Our Top 10 Games of 2019!

Well, we’re just at the start of a new year and thought we’d take a few minutes to look back 2019 and what games we played the most and discovered in the year. We’ve not done one of these posts since 2017 and so there’s bound to be some changes, but I’ll bet there will be some long time favourites in here too!

Do you agree with any of the games on our list or do you have your own favourites from 2019? Let us know!

Top-10 (2016)

In no particular order, here are our favourites!

As always, you’d expect to see Minecraft in our list – we’re still playing it as much as ever, although not as much in the MinecraftRealms world – 2019 meant Melvis trying Hypixel for Skyblock (and bashing it a bit…) and Hopper tried his luck with his own server – still ongoing and not yet featured in a video, so watch this space… 

 

Fortnite 6No surprise that 2019 sees Fortnite becoming popular with Hopper… By the end of the year this was one of his favourite games and he’d managed to graduate from noob to mediocre 🙂

He’s collected some pretty cool skins along the way including the Demigorgon from Stranger Things, which was one of our fave binge watch box sets of 2019 and spawned a new flurry of Funko Pop purchases… (Melvis loves Scoops Ahoy Steve!)

220px-Lego_DC_Super-Villains_CoverSo, 2019 was pretty thin on the ground for Lego games – there was only the Lego Movie 2 game tie-in that came out and we didn’t get it! But, The Incredibles was still popular, and we’re close to completing the awesome Lego DC Villains which both released in 2018. Also in 2018, they released an updated Lego Harry Potter Collection, which brought together all the school years 1 – 7 in a single pack! Again, Melvis and Hopper are still progressing through this series, learning the new spells and hoping to pass their NEWTs before the end of 2020! 

KingdomsIf she gets the time, Mel still loves Kingdoms and Castles released on Steam for PC and Mac in 2017. There have been lots of extra features added since it first launched, including witches (that you can help or antagonise!) and the ability to trade goods. Obviously, the plague and general depression still tend trouble your peasants as well as the occasional dragon and Viking attack… Ah, Melvis needs to get back to her subjects and play a game of this 🙂

Clash Royale

Not a surprise for you that Clash Royale has made the Top 10 is it – yes Melvis is still obsessed, yes, she’s collecting more cards and now runs two separate profiles in the Clan – Level 11 and Level 9 – you’ll have seen some Clash videos in the last few months and probably more to come as the new Season packs added in 2019, along with extra emotes for in-game communication, designer tower skins and new game modes all make this more interesting than ever!

BeamNG Drive

One of Hopper’s favourite games – that he finally got his PC upgrade to be able to handle is BeamNG.drive We’ve done a few test run videos but not posted any yet, but expect something on this soon!

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Totally Accurate Battle Simulator / Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator have both made appearances on Hopper’s PC playlist this year – with more play options and a higher spec PC he can run bigger battles and crazier teams… Stan Lee Vs an army of Frodo Hobbits? You got it!

Prison ArchitectHopper picked up Prison Architect on Steam having seen DanTDM’s videos on it – a construction and management game (like a prison-themed Theme Park or Kingdoms and Castles) you have to keep your prisoners happy – and not rioting – shake down their cells and generally ensure that people don’t die or escape… Thankfully the cartoony-style of it all stops it being too depressing, although I’m not sure I’ve seen a world of Hopper’s yet that hasn’t ended in a riot and the prison burning down – so hopefully not a future career in the prison service, for everyone’s sake 🙂

Subnautica Below ZeroThe original Subnautica was a favourite with Hopper a couple of years ago, so when Subnautica Below Zero was released in January 2019 on Steam in a trial mode, we got straight into this new version of the game, set on a frozen world. Come to think of it, I think there were a couple of videos on this from back then, perhaps we should dig them out…?

So that was our most played of 2019 – what were yours?

Our Top 10 Games of 2017!

Well, we’re just at the start of a new year and thought we’d take a few minutes to look back 2017 and what games we played the most and discovered in the year. There are some old favourites and new ones – do you agree with any of the games on our list or do you have your own favourites from 2017? Let us know!

Top-10 (2016)

In no particular order, here are our favourites!

As always, you’d expect to see Minecraft in our list – we’re still playing it as much as ever, wiMinecraftth Realms being the main place Hopper and Melvis play together. Hypixel is still popular with Hopper for online gaming.

Marvel SuperHeroes 2

 

 

Released near the end of 2017, we’ve had great fun playing the latest Marvel Superheroes 2 Lego game – and FINALLY the Guardians of the Galaxy made the team – I LOOOVE GROOT!!

Ninjago

Another great Lego game that came out in 2017 was The Ninjago Movie videogame – it has lots of similar features to the other Lego games, but different with this game to a lot of the others is the special moves and training that you ‘upgrade’ to throughout the game.

KingdomsIn the summer we came across Kingdoms and Castles released on Steam for PC and Mac. Melvis is a sucker for Sim City style games (Theme Park, old school Sim City, Hay Day) and so this was a big favourite of 2017 for her. As well as building up your medieval city with blacksmiths and grain stores, training your own knights and deploying archers in your stone towers, one of the best things about the game is the ‘Peasant Profiles’ you get when you hover over the little people who inhabit your world… Things like Boris Stephorn, 26 ‘Mostly thinking about clouds’… Petunia Gobstone, 84, ‘Just stepped in mud’… We’re just waiting on the next update which will introduce trading and other extras to the game and then Melvis wants to do some videos on it – watch this space!

Clash Royale

Not a surprise for you that Clash Royale has made the Top 10 is it – yes Melvis is still obsessed, yes, she’s collecting more cards and currently trying to level up to Level 10. There will definitely be more videos on this game in the future – her hobby at the moment is trying to put together good decks around 2-3 specific powerful cards to see how effective they can be. (Judging by the amount of battles she’s losing during the experiments, don’t expect to see the Three Musketeers / Hog Rider combo any time soon!)

BeamNG Drive

One of Hopper’s favourite games – that we’ve still not even got ourselves – is BeamNG.drive So far, he’s had to make do with watching it on YouTube, but maybe he’ll get the upgrade he needs in 2018 to get his hands on this…

TABS

Totally Accurate Battle Simulator has stayed on Hopper’s PC playlist from 2016 and so it has to make the list – there have been some new groups added this year, to make the battles even more fun / crazy. From the ‘Farmers’ and crazy ‘Dark Peasant’ to ‘Vikings’ and the disturbing ‘Chicken Man Man’… Totally weird!

Apollo VR

We were lucky enough to get the PS4 VR in mid-2017 and so have had some fun playing the games that come with this. The Carnival VR game was great fun and a good starter game for getting used to the new controls of the VR set. We also loved the underwater adventure in the demo disc and flew to the moon on a real NASA space mission in Apollo 11 VR, bringing real footage and audio from the launch and mission together with VR experience – amazing! (You can link to the Play Station website here to see a post on 107 amazing things you can do on your VR set today! Click here to open their web page.)

Carnival

Last but not least – Hopper has developed a taste for driving games in 2017 and whilst there are quite a few that he’s played The Crew seems to have been his favourite. Melvis’s favourite driving games were the retro ones she found at Play Expo in the summer, especially the ‘moving’ version of Outrun!

So that was our best of 2017 – what were yours? 🙂

 

Logic & Elves – Extra!

If you liked our video yesterday on Logic & Elves, or would like to know more about the creator of the game, then check out the links below for Dwittyy who built the game!

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Here’s the link to Dwittyy’s own YouTube channel, where you can find out more about the games he has designed and other gaming stuff!

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtZN1_mXjB7TCjVJZe7HWaA

(Please note: this link is for external content and all detail have not been verified as kid-friendly, so please review and decide for yourself).

It’s Minions Time!

Minions - Sidebar

Bello! 😀 Minions are back!!

We’re going all kind of bananas this week because the latest Despicable Me movie is out on Friday and we can’t wait to top-up on minions, Gru and fluffy unicorns!

To celebrate the release of Despicable Me 3 we’ve done a couple of minion related videos to get you in the mood for all things yellow and villainous 😀 so check out the blog later this week to see what we’ve been up to. In the meantime, you can check out the movie trailer here…

10 million views in week!!

That’s what this Harry Potter origin film trailer has picked up since it came out last week – and we got pretty excited when we saw that they would be making a prequel film for the Harry Potter story, looking at Voldemort – or Tom Marvolo Riddle – as a young boy and how he became the Dark Lord.

You can check out official trailer here:

Apparently, the idea for the movie has come from fans, who made a fan-trailer in the first instance, which has now been agreed by Warner Bros to expand into a full feature film… Due in 2018, the main reason Gianmaria Pezzato and co-director Stefano Prestia have got the go ahead was because they are making the film for no profit and will release it for free on YouTube.

The idea came from a re-reading the sixth book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, where the pair found themselves with several questions. There are clues in the book that have inspired their ideas, but as with most book to screen adaptations not all could be explored in the main movies. The content of the trailer also suggests that it might draw on details from the script of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child which is currently running on the London stage.

So, what do you think of a film will tell the story of the rise of the Dark Lord before Harry Potter ever existed? Hopper and I were pretty excited when we saw this and we loved Fantastic Beasts from the wizarding world of JK Rowling… We can’t wait for more!

Catching up…

So, we’ve recently sorted out the editing issues we had and so there are a backlog of videos to get up onto the channel from content we’ve made over the last six months or so and not been able to post. To try and have them make sense, we’ll post them roughly in order and back date them, so if you’re currently following us and wondering why things are popping up all over the timeline, this will explain it! 🙂

Really wish it was because I’d found a time machine though…

The_Time_Machine

More Kid Friendly Minecraft You Tubers

The content of this post can be found in its original form at Common Sense Media a great resource site for parents on a whole range of topics, not just games. This post was made by Caroline Knorr Senior Parenting Editor and Mom of one, and gives a detailed overview of other YouTubers out there delivering kid friendly entertainment, mainly on Minecraft, but some other games as well.

This is obviously something that we’ve aspired to do with We-Game.Live as well, so if you’re looking for some more options for videos, this list is good and features some of our absolute favourite YouTubers: DanTDM, Stampy, iBallisticSquid and Little Lizard Gaming.

ThxcyaI will say that from this original list, I’ve taken out TheAtlanticCraft, although a lot of their videos are OK, there are a few odd ones in there that make me think it’s not 100% suitable for kids, so I wouldn’t include here. It also misses off one of our other faves ThxCya, who is a good friend of DanTDM – aside from doing general Minecraft videos he has these great Minecraft music videos with amazing animation – lots of fun and with ‘in’ jokes for regular Minecrafters – he is definitely one to check out and at the moment is just shy of 1 million subscribers, so you could help him get to that milestone 🙂 Check him out here at his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ThnxCya


(Original Post)

If Minecraft has taken over your kids and you hardly know who they are or what they’re talking about anymore, you’re in good company. But, although you may love that the game helps build 21st-century skills such as creativity, innovation, and collaboration, your kids’ obsession can be overwhelming. Perhaps most puzzling is that every waking moment they’re not playing Minecraft, they’re in front of YouTube watching Minecraft.

Minecraft videos on YouTube attract millions of views daily. There are tutorials (for ideas on new things to create), “Let’s Play” videos (footage of people playing the game), challenges (new gameplay ideas to try), mod showcases (which show off cool thing kids can download to modify their Minecraft worlds), and more.

But the unique things about the game, including the ability for any player to create anything they want, can result in wide variations in quality, age-appropriateness, and relevancy to your kid’s specific interests and gaming ability. There are hundreds of channels devoted to Minecraft, including popular but edgy ones such as Yogscast and SkyDoesMinecraft, and it’s hard to know which ones are good for kids. Although you could download an app such as KicVidz, which curates only kid-friendly Minecraft videos, you know your little fanatic will be begging — and searching YouTube — for more.

Even kid-friendly videos come with a few caveats. First, with many clocking in at 20 or 30 minutes, they can be a major time suck. Second, many have commercials that advertise products from cars to cookies to vodka. Third, some videos contain salty language so take note of our age recommendations below and preview videos when possible. But there’s plenty to explore to help fan the flames of this mostly worthwhile pursuit. Here are the top 12 best-for-kids YouTube Minecraft channels.


Stampy (aka Mr. Stampy Cat, aka stampylonghead). A British cartoon cat (voiced by Joseph Garrett from Portsmouth, England) hosts the lively videos on this lighthearted channel. Stampy offers Let’s Plays and tutorials on a range of Minecraft topics (and other games, all family-friendly), and his game worlds are distinctly colorful.
Best for: Younger fans. Stampy feels like a cross between Pee-wee Herman and Mr. Rogers.
Check out: His How To Minecraft series is excellent for noobs.

iBallisticSquid. Stampy’s best friend is a squid — remember, anything is possible in Minecraft! — voiced by Garrett’s real-life pal David Spencer. Squiddy (or Squid Nugget) exchanges mild, kid-friendly, English-accented banter with Stampy and uploads Let’s Plays, mods, and challenges (which are usually set for him by Stampy).
Best for: Younger fans. Squiddy’s squeaky-clean.
Check out: His Pixelmon Learning the Basics is a great introduction to a cool mod.

Paul Soares Jr. This self-described husband, father, entrepreneur, and gamer offers family-friendly Let’s Plays and tutorials in a kindly, straightforward style.
Best for: Younger kids, new players, and families. Soares mixes in a lot of how-to information while he’s playing.
Check out: Soares’ How to Survive and Thrive tutorials are newbie nirvana. Also, note the ratings on his videos; he’s the rare YouTuber who has bothered to have his content rated for families so you know it doesn’t contain mature content.

Little Lizard Gaming. Irish brothers Ryan and Scott Fitzimons run the super-popular Minecraft channel Little Lizard Gaming which features play-throughs, how-to’s, and mods.
Best for: Younger kids. The channel boasts that it’s “100% kid-friendly.”
Check out: Minecraft Pixelman Mod, a funny mash-up of Pokemon and Minecraft.

PrestonPlayz. This young Minecraft YouTuber has earned a large following based on his solid playing, awesome parkour maps, and positive attitude.
Best for: Intermediate players who know the basics and want to expand their Minecraft skills.
Check out: Preston’s “Draw My Life” video explains his unique background and the source of his motivation.

Popular MMOs. Although it’s known for epic battles and massive explosions, Popular MMOs’ host is a friendly, folksy guy named Pat, whose knowledge of and enthusiasm for the game plus killer mods draw big audiences. He also frequently plays against his fiancée, Jen (who hosts her own Minecraft channel, GamingwithJen).
Best for: Older kids with a taste for excitement.
Check out:The Minecraft Kitty Cat Challenge, where Pat and Jen honor the passing of their cat by duking it out on Minecraft, shows the human side of the game.

Minecraft Universe. Charming TrueMU (real name: Jason Probst) hosts this popular channel that’s jam-packed with adventure maps, parkour maps, mini-games, and even original electronic songs available for download. He often plays spirited games against other advanced Minecraft players in a group called Team Crafted.
Best for: All ages. There’s a wide range of content.
Check out: The “Hottest Girls Ever” Let’s Play, wherein Jason and an opponent play as female avatars, can spark a conversation about gender roles in games.

The Bajan Canadian. Twenty-year-old Canadian video game commenter Mitchell Hughes offers a wide range of technically adept Minecraft videos, mostly played with a gentle, nerdy patter against his mild-mannered gamer pals.
Best for: Older players who really want to geek out on Minecraft.
Check out: His parkour videos and downloadable “wacky parkour maps” are some of the best.

Maricraft. Hosted by female gamer Mari Takahashi on the ultra-popular gaming channel Smosh Games, Maricraft features mostly Let’s Plays of spirited battles with her pals in wacky Minecraft worlds.
Best for: Older fans. Players swear, but the words are bleeped out and there’s some juvenile humor.
Check out: In Splegg in Your Face!, Mari and friends pummel each other with spleggs (Minecraft eggs).

TheDiamondMinecart. Hosted by twentysomething Dan Middleton of Northamptonshire, England, TheDiamondMinecart is popular for its wide variety of entertaining, creative videos. The videos’ quality across all genres (Let’s Play, mod reviews, characters, and so on) has made it one of the most highly subscribed-to and most highly viewed channels on YouTube.
Best for: More experienced players; the offerings are pretty advanced, but they’re mostly clean.
Check out: The Hunger Games video wherein DiamondMinecart takes on Stampy has a fun twist at the end.

CaptainSparklez. With one of the biggest audiences on YouTube, CaptainSparklez dazzles with his technically advanced worlds and warm, entertaining commentary. Recently purchased by Disney-owned Maker Studios, CaptainSparklez is beloved as much for his intricate, atmospheric, and complex worlds as for his parody videos.
Best for: Experienced players who can grasp the technical jargon. He can get a little edgy, too.
Check out: His Super Modded Survival Series takes fans on an epic adventure full of dungeons, new dimensions, and mighty foes.

 

It started with Insomnia…

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Funnily enough, it wasn’t the normal kind of child-induced insomnia you expect as a parent…instead it was Insomnia 57 at Birmingham NEC “the UK’s Biggest Gaming Festival” that got this whole thing started.

Over the past three years, since HopperBoy got an iPad at Christmas we’ve gradually been pulled further and further into the gaming world that kids experience today: You Tubers, servers, mods and more… It’s a lot to take in, especially if you’re trying to get your head around it in the middle of handling your day-job, doing school runs and keeping on top of all the other domestic joys that get thrown at you.

So, whilst HopperBoy likes making his own videos and talking to himself like a YouTuber no matter what game he’s playing, I started the blog to share my travels along the gaming highway with him – because Google has become my new best friend in mastering the skills needed to download mods and play server-based games, all the while, trying to make sure that what you’re doing is safe and suitable. There are lots of fantastic parent-help websites around, for many of the games we play – certainly a lot more in-depth than what I’ll do here. This blog is intended to be a quick-fix for ideas on games, reviews from a kid and a parent to help you decide if the games are for you, and to share the bits of knowledge I come across that may be helpful to share.