An interview about Age of Decadence with Iron Tower's Vince D. Weller can be found at ePressDeck, which answers amongst others the question what a CRPG is.

EPressDesk: On your website your game, Age of Decadence, is described as a CRPG style game. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means and what sort of games you can compare it to?

Iron Tower: The way I see it, role-playing games are about using your character’s skills, abilities, and knowledge (as opposed to your own) and being able to make decisions fitting your character (as opposed to following a linear storyline with little or no input).

Basically, a true role-playing game is *your* adventure set within a flexible story arc that supports different decisions and offers different paths and outcomes. You decide what to do and how to do it, and your actions affect the story and alter your options, creating a different experience with each replay.

I don’t think I can compare it to anything because it’s sort of a ‘one of a kind’ game now. I’m not sure if it’s good – in fact, I suspect that it’s not – but what’s done is done. So, if you feel like playing something different tonight, download the demo (283 MB) and see for yourself.

The Surly Gamer has recorded his playing session of Age of Decadence based on its demo.

Lords of Xulima project staff sends word of a new blog post on the games webpage. The topic of discussion deals with balancing in RPGs 

Hello Watch,

The Numantian Games team is hard at work on their debut indie RPG, Lords of Xulima. We expect the game to be ready in late 2013. Here is a link on our latest developer blog post. As we work on refining Lords of Xulima and making it the best RPG we can, we are taking time to look back at past games and describe how their systems and designs have influenced us. Here we talk about the challenges of balancing in open world games, and the horror of auto-scaling.

Legend of Grimrock 2 has another development update posted. The posts topics talk about a new animator who has joined the team, new levels, items, and monsters.

Olli has been helping out Jykä to get up to speed and he’s also been active on the business side by filling blanks on obscure documents for our new accountant. Sometimes the business side of things feel like solving a cryptic Grimrock puzzle and Olli’s getting pretty good at it. Olli’s also found time to complete animations for the very first monster you’ll encounter in LoG2.

In another news, Jyri #1 has been working on new items graphics. We need at least a hundred new items for LoG2 so this will keep him and a few other people rather busy for some time! Jyri has also been modeling new environmental assets and a new puzzle object that Antti will be putting into good use.

Talking about Antti, he’s been working on the levels and we now have about 30% of the playable area in “pre-alpha state”, i.e. mapped out with puzzles and initial placement of monsters. I’ve also helped Antti by creating the first version of the very first introductory level.

Juho has been working on a new monster concept and has also been modeling assets for the first level. He’s also gotten his eyes shot with a laser and he had to take a few days off to recuperate. His new laser-cut eyes will hopefully make him even better as an artist (if that’s even possible!).

On the tech side the refactoring work for the component system is finally done. Some other notable changes are: a new quite deadly trap, and lifting off the restriction of levels having to be 32×32 squares in size. Levels can now be any size up to 64×64 and also non-square. Levels can now also be connected in north-south and east-west directions as well as vertically.

A new update has been released for Ballikin, bringing it to alpha level 48. A lengthy list of changes can be found on the download page, but the highlights are these:

* You can now resize the game window.

* Graphics overhaul (increased size slightly, and sprites re-drawn at new size).

* Combat (and other) floating text display.

* Two new items, a Lantern for more light, and a Healing Balm to .. Heal you!

* Mobs now drop a better range of items.

DoubleBear released a nine minute Q&A video for Dead State. Topics talk about zombies, drinking, parental concerns, and a whole lot more

Last week RPGFan did a hands-on preview of Underrail based on the available alpha build and were positively impressed with the state it is in.

"They don't make 'em like they used to." We hear it all the time, but when it comes to video games, I say nonsense to the old adage. Maybe the triple A companies don't make 'em like they used to, but there are so many independent game designers out there now catering to an old school audience that these days; they definitely DO make 'em like they used to. So much so that the way they "used to" could just become the way they are making 'em.

Unlike a lot of previews you'll read on RPGFan, we did not have any kind of exclusive access to the game. Anybody can go online right now and purchase the alpha of Underrail, which includes a copy of the beta, the full game, and future updates. In playing the game itself, I initially found it quite challenging compared to more contemporary games, getting smoked by the first pair of rats I came across. This was entirely due to carelessness on my part, but I asked Dejan what he thought of the difficulty of the alpha.

"In my opinion, the game is only hard if you're careless or just very unlucky. But obviously I'm not qualified to measure the difficulty, since I know the game mechanics inside out."

Consider me appropriately chided. But I agree with this assessment — the more I realized the encounters require planning and caution, the less trouble I had staying alive. This game is difficult in the best possible meaning of the word. That said, I wonder if gamers who are unfamiliar with that style of gaming will have trouble with this. Dejan was ambivalent on that point in a compelling way, speaking to his game design philosophy.

Greenlit Gaming interviewed Anne and Ville Mönkkönen the creeators of Driftmoon.

Something I didn’t expect from Driftmoon was to enjoy it in a manner similar to a really good book. I found the characters to be quirky and the dialogue charming! What made you decide to create a game with such an emphasis on its written elements?

Anne: Thanks! Wonderful to hear you’ve found similarities between Driftmoon and a good book. One of the benefits of working together has been the fact that we’re usually not short on ideas when we get the chance to toss them around together. That means we had a lot of stories to tell. Both of us also enjoy reading good books (when possible), and playing story-heavy games, so it felt natural for the first game we did together to put an emphasis on the adventure, and the story.

Ville: To me the most important part of a roleplaying game is the story and the characters, so that’s where we’ve put most of our development time into. We had a lot of fun writing all the dialogue, I’m definitely going to miss that. First one of us would write a rough draft, then each of us would go through it taking turns revising the dialogue, and playing with the kids.

The story in Driftmoon isn’t your typical “dark and scary tale” often seen in games nowadays. In fact, it’s often quite the opposite! What kind of reaction do you hope players get from the story?

Anne: I’d really like Driftmoon to be a feel-good game, a game that would leave you smiling, so it’s always awesome to hear playing Driftmoon’s managed to brighten up someone’s day. I know that’s what I’m hoping for the most. Calling Driftmoon the cure for depression might be a tiny exaggeration, but that would be a pretty remarkable achievement for a psychologist, don’t you think?

Ville: My favorite feedback is: “Playing your game is like being wrapped in a warm blanket with a cup of hot cocoa on a cold winter night.”

Both Eshalon Book I and Eschalon Book 2 are now on sale at Good Old Games with a discount of 50%, for the rest of the week. This means you can get them now for $2.99 and $4.99 respectively.

Almost Human has posted a new blog entry for of a new position on their team for a talented freelance artist to create new awesome character portraits for the upcoming Legend of Grimrock 2.

Iron Tower has a new monthly development update for you to read.

Memory leaks and loading:

We tried different things, including reviving Torque Memory Manager, but to no avail. We updated the engine to the latest version (March 2013), which comes with some bug fixes and neat features, but sadly does nothing about the memory problem.  

We used a 3rd party memory leak detector, which doesn’t show anything “leaking”. Torque eats a lot of resources by default and uses more every time you load a game, which is about 50MB per load. The base memory load-out is about 1.5GB, so ten reloads will push it to 2GB.

When Windows feels that it had enough, it refuses to throw more memory at  and it crushes ignobly.

Nick decided to attack the problem from a different angle and wrote some code to support level specific datablocks loading, which reduced the overall memory usage to 1GB on the biggest locations and reduced the loading times by 50 to 90%, depending on what we’re loading, which makes a hell of a difference. Coincidentally, it reduced the memory per load to 10MB instead of 50, which should help a lot.

Wait, what about the beta-test?

Planning to start beta-testing Maadoran, related locations, and system changes in early June.

Almost Human has a new update for Legend of Grimrock 2. The update focuses on the state of the game, and its plans for the near future.

The codebase has been in quite a bad shape after working so furiously on the first game. So I’ve been doing a lot of code refactoring which is a bit unthankful work because I’m rewriting a lot code and on the surface nothing seem to be changing. But still it’s very important and will speed up development in the future tremendously. Almost everything is now component based (except for the Party class which is a bugger to refactor because it’s so tightly connected to many places). Also I have rewritten the save game system, so that it’s easier to add new components that store their state automatically in save games.

I’ve also worked on the AI and as a result some critters are now noticeably harder to deal with. A completely new AI behavior has also been added. You can tell the difference immediately when this new behavior is activated but I don’t want to spoil the fun by revealing all the secrets yet!

I came across another indie RPG, and thought it deserves more attention.  Anodyne uses the classic top-down, 2D adventure, most reminiscent of Link’s Awakening.

In Anodyne, you explore and fight your way through nature, urban and abstract themed landscapes and dungeons in the human Young's subconscious, evoked by a GBC/16-bit-era visual style and a moody, dream-like soundtrack.

I found another indie gem on wingedpixel. The game is called Heroes of a Broken Land. It's described as a classic style, turn-based RPG under development.  If you purchase now you get a discounted price plus access to playable builds under development.

Heroes of a Broken Land is a classic style, turn-based RPG under development.  If you purchase now you get a discounted price plus access to playable builds under development.

Features

• Unlimited worlds – a new, procedural world is generated for each game
• A large overworld to explore
• Multiple parties of up to 6 heroes each
• Party based dungeon crawlling in a variety of dungeon types and layouts
• Town management and construction – find and upgrade towns to equip your party with the best equipment

What will be in the Full Version?

Heroes of a Broken Land is still in development, so there’s still a lot of content and features yet to come.

• Lots more unique buildings and places to visit
• Diverse and devious enemies to fight
• Complex quests and dungeons, including secret rooms, nefarious traps and puzzles
• More playable races, each with unique powers and abilities

An update of the current status is given for Bloom, which unfortunately has not made it in their Kickstarter campaign.

ey everyone, Dani here again (I really need to come up with another way to start these), I just wanted to drop in and let you all know how things are progressing (abridged version - things are going great!).

This last week was been pretty crazy as we get everything set up to move forward with the limited resources we have. Thanks so much to everyone who jumped over to our PayPal (and amazon) campaign to make this next phase a little easier! It is definitely helping us out and we will be keeping it up as we forge ahead (so, plenty of time to hop over and take a look for those that missed it).

We've also been extremely lucky with some amazing offers of help on the project (including an animator from Dreamworks!)! So, we are taking advantage of the opportunity and over this last week we added on a couple more people to the team to get this out faster and better than we could have before.

Anyhow, for the next couple days we are continuing to get everything settled and sort out a few production details / who does what (I got dibs on the art! :D). Then we jump into full production and keep pushing ahead! In addition to all this we've also come up with a couple new ideas that should be pretty exciting (like I said, it has been a crazy week!). I’ll be covering them once we have everything nailed down a bit more (so stay tuned :)

Also, once the dust clears expect loads of new artwork / creatures / concepts. And, as always, feel free to chime in with suggestions or thoughts as we go along (feedback is always welcome).

The Rablogames website offers a trailer showing off Lost Spirits of Kael. It's an indie ARPG coming to PCs next year. The site also announces their crowd funding campaign is underway. They are asking for funding for the project by selling its work-in-progress soundtrack on Band Camp.

Lost Spirits of Kael is an action-RPG with focus on atmosphere. You play the role of a young painter who has lost his inspiration and tries to get it back in the Forest of Kael. There, he meets a mysterious harpist who covers the forest with magical mist by playing her harp. Lost in this creepy forest covered with graves (but no zombies), he will have to find his way out. But the forest has mystical powers that makes finding one's way nearly impossible, and some of its inhabitants will try to stop him.

The second campaign for Grimoire is over, taking in only $6,805 out of the asked $25K (the first did a bit over $10K of an asked $250K). As it is a flexible campaign the money goes to Cleve all the same. So unfortunately for Cleve, like before there was no soaring past any number like it was not there, so I hope he isn't stuck with a barn full of crow.

on the bright side it is almost May and he did mention the game would be released in that month.

Thus ends the greatest crowd funding campaign in human history that did not actually meet any of it’s funding goals. I have been filled with renewed vigor by this failure to raise any significant sums of money and am more determined than ever to get Grimoire out as soon as I possibly can.

My original plan to flee with the money to a 3rd world country with weak extradition laws has fallen through after the local dictator has nationalized all foreign accounts. He was particularly outraged to discover my secret Grimoire deposit box only contained a free drink voucher for Chuck E. Cheese and some broken Pez dispensers.

In coming weeks we have three goals :

1. Finish game for release
2. Implement all consolidated pledges from both this and prior campaigns.
3. Start writing manual and hint guide with help of automated tools.
4. Put Grimoire up on Project Greenlight to see if we can get it distributed on Steam.
5. Seek other digital distribution channels for final product. We may consider GOG after the product has been on Steam for a while.

Thanks for all your support and rest assured the overthrow of the forces of decline and fail is close at hand. I am sure many of you know this is shaping up to be a great year for RPGs, possibly the best year they have had since 1992. It is fitting Grimoire will be released in the same year as sequels to classics like Wastelands, Planescape Torment, Might & Magic and many others.

Crowd funding has changed everything in the past 12 months and it has made two things obvious :

1. People like me whining constantly about decline were correct the past 17 years. It was an era of decline.
2. The way things are shaping up, constant decline may become a thing of the past with the creative power shifting into the hands of creators. Incline may once again become a dominant force in the universe. That means you will be able to regularly play computer games that are not a blow to the basic dignity of mankind.

I look forward to the coming years and I expect my fledgling company Golden Era Enterprise to become a real force in the future for quality creative output. I hope you are all going to get at least half of the enjoyment I have been promising from Grimoire when it is released and from the games I still have inside me trying to get out.

Once again, thank you for your support.

The Lords of Xulima devs have written a new editorial, which this time is about random encounters.

Random encounters are also a way to auto-balance  the difficulty of the adventure. They can allow the player to grind for experience and treasure as much as they want in a nearly unlimited fashion (well, limited only by the player’s patience). In RPGs without random encounters the total experience that a player can earn is often set at a fixed number. In some of those cases, if a player has not made a group that the game designer has deemed ideal for the adventure, then the player has less opportunity to take time to level their characters up to be more useful in the game. Sometimes this is solved for by the game providing many more optional areas, re-spawning areas with enemies like in Might & Magic VI,  or more directly, by addressing balancing with other artificial methods like scaling enemies to the player’s level.

The Nature of Encounters

The vast majority of random encounters are with enemies where a battle is automatically triggered, but this does not always need to be the case. The encounter can be with an NPC, like in the villages of Wizardry VII, a messenger, a merchant or any other type of event such as a revealing dream.

Even if the encounters are with enemies, many RPGs give the player options to avoid combat or to use other abilities of the characters in the group. The most common method of avoiding combat is, of course, to flee, but depending on the game players can also try conversation (which rarely works), bribery, or threatening the enemies to scare them away.

Dead State has a new update on their kickstarter page.

 Our video update is still coming at the end of the month, but I just wanted to announce that we have been Greenlit on Steam and can confirm our availability on the platform. We will still be offering DRM-free versions, but for those who want to activate on Steam, that option will now be available. Thanks again to everyone who voted for us!

Most of you have probably seen our combat video by now. This was an early build of our combat which has taught us a lot about what is working and what isn’t in the design. The biggest change that we have recently made is the following – you can now control your whole party in combat.

We did this for a few reasons, namely to eliminate the wait for the player’s turn and to cut down on the frustration the player might feel from an ally AI’s tactical decision. With party control, you can also switch to characters that have the skills you might immediately need, which comes in handy when you want your mechanically-inclined ally to lockpick a door or your medic to prioritize a certain character’s health. 

We’ve got a very early build that we’re fine-tuning, but expect to see more of full-party control in the future. We think it’s very much an improvement, and for fans of Jagged Alliance or X-Com, it’s going to offer a lot of the tactical options of those games. Our build is getting new features all the time, so we will demonstrate some of the new material when we have a more polished version of the new combat features. 

Also, for anyone following us that did not get a chance to back us on Kickstarter, we now have a pre-order site up for the regular version of the game and the digital deluxe version with the digital soundtrack and digital version of “The Making of Dead State”. 

With 14 minutes to go and their goal still $15K aways there is no hope for the Bloom Kickstarter to succeed, but they are determined to go onwards and come back.

So, here is what we are going to do! For next 4-6 months we will be working as much as possible on continued development. This will result in the polished first section of the game adding onto our current build. From there we will take that game section and offer it as a strong public demo up and ready for the world to play. The resources we are working with are tight though, so we need your help to keep us going strong. 

In order to make things easy on everyone, we have moved the pledge tiers over to our website ( www.studiofawn.com ) and set up a PayPal ( http://studiofawn.tumblr.com/donate ) to run while we keep going (some of the tiers have been adjusted a bit with better rewards and all rewards tiers will also be your choice to interchange with the next campaign if they are altered). So, please take a look and let us know what you think.

After the demo is released (the first section of the game), we will be coming back to Kickstarter stronger than ever before for a “round 2” of fundraising. Effectively, this is just splitting up the funding campaigns into two stages (the first now through our website to help see us through the polished demo phase).

Every bit helps as we move into these next months and we are counting on your support to make the road a little less rocky. Of course, rocky or not, we will make it happen.

In their latest developer update for Underrail more information is provided on pickpocketing and feats changes.

First of all I revamped the pickpocketing mechanics as I promised. The way it works now is that when you are stealing items from an NPC you are filling up their permanent "suspicion meter". If you fill up this meter to the max you will be detected and the combat will ensue. The game will indicate how much stealing a certain item will raise the suspicion meter.

The rate at which you fill this meter will depend on the ratio between your pickpocketing skill and the victim's detection. Since the detection scales off of character's level and perception, this basically means that you'll have to continue investing points in the pickpocketing skill (and ideally dexterity as well) in order to be able to steal (or steal more) from progressively higher level NPCs. Also, some items are harder to steal than others (e.g. heavy weapons and armors in comparison to smaller stuff like ammo and hypos).

The way this system is set up it means that, unlike lockpicking and hacking, the outcome is not binary. Depending on your skill-to-detection ration and the difficulty modifier of the item, you may be able to steal zero, one or more items from a given target. So investing more skill into pickpocketing will always be useful. Because there's no dice involved in the calculations, this will also eliminate the need for save scumming.

Pickpocketing does not require stealth, unless of course you're trying to steal from a hostile NPC.

Thanks Screeg.

Consortium sends news on there kickstarter page that the project is now officially funded.  Congratulations to Interdimensional Games, and any of the Watchers that helped with pledges.

Greetings everyone!

So here we are....the final few hours....WE HAVE SUCCEEDED!!!   The whole team is feeling charged, inspired and more excited than ever to finish and deliver to you all an awesome experience!

We have a special video update for you today.  The following is a rough, visual history of the CONSORTIUM project, from pre-pre-production all the way to the present.  

Other than documentation and concept art, the first bit of work done for CONSORTIUM was an early prototype of Zenlil, which was initially built by Gregory as a rough "proof of concept".  Being a very old-school game designer, Gregory built the entire level with only brushes in the Source engine tool HAMMER.

In each of the three sections of the video, we are showing you various sections of Zenlil in 4 different stages of production:  early prototype v0.01, v0.3 first playable, v0.6 alpha, and the present build, v0.8 late alpha.  Enjoy!

The Consortium Kickstarter has only 32 hours to go and would like to reach their $70K stretch goal (currently at $61K).

In addition they also mention an interview at iGR.

5. The RPG elements are wide open in CONSORTIUM. Most of the time gamers nowadays attribute RPG to character leveling and customization, forgetting many of the aspects that make the genre great. What was the motivation for iDGi to focus so heavily on the more in-depth aspects of the RPG?

Yeah, we’re getting a little tired of those very old and overused game mechanics, to be honest (levels, experience points, skills and attributes, etc). They certainly work, and they do create a sense of ownership and value towards player characters. However, we are creating an RPG that focuses largely on ROLE PLAYING. We do also have elaborate and unique inventory and resource management systems as well that will allow players to customize themselves. But yeah, one of our principal goals with CONSORTIUM is to attempt to bring to a CRPG the one key element where table-top RPGs have always had the edge: real human interaction.

With 38 hours to go and a $17K gap between where they are now with the Bloom Kickstarter and their goal of $50K a new update is presented on the dedication of the team to finish the game. They have been picking up some steam over the last week, so it isn't entirely impossible.

Basically, we are pretty passionate about what we are doing. It was actually pretty obvious before we even started that indie development was an uphill battle, especially if you are trying to do a project that takes more than a few months (and especially if you are relatively unknown)! We knew trying to go further with art, story, game play, and even music as a tiny indie team with no resources would be a pretty rocky path .. .but nothing worthwhile is ever easy. ;)

We want to assure everyone that our commitment to this project and seeing Bloom through to release isn’t dependent on this campaign (though, it would definitely make things a little smoother!). At the end of the day we believe in what we are doing as developers, as artists, and as gamers. So, when bumps appear in the road (of which I’m sure there will be plenty along the road), it is our unwavering dedication that forces us to find a way over them.

In their review of The Banner Saga: Factions, Thunderbolt does not give it a higher score than 6.

Each match in Factions earns Renown, which is used to upgrade your classes into the aforementioned variants as well as allowing for the purchase of alternate character skins and other perks such as extending your barracks. Stoic are continuously tweaking the amount of Renown needed for upgrades, but even still, earning enough to upgrade each member of your party will take a long time. That’s where the marketplace of Factions comes in. Renown can be purchased in blocks, or boosts can be used to increase the amount of Renown earned from playing. While many will turn their nose up at the idea of paying for in game currency and quickly begin preaching about “pay to win”, the key is that there is nothing available to those who pay that can’t be earned by actually putting in the hours and playing the game. It could even be argued that paying for Renown from the beginning would be detrimental to the experience, as anyone doing so would lack the experience built up over many matches to effectively use the forces at their disposal.

Consortium brings another update for the successfully funded kickstarter. This time we meet the writers.

Hey all, Steve here: 

I thought it would make sense for me to introduce this update video. You’ll find myself, my fiancée/co-writer/company editor Deanne, and the newest member of our team, Bob Edwards, content writer extraordinaire. Each of us talk about a different aspect of the CONSORTIUM story/characters, and then intermixed are various fitting game play clips.

In addition: Everything we have shown through the course of this campaign has been from the first 40% of the game, and mostly focuses around the Homeless Mercenaries storyline – which is only one story thread in the game. We are keeping the rest of the game under wraps intentionally so as not to spoil all the BIG twists and turns. Kiril and his Homeless Mercs are only the tip of the iceberg... the “setup.”   It’s how you deal with them and the consequences/choices which follow that really matters most.

Before we get to the video, I thought it would be fun to give you a list of “facts” regarding our characters and the story:  

- There is an estimated 3,300-3,500 total lines of dialogue in CONSORTIUM, split between 21 characters.

- There is not a single character (NPC) within the game of whom you cannot speak to. That is A LOT for a game almost entirely based in a single location; CONSORTIUM really will feel like "Interactive Die Hard on a plane." 

- Every single character in CONSORTIUM (including the “generic enemy”) have at least 100 lines of dialogue, some of the more main characters have 300+. The vast majority of these lines come from direct conversation with the player.