Latest Publications

New release: Kingturn RPG Plus

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Remember how I posted about Kingturn RPG not that long ago? Well, it just had a baby: Kingturn RPG Plus.

Kingturn RPG Plus, just like its predecessor, is a turn-based tactical RPG with an overtly political storyline. This time, however, the story is completely different (which begs the question as to why this is given the appellation “Plus” instead of “2,” but whatever.) Here’s the plot:

The Kingdom of Andaria is at peace since many years thanks to the moderate and thoughtful rule of King Constantin. Even peasants start participating in the country’s growing prosperity as a result of the ‘King’s Verdict’; – a royal law that grants a small share of wealth to the common folks, too.

The story starts with the mysterious murder of King Constantin resulting in a full-scale civil war raging all over the formerly peaceful country of Andaria.

While noble families accuse each other of being responsible for the King’s assassination, the fight over the succession to the crown and throne begins …

Kingturn RPG Plus, like Kingturn RPG, takes place across 65 scenarios. The two games share the same trailer, which I guess is appropriate given that they share the same engine and feature nearly identical mechanics:

Unlike Kingturn RPG, Kingturn RPG Plus is a “freemium” title, meaning that you can download it and play for free through a 10-scenario campaign (the remaining 55 scenarios reside behind a pay wall). Get the game on Google Play.

New release: Pocket Heroes

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It was only a matter of time until Pocket Heroes made it to release (specifically, about two months since the last time we posted about it). Well folks, that time is now!

According to the developers, this initial release is basically a starter pack, as they’re planning on continuing to add content over the coming months:

With Pocket Heroes 1.0 you only see a glimpse of the world of Altair. We plan to update the game in the future with new classes, more dungeons, and even more fun co-op gameplay mechanics.

And look, they made us a (slightly) updated trailer and everything! What swell guys they are.

Pocket Heroes is an iOS exclusive, and can be purchased on the app store for a mere $0.99.

MiniFlake demo released, taking pre-orders

Chris Legasse, he of the 1-bit roguelike MiniFlake, was good enough to notify us all that there is now a free playable demo of the game available on Desura. Also, there appears to be a proper trailer now:

The demo is Windows-only; however, per the developer, the finished game will be released “on the Android, Ios, PC, Mac, and possible browser platforms.” You can now pre-order the game for $3.89 (the price will rise to $5.99 once it leaves alpha), or for $99.00 if you find yourself tripping over big stacks of cash every time you try to take a step in your apartment.

New release: Heroes Rise: The Prodigy

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Choice of Games has come out with yet another “Choice Of” game, this time superhero-themed: Heroes Rise: The Prodigy.

In “Heroes Rise,” Powered heroes have become the ultimate celebrities, and you dream of joining the A-List–but to get there, you’ll first have to take down evil Powered gangs, compete with deadly rivals, choose a worthy sidekick, team up with famous champions, and prove to all of Millennia City that you’re a true hero.

The developers ask: “Will you play as male or female? Gay or straight? Crusade for justice, or gun for money? Will you work as a team with the world-famous Millennial Group, or will you steal their spotlight? Will you actually be talented, or will you achieve fame by releasing a sex tape?” (Okay, I made that last one up.)

Heroes Rise is available for $2.99 on the iOS, Android, Kindle, and for free in-browser.

Telepath Tactics announced

Sinister Design, developer behind the strategy RPG/wRPG hybrid Telepath RPG: Servants of God, has announced a new game: Telepath Tactics, a multiplayer turn-based tactics game you can play with up to 5 friends or AI enemies.

This game was actually announced months ago, but I hesitated to post about it here because I try to focus on single player RPGs (and more recently, single player fantasy strategy games). Things have changed, however. Sinister Design just announced a single player campaign mode for Telepath Tactics, which means that this is no longer purely a get-together-with-friends-and-kick-each-others’-butts affair.

The campaign mode is described as being a linear series of battles with persistent armies and character development, very much in the Fire Emblem vein. Here is the latest (quite lengthy) video showing the state of the campaign:

Telepath Tactics sports an engine with destructible terrain, elevation effects, and numerous other goodies. I’ll quote the feature list to give you a sense of what it’s capable of:

  • Destroy walls, build bridges and lay explosives, changing the face of the battlefield to your advantage!
  • Capture the high ground to get damage and range bonuses for your ranged attacks!
  • Fling enemies off of cliffs and into environmental hazards like water and lava!
  • Inflict nasty status effects like blindness, burning, weakness and stun!
  • Control the map to grab randomized item drops before your opponent does!
  • Build an army from 22 different classes, each with its own suite of attacks, stats, and elemental strengths and weaknesses.

Telepath Tactics is currently scheduled for release on Windows, Mac and Linux in the winter, with mobile ports likely to follow.

F.L.A.R.E. announced

Following up on Friday’s post about RPG Playground comes the Free/Libre Action Roleplaying Engine. F.L.A.R.E. is a free, isometric open source engine for action RPGs created by Clint Bellanger and a small army of volunteer contributors.

Looking at F.L.A.R.E. in action, it basically looks like a less-polished Diablo 2, albeit one you can use for your own games on Windows, Mac and Linux. GameBoom created a lengthy video showing how it plays; rather than try to describe F.L.A.R.E. to you in detail, I’ll just post the video for you to watch:

F.L.A.R.E. is currently up to version 0.16, with further development planned. You can already use F.L.A.R.E. to create stuff, however, as most of its features are already complete.

RPG Playground announced

One-man game studio Koonsolo (a.k.a Koen Witters) has announced RPG Playground, a browser-based RPG and RPG editor rolled into one, based off of Koonsolo’s RPG editor (which has been “temporarily discontinued,” per the developer).

Witters describes his plans for the game as follows:

With RPG Playground you can create your own online RPG Worlds. It’s basically a web RPG with ingame level editor.

It’s is far from finished, but the following should be possible in the final version:

  • Create your own online RPG World
  • Invite friends to play your RPG
  • Add trees, houses, roads, rivers, etc.
  • Add monsters and fight with them
  • Create items and quests
  • Add NPC’s with conversation trees
  • Play on Windows, Mac, Linux and tablets

Since the game’s initial announcement, an early alpha version of RPG Playground has been made available for free online. You can give it a try right here. The look of the sprites currently available gives off a distinctly RPG Maker vibe, but the developer confirms that the game itself will actually use basic action RPG mechanics rather than jRPG.

Game review: Warlock’s Bounty

Warlock's Bounty TitleI am an Android owner who is often frustrated with the lack of compelling RPGs on offer from the Google Play store. That being the case, I was super-excited to try out Warlock’s Bounty by Attic Squad. Warlock’s Bounty offers “Choose Your Own Adventure” style gameplay, a genre of storytelling that became really popular when I was a lad, and seems to be enjoying a sort of resurgence.

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IndieRPGs.com Checks Out Drox Operative

Hey there, folks! I was recently given access to a preview build of Drox Operative, the upcoming outer space action RPG from Soldak Entertainment. Rather than try to describe it in a written preview, I figured I’d do something a little different: record myself playing it for the first time and offer commentary as I go. Here it is:

Please let me know in the comments how you like the video preview. Is this something you’d like to see as a regular feature on IndieRPGs.com?

On the curiously clone-resistant nature of indie RPGs

Every once in a while, I get an obsessive compulsion to create a more-or-less comprehensive list of something. Most recently, it was clones; specifically, games (typically iOS apps) that have been publicly accused of cloning existing indie games. Look at just how many of these we’ve seen over the past few years:

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