So! I just did a humongous audio interview with DeadlyHabit of Vinesauce Vidyas about a wide array of subjects, including but not limited to:

• Telepath RPG: Servants of God
• IndieRPGs.com
• politics in RPGs
• game development
• whether or not X-Com is an RPG
• which RPGs get covered on gaming blogs, and why.

Fair warning: it’s really really long, clocking in at 1 hour and 45 minutes. However, in my totally unbiased opinion, it is the most entertaining thing you will ever listen to. Ever.

Check it out here if you’re curious:

http://sinisterdesign.net/?p=1475

Jeff Sullins of Empire Forge Software writes in to tell me about the upcoming RPG Forge of Legends. He describes it as a turn-based first-person dungeon crawler similar in kind to Wizardry 7:

the player will form a party of six characters, crafted by the player by combining races, classes, and other options. The player will then lead this party through dungeons, towns, and other places to battle monsters, solve quests, and earn rewards.

The game features a map editor, though Sullins hasn’t yet decided whether he wants to release it along with the game. Since we’ve been seeing quite a few releases in the first-person dungeon crawler subgenre recently, I put the question to Sullins: what makes Forge of Legends stand out? He had this to say:

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I’m a bit late with this, since developer Mario Gaida didn’t email me upon his game’s release. Regardless, a little investigation on my part confirms that the Bard’s Tale-inspired first-person dungeon crawler Silver Sword is now out and is updated to version 2.09. It’s iOS-only, however–PC gamers are out of luck on this one. If you want to buy the game for your iPhone or iPad, you can nab it for $4.99.

More recently, Gaida has announced plans to release a sequel. He states that Silverword 2 will be full 3D, developed in Unity, and modeled after Wizardry 8. He’s currently fundraising for it over on the German crowdfunding site StartNext.de. With 76 days left to go, he’s currently just under 14,000 euros shy of his fundraising goal. If you want to go help out, I’m sure he’d welcome your support.

It didn’t take long, folks. Shortly after my post about Mysterious Castle, Matthew Downie writes in to me with news that he, too, is working on a new tactical roguelike. This one is called Dungeon Bash Tactics:

Dungeon Bash Tactics is a free single-player turn-based mouse-controlled, random dungeon, loot & leveling game with a minimalist plot. It’s somewhere between a Rogue-like and a Japanese tactical RPG.

My impressions from my admittedly short time playing the game are as follows: it’s a promising start. There are a good variety of different attacks with different effects, and you’re constantly faced with choices about which attacks to study and how to make the best use of your limited money.

However, the game definitely still needs work. The user interface, in particular, isn’t quite there yet. Right now, you have to press Okay after every action; if you want to take no action, you have to actually select “No Action” from a menu and then hit Okay, which is doubly irritating. I’d like to see DBT offer a larger party and greater class specialization. Terrain effects also seem like a natural addition: without them, the randomly generated dungeon levels don’t make too much of a difference in terms of how the battles play out.

Those are just my impressions, though. You can download the game here and form your own opinions. The creator is requesting feedback on the game, so this is a good opportunity to exercise a critical eye and influence the design of a nascent RPG. A word of warning: Dungeon Bash Tactics requires DirectX 9, which I believe makes it Windows-only.

We have a roguelike double-header today. Developers Cascade Studios and WombatRPGs have released a new, free roguelike by the name of Steel Knights. Interestingly, this one employs a sci fi theme, featuring firearms, ammo, three worlds, roughly 30 enemy types and four bosses.

You wake from the peaceful slumber of cryo and stumble out onto the cold metal floor of the Staging Point. Outside the reinforced windows the darkness of deep space can be seen highlighted against the deep red colour of a barren world. Your S.K. suit insulates you against the chill as the ships systems begin to come to life around you, bringing up the lights and activating the myriad of consoles and computer screens around you.

The pair of you have a simple brief, split across three locations. Discover what has happened onboard the Thunderchild. Locate the whereabouts of the crew and deal with whatever the source of the issue could be. This is what you do, and you’re well trained for it. All that remains is to pick where the best place is to begin your mission . . .

You can download Steel Knights for free here.

Now, there’s actually a second game by these same devs. They released another, somewhat less ambitious roguelike in the traditional fantasy vein last year by the name of Golden Age: Endless Dungeon. I was emailed about it at the time, but somehow I forgot to post about it. Well, there’s no shame in making up for lost time, right? Like Steel Knights, it’s free. You can download it or play it on Facebook.

Sinister Design, creator of the tactical RPG / wRPG hybrid Telepath RPG: Servants of God, just sent me an email letting me know that they’re getting out of the RPG business due to disappointing sales.

Moving forward, I’m going to have to make some hard decisions about the kind of games I make if I want this business to succeed. I’ve been thinking things over, and I have some bad news: Telepath RPG has to go. I mean the whole series. I’m moving on as of today. It’s like Brad Wardell of Stardock said: when you release a game that does poorly, it’s simply a poor business decision to burden the next game with the baggage of its predecessor.

It’s always sad to see an indie developer crumble like this, particularly so one that took the kind of creative risks involved in a game like Telepath RPG: Servants of God. Here’s hoping they find a way to come back to RPGs someday.

UPDATE: This was an April Fools’ Day joke, folks. Sorry if I depressed any of you!

Dan Stradwick, formerly of Biclops Games and now the guy behind Monstrum Games, has released a new procedurally generated dungeon crawler by the name of Monster’s Den Chronicles.

For those unfamiliar with the series, these games are basically party-based roguelikes with a laser-like focus on combat and loot collection, as well as a solid 2×3, rows-and-columns combat system that bears some similarities to Exit Fate. (You can find our review of the previous Monster’s Den game here.)

Monster’s Den Chronicles is free to play on Armor Games. From my time spent playing it yesterday, I can confirm that it features more character classes, improved graphics, and a way way slicker interface than that found in previous games in the series. It also seems to feature terrain effects in combat, which is neat. Otherwise, however, the core game remains very similar.

Stradwick also mentions that you can upload your own custom character art and have it appear in-game. It’s a cool feature, though I can’t imagine myself actually using it. Still, if you feel like going all Super Smash Bros, there’s nothing preventing you. No, seriously:

Beyond that, the game is free. Did I mention that? Just go play it.

 

Roman Bolzern and Marko Brasovan have emailed me about a new indie browser-based MMORPG by the name of Cohorts of Kargonar. They’ve been working on this game for four years already, which is–let’s be honest–a pretty long damn time to wait before announcing a game.

Still, it looks like they’ve been spending that time well. Cohorts of Kargonar features pleasant 2D graphics, turn-based party-based combat, skill tree progression, class promotion, quests with multiple endings, and a village-building mechanic that basically lets you create your own home town. You can visit other players’ villages too, which is kind of a neat twist (though it isn’t immediately apparent to me what this last option really does for you, seeing as towns seem to function more or less as graphical menus).

This video will probably do a more thorough job of explaining how it all works than I could (albeit much more long-windedly):

There doesn’t seem to be any actual plot for the game just yet, though the creators have written up a lengthy history leading up to the start of the game over on their wiki. If you can ignore the fact that they insist on abbreviating it “cok-game,” the devs have a crowdsourcing effort going on over on IndieGoGo.com that could probably use your help.

I’m way late on this one, but better late than never, right? The creators of Titan Quest have gone indie and are hard at work on a spiritual successor to the initial, decidedly non-indie Diablo-alike that made them famous. The name of that successor is Grim Dawn, and its plot is…well, pretty grim:

Players will be thrust into the dark, war-torn world of Cairn where a once proud empire has been brought to ruin and the human race driven to the edge of extinction. Cairn has become ground zero of an eternal war between two otherworldly powers, one seeking to use human bodies as a resource, the other intent upon destroying the human race before that can happen. This cataclysmic war has not only decimated human civilization but is warping the very fabric of reality and, in its wake, giving life to new horrors.

For humankind it is the dawn of a grim new age where iron has replaced gold as currency and the importance of salt as a weapon makes it far too valuable to waste on food. Small enclaves of human survivors exist scattered throughout the world, holed up in hidden refuges. These humans have quietly watched the warring invaders destroy one another and have become wise to the strengths and vulnerabilities of their otherworldly foes. A few survivors have begun to exhibit strange new abilities after surviving possession or exposure to the warp. These unnatural powers are feared by some but give many new hope of launching a resistance to fight the “outsiders” and reclaim what’s left of their world.

RockPaperShotgun did a really good interview with one of the lead developers from Crate this past August, so if you’re curious about the game, I’d suggest reading it.

The devs note on their website that “Grim Dawn is still pre-pre-pre-alpha and I might have even missed a pre,” but they’ve been posting images and video since 2010, so I have to imagine that some of these are at least a little representative of how the finished game will look. One of their videos shows off the combat system (which, I gather, is going to constitute the vast, vast majority of your time interacting with the game):

I haven’t been able to find a release date for Grim Dawn, but you can get access to the current version by pre-ordering on their website for $19.85 (or more, if you have extra cash to burn and want to be extra supportive).

What makes a game indie? In my view, it’s simple: indie is short for “independent,” as in “independent of any publisher or funding entity that can exercise control over the content of a game.” By that measure, any game funded entirely through Kickstarter counts as indie–even if the game just so happens to receive more than $1 million in the process.

Following fast on the heels of just such an event by adventure game developers DoubleFine comes Wasteland 2, already fully funded by Kickstarter users within less than 48 hours of its posting, and now accumulating funding in excess of $1 million.

Why are so many people (full disclosure: I am one of them) so excited about Wasteland 2? Here’s the thing: Wasteland is the game that basically invented the post-apocalyptic RPG. Fallout was created as a spiritual successor to Wasteland. Wasteland is a big deal.

The CRPG Addict has a great write-up of his playthrough of the original game, if you’re curious to know what it was like. As for Wasteland 2, many of the details are currently being hashed out: publicly, on the developer’s forums; and privately, among the developers (which include Brian Fargo, Michael Stackpole, and other luminaries who created the original Wasteland).

You can essentially pre-order the game by visiting its Kickstarter page and pledging at least $15 to the cause. This will net you a “Digital Downloable copy of game DRM free for PC” upon its release. If the game hits $1.25 million pledged before the drive ends on April 17th, a Mac OSX version will be produced as well; and if it hits $1.5 million, a Linux version to boot.