Teudogar and the Alliance with Rome is an historical RPG in the style of Ultima 6. Created by Wolf Mittag, this game was released way, way back in 2003. This is an old release, folks.

The premise is simple:

12 B.C.: By order of Emperor Augustus, Roman legions conquer barbarian Germania. Fight for your tribe’s freedom – or form an alliance with Rome!

There’s actually quite a bit more to it than that, though. Beyond touting Teudogar as a thrilling and historically authentic experience, Mittag cites the following features:

• multiple different storylines   Become farmer or merchant, warlord or pensioner, Roman mercenary, or king of your tribe. Countless sub-plots, and great freedom of action in every game situation.

• classic role-playing features   As you play your way through the game you’ll gain experience, improve your skills, arm yourself with chain mail shirts or Roman weapons, learn wizardry, capture booty, hunt for treasures, or trade goods. What kind of skills and character you develop depends only on your actions.

• detailed and realistic game world   You can talk to all characters within the game world, barter with them, make friends or quarrel with them. All objects within the game world can be used and have realistic attributes. People produce new goods, merchants sell their wares. The entire surrounding of each location can be explored.

• strong artificial intelligence   All persons within the game have their own daily schedules, relationships, plans, and views. They act realistically in everyday life and interaction with others, and they react intelligently and naturally to everything the player says or does. All persons are aware of their surroundings, the player and other persons, or interesting events, and they can refer to these during dialogs.

Teudogar is Windows-only. There’s a free demo available here, with the full version available direct from the developer for $14.95.

Despite appearances, it seems Disastercake merely dropped off the internet for a few months, and that development on Soul Saga Episode 1 continued (albeit in silence). In his first blog post in months, developer Michael Gale goes into the problems he experienced working with contract animators:

You remember my animator, right?  Well, he quit.  And so did about 4 others in the past 5 months for various reasons, basically all coming down to the point that they didn’t have enough time to spend on the project for the budget I have been able to put aside for the animations.  This was because the rigging job was so insanely huge, and the models weren’t even made right to do it!  After months of time wasted because animators kept losing confidence in the art assets, I decided to take things into my own hands…

Gale states he then taught himself to rig and set up the game’s models so he could get animators to stick around and actually animate them. He has posted a detailed developer diary explaining in detail what he’s accomplished during the past few months, but it’s very much a missing the forest for the trees thing. The nature of the game itself has changed dramatically, the jRPG style seemingly abandoned entirely in favor of “fast paced hack and slash combat” and a “procedurally generated story and world.” Which is to say: it’s a Diablo-alike now.

Curious to know exactly what’s been going on and what new direction the game will be heading, I emailed Gale with some questions. The interview follows…

(more…)

Lunchtime Studios, a Boston-based indie outfit, has announced a new adventure game/RPG hybrid set in Prohibition-era New York. The aptly named Lords of New York centers around the New York mafia–and more specifically, your character’s attempts to either rise up through its ranks or bring it tumbling down.

The premise:

It’s 1925. Prohibition is in full swing, alcohol is forbidden and business is booming for the mafia. Speakeasies and jazz clubs are packed every night.

Step into a world that dances between glitz and guns, glamour and danger. Are you going to make your mark by working your way to the top of the mafia or by bringing it down?

Your journey begins at the end of a dark alley where the only thing that stands between you and the path to glory is a knock and a password.

Aside from the setting, the most unusual feature in Lords of New York has to be the combat system. Basically, it’s poker, but with character stats governing metagame elements like spotting tells or cheating. LoNY’s combat is to poker what Puzzle Quest’s was to Match 3 games, in other words.

Lords of New York has a really nice art style, an unusual mix of 3D rendered backgrounds and 2D cartoon character animations. You can get a sense for it all in the video and screenshots below:

Lunchtime are currently seeking some pretty significant funding on Kickstarter to make this game happen; their campaign is off to a bit of a slow start, but it’s nothing a cadre of enthusiastic indie RPG fans can’t fix! Without funding, Lunchtime dev Courtney Pinnell tells me that development will continue, albeit with fewer playable characters, downgraded visuals, and longer development time. If you want to help this project out, here’s the place to go.

Lords of New York is being developed for Windows, Mac and iOS. Assuming successful funding, it is planned for release in summer 2014.

Erik Kain, Forbes’s resident games blogger, has posted a nicely written interview with Iron Tower Studio‘s Vince Weller (lead developer on the upcoming wRPG Age of Decadence). A snippet:

Forbes: Tell me a little bit about Age of Decadence. What’s the setting and why did you choose that setting? Where did the name come from?

Weller: It’s a fantasy role-playing game set in a world inspired by the fall of the Roman Empire. Nowadays, ‘fantasy role-playing game’ tells you absolutely nothing, so let me elaborate to give your readers an accurate picture.

It’s a hardcore game. What does it mean? Well, if accessible means ‘a game that can be enjoyed by everyone, including your grandma and the neighbors’ cat’, then hardcore would be the exact opposite of that. It’s a game made for a very specific market, a market abandoned long ago simply because it’s a niche within a niche. Even been in the middle of nowhere? Endless empty land stretching out in every direction, an antique gas station, and a diner that says, “I bet you a silver dollar you ain’t man enough to eat the special and live to tell the tale”. Well, that’s our niche. We’ve moving in and setting up shop there.

Traditionally, many fantasy RPGs are about killing things, clearing up dungeons, and being a hero. Now, there is nothing wrong with mindless fun and wish fulfillment, but we serve a different meal here.

…

The focus of the game is not on killing monsters, but rather on dealing with fellow humans and factions, trying to survive – easier said than done – and making a name for yourself. Naturally, to accommodate all that scheming, plotting, and backstabbing, we give the player plenty of choices, from multiple solutions to quests to different paths you can take through the game. You (and your actions) will determine who your friends and enemies are. There are no default good and bad guys.

Click here for the full interview.

It’s been quite a while since we last heard from Double Bear, developers of Dead State. I was started to worry that their game might be in sort of a dead…state.

Well! Banish the thought. DB have put out a nearly 10-minute long video showing the game’s combat system. Kick back, toss off your shoes, and settle in for another exciting movie night!

Sword of the Stars: The Pit is a sci-fi roguelike set (appropriately enough) in the Sword of the Stars universe. Developed by a small team from Kerberos Productions, The Pit was funded via just shy of $24,000 in contributions on IndieGoGo back in November and (apparently) released about three weeks ago.

The premise:

A deadly plague ravages your world. Your last hope: a legendary alien facility dug deep into the Feldspar Mountains…a massive Pit, built by the ancient Suul’ka.

If ‘The Pit’ really exists, there might be something left. Something that will give your doctors a fighting chance at the cure.  All you know for sure is that every expedition into those mountains has failed to return…

And nothing sows death like the Suul’ka.

One thing that sets Sword of the Stars apart from other roguelikes, besides the setting and use of firearms with limited ammunition, is the very wRPGish way in which characters have numerous different skill proficiencies in varying percentages–all in all, it reminds me quite a lot of Fallout 1-2.

Here’s the trailer:

You can download a free demo of Sword of the Stars: The Pit from GamersGate, GamersHell or AtomicGamer. The full version of the game costs $9.99 from GamersGate or on Steam. The Pit is Windows-only.

I don’t normally post general interest news stories about games like this, but I think this is legitimately interesting. Level Up Labs has created a method to crowd source the localization of its game, Defender’s Quest, setting up a dedicated webpage devoted to that task. I can’t think of any other occasion where I’ve seen a developer do this, and I have mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, it’s awfully clever as a business maneuver, and functionally speaking, it isn’t all that different from offering mod support that users are free to take advantage of. On the other hand, translators are professionals providing a valuable service, and this seems rather narrowly targeted to specifically cut them out of the loop; it reminds me a bit of the Wasteland 2 asset design contest, or Amanda Palmer’s request for people to play instruments for free at her concerts. On the other hand: wouldn’t it be better if gamers of all languages and nationalities from all over the world could play every game without huge cost barriers getting in the way? As a developer myself, I can say that I find the thought of people voluntarily translating my games into dozens of languages awfully appealing.

I contacted Lars Doucet, the main force behind LevelUp Labs, to see what he had to say about it. He wrote:

I just got an email from a professional translator asking me about the ethics of crowd-sourcing translations from amateurs, in light of our recent success. That was an interesting discussion and I’m thinking of turning our exchange into a full article (with his permission).

I used to work as an (amateur) translator myself, and so I’m definitely sensitive to undermining the work of professionals by soliciting amateurs.

As for what would happen if he didn’t use crowd sourced translations, Lars had this to say:

We’re hiring one professional right now (german), which is the largest market. If that turns out well, I can get my business partners to agree to risk some money/time on the next largest markets, French/Spanish, etc. For all the little countries, though, we either open them up to fans or they don’t ever get translated at all.

What do you think, folks? Voice your opinions in the comments below!

Polish indie developers MoaCube have announced Bonfire, which they describe as

a battle roguelike with a puzzle element. The puzzle is: ‘How the hell am I supposed to survive this!?

It seems pretty stripped-down for an RPG, and that seems to be the general intent:

Bonfire is what happens when you take a battle system out of an RPG, boil it down to what really matters strategically, and make it super-hard.

…

The basics are simple. You form a party of three out of many possible characters, each with distinct abilities forming interesting combos, then use that to progress through several randomized quests consisting of combat encounters, random events, and finding powerful single-use items. Progression unlocks more characters, allows to develop their stats, initial equipment, etc.

The game is set up so that every encounter and party combination requires improvisation and custom approach. All monsters are designed to break or counter different strategies, and your characters are pretty fragile, so trying to do the same thing over and over results in a quick defeat. Every turn you must consider what’s the best action to take, depending on the encounter’s composition, your characters’ status, and what items are available. Each battle is a puzzle of its own.

So perhaps we’re better off calling it fantasy strategy, even if it does seem to eschew the spatial mechanics we come to expect in such a game.

Bonfire is being developed for Mac OS and Windows, and should be out “pretty soon.”

It’s been a while since we featured a new jRPG here on IndieRPGs.com–let’s fix that! A few minutes of digging around the internets reveals to me the existence of Vengeance Road, a new title from Warfare Studios. The premise:

Gallagar used to be a fragile country, weak and without respect. That was until Queen Lilliana took the throne for herself. Slowly things started to change, the country became stronger, it now inspires fear into enemies. However, that was not without cost, in that long path the people were forgotten, Gallagar became a place of terror both for enemies and for those who call it home.

Sura, is a young woman, leader of an infamous group of mercenaries called The Night Sword, her only objective is to provide a good life for her brother while keeping him safe, they have both suffered by the hands of the Kingdom not unlike everyone else. What she doesn’t know is that a Rebellion is coming upon the country, and she is to play a role of great importance…

Will you travel down Vengence Road, or will you instead opt for Saveyourmoney Avenue? Only you can decide! You can nab a free demo here to help with that decision. The game is available from both Aldorlea Games and Amaranth Games for $19.99; Windows only.

Hosted Games, the not-Choice-of-Games-but-owned-by-the-same-people company that distributes user-made games created with the Choice of Games engine, has written in to let me know about a new release in that vein called Life of a Wizard.

Created by Mike Walter, Life of a Wizard is an RPG / Choose Your Own Adventure hybrid with variable stats and multiple endings. The premise:

Write an archmage’s autobiography in this 80-year 130,000-word interactive fiction! Play good or evil, man or woman, as you bring peace to the kingdom or take over the world with your sorcery. Brew potions, raise the dead, summon mythical beasts, control men’s minds, and blast away your enemies.

…

Will you find romance, get married, or have children? Will you become the arch-mage, grand bishop, nature-loving druid, hardened battle-mage or even an undead lich? The choice is yours!

Can I become an undead lich, then get married and have children? Because that sounds…well, kind of gross, actually. And yet, intriguing!

Life of a Wizard has a free browser demo. The full version is available for $1.99 on iOS and Android, and for PC via the Chrome web store.