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Celebrating

January 6th 2013: Oak Acre Farm - Now Live

Seasons Greetings

It is now time to give my late Christmas and New Years house, which I have worked hard on trying to finish with my crazy Christmas schedule! This lot contains a barn with stables for four horses and has a great private back yard that changes with the seasons - yes I am testing out my "Seasons Marker" skills a bit! Enjoy!

Shrooms!

October 12th 2012: Tweety Bird!

Tweet to me!

I am starting to get the hang of Twitter - nearly. I would like to get connected to you the fans who make designing for such a joy, so I was wondering if you would like to follow and tweet me your comments,thought or suggestions on my lots and see if you can teach me a thing or two - or we could just chat nonsense! My twitter name is @Astorina and I think there is a button in my Studio.

Muchos Lovings

Astorina

P.s Heres a Screenshot of a current WIP

Spooky!

August 30th 2012: My Supernatural Review!

I attended a Preview Event for this Expansion pack at EA's UK Supernatural Tour stop-off in Glasgow. I had the opportunity to play the game for two hours... which was not nearly enough! The game just seemed to throw so much at you at once I could have taken it in any direction and played any particular type of supernatural.

I decided after much deliberation to have a look at the family names and descriptions for the residents of Moonlight falls, which is the brand new world included in this EP.

Families are based heavily on popular culture, Twilight, Charmed, Bewitched, Being Human, and funnily enough the family with the fortune teller contained Ghosts from the Goth Manor tombstones of the original game. The two Warring families are the Wolffs and the Van Goulds. I played around with the Crumplebottom sisters who are clearly based on Charmed. The house they occupy is just awesome, I loved the layout which feels just like Charmed Manor! This is where I met the witches. Melinda was the only one with a wand, the other two didn’t but they might have been using the Alchemists Table up in the cool attic space! I loved this family and the house design just added to it. It also was a great house for showing off the new Build Mode windows and doors which are the most authentic Georgian/Colonial style I have ever seen made by EA.

I started playing with Melinda since she had learned a few spells and charms and curses! So what did I do as my first action? I attacked the sisters with the Fire Blast spell, then the Ice Blast Spell from the cast spell interaction menu. The spell menu consists of two separate option for charms and curses. Fire Blast gives the burnt to a crisp look on the Sim as if they had been blown up or been on electrocuted. Ice blast gives them a kind of aura of icy whiteness. The good news is that Sims who don't know any spells can't retaliate! Melinda could also use the ice/fire blast on certain objects and could extinguish the fire in the fireplace with a spell, she did this autonomously which was a nice touch.

It surprised me to learn that Sims don't get a spell book. I tried to locate the Spellbook, first I looked at the Alchemy Table’s book, then I looked through buy mode, but still could not find the spellbook, searched the bookcases NOTHING! Magic does not even show up as a skill in the skill book!! It seems to be hidden! So no spellbook, but after looking into the lessons I found out that witches learn their craft through the "Play with magic" self-interaction. This consists of playing with the wand, but they also learn through casting - charms, spells and curses on others.

One thing I learned whilst playing is that whilst having a wand is helpful, you don’t always need a wand to cast. Melinda was on a crusade to attack people with magical spells, so I ventured out into Moonlight Falls on my broomstick (flying along the road like a pro). I came to a house, where I decided to pay a visit. It seemed like a family lived there so after I was invited in by the wife, I then met her husband,n carrying a fairy toddler. I thought it would be a great time to try out some curses, but suddenly nothing worked, the spells backfired constantly. The husband simply wiggled his fingers, and then wicked Melinda was in her underwear lying on the floor! I tried to wake her up but soon realized I couldn't control her and then Death showed up to crash the party! Melinda became a brand new type of ghost I hadn't seen before, a dark green spirit with skulls and things glowing around her!

After I had played with the witches and went on to search for the Van Goulds. Moonlight Falls is vast, I felt I was spending so much of my precious short preview time scrolling through the town because it is enormous! The lighting in it is fantastic and the colour palette is lovely and cool toned. Most of the lots have a good distance between one, so it'll probably play well for those who have lot density problems. The lots are very nicely done, very themed in the styles such as Gothic, Baroque, Victorian etc. I really felt this world was one I wanted to play with just to find out the back-story and how each family was involved; I have never wanted to play in that way before now!

Next I went in search of the Lunar Cycle settings - another new feature included with this EP. I thought the settings panel for the lunar cycle was easy to use, you can choose what moons to have or to force it to be a full moon every night (spooky!). I chose the full moon to see if the Zombies would appear but sadly didn't notice any zombies, not even strange moodlets for the Sims. I guess I'll just have to wait to get my own copy of Supernatural before I get to see a real Sim zombie apocalypse.