Word reaches me of a new jRPG: Twilight of the Gods (a.k.a. Götterdämmerung in the game’s original German).

Developed by Default Games, Twilight of the Gods takes place in 2112, a century after the world tore itself asunder:

In the year 2012, a series of unexplained terrorist attacks pushes the world into nuclear war; civilization as we know it is completely destroyed. The war’s few survivors gather in small villages and struggle against famine and disease. In the following decades, six charismatic leaders appear in various parts of the globe and begin shaping new civilizations from the ruins. It does not take long before these new empires start to fight among each other, and new wars break out.
Slowly, gradually, the new empires learn to live with each other; today, one hundred years after the nuclear war, the world lives in a fragile peace.
In the trading post of Dikea, on the southern border of the Saharan desert, a young boy grows up in a peaceful culture of farmers who shun any technology that is not absolutely necessary for growing crops. When a mysterious flying object falls into his father’s cabbage patch, his life is suddenly about to become a lot more interesting…

Here is a gameplay trailer that shows off the (surprisingly numerous) sides of TotG:

Twilight of the Gods is currently available for $19.99 direct from the developer. It is Windows-only. (If you don’t buy the game up-front, it functions as a free demo with two hours of gameplay available before you have to unlock it.)

Greg Lobanov (a.k.a. Banov) was good enough to provide me with a pre-release beta build of his upcoming jRPG spookfest Phantasmaburbia, and so I did what I usually do when developers give me early access: I scoped the game out and made a video! Click below to get a special sneak peek:

Phantasmaburbia is due to release on October 31st. However, no word yet from Banov yet on whether the characters are, in fact, just stuffing items in their pants throughout the game.

James Sablatura writes in to announce AAIMIE, an unusual sci-fi first-person dungeon delver where you play as an AI robot.

AAIMIE, short for ‘Autonomous Artificially Intelligent Mechanized Industrial Engineer’, is a first person point of view dungeon crawler. You play as AAIMIE, a repair bot in a power facility on a distant planet. One day after a brief power outage, her memory banks were filled with new found knowledge of power facility, its secrets, its inhabitants and most importantly an uncontrollable urge to destroy the very facility she has spent her life repairing.

The developer describes AAIMIE as a cross between Tron and Legend of Grimrock. He writes: “AAIMIE focuses on exploration, story-telling, scripted events and a story-driven gameplay.”Although AAIMIE will feature real-time combat, Sablatura states that the game’s primary focus will be on exploration and puzzle-solving rather than constant fighting.

AAIMIE will not be party-based; the developer has stated that he wanted to focus on the feeling of isolation from being a lone repair bot. Sablatura has created an early trailer that demonstrates AAIMIE’s grid-based movement and gives a sense of the game’s aesthetics:

AAIMIE is due for release in “late 2013” for PC, Mac, iOS and Android; no word yet on pricing. There is also a Kickstarter, if you’d like to help the game meet its modest budget goals for art, sounds, and Unity licenses.

You may recall The Real Texas, the oddball, western-themed Zelda-alike released back in June by Kitty Lambda Games. The creator, Calvin French, was good enough to provide me a copy–my early impressions playing through the start of the game follow:

Actually, I undersold Calvin’s generosity just now: he was nice enough to provide me with some additional unlock codes for the game. Want a free code? Follow us on Twitter–we’ll be giving them away tomorrow morning / afternoon!

Okay, this isn’t technically a new release: Nethergate Resurrection came out way back in 2008. However, Jeff Vogel wrote in to inform me that it was just recently released on Steam, and that is as good an excuse to finally post about Nethergate as any!

Nethergate Resurrection is a bit of an oddity. It’s a wRPG set in an actual quasi-historical setting: ancient Britannia, from back before “Britain” was officially a thing. Granted, the game is filled with all manner of made-up and ahistorical things like faeries and mythological locales and magical artifacts, but it’s set in something vaguely resembling real-world geography with real-world “races” (you can play as a Celt or a Roman), which is interesting in and of itself.

Here’s the premise:

Britannia is a land ravaged by war. The natives of this land, the savage Celts, have long been subjugated by the Roman invaders. At last, they have risen up in bloody rebellion. Battles rage across the land. Cities are sacked, the inhabitants massacred. And, lost in the chaos, in the small, forgotten valley of Shadowvale, a plan is being formed.

Soon, a band of barbarians will rediscover the lost secrets of magic. They will find a way to rid their lands of their oppressors forever. And you, as the Celtic warriors, will attempt to free your people.

Or you, as the Romans, will attempt to crush them. For the good of the Empire.

Sound interesting? The game is available for Mac and Windows direct from the developer for $15; the Windows version is also available through Steam for $4.99. There is a free demo as well; grab it here for Mac, here for Windows.

John Clowder writes in to announce the release of Middens, “an exploration game using collage and original pixel art in tandem that takes the perspective of a drifter traversing a veritable x-zone.” If it were up to me, I’d call it a surrealist jRPG in the tradition of Space Funeral, OFF, or (perhaps the closest analog) Boundless Ocean.

The premise:

Roving its interminable wastes the nomad chances upon a sentient revolver beside an ominous pile of remains. The pistol offers its exploit in exchange for a pledge of inextricable companionship. Espousing to be the player’s conscience the dubious weapon directs the drifter to a nearby outpost wherein the story further unfolds.

Despite its appearance as a wasteland the rift is home to many strange denizens–some volatile and others ineffectual. Whatever their disposition the pistol represents the choice to engage them or to spare them. Aggression and passivity have their appropriate times with rewards and consequences being granted to both paths respectively.

Clowder reports that Middens features more than two hundred hand crafted creature portraits, an original soundtrack of seventy songs, a custom battle system, multiple endings, an open-ended world, collectibles, and some very attractive watercolor art by Shaina Nordlund. Oh, also: a trailer. It has one of those. Behold!

There. If that didn’t intrigue you, you should probably seek medical attention.

Middens is free and runs exclusively on Windows. The most recent version, v. 2.22, is available for download right now from RPGMaker.net or from GameJolt. What are you waiting for?

Ryan Krafnick, the man behind indie studio Kraflab, began work on a graphical roguelike he entitled Epilogue in or around March of this year. On April 1, 2012, he released version 1.0. No one reported it on it. (Which is why we don’t release games on April Fools’ Day.)

Fast forward to a little less than two weeks ago, when the game reached version 2.6. Actually, strike that: fast forward to yesterday, when I finally learned of Epilogue‘s existence. Here’s the premise:

Years ago, the last heroic types failed to defeat Slith, the demonic overlord. Now, all peoples live as mindless slaves to him, and have for many generations. In this great absence of combat, your mind has been left to wander and you have started to realize who Slith is and what has happened to your people. Now you are free from his control and must defeat him once and for all! Dive down through 10 dungeon levels of fierce tactical roguelike gameplay and face your greatest fears!

Don’t be turned off by the standard-issue story–Epilogue features a nice little bundle of interesting mechanics that (in my view) make it worth checking out. For one thing, this game eschews the idea of random loot drops: as in a Fire Emblem title, all the loot you find on an enemy is stuff that that enemy was actually using. Epilogue also features limb-specific injuries, a fatigue/sleep system, class and skill specialization, and a bizarre menagerie of enemies (I quote: “On the first floors you can expect to find Robotic Snowmen, Dual Wielding Sea Otters, and Crazed Martial Artists”).

Here is a trailer that shows off the game’s visual style:

Epilogue is now available for Windows and Linux for $6.99 through Desura, and will perhaps one day be available on Steam if its Greenlight page gets enough upvotes. In the meantime, there is a free demo out for you to try–go ahead and see if you like it (Windows demo here, Linux here)!

You may recall a peculiar little roguelike I posted about back in April by the name of Voyage to Farland. The developer, Patrick Casey of Peculiar Games, writes in to let me know that he’s well into the process of porting the game to Windows and Linux.

Even better, he’s posted the current beta version for everyone to try online. He has this to say about it:

The UI still needs work and it’s using the same mobile sized graphics scaled way up, but the gameplay’s pretty solid since it’s using the same roguelike engine that’s been tested and honed for two years in the Android version. So if players can look past the current graphical shortcomings they should be able to enjoy the game.

He states that ShroomArts is currently producing new, high-resolution sprites for all of the game’s characters, which he expects will be complete within a few months. In the meantime, grab the beta port now (here for Windows, here for Linux)!

Florin Udrea writes in to let me know about I Shall Remain, an action RPG set (where else?) in the zombie apocalypse. In development by Jake Way and Scorpius Games,

I Shall Remain is a bird’s eye view RPG that allows you to control the journey of a Marine who has awoken in a city infected by the Z0M-31 virus. Memory impairing head trauma requires him to slowly relearn who he was. As he learns and regains his profession at arms, his peers are more convinced that people like him, are man’s greatest weapon against certain extinction. Navigate the Marine through the city, organize teams of survivors and equip them to fight, plow through the crowds of zombies with lead, vehicles and explosives. The careful and calculated execution of this just might allow you to survive.

They have a trailer:

In short, it’s a real-time isometric squad-based shooter with inventory management, character creation, leveling and skill trees. It’s also episodic; the “prologue” episode is available for free. The first proper episode is planned for release “soon” on Windows.

Today, we have an interview with a very special person in the world of RPG development: Chris Avellone. Among other things, Chris was lead designer on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II, as well as on Planescape: Torment (widely considered to be one of the most artistically significant–if not simply the best–RPGs ever created).

Aside from his pedigree as an RPG designer, Chris has been in a good position to observe first-hand some of the sweeping changes that crowdfunding has heralded in his corner of the industry over the past year or so. I caught up with him to pick his brain about RPG design, the Kickstarter revolution, and what it means to be independent from publishers.

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