Gurk and Gurk II, Android apps from developer Larva Labs, Ltd. are top-down, turn-based role-playing games that are at least superficially reminiscent of Ultima V.

We’ll start with Gurk, a free game that offers “a 3-character party, 24 dungeon levels, 44 different items, 23 unique monsters and a vast wilderness.” It seems fairly basic, but again, it’s free. And at a mere 100 KB, the game is pretty compact to boot.

Gurk II, released last year, is decidedly un-free at $0.99, but it’s also more ambitious. For your minor expenditure, the devs say you’ll get the following in return:

Quests, boats, potions, music, more boats, tons more monsters, items, spells. The super-charged sequel to the famous 8-bit RPG, Gurk II is a huge new adventure with all of the most requested features added: quests, music, sound, potions, and an improved look! Fans of the original will be shedding tears of joy as they roll for their character’s stats, board ships, summon monsters and cast powerful area of effect spells. Players not previously familiar with the realm of Gurk will simply stare in slack-jawed wonder at the beautifully pixelated graphics, all the while being serenaded by the lush and authentic MIDI soundtrack. Only the viscerally-compressed sound FX and challenging new combat tactics will snap them back to their senses.

I’ve found at least one review that says Gurk II is a tactically involving game well suited for playing in short bursts, and a second that strongly recommends Gurk II over its free predecessor. Interested? You can grab Gurk II for less than a buck right here.

Next on our list of mobile indie RPGs is another first-person dungeon crawler, Oubliette. Created by GabySoft, Oubliette appears to be a remake of the 1983 original.

The developer description of the game is rather confusing, in that it uses the terms “character” and “player” interchangeably (perhaps a relic from the days when a player was a PLATO user, and had only one character?) The developers also refer to the game as “multiplayer,” and I’m not sure if that’s in their weird, “player-really-means-character” sense or in the “multiple actual human persons playing together” sense.

Each player (character) in the game is created from one of eight player races, which vary in attributes such as strength, intelligence, dexterity and durability. Elves are highly intelligent and (potentially) immortal, Orcs are strong with short life spans, Dwarves are strong with high wisdom, Kobolds are quite weak in most areas but advance more quickly.

Depending on these attributes, each player will be qualified to join a limited number of player classes (occupations). More balanced players will have more choices, including Hirebrand (fighter), Mage, Priest and Thief. Less commonly, players may be qualified for a highly selective class with special skills such as Ranger, Sage, Paladin, Samurai or Ninja.

Unlike games which focus on a single player against multiple opponents, Oubliette allows a party of up to 10 players with complementary skills to face the various types of monsters found in the dungeon. There are more than 160 different monsters, and to deal with them, more than 150 different pieces of equipment, which may be enchanted with special properties or skills.

So, I’m pretty sure that this is a single-player game where you can create a party of up to 10 characters. If I’m wrong, someone please feel free to correct me in the comments.

Oubliette is available for iPhone, iPad and Android, though I admit to being a little perplexed by differences between the versions on each platform. From what I can tell, both versions involve in-app purchases. (Among them: the opportunity to set a “save point” and ward off perma-death for your party.)

The game version and price of entry differs among platforms. You can pick up version 2.1.1 of Oubliette (last updated in April 2012) for Android on Google Play or Amazon for $3.99. To assist in determining whether you want to shell out for the Android version, there is a free demo available right here.

Meanwhile, version 1.2 (last updated in September 2010) is available free-of-charge for iPhone and iPad in the Apple App Store. It isn’t immediately clear why the iOS version hasn’t been updated–particularly so given that the developers were evidently working on updating it last year–but it’s hard to argue with free.

I spent some time this past week trawling various mobile app stores, looking for indie RPGs I hadn’t heard of. It turns out that there are a ton of them! I’ll be going down my list over the next week or two, posting about the games I found.

First up, we have a first-person dungeon crawler by the name Deadly Dungeons (created by an unnamed team consisting of Jacob Ensign, Philip Beal, Micha Hoeylarts, Martin Lande and Jillian Hurst). This is a real-time grid-based crawl, very much in the same vein as Dungeon Master–or, more recently, Legend of Grimrock. Unlike those two games, however, Deadly Dungeons is not party-based; you’re all alone down there with a single character!

The basic premise follows:

After being separated from your adventuring party, you must navigate a deadly dungeon, and fight your way through hordes of creatures in a desperate attempt to escape alive.  What first begins as a simple escape to the surface turns into a fight for survival, a confrontation with an ancient evil, and a descent to hell itself.

Interestingly, Deadly Dungeons seems to be something of a roguelike (note the second entry on the feature list):

• Massive and deadly dungeon environments to adventurer through.
• Randomly generated dungeon levels, creatures, and items.
• Pages worth of dialog, journal entries, and environmental descriptions of the dungeon environment.
• Continuous monthly updates that enhance and extend the RPG game.
• First-person dungeon crawling rendered using OpenGL ES.
• Touch-based interface.

A piffling $2.99 on Google Play or Amazon will net you Deadly Dungeons in its entirety. In the meantime, MeAndMyAndroid has a review to help you decide. Unfortunately, Deadly Dungeons is an Android exclusive, so I’m afraid iPhone users will have to give this one a pass.

Back on March 22, developer TouchFoo released a side-scrolling platformer RPG by the name of Swordigo for the iPhone and iPad. Me, I just heard about it yesterday, so here I am sharing the news.

Swordigo’s feature list is sort of generic, and the website says absolutely nothing about the game’s plot, so I’ll simply observe that it looks a lot like a modern take on Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, minus the overworld. Check out the trailer and see for yourself:

The app is currently free for a limited time; after today, it reverts to its normal price (which I can’t seem to find anywhere). Nab it here.

Chain of Retribution is a free jRPG created in RPG Maker. More interestingly, however, it’s also a “chain game.” This means that it was created via the game design equivalent of Exquisite Corpse. To wit: one designer worked on it, then passed it to another, who then worked on it and passed it on, and so on until the game was completed after two years.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the convoluted method in which it was created, Chain of Retribution sports a simple premise:

When two mercenaries accepted an escort job–thought to be a swift and easy– they found themselves involved into a global conspiracy that would shake the very core of the earth.

The devs (Archeia_Nessiah, Ocean, GreatOldOne, Skie Fortress, JIHAUS, marimo, Khos, and mellytan) state that CoR features a few unique mechanics. In particular:

*New twist on the battle system: Each character is divided into 3 categories. Striker, Balance or Passive. Striker types regain MP in battle by attacking only. They’ll gain 20 MP this way, and are usually more for saving up for a big attack.
Balance types regain 10 MP regardless of what command is used. Their skills tend to cost less but are not usually focused on having a big final attack to use.
Passive types regain 30 MP when you defend. They also start with the most MP in a battle and are Mage-types.

*Encounter Gauge which fills up as you fight encounters (which are seen on the map). Once filled, you can open up a special chest in the area.

The game is free–to nab it, simply head here and download away.

I recently reviewed Age of Fear: The Undead King. Although I decided that it’s a fantasy strategy game (as opposed to an RPG), there’s a sequel due to come out around the end of the year that may muddy those waters a bit. With the review behind me and only a few details about the upcoming sequel in front, I decided to email the game’s creator, Leszek Sliwko, seeking answers. Luckily, Leszek was kind enough to sit down and respond my questions over email.

Hit the jump for the games that inspired Age of Fear’s mechanics, details about the sequel’s multiple branching campaigns, and the developer’s one (surprising) regret about Age of Fear: The Undead King.

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There’s a new interview with Steven Peeler up at the Random Tower of Games blog, in which they discuss Soldak Entertainment’s upcoming action RPG Drox Operative.

4. Compared to your last game, Din’s Curse, what kind of new features players could find?

The biggest new feature is basically all of the diplomacy with the races vying for control of your current sector of space. It’s up to you who to support, who to hinder, and how you will accomplish all of this. Just a reminder, it’s your goal to eventually be on the winning side. It gets tricky pretty fast though.

For example, the ship Cyano is terrorizing the star system that you are currently scouting.You believe that you could win the battle and the Cortex are offering a pretty hefty bounty for the destruction of Cyano. Do you destroy Cyano and collect on the bounty? In this case, the Cortex are the second most powerful race, they are well behind the Drakk empire, the Cortex and the Drakk are at war, and the Drakk don’t particular like you.
Yeah, it just got much more complex.
If you take the bounty, you will make the second most powerful race happier and more stable, but at the same time you will piss off the most powerful race. Do you take the quick cash and try to repair the relations hit later? Do you throw your full weight behind the Cortex and try to overthrow the Drakk? Or do you kiss up to the Drakk and let the Cortex handle their own problems? It’s completely up to you.

…

There is a lot a Drox Operative can do to change the outcome of a sector. A few of the things that they can do to help out their chosen race(s): scout for bountiful planets, locate technology to speed up a race’s research, destroy dangerous monsters, give monetary gifts, and solve major problems like Galactic Flu, incoming comets, and geomagnetic storms.

Check out the full interview here. For further reading, check out detailed descriptions of the factions you’ll be dealing with in the finished game here. (Peeler tells me that two races have yet to be added to the page, and there will be 20 additional sub-races once Drox Operative is complete.)

The Age of Decadence, a wRPG long in-the-making by Iron Tower Studio, has an updated demo as of a few days ago. I won’t list all of the changes they made, but you can rest assured that there are a lot of them.

Age of Decadence has had a combat demo out for quite some time, but this latest demo release isn’t just battling–this one is the real deal. From my brief time with it, I can confirm that there are elaborate branching quests, dialog choices, a whole slate of skills to choose from, and numerous skill-checks that open up new ways of approaching different situations.

Go ahead and download it, see what you think. (It seems the game is Windows-only, unfortunately, given that it’s running in Torque.) The full game is due for release in Spring 2013. If you’re moved to support the developers in advance of that date, you can pre-order Age of Decadence right here.

I love a good tabletop war game, and I love Collectible Card games. Sadly, this love can never be due to the difficulties and constraints of living on a physical plane of existence. I want desperately to collect and paint miniature versions of heroic soldiers and horrifying monsters, but the limitations of a shared one-bedroom apartment have not allowed it; the excitement of peeling open the foil on a new booster pack and sorting through the treasures inside is surely one of life’s great joys, but my bank account has never been able to keep up with this pursuit of happiness.

Luckily, a studio in the Bay area called BitFlip Games exists, and they are developing a game that seeks to remedy the problems that I (and many other financially/spatially challenged gamers) have faced. Minion Master takes the depth of a tabletop war game, combines that with the fun of trading cards and deck building, then tops it off with a charming and fun-filled approach to art design. As of this writing, Minion Master features 30 minions to summon and do battle with, and over a hundred modifier cards. Both cooperative and versus multiplayer games are supported, and a level editor is included for those who like to tinker with terrain.

The best part? You’ll never have to waste your time setting up and cleaning  your gaming space. You won’t have to waste your time arguing about math or rules since the game engine will do all that for you. You won’t have to bench your overpowered cards and characters, as BitFlip is promising that “Cards are constantly tweaked to keep things balanced. There is no need for the dreaded ban hammer.”

BitFlip Games is planning to release the full version of Minion Master late in the year, but the pre-order allows you to play it right away and participate in its alpha and beta phases. In a classy move, BitFlip games is also going for an “open development” approach, meaning that you can see what they’re working on, see when new features will be finished, and provide instant feedback to the developers via their website. If you’ve ever been interested in seeing how games get made and being a part of that process, this is a great way to get involved.

 

Second only to procedural generation, cooperative gameplay seems to be the biggest trend in indie RPG development right now (Dungeon Dashers, Boot Hill Heroes and Secrets of Grindea being three examples that come immediately to mind). Adding to the pile is Pocket Heroes, a multiplayer cooperative dungeon crawler in development by F5 Games exclusively for mobile devices.

The game is multiplayer-only, with asynchronous turn-based play. From what I can tell, it looks like it uses an action points system, with each character class having a unique selection of skills at their disposal. Speaking of which, Pocket Heroes will launch with five different character classes to select from: Lunar Priestess, Dwarven Mechie, Rogue, Paladin, and what I can only assume will be some sort of mage.

Pocket Heroes was initially planned for a May 10 release, but F5 state that that’s going to be pushed back to sometime later in the month to make room for extra polish. Here is a trailer showing off an in-progress build of the game: