Simon Mesnard writes in to tell me about TBT: The Black Tower, a very slick-looking 3D jRPG currently in development by a three-person French team.

The premise:

In 2011, Philippe Forté found a strange alien Cube during a routine mission on the Cobalt-5 satellite, around planet Terra. Hypnotized by this discovery, as if he was being called, he risked his own life to take the dark artefact in his hands. Noone ever heard of him after these events, and Philippe Forté is now known as a crazy astronaut who sacrificed his life for an illusion. Yet, the mystery remains.

In 2032, Yan Forté is a kind of forest ranger and lives in the woods of Lutetia – a country of the Europa continent on Terra. He has decided that he would never walk in the steps of his father Philippe, and that he would devote his whole life on protecting Nature on his beloved planet, instead of exploring the space. Things will suddenly change after he meets Ellana, a young girl with a strange black Die as a pendant around the neck, who came out of nowhere in a cloud of yellow particles…

According to the developers, “The game will feature a vast world to explore through various places that you reach from a Worldmap, with random encounters and turn-based battles.”

Mesnard states that TBT is heavily influenced by jRPGs of the PS1 era, and one look at the 10-minute gameplay video taken from the prototype should leave no doubt about that. Neither should the game’s current trailer:

TBT is planned for a Windows and Mac release sometime in 2014, with both French and English translations. There is an Indiegogo campaign currently running if you’d like to help them fund development, and the inevitable Greenlight page in case you want to boost their chances at winning the Steam lottery.

Hello, gentle readers! We’re back from our Memorial Day break with a free game for you to check out. Michael Lau writes in to tell me about Lunar Wish: Orbs of Fate, a jRPG he recently completed using RPG Maker VX.

The premise:

Serathium, the fabled land of legends home to Angels, Beasts and Vampires, and most importantly, the Heart, Spirit and Soul of Existence itself: The Lunar Orb.  One day, The Lunar Orb started to lose control and the very foundations of the universe itself begin to crumble around them. The destruction gave way to an event which no one in the history of time itself could have foreseen: The Rebellion of Serathium.

The story begins, when one day a young boy, Falk, encounters a highly mysterious and seemingly malevolent voice in his room which informs him that someone close to him will disappear. In search of clues, he gathers his friends on a journey to unriddle the mysteries of Serathium and find his missing friend.

Lau has taken something of an ensemble approach to the story, with multiple parties and no clear protagonist. He states that Lunar Wish is full of interesting puzzles and mini-games, with numerous custom battle animations and side quests. Here is a trailer:

Lunar Wish is 12+ hours long; you can grab it right here at no cost; Windows-only.

Man; you turn your back for a few months, and BOOM: Mangobile releases another Kingturn game! For those who don’t know, Kingturn is a strategy RPG series for mobile devices (for more background, see this and this.)

The premise of this newest one, Kingturn Underworld RPG, is decidedly Disgaea-ish:

Juliet, necromancer and daughter of Overlord Xanthus, finds herself forced to flee the Underworld after a rebellion of her father’s minions. Struggling to survive on Andaria’s hostile surface, she has to take unusual measures to get things under control …

The primary Kingturn Underworld RPG campaign consists of 68 scenarios, with a shorter second campaign adding an additional 6 scenarios. The developer states that the main campaign is actually an “extended remake” of their earlier title Knightturn (a game which appears to no longer be available for purchase).

After a visit to the developer’s website, I have determined that the three Kingturn games are actually meant to comprise a trilogy: Kingturn Underworld is technically a prequel, since its story comes first chronologically.

Mangobile states that Kingturn Underworld RPG lets you command monsters and the undead, with new character classes such as the “Champion, Thief, Lizard, Demon, and Heretic.”

For now, Kingturn Underworld RPG remains exclusive to Android; you can nab it on Google Play for $4.89. An iOS port is scheduled to hit in September 2013, however. (It appears that Mangobile is actually in the process of porting the entire Kingturn series to iOS–they’ve already released an iOS version of the first Kingturn, and say that Kingturn Plus is slated to hit the Apple app store in June or July.)

Word reaches me that Brace Yourself Games is working on a “roguelike rhythm game” called Crypt of the NecroDancer. I’m not sure words will do this justice, so watch these two videos instead. First, some early footage:

Second, a live recording of indie darling Matt Thorson actually playing an early build of the game using a DDR dance pad:

Brace Yourself coder Ryan Clark recently did an interview with IndieGames.com where he spilled the beans on how this game works. It’s close to a true roguelike, but it’s real-time and rhythm-based in an effort to subvert what Clark sees as the “extremely unfair” nature of Rogue itself. He states: “I want NecroDancer to be based on a player’s skill more than knowledge of arcana.”

As for how the rhythm factors in:

Well, the main survival strategy is to observe the movement patterns of the enemies and use those to your advantage. (Every enemy has a predictable, repetitive movement pattern.) Most enemies move only every second beat, while the player moves on every beat. This means you have time to hit an enemy and retreat before it has a chance to strike back. And, for the enemies that do move on every beat, we’ve generally made them weaker such that they can be killed in a single strike. The player simply needs to wait for them to approach, and deliver a timely blow!

Clark tells me that they plan to release Crypt of the NecroDancer sometime in 2013 for Windows and Mac, with the possibility of other platforms to come after. If you want to keep abreast of the development process, Brace Yourself Games have invited the public to follow along on their forums.

A bit of digging reveals to me the recent release of a new jRPG named Love’s Triumph by indie developer Gamer Fatigue Productions.

The premise:

Several months have passed since the events of Love’s Epitaph. Creighton, with his newfound ally, has taken the battle to the Tyrants. Together, they will stop at nothing to recover Lysa, and put an end to their schemes once and for all.

It all sounds delightfully soap opera-ish, I must say. Love’s Epitaph, the earlier title continued in Love’s Triumph, is similarly dramatic:

Love’s Epitaph follows a woman who is being pursued by an organization. Soon, a protector appears to defend her at all costs. Together, they must seek help from others, while trying to discover the mysteries behind their pursuit.

Here is the feature list:

• Conclusion to the Love’s Epitaph storyline.
• Customize your party with up to 8 different party members, with their own skills and weapons
• New side view battle system replaces the older front-view battles
• Several items to find with different ways to enhance your party
• Love’s Triumph offers a recap of events from the first game, so new players can jump right in without having to play Love’s Epitaph

The 8-character party size cap is actually legitimately unusual, and might make this title worth trying. You can snag Love’s Triumph for Windows for $9.99, or grab the free demo to give it a trial run.

Steve Gibbon writes in to tell me about Tales of the Drunken Paladin, a comedic jRPG with some very nice custom character portraits. (“Custom,” of course, being relative to the rest of the graphics, which appear mostly to be defaults from RPG Maker.)

The game was originally released way back in 2009. Since that time, Gibbon has come out with two expansions, both of which are now sold as part of the full game in its newest incarnation, “Version II.”

The premise:

The story begins ten years after the invasion of “They” who we do not speak about, their expulsion from the kingdom and its subsequent recovery. We follow one of the great heroes responsible for saving the realm, and come to learn that he has not ultimately been using his riches and strength for the good of the world. Nor has he been using them for ill. Indeed, “Anebriate” the Drunken Paladin mostly prefers neutral things, like drinking and donuts.

However, there are those who have other plans for his riches. Our hero’s strength and memory are robbed along with his great fortune, and he must embark on a grand quest to find out why.

If this were the real world, my guess would be “liver disease, hippocampal disruption, and medical bills, respectively”–but this is a game, so that’s probably not why our hero has lost his strength, memory and savings. (At least, I hope it’s not; I don’t know if health care reform would work all that well for a main quest in an RPG.)

Gibbon states: “The game is pretty heavily modified and scripted, so there isn’t a lot left that’s default from the RPG Maker system except for some of the tiles and animations. It has a side-view battle system with an ATB that has served me well enough, but I think what’s special about the game is that pretty much everything you see in the game is interactive, and in some cases, contextual with the time of day and who’s in your party.” Pretty cool; why don’t we have a look at a trailer?

Gibbon notes that this trailer is outdated, and that the cool new character portraits shown at the top of the article are, in fact, in-game. Gibbon promises 35-45 hours of content, which is pretty darn good for a free game.

Yes, you heard right: this game costs no money. You can grab Tales of the Drunken Paladin for Windows right here for zero dollars. Go for it! And hey: if you like it, there’s even an option to donate some money to the developer so he can continue making games.

Minecraft has always had sort of an RPG veneer, as have numerous other games with visuals inspired by its voxel aesthetic (see e.g. 3D Dot Heroes and Cube World). But we haven’t seen a proper voxel fantasy strategy title* yet–not until now.

IndieRPGs.com reader Steven Adamo wrote to me last week to let me know about Radiant Entertainment‘s project Stonehearth; the devs describe the game as “equal parts sandbox, RTS, and RPG.”

In Stonehearth you lead a band of settlers who must carve out their place in the world by gathering resources and building fortifications, while under constant threat from intruders.  As your settlement grows, you will eventually train up a standing army then venture forth into the world, where greater challenges await.

The features list reads as follows:

• Randomly generated, destructible worlds built with voxels
• Creative building on both large and small scales, from cities to teacups
• Scripted RPG-style content to discover and adventure through
• Robust class trees for both combat and civilian units
• RTS-style combat with an emphasis on tactics over micro management

As for what this actually looks like in action, here’s the latest trailer:

I got in touch with one of the developers, Tom Cannon, to unearth more details about the game. He tells me that city management includes managing resources and crafting items, with the ability to both lay out the city on a macro level and create individual buildings right down to floor plans and furnishings.

I asked him about this game’s RPG credentials as well. (Specifically, character persistence, leveling, classes, and unit control.) Cannon had this to say:

All your settlers, both civilian and military, have their own class which will level up and gain new abilities: Carpenter, Mason, Blacksmith, Geomancer, Swordman, Archer, and many more.

…

Your town is made up of persistent characters, each with with a name, class, and level. You can upgrade your units’ class in a tech tree, similar to Final Fantasy Tactics. Here’s a small portion of the class progression tree.

You control your military units directly, similar to an RTS. For your civilians and crafters, you give general orders like “chop down those trees” “build this house” or “craft me 10 swords” and they figure out how to do it themselves. We don’t want you to have to micro dozens of different kinds of workers/crafters, and like the ant-farm feel of your little guys working to implement your orders on their own.

You’ll have to deal with waves of invading enemies, which (scripted RPG content aside) seems to be the main source of the game’s battles. The developers state that although the controls derive from the RTS genre, battles “will play out at a slower pace, with a priority on strategic decision making over reflexes and multi-tasking.”

Stonehearth is being developed for Windows, Mac and Linux. A beta release is planned in December 2013, with full release to follow in September 2014.

The game is presently on Kickstarter, where it has long since met its goal. Over the next 9 days, $15 will pre-order Stonehearth in anticipation of its full release in fall 2014, while $30 pre-orders it for beta release onwards.

*Except for Castle Story, arguably, though I think that one is a pure RTS title.

Back to Back is back! Welcome, you know, back.

Glancing over the campaigns that have ended since our last edition, Chasm succeeded admirably while Lex Laser, Wranglers and Paradigm Shift each fell short. The current round-up contains both returning projects and some fresh blood:

• Ghost of a Tale — a beautiful 3D action RPG with anthropomorphic animals. IndieGoGo made a weird exception to its rules and extended the deadline for this one when the campaign creators appealed to them for more time. Ghost of a Tale now sits 87.3% funded, roughly 5,700€ (~$7,300) shy of the goal with 4 days remaining.

• King Voxel — a 3D voxel-based Zelda-alike (previously covered here) with a new procedurally generated world / quest each time you start a new game. On the minus side, this campaign remains stalled at $546 raised; on the plus side, there are 52 days left to do something about that.

• Old Legend — 41 days remain for this 3D first-person dungeon delver.

• Remnants of Twilight — a jRPG with some nice concept art and sprite work. If this project raises $1,710 in the next 11 hours, it will meet its goal.

• Reobirth: Magic’s Awakening — “Reo; Re-e-eo! Daylight come, and we want to go home.” This is a sidescrolling 2D action RPG with some nice art and a legitimately cool-sounding system where you breed magical combat companions with varying abilities. (I previously covered Reobirth here). This campaign has an eminently reasonable $12,500 goal, and 31 days left to hit it.

• Stonehearth — a fantasy strategy title that takes the “strategy” side of things a bit more seriously than most of the games I’ve covered in this category. That said, it also has persistent characters, classes, leveling, and promotion trees, so this actually has some legit RPG credentials as well. It’s already close to three times its funding goal; I’ll be covering this one soon.

• TinyKeep —  a 3D, third-person action RPG with procedurally generated dungeons and cute, big-headed character models. The developer promises “a sophisticated AI system, designed to produce unique monster intelligence that behaves in exciting and unpredictable ways,” as well as a pet system. This campaign has 13 days to raise £13,000 (a little less than $20,000).

A bit of digging has revealed the existence of Nadia Was Here, a from-scratch (read: not made in RPG maker) jRPG with a unique battle system and an unusual, limited color palette in development by Joep Aben.

The premise:

This is not the first time this is happening.

A mage driven by guilt. Will any of his good deeds ever truly redeem him?
A warrior that lives in the past, will he ever be able to accept that he’s not who he used to be?
A thief born in poverty, will she ever be worth something?

Three ‘heroes’ set out on a journey to prevent time from starting over again.
But will it solve their problems?

NWH is due to feature 7 villages and a variety of puzzle-heavy dungeons. It also features an unusual combat system. Aben writes:

Characters only target the enemies opposite of them, and enemies only target characters opposite of them in return. The position and moves of the characters can be changed in real-time, and the characters will automatically perform those moves once the charge time needed for that move has been reached.

The game will have a set amount of battles. The only way to increase stats permanently is by using equipment, but even then stat growth is very limited. The main way to defeat more difficult enemies is to learn new skills and use those tactically. Not a single skill will ever be useless or outclassed by another, and not every skill will be useful for every battle.

Aben has made a video showing the current state of the battle system right here;here is a second video showing a bit of exploration; and finally, we have a trailer. (I can’t actually embed these for some reason, as they’re hosted on a weird video site that doesn’t play nice with WordPress, but do feel free to click the links.)

Nadia Was Here is planned for release in early 2014 for Windows, with probable ports to Android and iOS. Per Aben, Mac and Linux ports are a possibility as well.

For now, there is a free alpha demo out (Windows-only); go give it a try and see what you think!

Jon Dibble writes in to inform me of a side-scrolling action RPG he’s working on called Reobirth: Magic’s Awakening. (That’s not a typo, by the way–it’s actually spelled Reobirth, and pronounced like “ray o’ birth”.)

Here’s the premise:

When Reo, a powerful and devastating form of elemental magic, is unleashed across the greatest expands of the universe, sinister monsters of dark magic begin growing all throughout the galaxy. On earth, humanity is forced to seek refuge by escaping to the Hove, a large man-made airship that valiantly hovers high above the clouds. The privileged and high ranking civilians retreat to the Hove under command of the questionable Emperor Vioz, while the commoners are left on earth to fend for themselves against the growing masses of dark monsters. Two hundred years upon the Hove and the once mighty airship now slowly grazes through the air, desperately seeking restorations: damaged, quickly losing altitude, and seemingly mere moments away from plummeting back down to earth for the Emperor and all passengers to meet their untimely fate: death by Dark Magic monsters.

But in a moment,  a mysterious young boy with aquatic blue hair is seen standing motionless on the deck, mysteriously blending with the darkness of the night. No name, no origin –  stricken with an eerily uncanny silence and a deadpan expression drawn across his pale face.

“Who is this young boy that has slipped aboard?” the passengers whisper, completely perplexed. “There is no entrance to an airship that hovers hundreds of miles in the air!”

And this Reo – such a relentless and destructive force – how did that come to be?

Our adventure begins…

Based on early gameplay footage (which I’ll be posting here later this evening), the combat in Reobirth looks quite fast-paced, with a wide variety of sword attacks that call to mind Link’s move set from Super Smash Brothers. Dibble assures me that this is intentional, and that he has drawn further inspiration from SSB in utilizing tight controls and “a simple control scheme that focuses mainly around an attack button, a spell button, and a block button.”

Equally cool (or possibly even cool-er), Reobirth has a system where you breed little flying combat companions called “Pon.” Per the developer:

The Pon are largely autonomous creatures controlled by AI. Their movements and interactions will be both influenced by your actions and the context of the battle. For example, if you attack an enemy, the Pon will also immediately target that specific enemy – chasing and attacking. The Pon are also the spellbearers that enable your player to cast spells. Each Pon will be born with three spells (varying elemental types) which can be equipped in the spell palette (upper left hand corner of the screen, with each spell mapped to the SPELL button + a direction for easy spell casting). There’s a limit to how many times a Pon can cast a spell before it must recharge, but Pon will also have self-spells that they can cast at their own discretion (such as healing and other support spells).  The spells and power of each spell is determined via a Pon breeding system, similar to breeding Pokemon or Chocobos in the Final Fantasy series.

Reobirth is being developed for Windows, with possible Mac and Linux ports to follow. Dibble estimates that Reobirth has been in development 8-9 months; based on the game’s Kickstarter rewards, it looks like Dibble is aiming for release in September 2014.

Speaking of which: there’s a Kickstarter. It’s $10 to pre-order the game, which seems like a pretty fair deal to me.