Since I’ve been loosening up on the sort of games I’ve been willing to post about lately, I figured it was time to stop agonizing about whether Defender’s Quest was really an RPG and just post about the thing.

Defender’s Quest is a hybrid RPG / tower defense game by Lars Doucet. Protector, the first game to claim the tower defense / RPG mantle, was not really an RPG at all, so I was reticent about this one. Despite my initial skepticism, however, now that I’ve spent a bit of time with Defender’s Quest, I have far fewer reservations about it. The tower defense-style combat system works quite well; and at the same time, the game still feels like an RPG because of a heavy focus on individualized character progression (characters can purchase their own equipment, and can be upgraded as you see fit via class-specific skill trees upon level up).

Defender’s Quest is story-heavy, with unique characters and dialog, as well as a tone that strikes a nice balance between drama and camp. This is a legit RPG, in other words; but words are seldom enough, so have a trailer:

In fact, that trailer probably wasn’t enough either. I don’t think this video does an especially good job of imparting the feel of playing Defender’s Quest; there is a free demo available right here, which I strongly suggest giving a try so you can experience the game for yourself.

Defender’s Quest is available for Windows, Mac and Linux for $6.99; you can buy it here. (I understand that an updated version is due to drop soon, at which point the price will rise to $9.99.)

I just wrote about OFF the other day; I’ll admit, I was intrigued, so I figured I’d give the game a shot and record the experience. The results of my brief foray into the surreal world of OFF are documented below:

As an aside: I learned something today, folks. Dehort is totally a word.

Word has reached my ear that Valdis Story: Abyssal City, a side-scrolling action RPG, is in development courtesy of EndlessFluff Games.

Here’s the premise:

Over 40 years ago the Dark Goddess Myrgato attacked and killed her creator, the All Mother Valdis. Since this event Myrgato has been at war with her twin sister the Goddess of Light Alagath. The war has wreaked havoc on the land and the hope of mankind is dwindling as they are forced to choose a side or perish. Wyatt has been following a trail of clues for the past 5 years left by his father that he believes will lead him to find a way to end the Goddess War.

Do you like bullet points? Of course you do! Here are some of those, accompanying each of the game’s main features:

• Intense combat weaving sword and sorcery together seamlessly.
• Equipment and Customizable skills to fit your own unique fighting style.
• Unique magic souls that aid in combat and traversing the ruins of the city.
• Interconnected zones allow you to explore new areas or backtrack.

EndlessFluff have been posting videos periodically as they develop the game. One of them dates back to 2007, meaning that this has been in development in one form or another for quite a long time. Here are two much more recent videos, one showing off the game’s magic and leveling systems, and a second showing off hand-to-hand combat:

Valdis Story appears to have something of a playable build available already despite the fact that the game is still in development; you can nab that here.

The game is planned for a Windows release, with a Mac port likely to follow. There is some possibility of a Linux port as well, but the developers haven’t committed one way or another on that. No word on a release date yet; I’ll be sure to mention it once I find out! The game is planned for release in early 2013.

A reader writes in to inform me of the existence of OFF, a surreal-looking French jRPG. Created by developers Mortis Ghost and Alias Conrad Coldwood way back in 2008, OFF has been localized into English by the Reconstructed Game Team. The localizers have this to say about it:

Originally in French with only few English resources, a part of the Reconstructed Game Team (including myself) have spent their summer break translating this gem to English to make it available to a wider public.

In “OFF” you take control of a mysterious person called “The Batter”, who is described to be on an important mission. The Batter, and yourself as his controller, are dropped off in zone 0, the first of 4 zones in a perplexing, unknown world about which you slowly find out more and more in the process of the game.

“OFF” has been praised and known as an insider’s tip between French gamers for its strong story, great characters and incredible atmosphere.

Looking at the screenshots, OFF reminds me of nothing so much as Space Funeral. You can download the game for free right here.

Connor Ullman writes in to tell me about Seedling, a nonlinear Zelda-style action adventure game he created and released recently. I’ve played a bit of it, and I can report that Seedling has a pretty interesting world with noticeable influences from Zelda: A Link to the Past and Shadow of the Colossus.

There isn’t too much to say about Seedling’s gameplay: mechanically, it’s a more-or-less straightforward clone of the older 2D Zelda titles. One exception: your health returns to maximum every time you change screens, which actually makes this even less of an RPG than Zelda.

Speaking of which: I had a small debate in my head about whether I should write about games like Seedling in the first place. “They’re not really RPGs,” I said to myself. “They’re Zelda-alikes. They have no stats, no leveling.” On the other hand, I already caved and started featuring fantasy strategy games, so I suppose it can’t hurt to cover this other close cousin of the RPG.

Besides, Seedling is enjoyable and free. Go ahead and give it a try.

Rogue’s Souls is a new roguelike in development by C. A. Sinclair. You may at first think that the game’s title is a typo, but it isn’t: Rogue’s Souls is literally a game about a rogue who goes around adding to his collection of souls.

It’s a roguelike and it’s loosely inspired by Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls as well Brogue and DoomRL. The focus is on tactical combat. The central mechanic is the stamina system used for things like attacking, blocking and running.

As is the way with most roguelikes, Rogue’s Souls is already freely available and playable even though it remains fairly early in development, though it is currently limited to a 5-floor dungeon. You can nab alpha version 0.51 and give it a try right here. Mouse support and custom tilesets are planned for the final version.

Now this is interesting–if you’ve spent much time on Newgrounds over the past five years, you’re probably familiar with the Australian Flash animator Josiah Brooks (better known as Jazza). Jazza already has a fair few games under his belt, but none of them have been RPGs.

Not until now, anyway. I just learned that Jazza has apparently formed a small company called Elvidian Entertainment, and has been hard at work on an RPG with a very Baldur’s Gate-y aesthetic called Ortus. Here is how Jazza describes the game:

Ortus is an upcoming Medieval Fantasy (Flash) RPG set in the land of Candor 100 years after the Battle for Wayland Keep.

All of your actions cause an effect. The reputation you build (or break), the people you help (or hurt) and the skills you gain, will lead you to a unique story path, and one of ten different endings.

Ortus features hundreds of items and unique locations to explore, and many relationships to build for good, evil, or anything in between.

I can verify that, among other things, the game is due to have hundreds of lines of dialog, many of them voiced. In short, it seems that this is a legit wRPG that just happens to be created in Flash.

As is typical for Flash games, Ortus seems to have an outside sponsor (Armor Games). Unlike publishers, Flash sponsors don’t generally interfere in the making of a game, and don’t actually fund its development–rather, they pay upon a game’s completion in exchange for the right to stick links back to their site into the game, then disseminate the game all over the internet. It’s a different model. Because all of that stuff happens after the game is completed, the developers remain independent and unfunded while actually developing the game. Thus, I have no issue with deeming sponsored games of this sort indie.

What’s really unusual about this is that Elvidian also Kickstarted the game (successfully, I might add) around the end of last year. So Kickstarting Flash games that are also getting sponsored by Flash portals is apparently now a thing.

Almost as odd, Elvidian are apparently doing all of their updates via their old Kickstarter page despite the fact that they have an actual website. Why? Who knows. What I do know, however, is that Ortus is still in development (and still in pre-alpha), but is apparently far enough along that they’re starting to show it at conventions.

Here is a video left over from their Kickstarter campaign to give you a sense of what they’re going for:

The animations shown in the video look quite nice, but these more recent stills look even nicer:

Ortus is being made in Flash. Due to the realities of Flash sponsorship, I would be very surprised indeed if Ortus were not released as a browser game. However, there is no official announcement yet as to the platforms it’s targeted at. Flash is quite flexible in that regard, so it’s entirely possible that there will be ports for Windows, Mac and Linux with the game running as a standalone executable. That’s all just guesswork at this point, however. No release date has been announced as of yet.

Mighty Rabbit Studios have written in to announce (unsurprisingly) that episodes 1 and 2 of Saturday Morning RPG will be followed up with an episode 3.

Episode 3, “To Bot or Not To Bot,” is apparently Transformers-themed:

The evil Botchangers, the Badbots, are attacking Shadow Valley’s Jean Claude Van Dam and stealing all the power! Marty must stop them to save the town.

What this means is that the vast majority of the episode takes place in Shadow Valley’s hydroelectric power plant, the Jean Claude Van Dam. The rest of the episode takes place in downtown Shadow Valley.

The developers have a fairly extensive preview up on the their website: go ahead and check it out!

Alchimia Studios writes in to announce the development of Echoes of Aeons, a 2.5D action RPG with some very attractive hand-painted art and animations.

The premise:

Eldric entered the shop unaware of the eyes watching him from just beyond the pumpkin field fence, just into the morning trees in the forest of Westwood. He was unaware that while he had slept, the small adamantium crystal given to him in his youth by his parents the day they were killed, had been glowing on the leather cord tied around his neck.

Unaware of the war brewing between the kingdoms; of a King and his daughter’s disagreement; of the shadows beginning to creep across the land – unaware that the stories being told of strange dark creatures beginning to appear seemingly from nowhere, and attacking innocent townsfolk across the rural lands might actually be more than just tall tales told beside a campfire to scare friends.

But unawareness could stop you dead in your tracks from things you thought weren’t even real. Unawareness could even hang the fate of the worlds upon your shoulders – if you weren’t careful – without you even knowing it.

Unawareness could kill you in a bloody heartbeat.

Mechanically speaking, EoA’s perspective and action-based combat makes it look…well, kind of Streets of Rage-y, frankly. Take a look at this early informational trailer Alchimia were kind enough to provide:

This is yet another game that will be finished no matter what, but which you can support on Kickstarter if you want to see it released faster. (It is planned for release in 6 months, assuming a successful campaign.) Echoes of Aeons is planned for Windows and Mac release, as well as release on iOS and Android.

Well shucks, folks–here we have another interesting project by a developer who can clearly code incredibly complicated stuff, but who hasn’t figured out the most basic rule of game marketing: you have to actually email people about your game. Seriously, I just stumbled onto this one by pure luck in a random internet comments thread (and a bit late to help out the developer, as we’ll see below).

Lodestar: Stygian Skies is described as “a 3D voxel, sci-fi, tactical turn-based combat/exploration game, rich with lore and procedural elements.” The game takes place in a ternary star system on a cluster of planets protected from the stars’ intense radiation by alien technology. That’s my summary; the official premise is a little more…technical.

The game is set in the distant future on a planet residing within a cataclysmic variable star system. LSS falls loosely into the category of hard science fiction, and will include xeno-drones, re-purposed quasi humans, adaptive sub-quantum xenobiological nanotechnology, genocidal paraterraforming, and quantum mass weapons. All power is derived from the alien technology and traditional electricity is unstable due to the massive electromagnetic fields produced by the CV star system.

Right. That.

In keeping with the theme of inaccessibility, Lodestar is being developed in Linux, for Linux. (A Windows release is planned as well, but not until it comes out for the Big L.)

Lodestar had a Kickstarter, but the developer was unable to raise the required funds in time. Regardless, he has kept on plugging, posting regular updates on his developer blog. You can currently pre-order the game for $8, which will give you early access to the game once an alpha build becomes available.