Aldorlea Games writes in to announce that they have released Moonchild, the latest of their jRPGs. The premise:

What kind of danger can a mother face to rescue her child?

Play as Queen Calypso and her friends going after Calypso’s abducted child and trying to figure out what happened… and why. Can you solve the mystery and rescue Moonchild? Play the game and find out!

The idea of playing as a queen going after her abducted daughter is actually pretty novel, as RPG plotlines go.

The developers promise 20 hours of play time, 9 playable characters, visible enemy encounters, mouse control, and three difficulty settings.

Moonchild is available for Windows at a $15.99 price point; nab it here, if you’re so inclined. Or if you’d prefer to try a free demo first (generally a good idea), they’ve made one available; grab that here.

Karl Crawford has written in to announce a new jRPG project called Rainbow Nightmare: Libra. In development by Crawford under the name Ghost in a Bottle Games, RNL features the following premise:

Take on the role of Lady Libra as she goes above and beyond to help her friend find a cure for his disease. Along with her trusted friends they must sneak into the robotic Neon Empire. Unfortunately for them, it’s not that simple.

There’s also something about thwarting an attempt by the Neon Empire to take over a human kingdom, but it’s all a little vague at this point. The Neon Empire setting, in my view, is the most interesting part of the whole thing. It’s a nation run by robots, for robots. Humans approved for entry into the empire are second-class citizens; all others are subject to extermination.

Here is a trailer:

Although the trailer doesn’t show any proper battles, Crawford was good enough to provide a description of the battle system:

The battle system will be class based. Each character has 3 sub classes to switch between during combat to maximize buffs, heals, and attack or defense. Additionally a card system with 3 slots will be available to boost specific attacks or skills.

…

The combat system is designed to be close like FFX2. You build points during combat to “class” switch on the fly to meet various enemy strategies and formations.

Enemies will be visible on the map a la Chrono Trigger, so battles will be avoidable. With regard to bosses, the developer states:

You will encounter bosses in two flavors. Traditional RPG battle format where you utilize your skills, classes, weapons, and strategy to defeat a powerful foe that requires you to think and plan your next move. The second are timer bosses, that are simply too large to be directly damaged. You will need to outlast a timer and avoid it’s brutal attacks and incoming obstacles.

Crawford has said that you will have the choice of one of two parties of characters to play through the game with, each with different abilities and different “rewards to unlock.”

If you want to help the developer get enough funding to finish up the soundtrack and hire a second pixel artist, he’s running a Kickstarter for that express purpose right now. RNL will be released for Windows at some point; I haven’t seen any estimated release date posted yet.

Silence your cell phones and leave the babies outside, folks: it’s time for another of IndieRPG.com’s Movie Nights!

For this week’s edition, we have a new pre-alpha teaser for Telepath Tactics (previously covered here) showing off the game’s new character animations, an IGF trailer showing the latest build of Drox Operative (previously covered here), and some brand-new gameplay footage from the upcoming action RPG Valdis Story (previously covered here). Hit the jump for the movies!

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I’m behind the times on this one, apparently: I actually found A Closed World while I was browsing the official selections at Indiecade. A jRPG by Todd Harper and MIT’s Gambit Game Lab,

This console RPG-like game puts you in the shoes of a young resident of a village just outside a forest that everyone says is a place of no return. Supposedly home to hungering demons and a beast that would destroy the village, the forest is forbidden and nobody knows what’s on the other side. However, our hero’s beloved — tired of the oppressive attitude of the villagers — decided to go there, as anywhere would be better than home. Now it’s your turn to follow after. Are you willing to risk everything to find out what’s on the other side?

Here’s a gameplay video:

Truth be told, it strikes me as more of a proof-of-concept than a complete game. The mechanics of combat are imaginative in theme but undercooked in implementation, the narrative is never really explored too deeply, and the whole experience is ultimately quite short. However, with that said, the game is free and available to play in-browser, so it’s hard to complain. Try it here.

David Williams writes in to announce The Wizard’s Lair, the latest in a seemingly endless stream of graphical roguelikes coming out of the community lately.

The premise:

The game is an RPG in the spirit of Roguelikes and the Mystery Dungeon series, in which the hero(you) is tasked to descend the Dungeon and defeat the Wizard of Anarkhis, who has stolen a powerful Staff and threatens to destroy everything in his wake! It has randomly-generated dungeons, fearsome monsters and a bunch of potions and spell scrolls to use!

Yup, sounds like a roguelike to me. Looks like one, too.

From the video, it’s apparent that this is one of those roguelikes that requires you to manage hunger by finding food as you progress. Beyond that, I’m not totally clear on what distinguishes this game from other graphical roguelikes (other than the little “poof” animation for clearing fog of war and sword swing animations, which are pretty swell).

The Wizard’s Lair is currently in beta, but you can pre-order it on either Windows or Linux for £3.50 (approximately $6) and play it as development continues. The game will cost double this amount upon release.

I’ve stumbled across a new first-person dungeon delver under development by the name of Dungeonspace.

“Another one?” Yup. This one stands out, however, for one big reason: “a LAN/Internet multiplayer mode.” The game also supports modding, with the ability to add in entirely new creature art and dungeon tilesets to the game.

The game’s premise is interesting as well, if currently short on narrative justification:

Dungeonspace is a classic Dungeon Crawler combined with Space exploration. Your aim is to build a ship, get into space and search for planets an explore them in a classic 2D Dungeon Master style. The space is meant for traveling from one planet to another (inspiring examples are Whale’s Voyage, Captive, Black Crypt and of course Dungeon Master).

Dungeonspace is still quite early in development, but developer Crank Gaming does have a few screenshots up. Check it out:

They ordinarily have a prototype version available to play in-browser, though it currently appears to be offline.

 

Christian Werner writes in with news of a new graphical roguelike, Battlepaths. (It’s new to PC, at any rate: Battlepaths was evidently released on XBLIG some 4 months ago.)

Created by Key17 Games, Battlepaths takes place across three realms. Battlepaths has a loot system reminiscent of Diablo, the ability to swap items between your characters, and a magic system based on consumable “potions” (some of which are evidently just thrown at enemies, alchemist-style). Leveling involves character specialization. To wit:

You can build a heavy, damage dealing tank, a deadly ninja that utilizes high speed and agility to attack his victims from out of nowhere, a true master of mind who crushes his foes with powerful combinations of special abilities, or something in between.

The goal is to become “powerful enough to face the Chaos Overlord”–if there is any semblance of a plot beyond that, the devs don’t mention it. Here is the trailer:

Battlepaths is available on XBox 360 via XBLIG for 80 points, or for Windows for $2.99 via GamersGate. There doesn’t seem to be a demo, but you can probably get a decent sense of how the game plays by watching this gameplay video.

Greetings, gentle readers! It occurred to me just now that we’ve passed our 300th post here on IndieRPGs.com. Before we break out the noise-makers, I hope you’ll forgive me if I take a moment to wax sentimental.

It has been more than two and a half years since I began this site, hoping to provide sorely needed (and badly lacking) attention to small RPG developers. I’m proud of what IndieRPGs.com has become: a place that has given attention to many dozens of small developers; a rallying point for hundreds of unique visitors every single day, each of them eager for new and interesting experiences in the RPG space; and a resource for people wanting to browse an organized (and ever-growing) collection of recent work from the world’s small developers.

Even better, I think I’ve mostly avoided falling into any significant ethical quagmires while running the site.

I hope you’ve enjoyed visiting the site as much as I’ve enjoyed running it. (For my part, I find it oddly satisfying to document an obscure title known only to a few dozen people.) Here’s to many more years of indie RPGs!

Ari Rae-Silver writes in to announce Antharion, an isometric turn-based party-based wRPG in development by Orphic Software.

The premise:

Ever since the murder of the beloved King Mallory (uniter of the Kingdom) at the hands of his own debauched son (and now King) Zeverith, the Kingdom of Antharion has been ravaged by political turmoil. Zeverith’s first act as King was to dissolve the Senate; his second was to sell off large chunks of the Kingdom to rich noblemen who promptly enslaved many of their inhabitants. The Order was a collective of adept magical enthusiasts who for centuries collaborated in secret to tame and refine their arcane magical knowledge. Zeverith quickly became aware of the Orders existence through his network of spies and sought to stamp them out. Many were killed by Zeverith’s forces while others fled deep into the depths of long forgotten caverns – some of the more masterful Wizards even managed to magically construct artificial planes of existence to escape off into. In response, Zeverith began what would come to be known as The Great Purge, sending his men from city to city to hunt down every last Wizard leaving no stone unturned. As part of a poor group of peasants from a small quiet town on the outskirts of the Kingdom, you suddenly find yourself swept up in the purge when, without notice, a group of Zeverith’s men storm your town, murder nearly all of its inhabitants, and burn every last house to the ground. Taken deep into an underground dungeon for a torturing and eventual execution, you somehow manage to overpower your captors. What happens next will be up to you.

The developers state: “We wanted to fuse together elements from classics like: The Elder Scrolls (a huge open world), Baldur’s Gate (a deep tactical combat), and Ultima (a classic old-school look and feel) into a single unique RPG experience.” Combat is turn-based with action points; character creation lets you create every member of your party. The developers promise more than 100 dungeons, 20+ cities, and 50+ unique monster types, which would indeed mean a pretty huge world if successfully carried out.

There are many more details on the game’s page, including descriptions of the classes and the game’s magic system. All in all, it sounds mighty ambitious.

There are some screenshots below. I am doing my damnedest to look past the fact that the characters’ heads are enormous, and I think you should too. Antharion is due for release in June 2013 for PC, Mac, and iPad.

…oh, and there’s a Kickstarter. (Of course.)

Graham Norville writes in to let me know that Fabula Divina (previously covered here) has been updated to version 0.32.

The developers tell me that there have been many, many changes. Among them:

• Character generation and player classes are in.
• There is now a magic system.
• The introduction and main story of the first act is in (good for 2-3 hours of play).
• The battle system for the player has switched to jRPG style mode, while monsters battle themselves on the map.
• Karma is starting to be assessed.  (Example: if you take something from someone’s house, your karma goes down.)
• NPC farmers grow their own crops.
• Gardening has been implemented.
• Two dungeons are in the game.
• UI improved; roguelike-style keyboard input is in.
• Help system has been implemented in the form of a guardian angel who you “talk” to.
• Gems can be collected and pounded into glyphs to upgrade items.
• You can now sail the high seas in boats.
• The hero talks to you now, giving you feedback on what is happening to him/her in the world.

Well! That’s certainly a lot of improvements. Oh, and there is a trailer now:

The devs say that they are working on a system for random dungeon generation for their next update. As before, the game is freely available to download–snag it here.