Hey all!
Over the past few months if you've been paying attention we've rolled out fresh seasonal events here on Out of Games. It kicked off with August's Reelfest where we got to go fishing for the first time on the site and then we just finished up Breaking Ground which got us a settlement started and paved the way for more skills on the website: Foraging, Mining, and Woodcutting.
It has been a long time coming. Over 6 years ago we had plans to introduce a game onto Out of Games to become the core of our old events system and the time and tech at the time just wasn't something we had ready to go. But, through a lot of time we're finally there and are delivering a fun experience for the community here to take part in, and the best part? It's totally free! All you need to do is login to your account to take part.
Oozefest is the first major event in our seasonal content and it introduces one of the things I have always wanted to do on the site: Boss Fights.
Oozefest Returns
Oozefest was the very first event we did on Out of Cards, yes, Cards not Games, back in 2020. We introduced trick or treating to the site and yes, there were indeed some tricks you could experience. The candy system gave us a way to let people purchase new cosmetic details on the shop and everyone had a great time.
Today's Oozefest looks a bit like the one we had 6 years ago, but there's so many new things so if you haven't had a chance to look at it all yet, let's see what's new in not only Oozefest but also Sidequest:
Boss Fights: The community takes on a new weekly challenger. What happens if we win? What if we lose?
Your Character: Everyone has their own character that is a part of Sidequest. Customize your person and equip gear to become more powerful.
Craft Gear: We have several artisans which operate different workshops and if you spare them some gold, they'd love to teach you new recipes as you level your craft. They love to give out gifts too!
Gathering: At the bottom of every screen you can Gather materials on a cooldown. You can also randomly encounter materials on your site travels - and even random chances of finding gear.
Ectoplasm: Our new Halloween-specific currency, replacing Candy. Candy is now a consumable item you can earn which gives you buffs during boss encounters.
Throwing Ooze: If you remember snowballs, now there are Oozeballs! Buy some in the Shop and throw them at other site members by visiting their profiles or finding their comments.
Trick-or-treating: knock on member profiles, realms, and articles published during the event for treats, tricks, pranks, and Sugar Rush. There are a ton of ways for you to trick-or-treat every single day.
We have an entire thread dedicated to talking about the new Sidequest updates for October so you should check it and our site update notes out for more details.
Boss Fights
The big addition this month is boss fights. I mean, gear is a pretty big one too, but boss fights is a big focus because we get to learn a lot about balancing them!
Each week, we'll have a new encounter appear that we can fight. We either win or we lose, there are both positives and negatives to this so its important that everyone bands together and gets their attacks in every day at the strongest they can be. Use your personal store pages to trade between each other to help bolster our attacks as a settlement and ultimately, we'll have to see what happens!
Boss fights are going to get more intense over time and will require us to think about approaching them in different ways. Right now our first boss, Gourdon the Rotten, is tank and spank so it's okay to just run up to him and give him the ol' smack in the face. That won't always be the best strategy.
You can earn additional attacks against the bosses each day. You can get one by completing all your daily challenges found on the Oozefest page and if you gather the correct materials, you can hit up the Kitchen to craft a Battle Stew which can be used once per day to gain an extra attack. I'm always missing Candy Corn Cod!
Do note that Battle Stew will have different materials to make it over time as they are always going to be related to the season. Once the season is over, you'll retain old Battle Stews sitting in your inventory but to craft new ones you will need new materials.
The Future of Events / Seasons
We are only just getting started. Every month is going to see the addition of new kinds of content into Out of Games Sidequest and really, the sky is the limit. We are turning the site into a game to play and we have so many great ideas to execute on - it's just going to take some time.
Personally, I cannot wait for the Winter event this year because what is planned is something that we as a team had planned out many years ago and it's finally time to bring that fight to everyone.
Also I wanted to talk about the interface. Right now, we've tried to keep everything consolidated into one realm, the Sidequest Realm, but unlike hopping into an actual video game, it can be a bit of a pain to access all the different features since they are spread out a bit. Our Sidequest World, which is a literal game on the website, will eventually support all of the same functionality we have on the website to interact with the world. It's just going to take us some time to get everything implemented there and most importantly, it's going to happen in stages because our settlement is still not fully built! Right now we think the Kitchen is really just a pit in the mud. Is this food even safe to eat?
Ultimately, Sidequest and our seasonal events are going to improve thanks to your feedback during events so don't be afraid to let us know what you think about things. The best place to share your thoughts is over on the Sidequest Realm by creating new threads or discussing with others there who have started feedback threads of their own.
Leave a Comment