UPDATE March 11th, 7:00 a.m.: Unfortunately, it looks like no.match has suspended their daily free hairstyle gifts. As of today, the All Day Mania panel has been replaced with a group gift (it costs L$50 to join the no.match group). Sorry!
Did you know that no.match hair store is giving away a free hairstyle every day? It’s completely free. You don’t need to join any group to get it, just click on the gift box in the store at this SLURL:
Sometimes the freebie is male hair, sometimes female, and some styles are unisex. The daily gifts can be fatpacks of all colours, or just one colour set (blondes, brunettes, etc.).
Here’s an example of a beautiful, elegant updo I picked up this week, which came in a fatpack of colours:
Sweet minty Jesus. Not another blockchain-based virtual world?!?? Are people learning nothing from all the struggling ones already out there??
This one is called NeoWorld, from a Singapore-based company, and it has the audacity to bill itself the “First MMO/Virtual World”. (NOT.)
NeoWorld is so new that they haven’t even bothered to translate anything from Chinese into English, as you can tell by the following promotional video. The computer-generated English voice-over becomes meaningless mumbo-jumbo near the end:
“In a word, NeoWorld is compatible with all proven business models in any virtual world, including games, online community, knowledge sharing, and financial services.”
Here’s a brief tutorial video (in Chinese, with English subtitles) to give you a feel for the platform:
Also, Windows 10 gave me a security warning when I tried to install their client software. Not to mention a completely mystifying account creation page. I simply gave up. And when I tried to uninstall it, I found I couldn’t do that using the Remove Programs setting under Windows, so I landed up deleting everything by hand.
If you’re looking for something to do in the metaverse this weekend, why not visit a Japanese anime convention in VRChat?
The Virtual Market 2 convention is running all weekend. According to their website:
Virtual Market is a virtual convention held in the virtual reality platform, VRChat. In it, attendees are able to browse virtual goods and contents such as 3D models and props, try on virtual avatars and purchase any content that catches their fancy through an external website. It is our vision to enrich and to push the boundaries of the Virtual Reality experience.
The venue consists of six separate worlds, each of which has many booths from various vendors selling avatars and accessories. In my visit on Saturday, I managed to visit three of them, and I was very impressed by what I saw.
Here’s a couple of pictures I took using the in-world camera:
Here’s a link to their launch page (it’s in Japanese, but you should be able to figure it out with Chrome’s automatic translation option).
I’m not what you would call a traditional computer gamer. I’m simply not interested in most shoot-em-up games and MMOs (although I did get as far as level 20 in Lord of the Rings Online, because I am such a Lord of the Rings fan).
The only games I have ever been interested in have been puzzle-solving exploration games like Mystand Riven. (By the way, if you liked those games, Cyan has released a new VR adventure called Obduction, which I thoroughly enjoyed! They’re also working on a new game called ZED.)
If you like these type of games yourself, I am happy to tell you that there is a brand new first-person open-world explorer game that was just released on Steam last month, called Eastshade. Unlike most other computer games, there’s no guns, no violence, and no killing. According to their press kit:
Eastshade Studios was founded in December 2013 when Danny [Weinbaum] quit his day job as a 3D environment artist in triple-A games to build a weird world (Eastshade). With collaborators sprinkled around the globe, we are committed to building worlds that feel like real places, explored through non-violent mechanics.
“We were trying to think of a way to reward the kind of thing we wanted the player to do in Eastshade, which is basically to go slow, relax, follow their whims, and sightsee,” Weinbaum explained. “Eventually we came up with the idea to allow the player to ‘take’ paintings and create quests around the player capturing certain objects, places, colours, times of day, or a combination of those. This works in perfect harmony with wandering, because the slower the player goes, and the more they let the sense of place wash over them, the better they will do at these quests.”
In the game, you play a shipwrecked artist who is visiting Eastshade for the first time. Armed with your easel (the only belonging you were able to save from the shipwreck), you explore the expansive landscape, talk to various people you meet, solve puzzles, complete quests, and collect boards and cloth to make canvases on which to paint the beautiful scenery around you.
And Eastshade is gorgeous! It’s obvious that a lot of time and attention was put into the graphics for this game, and it shows. The best part is, you can wander around freely; you don’t need to stay on the well-trodden pathways that criss-cross Eastshade. You can wander through the woods and follow the rivers (even do a little fishing).
The daily eclipse in EastshadeThe city of Nava
As I mentioned, there are many quests to complete, in some of which you can earn currency which you can use to get lodgings for the night or to purchase more art supplies. You will also have opportunities to complete and sell paintings to various residents you encounter.
I’ve been playing Eastshade for two days now, and I am thoroughly enchanted. Here are a couple of promotional videos for the game:
Eastshade is not an MMO; you explore the island and paint without encountering other players, just NPCs with whom you interact. For this reason I will not be including it in my actively-updated list of social VR/virtual worlds. But it is still a visually stunning open-world platform that is well worth a visit. I recommend it highly.
