailer looks like cr@p.
2/ App is not available. Only the BETA is available.
3/ Beta and final product will be geo-blocked and unavailable in Japan and China (and probably never released in those territories).
4/ Game is merely a pay to win, freemiun clone of Clash of Clans, complete with generic buildings and level design.
5/ The "artwork" "shared" by the company at this site, in this post is just some generic backgrounds. No characterart, or anything event remotely "Transfomers" about it.
6/ I give this 3 months before it tanks.

Download the APK for the Beta and play it before you whine any more. The *actual* Beta of game looks awesome and plays well so far.

1/The beta is geo-locked and not available in Japa, where I live, which is one of the points I originally made.
2/ No need to test a copy of an existing freemium game to know that it's pay to win, in the same way that I don't need to eat excrement to know that it tastes like sh!%.
3/ No, it does NOT "look awesome". Games like "Anomaly 2" ( https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o8kjXzvlFd4 ) "look awesome". Even the trailer for this game looks awful.

Still, nice effort! I especially liked you personal attack with the use of "whine". Keep trying! You'll get there!

News Credits: 1646 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 9:17 pm

To go along with all the Earth Wars mobile game updates, we now have tons of new images of the characters this game will include. The whole collection can be found Here in our Seibertron.com gallery. The characters included in this gallery are: Bludgeon, Bumblebee, Skydive, Grimlock, Ironhide, Jetfire, Kickback, Megatron, Mirage, Optimus, Prowl, Ratchet, Razorclaw, Shockwave, Shrapnel, Skywarp, Soundwave, Starscream, Swindle, and Thundercracker. Some of the images have been mirrored below for your enjoyment:

There is also a video gallery uploaded as well:

And finally, here is the pre-registration link for the game:

http://www.seibertron.com/games/transfo ... /download/

So do these guys look cool? Excited for further developments in the game? Let us know what your opinion is in the comments section and stay tuned for all the latest news and galleries.

News Credits: 7 · Thu Feb 11, 2016 11:14 pm

YALP

Everything's looking really square. It's weird seeing Bludgeon's treads and Razorclaw's mane unnaturally flat and boxy.

Fri Feb 12, 2016 1:07 am

great designs 1 must say

News Credits: 226 · Fri Feb 12, 2016 1:40 am

steve2275 wrote:great designs 1 must say

Join the 'Cons, ally yourself with me and I will you spare you even more years of embarrassing defeats at my hands Steven.

News Credits: 54 · Fri Feb 12, 2016 3:16 am

I wouldn't mind a show that used models or designs like these with a little clean up.

Sat Feb 13, 2016 2:12 pm

some of these designs aren't bad at all. Curious to play the game though I still pine after a proper c&c style game where you have to use the bot's functions to build your base expand etc.

I've finished devastation and must admit i found it much more fun than I thought It'd be. And if I had to pick a game to create a G1 series it'd be devastation.

News Credits: 1 · Sat Feb 13, 2016 2:43 pm

I like what they've done with Kickback's legs.

News Credits: 4 · Wed Feb 24, 2016 11:40 pm

Is it just me or does Razorclaw's model look a LOT like MMC's Leo Dux rendition of the character in particular?

News Credits: 131 · Fri Mar 04, 2016 6:00 pm

Howdy fellow Seibertronians, we have a highlight video of the upcoming Transformers: Earth Wars Mobile game, which will be available on iOS and Android. You can pre-register for the game here. This video is brought to you by YouTuber TheGameHuntah and highlights several of the Decepticon classes available in the game. The video continues on to show the squad selection screen and highlights the importance of balancing classes before going into battle. TheGameHuntah wraps up the video with a demonstration of a battle and various tactics that can be employed.

Leader class Megatron has the ability to crash through walls.

Warrior class Blugdeon has high defense and can also crash through defenses.

Air class Starscream has medium range airstrikes.

Deployer class Soundwave can send his cassettebots to specific targets.

Gunner class Breakdown has long range attacks that can shoot over walls.

Scout class Kickback Glass Gas Mine ability causes targets to take more damage and grants extra ability points for buildings destroyed.

You can get a closer look at the in-game character models here. You may notice that some models are loosely based on previously released figures.

Have you pre-registered for the game yet? What do you think of the game so far? Hit the jump and sound off in the discussion below.

Remember to keep your browsers pointed to Seibertron.com for the latest in Transformer news, the largest Transformers galleries found on the web and the liveliest Transformers discussion this side of a space bridge.

News Credits: 3 · Mon Mar 07, 2016 9:17 am

If you have an Android device and you're geo-blocked from getting the Beta through the Google Play store, you can still get the APK for the game outside of the Google Play Store, and try out the Beta to see the cool designs in-game. They look pretty good on an actual device. Also if you're playing Decepticon sometimes when you win a battle Megatron gives a nice long evil cackle that's just awesome to hear.

Join the Decepticons and the Seibertron in-game Alliance.