When we set up Tomb of Ash a few years ago, we strove to make it a different, unique and exceptional website; a website that would deliver original content and not rely on official news posts.

Last year we created a number of incredible projects, such as providing our English and Russian speaking audiences with up-to-date media and news from E3 and other events.

You can read about our projects from last year in the End of Year report 2015. Truly, 2015 was very productive for us and we knew that it would be hard to top that year. 

From the beginning of 2016 we started producing unique projects, such as our Baba Yaga video, that was nominated for the Royal Television Society Award. Our ultimate pride however is our efforts to create the largest 20th Anniversary Celebrations for the fans, which we did with PLAY Expo.

We also tried to re-unite our divided community with our upcoming 20th Anniversary Video Project and we thank everyone who joined us on that journey.

Lastly, from mid-October until the end of November we had a number of Super Tomb Raider weeks, during which we would post exclusive Tomb Raider related content DAILY.

Core Design, Natalie Cook, Tomb Raider fans  and 2/3 of Tomb of Ash team at PLAY Expo. Photo by the Big Issue North

Below is the full list of our accomplishments this year.

We thank every single one of our readers for their help and support. We really can’t thank you all enough for helping us weather the negativity of the last year. We are still not certain about our future as an “official fansite” outlet but we definitely won’t be quitting, even if we do go “rogue”, as we feel we owe that to our readers and friends who have stuck with us through uncertain times. We also would like to thank every single contributor to our website, be you anonymous or not. Your submissions are greatly appreciated by us and Tomb Raider fans worldwide. Lastly, thank you to those of our readers who’s generous donations allowed us to upgrade some of our photo equipment.

~Ash, Terenete, April and Tatiana 

EVENTS

• PLAY Expo – we were co-organisers, coordinators and stage directors for the Tomb Raider celebrations at the expo
• 20 Years of Tomb Raider at the QUAD 
  
• MCM Comic Con Manchester
  
• Chester Comic Con
  
• Reboot Infogamer
  
• Gamescom
• insomnia 59
• Tomb Raider LIVE in Concert

ARTICLES

• A Guide To The Real Locations In Tomb Raider 3
  
• Exploring Aldwych – The Real Location In Tomb Raider 3
  

• Easter Eggs In The Angel Of Darkness

INTERVIEWS

As usual, a number of exclusive interviews were conducted throughout the year

• Judith Gibbins
• Natalie Cook
• Jill de Jong
• Nathan McCree
• Murti Schofield
• Richard Morton
• A number of ex-Core Design team members were interviewed in our PLAY Expo video recap

VIDEOS

We were super busy with creating visual content, such as our Baba Yaga project (below). However, we felt it was important to cover all of the major “TR20″ events this year so we released a number of recap videos for those who could not attend.

PLAY Expo recap

• Tomb Raider 20th Anniversary Panel at PLAY Expo
• Nathan McCree at PLAY Expo
• Lara’s Diary – Baba Yaga
• Core Design Panel at the QUAD, Derby
• Murti Schofield – Writing Games (Chester Comic Con 2016)

IMAGES

We released NUMEROUS  unseen screenshots and renders, notably from

• Tomb Raider the 10th Anniversary Edition
  

• Tomb Raider the Angel of Darkness
  

• Classic Tomb Raider Series

We also released some fan-art, such as

• 3D renders
  
• LED Art

OTHER TOMB RAIDER 20 CONTENT

• 20th Anniversary Project
• Croft Confessions
• PLAY Expo Guestbook
• Natalie Cook – Raider (single)

PRESS AND PUBLICATIONS

Our website and our projects made it into online and print-based media!

• Retro Gamer titled Ash Kaprielov, the creator of Tomb Ash, as “Lara’s Biggest Fan” and wrote a feature about him in their huge TR20 article.
• The Big Issue North
• Liverpool Screen School
• The Arcade 
• Cherrylight (Russia)

Awards

We were overwhelmed to learn that our Baba Yaga video is nominated for a Royal Television Society award. The Royal Television Society is a British educational charity for the discussion and analysis of television in all its forms. It is the oldest television society in the world! We thank everyone who helped us with this project, including those who translated it to multiple languages <3

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Check out the latest addition to Liverpool’s gaming culture!

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Yes, I used to “download” my Tomb Raider internet friends on
my birthday and other holidays but this time it was different. Not only because Tomb Raider has an anniversary this year as well but For four days
straight I had different friends coming and going to congratulate me and it was
certainly the best experience ever. People from London, Glasgow, Cardiff,
Manchester and Liverpool came over to my place to have lots of fun and drinks. We played board games and generally were having the best time ever. We even ditched going out as we had so much fun!

Why am I ever writing this post? Thing is, I already wrote
about how I managed to get out of an antisocial vacuum because of Tomb Raider
franchise and that birthday weekend was a pure example of that. Most of
teenagers and kids had huge birthday parties whilst I’d be lucky if I had more
than two people showing up so having all these friends travelling across the
country just to see me was certainly one of the most special moments I ever
had!

What made it extra special was waking up to many tweets and celebratory
Facebook messages/posts from people who were not able to come and congratulate
me in person; can’t wait to meet you all one day  

Unfortunately we don’t have a group pic with everyone who visited me that week but here’s us with Lady Scion, April from Classic Croft and Survivor Reborn admin team

Thank you everyone who came over to share the day and a
birthday cake with me and thank you everyone for your messages, you truly made my year <3

#croftclan

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In YouTubers Life you take on the role of a YouTuber who creates gaming (cooking, fashion etc coming soon) videos. You start in a tiny room with a basic computer, but as the game progresses you can rent better spaces to live in and better hardware, which you use to create better videos.

To create gaming videos, you must choose your reaction to specific game moments and then edit the video together and apply post process effects. You then decide whether to upload the video or retire it. Once uploaded, you get to read people’s comments, see ratings and promote it.

At later stages you can do collaboration videos with friends and/or even hire collaborators who will be doing videos for you, as long as they like you and as long as you can afford them of course.

As with every real professional gamer, you will be invited to a variety of events and game presentations where you can meet fellow YouTubers, record Vlogs and pose for the press. You also have an opportunity to show in a variety of online shops for games, peripherals, furniture, food and clothing.

Even though the game is in early access it still is very enjoyable. Although I don’t really produce many YouTube videos in real life, I still found this game interesting and it inspired me for some projects that I may do in the future.

If you’re looking for a game that is like The Sims but much less complicated and which revolves around gaming culture, you should definitely give this game a go!

Special thanks: A. Rowles.

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