New release: Children of Zodiarcs

Word reaches me that Children of Zodiarcs, the 3D isometric turn-based tactical RPG we last reported on back in March, is now out! Developed by 9-person Montreal team Cardboard Utopia, Children of Zodiarcs racked up a substantial $195,000 in funding on Kickstarter, then took on Square Enix as a publisher (more about that in our previous article).

Anyway, here’s the premise:

The game tells the story of a band of professional thieves on the hunt for an ancient relic. Their adventure sees them infiltrating the private chambers of one of the realm’s corrupt nobles, alerting Toran’s authorities and sending them on the run to stay alive. This means taking to the city’s slums and wading through the underworld, chased down by heavily armed city guards, rival gangs, and subterranean cannibals at every turn. It results in action packed gameplay that really pushes the new dice and deck combat system to the limit.

I dunno about “action packed” (it is a turn-based game, after all), but Children of Zodiarcs does in fact base your characters’ actions on cards drawn from a personalized deck. Each character gets their own deck of actions, and actions–it’s not clear to me which ones, or how many of them–receive bonuses at least some of the time via physically modeled 3D dice thrown around onscreen. You can, of course, see this in action in the new release trailer:

You can snag Children of Zodiarcs for Windows both on Steam and on GOG for $17.99 (a bit less, in fact, with the launch week 10% discount), and for PS4 at full price on the Playstation Store.

The computer version of Children of Zodiarcs appears to be Windows-only for now, though the game’s page still mentions Mac–presumably, CoZ will get a Mac release at a later date.