Word reaches me that Spiderweb Software has released a spiffied-up remake of the classic wRPG Avernum 2, titled Avernum 2: Crystal Souls.

The narrative premise:

The end has come. Years ago, your people were imprisoned in the underworld, doomed to end their lives in the darkness. Then that was not enough. Your captors have invaded your caves, determined to kill you all. They are winning the war.

All known lands are commanded by the Empire, the eternal power that controls the known world. Everyone who spoke out, who misbehaved, who didn’t fit in was cast into the dark, volcanic pits of Avernum, far below the surface. There, these exiles survived, gained power, and struck back. They assassinated the lord of the Empire.

Now the Empire will have revenge. They have invaded Avernum, taking cave after cave, destroying your people. Your land needs a hero, and it needs it now. If you can’t find a way to stop them, and soon, you are all doomed.

The Avernum series is turn-based, party-based, and employs a 2D isometric presentation. As you can see, the game now looks much nicer than it did in its incarnation from 15 years ago:

The feature list:

• Epic fantasy adventure with over 40 hours of gameplay.
• An enormous underworld, with multiple nations and alien cultures.
• Over 100 towns and dungeons.
• Three separate game-winning quests. There are many ways to fight the invaders. Do just one of them or all three!
• Unique races and settings make Avernum different from any adventure out there.
• Dozens of side quests and hundreds of magical artifacts.
• Rich game system with over 60 spells and battle disciplines and a multitude of beneficial character traits to choose from.

You can download a free demo of Avernum 2: Crystal Souls for Windows or Mac. The full game will run you $19.99; you can nab it from GOG, The Humble Store, or Steam. Vogel writes that he plans to port the game to iPad as well.

Words reaches me that there’s a new graphical roguelike out. Developed by British indie developer Angry Toad Studios, this one’s called The Depths of Tolagal.

The premise:

You are searching for your missing apprentice within the deep, dark dungeons of Tolagal. Did he go there willingly, or was he kidnapped? You don’t really care, you just want your damn apprentice back!

So, uh, it seems it’s not big on story–but that’s pretty much par for for course in the roguelike universe. Besides: according to the developer, this game’s emphasis is on tactical combat.

While movement in exploration mode is of the traditional one-step-at-a-time variety, combat employs an action point system that expands the possibility space pretty considerably. You can see how this looks in the trailer below:

I have yet to see any media for the game which shows you playing any character class other than a butcher, but the game does let you shape your character as you level up by selecting from different perks, so it has that going for it.

The Depths of Tolagal is available for $9.99 right now via The Humble Store and Steam. Windows, Mac and Linux.

Happy new year, indie RPG fans! It has just come to my attention that LISA: The Painful RPG (first announced in December 2013) has been released.

The premise:

Lisa is a quirky side-scrolling RPG set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Beneath the charming and funny exterior is a world full of disgust and moral destruction. Players will learn what kind of person they are by being FORCED to make choices. These choices permanently effect the game play. If you want to save a party member from death, you will have to sacrifice the strength of your character. Whether it’s taking a beating for them, or chopping off limbs, or some other inhuman way. You will learn that in this world being selfish and heartless is the only way to survive…

The main thing on offer here seems to be the world, which is a grotesque, over-the-top post-apocalypse. The latest trailer doesn’t show too terribly much, so I’m going to post a slightly less recent (but still pretty recent) one instead:

Per the devs, LISA’s list of features includes:

– Visible character sacrifices that effect your stats (removing arms, eyes, scratches)
– Recruiting 30+ new party members in towns and camps.
– Ruthless choices that permanently effect towns, characters, life…
– White knuckle shopping cart races.
– Expending party members in Russian Roulette for huge profit, but perma-death if they lose.
– Countless hidden secrets in the world for you to explore.
– A life ruining gaming experience.

Developer Dingaling Games seems to have let its website lapse in favor of making the game’s Steam page be its new home on the web. You can find LISA here for $9.99; Windows, Mac and Linux.

Hey folks! With the year ending, we’re in a slow news period for indie RPGs, but there are still things happening.

Gryphon writes in to tell me about the release of Secret of QWERTY, a jRPG in which battles require you to correctly type out a sequence of words under time pressure in order to attack your opponents:

Secret of Qwerty is an educational game inspired by The Typing of the Dead and Dragon Warrior. You explore, interact with characters, and fight enemies as in a typical role-playing game, but when you enter battle you damage enemies by typing words! You can also cast powerful spells and collect magical items on your way to defeat Qwertz and his four guardians forever.

When in battle, failing to type out the word correctly in time results in the enemy attacking you, damaging your health. If you mess up, however, you can use the number keys to quaff potions and cast spells that should help you recover. You can see how all this plays out in the gameplay trailer below:

Secret of QWERTY is free; Windows only. You can download it here.

Merry Christmas, Christmas-celebrating indie RPG fans! (And for those of us who do not celebrate Christmas: Happy Gratuitous Day Off From Work Day!)

Adventurepro Games was good enough to send me a build of their (now finished and released) graphical roguelike Dungeonmans. I had a look at a pre-alpha version of this game last year, but I had strangely little to say about it in my write-up at the time. I expect this post should make up for that. On to the video!

So, what did I think?

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Bacon Bandit Games was good enough to provide me a copy of Letter Quest, and as is my wont, I played through part of it and recorded as I went! You view the results below:

So, what did I think?

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Greetings, loyal readers! I’m back after being rather badly sick for a week, and boy do I have indie RPG goodies for you all! First up, Soldak Entertainment–creator of such classic procedural world action RPGs as Depths of Peril, Din’s Curse, and Drox Operative–has written in to announce a new title, Zombasite, a kind of zombie apocalypse-by-way-of-dark-magic fantasy title.

The premise:

The dark elves have always played god by creating and enhancing underworld slave creatures. As they watched a horde of zombies destroy the huge demon city Kraval, the dark elves were tantalized by the devastating power of uncontrolled zombies, and desired to control and increase it. When they wove their dominating magic into a few captive zombies something went horribly wrong!

They hadn’t known the powerful necromancer, Ciglio, had created these zombies. To control his huge armies of undead, Ciglio permanently bound his zombies and their infected victims to him. This binding was so powerful, their loyalty surpassed his untimely death. In the dark elves’ pride and lust, their magic twisted into Ciglio’s binding, fusing into a new, uncontrollable creation, the Zombasite.

Zombasite is a nasty, voracious, all-consuming Zombie Parasite. It doesn’t just reanimate the dead into mindless zombies. It is intelligent, insatiable, and unstoppable—infecting and killing the living, spreading faster and in more ways, helping the dead utilize many of their original skills, and mutating the dead with new powers. Dark elf zombies are terrifying!

So what does this have to do with you? You are the leader of a clan trying to survive the apocalypse. This is easier said than done. When a follower dies, they can’t be saved by any means. The Zombasite is highly contagious and zombies are quickly ravaging the world’s surface. Food is a critical resource that must be obtained. Vendors are rare and have limited supplies. Some of the stronger monsters have survived and are as dangerous as ever. Clans of humans and monsters are fighting over what few supplies are left.  Even within your own clan it isn’t safe. Humans living on the edge are even more unstable than usual. So yeah, survival isn’t easy.

There’s a list of planned features here:

 

• Survive the zombie apocalypse in a fantasy world
• Experience uniquely created worlds for every game, with different areas, monsters, items, and quests
• Explore a dynamic, evolving, living world
• Lead a clan of followers who have their own personalities and skills
• Navigate relationships with rival clans using diplomacy, trade, war, and raids
• Adventure with your friends with co-op multiplayer
• Your choices truly impact the game!

 

For the most part, it seems like Steven Peeler is sticking to the genre he knows so well, but there are changes–most notably, the addition of leading a clan of followers, as well as dealing with other clans of survivors. Peeler writes that you’ll be able to war with other clans, form alliances, and compete for limited resources.

Zombasite is tentatively planned for release in second quarter 2015.

Word reaches me of a hex-based mobile strategy roguelike called Hoplite.

Created and released by Magma Fortress (a.k.a. Douglas Cowley) in December 2013, with graphics by ShroomArts, Hoplite is described as

a turn-based strategy game focusing on tactical movement around small maps.

The game features roguelike gameplay elements such as procedural generation and permadeath while avoiding the traditional roguelike “bump-to-attack” combat in favour of movement based attacks.

I can’t seem to find a narrative premise anywhere, but there is a trailer:

More than anything, this game looks to me like a less-polished version of Auro: The Golden Prince. Cowley writes that he created the first version of the game in a mere 7 days for the 7-Day Roguelike Challenge, but he’s been regularly updating and supporting it since then, with the most recent update having arrived in September of this year.

Hoplite is available for iOS and Android for $1.99.

Welcome back to Back to Back, gentle readers! It’s been much too long, and–uh oh. I just realized: do you know what time it is? If you said “December, the month where Kickstarter campaigns go to die,” then I’m afraid you are correct.

Before we take a look at the current picture, though, let’s see what happened to all the games in our last edition. Animal Gods, Celestial Tear, Flamberge, Graywalkers: Purgatory, Rogue Wizards, Soul Knights, and Voxel Quest were each funded; Battlestation, Border: Remembrance, Dark Drive, Everstar, Exile Saga, Fragmented Fate, Golden Hour, Gorge, Graal Seeker, and Laser Fury were not. That means that well less than half of the games hit their goals, which doesn’t bode well for the current crop.

Speaking of which, let’s look at the games now seeking funding…

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Developer Adventurepro Games (the new company of existing dev Jim Shepard) has now released their graphical roguelike Dungeonmans. First announced in the summer of 2013 following a successful Kickstarter run, Dungeonmans features a deliberately silly world with persistent progress between characters.

The premise:

In an untamed wilderness, where civilization lives in the shadow of fearsome beasts and lawless villainy, the only light against the darkness are the courageous Dungeonmens! With cunning minds, mighty thews and iron wills, these great heroes and heroines are dedicated toward exploring the unknown, taming the wild, and crushing the fiercest of beasts.

Adventure begins at the Dungeonmans Academy, an ever-growing bastion of learning that expands and evolves based on the efforts of its graduates. As heroes return from their journeys burdened by giant piles of precious loot and ancient wisdom, the Academy grows and future graduates are able to take advantage of this knowledge, starting with a leg up on their quest to avenge the bold graduates who fell in previous battles.

The vast overworld teems with adventure! There are indeed dungeons deep and plentiful, but also dripping swamps, deathless crypts, huddled warrens, forest camps of bandits and highwaymen, ancient towers ruled by powerful despots, and even more terrible dangers waiting in the darkest shadows. A Dungeonmans rises to the challenge with a healthy mix of Skills and Masteries, fighting up close, at range, with steel and spell alike. Unfettered by “class restrictions”, a Dungeonmans chooses the right tools for the battles ahead.

The dev has posted a launch trailer which helpfully shows us what the game looks like without the need for pesky “words”:

(My only regret about this trailer is that it doesn’t feature a choir full of manly altos belting out “Dungeon-maaaaaans!” in time to music, a la the theme to Rawhide.)

The game’s final feature list reads as follows:

• True roguelike adventure: turn-based, tough but fair, countless combat options.
• More than 75 unique player abilities.
• 12 different styles of Dungeons and Battlefields with more on the way.
• Six class archetypes to mix and match.
• 50+ enemies, including the fearsome Triger!
• The Dungeonmans Academy, your home base that grows with each play.
• A world-class soundtrack brimming with music straight from the era of RPG classics.

I went ahead and checked out an early version of Dungeonmans last year; you can view my video preview from that experience here. Suffice it to say, I quite enjoyed it. I’ll be doing my best to give the new, finished version a first impressions piece of its own very soon, along with expanded thoughts on the game and how it stacks up against the current crop of indie graphical roguelikes.

In the meantime, you can nab Dungeonmans for yourself on Steam or via The Humble Store for $15; Windows only.