Want to be a Beta Tester? You Need to Read This First

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Article by Monica Mizzi

Beta testing computer and console games can be a lucrative job – not only do you get to test games before they hit the market, you can earn some sweet moolah for your efforts. While you may think your responsibility rests solely on giving honest and constructive feedback, you will likely have legal obligations to uphold as well.

Understanding any legal obligations you have to the company you are working for is critical, particularly if you are new to the field of beta testing. The most common legal document you will be asked to sign is a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). This short guide will answer some of the key questions you may have about NDAs, and will also offer advice on how to remain on the right side of the law.

  1. What is an NDA?

    A Non-Disclosure Agreement is a legally binding document which prohibits the disclosure of proprietary and sensitive information. The agreement defines which information is considered in such terms, and sets parameters regarding the usage of it.

    As the “Receiving Party” of the NDA, you will have a number of legal obligations to fulfil –that is– if you decide to sign it.

    By agreeing to the terms of the NDA, you enter into a legally-binding contract that states:

    a) you understand the scope of the sensitive information in focus.
    b) you understand that there will be repercussions if you break the terms of the NDA.
    c) you will not use or disclose the protected information with any third parties.

  2. What should I do now I’ve been given an NDA?

    Just take your legal obligations as seriously as Greg takes his gaming

    Take the time to read it thoroughly, ideally more than once. You don’t want to be caught out later because you skimmed over an important clause. You should be able to understand all of the components of the NDA – the terms, the scope, the legal obligations you have, and possible repercussions for breaking the NDA. Before you sign anything, it’s strongly recommended that you read more about the vital NDA considerations you should make.

    If you find there are still outstanding parts you don’t fully understand, ask. It is perfectly reasonable to follow up with your point of contact about any questions you have. Likewise, if you find something unjust or out of place, such as overly broad language, don’t be afraid to ask for the document to be modified.

    If you find at this point that the company is being too cagey, or is unwilling to compromise, trust your gut. Is it really worth it to take on a job you don’t feel completely comfortable with? Is it really in your best interests to work with a company that isn’t completely transparent?

    It may be hard to walk away from what seems like a brilliant opportunity, but dealing with an unresponsive and possibly questionable company is much harder.

  3. Can’t I just tell a few trustworthy people? Surely the company won’t find out..

     

    “But, but, I wanna tell everyone!” Sorry, bud. It’s just not worth it.

    If you wouldn’t even dream of breaking your NDA, feel free to skim over this section. However,   as Blizzard can attest to, NDA slips in the gaming industry are a relatively common occurrence. So let’s just go over this quickly just in case the thought ever crossed your mind.

    Hey, I get it. The struggle is real: you now have a juicy nugget of information, and you’re dying to tell your friends.

    I don’t want to get all NDA police on you, but this isn’t just some casual gossip you’d be letting out. By telling anyone anything about the NDA, you expose yourself to the consequences of breaking a legally binding contract.

    Even mentioning that you’re under an NDA puts you at risk of being targeted for the sensitive information you possess. You’re also far more likely to give in to your friends if they start hounding you for information.

    But are the consequences even that bad? Well, when you consider that the secret you let out could cost a company millions of dollars in lost revenue, you can imagine that the consequences are going to be pretty hefty.

    Anyway, why don’t you decide for yourself if it’s worth the risk….

  4. What are the repercussions for breaching an NDA?

    Sure, you won’t have to worry about Michael Scott style death threats. But the threat of litigation will be just as painful.

    If the company that issued you the NDA finds out –or even suspects– you have breached it, they will likely seek retribution from a number of legal avenues at their disposal. As such, there are many possible consequences you could face for breaching an NDA.

    Consider the following typical scenario to get a taste of what you could be in for if you are suspected of breaching your NDA:

    The company will first gather evidence to support their claim that the NDA was breached. They will investigate what information was compromised, how it was done, and who was involved. Following this, the company may send you a Cease and Desist Letter as a means of getting you to halt your unlawful action. It is basically a stern warning that if you do not comply with their demand to stop sharing the sensitive information, the case will be escalated.

    According to experts, if the Cease and Desist Letter does not work, the company can choose to take you to court. If they have a strong enough case and you are found guilty of breaching the NDA, the possible consequences include:

    • Monetary damages
    • Termination of employment
    • In very serious cases, jail time

    That’s not to mention the emotional stress of a legal battle, loss of reputation, and subsequent ongoing personal and profession consequences of having a legal breach to your name. Even if the court rules you were not in breach of the NDA, you will still have prohibitive court costs to pay. None of that sounds too fun, right?

  5. TL;DR: Err on the side of caution

Should you accept this mission, this could be you.

The TL;DR is to be err on the side of caution. Be vigilant when checking over the NDA, and clear up any questions you have before signing your name to it. If you choose to sign the NDA don’t tell anyone anything about the contents of it (or even that you have one!) – it’s not worth the devastating life consequences of breaching this sensitive legal contract. Just remember those caveats, and you’ll be on your way to your first beta tester coin run, Mario-style.

CRUSH.TV Early Access Review: An Exercise in Crushing Defeat

Action Arcade Featured PC Reviews Shooter
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crush.tv indie game

One arena, two competitors, and hundreds of enemies equipped with swift and punishing ways to murder you. That’s the recipe for CRUSH.TV—one you may remember from early arcade games like Smash TV and Robotron: 2084. In fact, developer Salt & Pixel cites those two games as the specific inspiration for CRUSH.TV, a 2D shooter that is currently available in early access.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way: I’m bad at CRUSH.TV. I’m no stranger to shoot ’em ups, but this one seems to have been designed with only the most challenge-obsessed gamers in mind. High difficulty levels can be a plus for some players and a barrier for others, but more on that later.

CRUSH.TV begins with a simple premise and a steep difficulty curve. The game throws you right into the middle of a packed arena, armed only with a basic gun and your wits. You also have a CPU-controlled buddy to fight at your side, which carries the promise of 2-player co-op in future editions of the game.

After a short countdown, your foes start flooding onto the stage. That’s when the carnage begins.

Don’t leave out the gory details.

To make it through a round, you and your partner will have to withstand hundreds of foes and one formidable boss. Your character is a little slower than most of the enemies, so you’ll have to use clever maneuvers and fast shooting to get through them. The game gives you several respawns to throw you back into the action every time you die, and trust me, you will definitely need them.

CRUSH.TV seems to delight in killing you over and over. For the first stretch of the game, that’s the only way you’ll learn how to progress. Every death gives you some insight into how your enemies function, whether they’re trying to shoot you down, blow you up, or cut you to pieces. You’ll learn to prioritize foes on the fly so you can survive for a longer stretch of time.

crush tv indie game for pc gamejolt

You’ll also need to figure out the various temporary pickups that will appear in different corners of the arena throughout your battle. Among the weapon upgrades, you’ll find the usual culprits: faster bullets, a grenade launcher, a flamethrower-like gun with short range and a wide spray, and a couple of super-satisfying laser blasters. Your character also has a devastating special attack that can blow through huge swaths of enemies over a generous activation period.

We now interrupt your (ir)regular programming.

While many aspects of CRUSH.TV are genuinely challenging, I can’t help but feel that the difficulty level is a little bit forced—and not just because I suck at it. For one, the controls need some work. On a gamepad, the game’s intended method of play, you use one joystick to move and one to aim your gun. While the movement controls are smooth, you can only aim in eight directions instead of having a full range of motion. The result is a kind of “choppy” feeling that leaves too many gaps between your shots and your foes.

The aiming scheme is likely a throwback to the game’s older arcade influences, but it doesn’t work as well on CRUSH.TV‘s larger scale. Because the playing field is so much larger and the enemies so much smaller, it often feels like you’re put into impossible situations because of your limited ability to aim. In the end you sacrifice precision in order to artificially inflate challenge, which is something even “hardcore” players may see as an issue.

crushtv game gamejolt pc

Some may also find that the difficulty is due in part to the sheer amount of action taking place on the screen at any one time. The small player-character models can sometimes get lost in the swarms of enemies, as well as the constant laser fire and gore splatter. There’s a screen at the top of the arena that tells you when your special is ready, but in all of the shooting and dying and running around, it took me a very long time to notice it even existed.

Verdict: The game doesn’t quite strike a crushing blow.

Once you get used to CRUSH.TV‘s presentation, it gets easier and easier to process what’s going on. You’ll learn to interpret different signals and react to your surroundings more quickly. The nice-looking visuals also feature the right amount of graphical detail to tell apart enemies and attacks without overwhelming the eyes.

CRUSH.TV has the potential to be a great game, especially for fans of its arcade predecessors. In its current state, though, it can feel a little monotonous. The game gets more engrossing once bosses enter the scene, but the time it takes to reach them can sometimes drag on. The sound effects are gratifying in a nostalgic way, but the music gets lost in them, which almost makes the game feel silent. It needs a good soundtrack to rev up the energy levels.

On the positive side, the game features some very intense moments. You can pull yourself out of a near-death struggle and find a powerful pickup that annihilates foes from a distance, only to be robbed of your moment by a stray shot or a nearby explosion.

The fast pace and constant onslaught of foes in CRUSH.TV creates an exciting tension that makes you feel like you’re really at the center stage of an epic battle. The second you pause for breath is almost always the second you meet your demise. In many ways, untimely death is where the game really shines—and with the right improvements, it might just survive its official launch.

CRUSH.TV has been in development since October 2016. You can play an early access version of the game, and follow along with its progress, on the developer’s Gamejolt page.

Fight Knight Demo: Put up your dukes for a high-speed dungeon brawl

Action Adventure Featured Kickstarter PC Reviews Steam
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Fight Knight Demo Preview

You’re faced with a monster, a puzzle, and a friendly NPC. Which one do you punch?

If your answer is “all of the above,” Fight Knight may be the game for you.

In Fight Knight, the player dons a pair of knight’s gauntlets and battles in a hectic grid-based, first-person dungeon crawl. Though it’s been in development for less than a year, the game already packs a mighty punch. After playing through the entirety of its current demo, which consists of two zones and two floors in each, I am left with some vivid first impressions and only a few minor concerns.

As the eponymous Fight Knight, you wake up to find your ship has docked near an ominous-looking tower that threatens to consume the land around it. With the vague promise of reward, you determine to ascend the Tower, level by level, until you discover what lies at the top.

fight knight game demo

While Fight Knight is mysteriously unable to wield weapons, other than his trusty gauntlets, you will quickly learn to speak with your fists. You jab villagers to learn their secrets, pummel switches to open new passages through the labyrinthine Tower, and wallop a variety of enemies on your way to the top. The whole process is satisfyingly simple, but it’s far from easy.

The Tower puts your reflexes—and your reasoning skills—to the test.

For a game still in development, Fight Knight manages to pull off smooth, fast-paced gameplay that only gets faster as you progress. Your combat arsenal mainly consists of your fists and your wits. Once you master the simple commands you need to punch, block, and dodge in various combinations, you can start experimenting with the knight’s special attacks to make quick work of your foes.

While the game starts you off easy, it gradually increases the difficulty by introducing new enemies. You have to learn each enemy’s quirks to avoid damage and handle them efficiently. If you don’t learn quickly enough in the later stages, you can easily be overwhelmed—especially when your enemies have complementary skills. For instance, I met one particularly deadly group with a necromancer that continuously raises minions behind a wall of tougher whip-wielding enemies. If you’re too slow to beat through the onslaught of foes, the necromancer can keep raising more allies indefinitely.

fight knight demo ship dock level

They may sound frustrating, but I found that these more difficult situations encouraged me to use special attacks. Your specials consume energy to target multiple enemies in a row or side-by-side, or throw a flurry of punches for extra damage. It’s up to you to figure out which moves work best in any given scenario.

When you return to the village to rest and save between sorties to the Tower, you can outfit your knight with different specials and gauntlets that you’ll unlock as you progress. You can also equip potions to supplement your journey, unlocking new ingredients as you fight new enemies. The demo only had a few of these to showcase, but the full game promises plenty of potential to mix up your loadout for a more customized experience.

The game offers a bombastic aesthetic, if a bit visually jarring.

While the available gameplay, level design and puzzles are clever and thoughtful, the graphics are currently a little lacking in polish. I can tell there has been a genuine effort to set the game’s presentation apart from other pretty, pixel-art indie games, and it does succeed in that respect.

The problem lies partly in the game’s color scheme, and partly in the level of graphical detail. The game relies on a hyper-saturated palette that, while eye-catching in screenshots, becomes a little headache-inducing in the game itself. The camera motion can also stray on the nauseating side. There are a few settings to help tone it down, but the added strain on the eyes may still discourage some players from longer play sessions.

fight knight puzzles

While I appreciate a clean, simplified graphical style, the game could also stand to ramp up the detail in places. For example, NPCs and item pickups look a bit too muted and blurry in the game’s current state, causing the developer’s compelling character designs to fall flat. I don’t think any of these issues are deal-breakers, though: they could easily be fixed without sacrificing the game’s stylized aesthetic.

Verdict: The game has a fighting chance.

Fight Knight may be all about conquering obstacles with your fists, but the game still managed to keep me on my toes throughout. Between the frenzied battles and inventive, well-thought-out puzzles, you’re given plenty of opportunities to flex your wits as well as your muscles.

The game is still slightly rough around the edges in places, but it’s polished in every way that matters. It’s also bursting with personality and charismatic humor. Its ostentatious style is bolstered even more by the charming, peppy soundtrack that recalls the nostalgia of older arcade games.

Fight Knight is currently slated to launch on PC, with the possibility of console, Mac and Linux ports in the future. The project recently exceeded its crowdfunding goals with June 2018 as its estimated delivery date. You can play the demo now on the developer’s Kickstarter page.

Kingdom: New Lands Review

Action Adventure Featured PC Reviews Steam
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Once you get the keys to the kingdom, it can be hard to let them go—and even harder to survive the challenges they will inevitably bring your way.

Kingdom: New Lands is an extension of Kingdom, a side-scrolling strategy and survival game that earned a loyal indie following with its unforgiving yet addictive gameplay. New Lands adds a variety of new content to the base game, including new NPCs, mounts and obstacles to help or hinder the Monarch’s campaign.

In Kingdom: New Lands, your only goal is survival. Sure, you can build your kingdom, recruit citizens and amass unthinkable sums of gold to improve your fortress—but your true objective is to escape the Greed, evil creatures that threaten your rule (and your life) with nightly attacks on your kingdom. To that end, you’ll have to rebuild your Monarch’s ship and sail to freedom before your defenses are overwhelmed by ever-escalating attacks.

kingdom new lands review darkness

Each session can end in one of two ways: either your Monarch sails away to freedom (and the next island), or the Greed steals your crown and ends your rule. Don’t be fooled by the simple premise. The game may a minimalistic appeal, but it comes with deceptively complex gameplay mechanics and a great disdain for hand-holding.

As you explore each of the five islands in succession, you’ll find wandering vagrants you can hire to build and defend your kindgom. Your citizens all have clearly-defined roles, and at first they’re easy to manage. Bowmen hunt and fight the Greed, workers build walls and munitions, and farmers work the land as a reliable source of coin. You’ll learn to work with the many moving parts of your kingdom with minimal instruction.

As the game progresses, however, you’ll be faced with a growing number of questions that can only be answered by trial-and-error. How far can you send your builders before they walk into danger, and how do you make sure your hunters always have enough game to fund your next build? The list of questions only gets longer as you discover new types of citizens and buildings with different functionalities.

kingdom new lands village

To play Kingdom: New Lands effectively, you’ll need to be patient and observe your surroundings to truly understand the consequences of your actions. For the most part, the game gives you a fair chance to learn and test theories while you build up your settlement. If your kingdom is overrun by monsters, or if you ran out of coin in the middle of winter, it’s usually because you overextended yourself or failed to plan ahead.

In other situations, the game can undo hours of careful building with one poorly-timed glitch. One bug stalls the progress of a wall upgrade, and with no way to issue commands to have your builders continue the job, you’re stuck with an empty space that offers zero defense against monsters. Managing your citizens can also be frustrating, because they sometimes put themselves in harm’s way for no discernible reason, or run to defend a side of your settlement that isn’t under attack.

Although the game can get very frantic very quickly, it feels like a deeply meditative experience. Aside from its occasional spikes of intense, nerve-wracking moments, it has an overall solemn and tranquil feel, due in no small part to the game’s gorgeous pixel graphics and charming soundtrack.

If you’re a fan of thoughtful strategy and exploration, Kingdom: New Lands has plenty of mysteries to keep you thinking for hours on end. Far from insurmountable, its challenges are perfectly weighted to turn your thirst for knowledge into an obsession. The game could benefit from a few bug fixes and tweaks to NPC behavior, but overall it feels very smooth and intuitive to play.

If you do pick up this title, I urge you to stay away from the online Wiki as long as possible. The best way to learn about Kingdom is to play it yourself. Once you learn to work with the randomly-generated landscape and manage your resources, you’ll be well on your way to rebuilding the Monarch’s ship—and to reaching the next island, where you’ll get to do the whole thing over again.

Midboss Review: Roguelike Dungeon Crawler of Possession

Action Adventure Featured PC Reviews Rogue-like
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Midboss Review

With the sheer amount of games that are available to the masses these days, it’s really hard to recapture that sense of wonder and hilarity that we used to have with games of yesteryear. Sure, there are tons of titles that brag about their ability to take us back to the good ol’ days, but how many actually achieve this feat?

Enter Midboss: perhaps the most rouge-like game since…well, Rouge itself.

midboss review game first level

Created and developed by Kitsune Games, Midboss was released on Steam on May 25th and is currently being sold for $14.99. With “Very Positive” and “Mostly Positive” ratings, gamers have clearly spoken – this game is definitely worthy of any Steam library.

The developers describe Midboss as such:

“Kill your enemies, possess their bodies, and take their abilities as your own in this turn-based procedurally generated death labyrinth. You play as the imp, the weakest monster in the dungeon. Tired of being bullied by the other monsters, you set off with your sidekick Mid to descend to the deepest levels of the dungeon, defeat the final boss, and take his place.”

midboss roguelike dungeon crawler

Which is way cuter than it sounds, honestly. This has a lot to do with the art-style and dialogue, which is just…adorable.

To expound, the art-style is pixelated, but not in the trendy 8-Bit fashion that is so common these days. It was actually refreshing to see what was essentially a “low tech” game aim for more when it came to design. The dialogue is snarky and has a childlike sense of humor that really adds the charm to the title. The music is…catchy, definitely, but extremely repetitive. Not necessarily complaining about it, because it won’t get stuck in your head for hours on end, but it would have been nice to have more music diversity.

The main mechanic of the game is that you play as an imp who can possess the bodies of your enemies and level up their abilities. This ensures that players will be running around the dungeons doing their best to find creepy crawlies to inhabit and then find even more to practice their newfound attacks on. It really had that “gotta catch ‘em all” feel to the game that I really appreciated, as it made me want to stick around and play as long as I could to unlock all those abilities.

midboss cratefish king boss battle

Don’t think for a second that because this game is so quaint and charming that it isn’t hard – be prepared to die a lot and throw your controller a lot. I walked away from this game several times, swearing that I wasn’t gonna play again, but Midboss and I both knew that that was a lie and I’d definitely be back for more. It’s addicting and enjoyable on levels that I didn’t think were previously possible.

One thing I wish the devs would have put in Midboss was the ability to hotkey items. I feel like that was something of an oversight, but simultaneously don’t feel it’s a deal-breaker either. Just one of those things on the wishlist for sure!

Midboss is the most rogue-like of all the rouge-likes. Retro gamers will be sure to enjoy this title with a twist – one with humor, wit, and unending creativity. Literal hours will be wasted on playing the lowest tier enemies possible just so their abilities can be maxed out – all in the name of completion. This game *must* be in your Steam library. I can’t recommend it enough!

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