Speaking of friends: when you take a look at Dragon Fantasy, don’t you just feel like you’re looking at your old pal Final Fantasy 4? What’s that–you say don’t know what Dragon Fantasy is? Well, let’s fix that!

Dragon Fantasy is an episodic jRPG from indie development studio Muteki Corporation (who I am told really is just a few people, despite sounding like a giant, evil cyberpunk megacorp).

I’d tell you the premise, but so far, each episode seems to have its own independent story. To wit:

Chapter 1:
Join Ogden, a hero who’s been written off as past his prime as he goes on a new adventure to reclaim his past glory…

Chapter 2:
Prince Anders of Wester discovers the secrets beneath Castle Wester. Team up with Lt. Chester ‘Chest’ Manstrong of the Westerian Army and unravel the mysteries behind King Wester’s disappearance. But beware the mysterious mercenary, Serpent Diablo. Is he friend or foe?

Chapter 3:
Help Jerald, an adventurous thief, and his niece Ramona escape from the increasingly dangerous desert empire of Sandheim. A mysterious amulet will change their lives forever, and only one of them will make it to safety.

This trailer probably gives you a pretty good idea what you’ll be in for:

In addition to the chapters, there is an “Intermission” available which appears to be something of a Minecraft parody in jRPG form. Weirdly, this is the one I’m most curious about, purely because I am forever interested by the various ways in which games approach parody.

The first three chapters and “Intermission M” of Dragon Fantasy are available for Windows (via Indievania), as well as for Mac, each at a $4.99 price point. You can also get the game for iOS for a mere $2.99.

The premise:

The universe has collapsed into an endless blue void, solid and featureless. Somewhere, there is a small pocket of existence where things continue normally, where the people wonder if there are others out there like them… Trapped in the lonely, featureless expanse of nothingness.

But genius persists, and a small order known as the Ysk discover a crude way of extracting power from the Edge of the World. With this discovery, however, things quickly spiral out of control… And into new and dangerous territory.

The story follows Cody, an orphan and farmhand, and his childhood friend Kira as they trace a growing conspiracy involving the Ysk, their strange technology, and concepts that may shatter their little world forever.

They have some screenshots already available, so why don’t we check those out?

Worlds Beyond clearly draws some influence from Chrono Trigger, with a world map of similar appearance and the ability to avoid the game’s turn-based battles.

Although Worlds Beyond is still very much in development, Bridge Unit Orzo have provided a free playable demo of WB so you can try the game out. The demo comes in both browser-based and Windows executable flavors; the finished game is set to run on Linux machines as well. (In addition, the developers promise both mouse and full gamepad support, which is pretty neat.)

Oh, and…you know. The K-word. Another one. Here it is. (Some days, I feel a little like a Kickstarter-link dispenser.) Still, Bridge Unit Orzo is a two-person team; in light of that fact, what they’ve accomplished so far is pretty impressive. I think it may well be worth your time to kick them some money and see what they can do with it.

DataJack is an upcoming 2D cyberpunk stealth action / RPG game which has been under development for four years. Set in the year 2030, following the collapse of nation states, the world of DataJack is run by megacorporations who recognize no rule of law beyond sheer military force. The game follows the career of a corporate mercenary who hires out his abilities as assassin, hacker and gunslinger to the highest bidder.

DataJack features hacking, stealth, destructible walls, dynamic guard AI, and real-time gunplay that hearkens back to the original Syndicate.

Still not getting it? Maybe this video will help:

I asked the main developer, Ryan Shaw, for more info about the RPG aspects of the game. He stated that he is following a model inspired by Deus Ex:

Everything is controlled through the flow of credits which you earn through missions- no separate exp / $$ counters. You then must decide what to soup up: your cybernetic limbs, your guns, your deck, your inventory, etc. So in essence it collapses the skills / leveling into a series of allocation choices. Better arms, for example, will give you better accuracy with your weapons, or you could invest in leg upgrades that would make your footsteps quieter.

DataJack will feature 28 moddable weapons and a handful of cybernetic augmentations to enhance your character as you progress. Shaw informs me that DataJack progresses via a branching series of open-ended missions from multiple factions:

It’ll be up to the player to decide what missions to take and when (limited by a sort of progression in faction standing) until eventually they hit upon one of the three endgame missions which will then lock them into working for that faction until the particular end. A few other games have this model, like the Armored Core series, or Escape Velocity (from way back in the day).

The factions are in place, and I’m working to give them unique presentations. One is your typical cyberpunk megacorp, one is a private military force, and the third is a radical youth anarchist hacker gang. None of them are particularly “good” and I’m getting the feeling that the main character isn’t a good guy either.

There is no estimated release date for DataJack yet; the developer tells me that it will be Windows-only.

In a land were science and magic are the same, you are one of the few born with Extrasensory Abilities–and you dream of attending the most prestigious metaphysical university on the Continent. There, you can discover not only your potential and place amid the Twelve Ways of Spirit, but perhaps your ultimate destiny. Fight drakes, make friends or enemies, chase ghosts and argue with angels, be an upstanding student or a devious rebel–it’s all up to you.

…

Will you follow the Way of the Healer, or carve your reputation as a Warrior? Shall gossip and relationships fill your days, or shall you choose the Way of Truth and study? Will you seek fame along the Way of Creativity, or hone your Abilities under the Way of magic?

Will you choose a righteous path, or fall to the Way of Evil?

Technically speaking, Way Walkers is not actually a Choice of Games game: rather, it was created by J. Leigh using the Choice of Games engine and is being sold through Choice of Games using some sort of affiliate system. You can play Way Walkers in-browser, or else pick up the game for iOS or Android, each at a $1.99 price point. The first portion of the game is available as a free demo in-browser, in case you want a sample.

The plot is a bit wordy, and seems to be something of an anti-knowledge take on the whole light versus dark thing. The feature list is the real star of this one, in my view. To wit:

Harmonia blends the style and mechanics of several genres together.  There’s a lot of Shining Force, a little Warcraft, and a little Nethack.  Each player commands a small band of heroes and collaborates with other players in massive tactical battles to defend (or destroy) the kingdom of Harmonia.  Positioning and management are key to victory; each of the 8 basic character classes fulfills a vital role on the battlefield.

• Soldier – The leader of the group, a proficient swordsman, but also provides valuable support effects to the troops
• Knight – Highly mobile lance-wielding centaur that specializes in melee combat and crowd control.
• Warrior – Stalwart defender, able to take hits and protect other more vulnerable characters.
• Birdsoldier – Nimble flying unit with the ability to penetrate the enemy’s squishier back ranks
• Magician – Slow and vulnerable, but if properly protected can lay waste to large areas of the map.
• Priest – The all-important healer & supporting spellcaster
• Archer – Ranged fighter with little in the way of defense but packs quite a punch from the back row.
• Monk – Holy melee fighter with lesser healing ability and powerful buffs/debuffs.

Each main class undergoes two promotions during the course of the game, resulting in a whopping 56 total classes for a huge variety of skills and play styles.

The developers tell me that each player will control 1-4 heroes during play. They also state that Harmonia Online will be fully moddable, with a built-in scripting language and an official map editor so you can run a server with your own variations.

The game’s engine already exists in ASCII form, and is in the process of being retrofitted with a rather more accessible look. As you can see from this video of Harmonia’s latest build, they’re going for something of a Shining Force 3 look, with chunky sprites projected onto low-res 3D backgrounds:

I’m still a little unclear on the combat mechanics they’re going for, as things look decidedly not-turn-based in all of the footage I’ve seen. That said, there is actually a playable demo available where one can presumably test this for oneself. Why not give it a try and see what you think?

Oh, also: Kickstarter. The developers want money to improve their servers, get extra art, and work on Harmonia full-time. They have only a few days to raise a significant amount, so if you want to help out, now’s the time. One way or another, this game will be seeing a Windows, Mac and Linux release at some point in the future.

This is a guest perspective by Greg Lobanov about the new Steam game approval process “Greenlight.” Valve’s press release, posted yesterday, states: “Steam Greenlight allows developers and publishers to post information and media about their game in an effort to convince the Community that the game should be released on Steam. Greenlight piggybacks on Steam Workshop’s flexible system that organizes content and lets customers rate and leave feedback.” Roughly 24 hours after launch, here is Greg Lobanov’s take on how well the system is working.

Steam Greenlight launched yesterday to a lot of early criticism. That criticism is deserved: the way it’s structured now, Greenlight empowers trolls and jealous competitors to shut out good indie games through downvoting.

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I can’t seem to find mention of a narrative anywhere in the game’s description, and actually playing the game just drops you into the world with no exposition or explanation.

Having played the game a bit, I can confirm that it’s tap-to-move, with combat occurring in real time. However, combat is entirely automated. When an enemy gets close, your character will suddenly close distance and start hacking away without your intervention. It’s not quite Progress Quest–you still have to explore and make inventory decisions, and you do have control over what spells your character uses–but beyond that, the game practically plays itself. It’s ideal, in other words, for people who just want to turn their brains off for a while and let the numbers go up.

Here is a video of the game, seemingly captured from some sort of device that is not an Android phone. (A tablet, perhaps?)

Forgotten Tales RPG is free on Google Play, with the developers making income purely through ads (I understand that you can remove in-game ads by paying a small fee).

Here’s the premise:

You take on the role of Roy Guarder, a young inventor who begins to obsess with the idea of finding a new color on earth after a near death experience shows him an after life filled with color. Your brother, Bivare, who is also an inventor and explorer, soon takes on your obsession and you begin a quest.

Roy G.’s brother is referred to as “Biv.” Um, yeah.

Absurdly, Aack Studios has no website I can link you to–only a Facebook page. On the plus side, though, they do have a trailer you can watch:

Want more? Here are two older videos: one showing off exploration, and the other showing off NPC interactions (it looks like all conversation occurs by choosing one of three general emotional states for your response; the developer says that these choices change the outcome of conversations).

Two Brothers is one of the few games I’ve seen to model the afterlife: when you die, you keep playing. From what I understand, dying is in fact pretty essential to your progress. Two Brothers also takes a page from Red Rogue, letting you eat enemy hearts to regain health (though in fairness, this also seems like the most obvious way of explaining exactly what hearts did in the Zelda games).

Aack Studios recently put up (what else?) a Kickstarter, in which they hope to raise money for ports to Mac and XBox 360, marketing and legal expenses, and the costs of…producing stuff for Kickstarter rewards? Meta. In any event, it doesn’t look like a successful campaign is going to make or break completion of the Windows version, so I’ll allow it. The developers say that the game is 70% complete; there’s no release date as of yet, but they say a 2013 release is likely if they meet their fundraising goal.

Level Up Labs has just released the Gold Edition of Defender’s Quest. The demo is updated, and so is the game. You can check out our video preview of the game right here.

Let’s put aside for the moment the fact that they have the best studio name I have ever heard, and look at what Worthless Bums are up to with this game:

• 2D retro-styled art and turn based action.
• Procedurally Generated Levels and Items.
• A squad of combatants fighting for their lives in monster filled steampunk spaceship.
• Use your squad to cover defensive positions or funnel enemies into chokepoints to blow them up.

That’s it. If there’s some premise beyond blowing up steam-powered automatons on a steam-powered space ship using marines in steam-driven power armor, the devs aren’t talking about it. Then again, I’m not sure the game really needs much of a premise beyond that.

The developers have posted a gameplay video; have a look:

As with most roguelikes, Steam Marines is freely available for download despite the fact that it is still fairly early in development. Grab the latest release, version 0.59a, for either Windows or Mac.