Polish indie developers MoaCube have transitioned Bonfire, the fantasy strategy title with procedurally generated battles that I posted about last month, into paid alpha.

They write:

The game is available before it’s officially finished at a significant discount. The price starts at $7.95 and will move towards $15.95 as we get closer to the final build. Players can affect the shape of the final game by leaving feedback on our forums. While Bonfire is technically unfinished, we try to make each build feel like a polished and complete game, that’s just going to get expanded.

The Bonfire alpha has a free demo out for Mac and for Windows; as mentioned, it’s currently $7.95 to get into the alpha for Mac and for Windows.

Yesterday, Rampant Games announced Frayed Knights 2: Khan of Wrath, the second episode in the Frayed Knights series (you can find my review of the first, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, right here).

FK2:KoW is being built from the ground up in Unity, so unlike the first episode, this one should run on Mac and Linux as well as Windows. It looks like Jay Barnson took some of the UI criticisms he received after the first episode to heart, as he has completely redesigned the user interface for episode 2. Given that the interface was 40% of everything that bothered me about the first episode, I find this to be a most welcome development.

The party roster will be expanded this time around, with support for six characters instead of just four (though you’ll still be able to import your characters from the first episode). There have been some changes to the game’s underlying rules, balancing changes to various feats, and the inclusion of a new “dynamic spells” system that will complement the original game’s stable of “fixed spells.” (More on rules changes and the new spell system here.)

FK2:KoW is currently planned for a simultaneous Windows, Mac and Linux release sometime in 2014.

There’s been a bit of a lull in people emailing me about their RPGs this past week, which can only mean one thing: it’s time for another Back to Back!

Every single game that was on last list remains available to fund, though most are approaching the end of their campaigns. Here’s the update, with some new titles added in:

• Ace Arena — a 2D jRPG looking to raise more than $75,000 on Indiegogo. 29 days remain, and they have not yet received any pledges; this may have something to do with the fact that they claim to be designing a new engine despite using footage from what is pretty clearly RPG Maker.
• Bloom: Memories — an unusual-looking Zelda-alike (previously covered here) with only 3 days left to raise another $18,000. That’s a lot to raise in such a small time frame, but given that they shot up $7,000 since yesterday, they should make it if their momentum keeps up.
• Caravaneer 2 — this isometric post-apocalyptic survival wRPG / economic sim (previously covered here) is now in its final week, having finally surpassed its (quite modest) $5,000 funding goal.
• The Enraged — a zombie-apocalypse-themed sRPG in the Shining Force mold, The Enraged is doing reasonably well on Kickstarter despite having one of the most awkward pitch videos I have ever seen in my life. There’s a downloadable demo, which I’m sure is helping. There are 12 days left to go on this one.
• 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. It has $526 raised out of a goal of $25,000; not exactly off to the best start, given that it’s been on Indiegogo since at least March. This one has 84 days left.
• Lex Laser Saves The Galaxy, Again — a 2D “tactical puzzle RPG designed for busy people,” Lex Laser one is clearly going for a Buck Rogers, 1950s sci-fi aesthetic, which is cool. The “for busy people” phrase makes me wonder about its RPG credentials, though; I’ll be investigating this one further. They’ve got more than $64,000 left to raise in the next 25 days to meet their base funding goal.
• Lords of New York — a 2.5D adventure/RPG hybrid (previously covered here) set in Prohibition-era New York City with a poker-based combat system. Unfortunately, it remains a little short of 10% funded with a day and a half remaining on the clock, and the base funding goal is so astronomically high that I doubt they’ll be able to meet it even with a tremendous last-minute push. Hopefully they’ll be able to retool and try again, as this does look like an interesting game.
• Paradigm Shift — a 2D jRPG with $46 in funding and 18 days left to go on Indiegogo; it has raised literally zero dollars in the past two and a half weeks, which is a little depressing.
• Pixelry Champions — a 2D jousting simulator with RPG elements, this game has a little less than three days to raise £20,000 or so (i.e. roughly $30,000).
• Telepath Tactics — a 2D tactical fantasy RPG with mod support, currently on its last day of funding. This one’s more than 200% funded; if you’re looking to save a game in need, I recommend looking further up the list.

That’s all for this edition! Frankly, barring a couple of success stories, it’s looking a little grim this time around. Given the recent, wild success of campaigns like Torment and Divinity, I don’t think we can blame “Kickstarter fatigue” for that; in my view, it’s more likely that people have developed higher expectations for quality on Kickstarter, and the consequences for subpar presentation and marketing have grown more severe alongside it. One of these days, I’m going to write an article with my theories about how and when to Kickstart a game…

Oof. So, I just did a bit of checking up on Ortus (the wRPG I covered last July, in development by Elvidian Entertainment), and while the news isn’t horrible, it’s not great either. It seems that Elvidian underestimated the amount of work they’d given themselves with the project, and their Kickstarter funding has run out.

I can’t say that I’m entirely surprised to learn that $21,740 is an insufficient amount of money to keep a team of 4-5 working full-time on a wRPG for more than a year. Assuming only four team members and no outside expenses whatsoever, that means each team member had $5,435 to survive on for the year 2012. (When they say they lost a writer during this period, I can only assume that that is because he literally starved to death.)

While this may all sound rather dire, I’m happy to report that Elvidian has not, in fact, gone all Manse Macabre on us. They’re going to diversify their development a bit, completing smaller projects as they proceed to keep from going broke, and working on Ortus in between. They even posted a 2-hour livestream of them working on Ortus on the Ortus Facebook page on March 7, so it seems that the game is still coming along.

A little bit of digging on Steam Greenlight reveals the existence of Jorvick, a jRPG with a unique art style in development by TACS Games. (I link to the game’s Greenlight page because it appears to be the only official page that currently exists for the game–hopefully that will change at some point.)

The premise is very short: “A strange land of giant flowers and terrible beasts! Explore and learn the secrets of Jorvick!” Based on the screenshots I’ve seen, it appears that you’ll be in control of astronauts who’ve crashed on an alien world–but that’s just speculation on my part.

Here is the planned feature list:

• Deep strategic turn based combat
• Risky exploration that rewards the adventurous
• Beautiful story told through in engine cutscenes
• Level your characters using the nanosphere system
• Battle many and giant foes
• Learn the secret of Jorvick

TCS Games states that Jorvick is being developed for Windows, Mac and Linux.

There’s no word yet on an expected release date; the developer’s last blog post about it, from September, mentions that “it’s very early days,” and a more recent comment below the post indicates that it’s “shelved temporarily” while the developer works on an as-yet-unnamed strategy RPG for the Vita and Playstation Mobile. A little early for an obit, then–I’ll be investigating further. In the meantime, why not look at some nice screenshots for a game that might or might not come to be?

 

Aldorlea Games has written in to announce the fifth installment in their Millennium jRPG series, called (appropriately enough) Millennium 5: Battle of the Millennium.

From what I’ve read, Millennium will feature tournament-style fights that occur in a sort of martial arts ring, where you can win by knocking (or tricking) your opponent out of the ring. Beyond that, information on the ground about this game is rather thin.

According to Aldorlea Games, Millennium 5 is “getting close to its release.” (It was initially scheduled for release in December 2012.) I expect they’ll release more details when that happens. In the meantime, why not look at some screenshots?

Claustrophobia: The Downward Struggle is a graphical roguelike in development by The Indie Forge. (Neither the developer nor the game seem to have an official website–look to the end of the article for links.)

I don’t think there’s a narrative premise, but there is a rather wordy feature list:

• Expansive Random Generation – Everything from the dungeons design to the enemies and gear you face is randomly generated on starting a new game. Like traditional roguelikes, each new adventure offers a unique experience, with hundreds of different room types to explore, and even more items and enemies to populate them.
• Clean Integrated Interface – All information you need about your character is on screen at once, and has been carefully optimised and integrated into the main game. Stats show gear progression on highlighting gear in the floor, and all loot can be dragged and dropped from the game world to your inventory.
• So Much Gear – If you’re the sort of person who loves collecting gear which has lovely brightly coloured names depending on the item’s rarity, then this is the game for you. Gear drops are frequent, and the gear variety extensive.
• Customization – What with all the gear, skills, characters and all, there really is a huge amount of room to make each playthrough of the game truly your own.
• Crafting – Various forms of crafting will be available, from Blacksmithing to Alchemy. Materials can be found in amongst your sea of loot, which can then become new, shinier loot.
• Slick Combat System – Every character has six abilities (mapped to QWERTY) which are used in combat, and well as just attacking with your equipped weapon. Q and W’s skills are determined by your main hand weapon, E and R by the character you are playing, and T and Y by a choice of your profession at the start of the game. Enemies also have skills unique to their type, which change how you combat different creeps. A spider for example, can web you to the floor if you get to close, and so is better taken out by using disabling abilities in return.
• Easy to control, easy to run – The game is simple to pick up and play at any time, for any amount of time. Load times are instant, as is saving and closing, and the game itself in its current early build is playable on anything from a netbook upwards. It’s perfect for maybe a few minutes in your break, or for an hour to get down and seriously play.
• Multiple difficulties – Keeping with the ‘playable on everything’ theme, here’s the ‘playable by anyone’ bit. Multiple levels of difficulty from ‘Pushover’ to ‘Impossible’ are available for players of any mind set or skill. Or just for those that fancy a challenge.
• Massive Replay Value – Since every playthrough is unique, and every character, enemy, gear set, and room is different on each play, the game has tonnes of replay value.

Here’s the trailer:

There’s a wiki if you want to learn more about the game / spoil things for yourself, and a developer’s log if you want to track changes in the game over time.

The most recent update to Claustrophobia (just last week) puts it at alpha version 1.0.9. As is usually the way with roguelikes, you can buy in now and play Claustrophobia as it’s developed. You can nab it for $4.99 on Desura or £2.99 on GamersGate; I leave it to you to work out which is the better deal given shifting exchange rates. You can also find the game on Steam Greenlight and upvote it if you so desire. Claustrophobia is Windows-only.

Adam Rippon of Muteki Corp. writes in to announce that Dragon Fantasy Book I is coming to the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. In addition to porting the game to the new platform, Muteki Corp. has enhanced it with the following:

Redid all the graphics and sound for the optional “enhanced mode”, added a new dungeon to chapter 2 that makes every much more balanced, redid the UI to match the improvements added in DF2, added achievements…

So that’s pretty cool. The PC version of the game will be benefiting from these improvements as well.

The new-and-improved Dragon Fantasy Book I will be releasing for $10 later this month on April 16th. You can see some of the spiffied-up graphics in screenshots below.

Aldorlea Games writes in to announce the release of Alpha Kimori Episode 2, the second in a trio of episodic jRPGs developed by Sherman 3D.

Sherman 3D describes the Alpha Kimori series as

cute, bright, and colorful Japanese Anime inspired episodic casual 2D Role Playing Games, which feature an intricate action-adventure epic story with a delightful mix of sci-fi and fantasy elements.

I’m not sure where the “action” part comes in, as combat is explicitly turn-based–perhaps that refers to other challenges in the game? As for the narrative premise:

Alpha Kimori™ is set 50 years after the alien invasion of Earth when the newly discovered planet Kimori plays host to two warring human factions – the Bidarians, who want to reclaim Earth, and the Jinrians, who are contented with their new home. Even as the Bidarians destroy with their mighty Robotic Intelligent Cybernetic Armor (RICA) technology, the Jinrians defend the planet with the ability to transmute into colossal indigenous creatures. Amidst the turmoil, young Bidarian warrior, Rick, falls in love with Jinrian princess, Yuki.

So it’s a fairly unusual setting for an RPG, though I wouldn’t exactly go into this expecting novel-quality writing. You can get a better sense for the games by watching the Episode 2 trailer below:

The first episode of Alpha Kimori was evidently released two years ago, unbeknownst to me. You can find free demos for both Episodes 1 and 2 here and here, respectively. The full version of each episode is $14.99, direct from the developer; if Alpha Kimori sounds like your kind of game, you can snag Episode 1 here and Episode 2 here.

Robert Gąsiorowski of Desert Fox Software writes in to announce the release of Srututu: Forgotten Foe, an odd sort of board game / RPG mix. (It actually came out on November 28, 2012, but I only just heard about it, so New Release it is!)

Here is how the developer describes it:

Srututu-Forgotten Foe is a board role-playing game. It is a combination of Monopoly and Desktop Dungeons. The board consists of 64 spaces arranged in a large square. Each space represents different place (Town, Fields, Forest, Desert,etc.). At the end of each turn, the player can perform selected action such as sleeping, searching for enemies, hunting. Many actions depends on the character classes, skills, and equipment. Srututu-Forgotten Foe The offers many opportunities and some skill connections may bring you great results (such as Hunting and Cooking). All depends on player’s strategy.

Robert tells me that the game has 20 missions, but no overarching story to speak of. You progress through the game by rolling dice and moving across a game board. There are six character classes in the game, each of which can be customized with different skills:

Warrior- high Hp, can use many types of weapons.

Thief- fast, increases critical hit chance every 6 levels

Archer- very fast fighter, bonus Dmg and critical hit when using ranged weapons

Hunter- high Hp,can hunt to get meat and fish,

Mage- high Mana,have offensive spells

Priest- high Mana, heal spell

Combat is similar to Desktop Dungeons, in that enemies are passive and battles usually optional. You can get a sense of how it plays by watching the video below:

Srututu: Forgotten Foe is available for free: you can download it from IndieDB, or from Indievania (with an option to tip the developer as a thank you). Srututu is Windows-only.