The Strategy RPG Ancient Frontier will be released tomorrow:

Ancient Frontier

Fair Weather Studios is very happy to announce Ancient Frontier! Ancient Frontier is a turn-based strategy role-playing game set in deep space in the far future. Players will explore, conquer, pillage, or liberate the frontiers of space.

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The universe is built off of the story established in our first project, Bladestar, but takes it much deeper with warring factions, double crossing corporations, privateers, and galactic governments. Take control of massive fleets of capital ships and support craft and navigate the rich multi-faceted story of Ancient Frontier- the future of war.

A new sailing adventure will be released on September 19: The Caribbean Sail

Description

Set sail across the Atlantic with your best friend, food. Food will keep you alive and food will keep you well- you get food by throwing harpoons at fish and turtles. Then one day BAM! The RNG screws you over and throws a pirate ship at you and you're forced to fight and defend your food!

The next thing you know, Johnny Macguffin is dying from an infected battle wound and you're amputating all his limbs to save his life- then you realize everyone is starving because Marvin Buttercup ate all the food and you're out of harpoons, on a raft, 2,000 miles from land, and in a storm.

The story is yours and unique every playthrough!

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Features

The Exciting Stuff!

• 8-bit renditions of nautical shanties and folk songs!
• Funny and depressing people to talk to!
• Play Liars Dice!
• Harpoon Fishing!
• Treacherous Reefs!
• Dynamic Weather!
• Varied difficulty by ship!
• Hypnotic Water!
• Naval Skirmishes!
• Online Leaderboards!
• Dark Whimsy!
• Secrets and Easter eggs!
• Turtles!
• -and NO crafting! I promise!

Two large content expansions are being developed and will be added for free

• Route Planning - Plot your own course across the Atlantic and visit new locations!
• Fantasy Toggle - Fantastic legends of the sea, myths, monsters, and more brought to life!

Vigilantes is going to Steam Early Access as announced by the latest update and will be available October 5th.

Update 30: New Trailer and Steam Early Access Announcement

Hello everyone,

Although the title very much gives it away, we've got two big announcements. The first is that Vigilantes is coming to Steam Early Access on 5th October 2017! It's the first step of the final phase of Vigilantes' development, and we'd like to thank you for the support which has made this possible. If you'd like to find out more, you can stop by the EA section of our Steam page.

We will look into the possibility of providing access to the Steam version to you, before it goes live, and will keep you posted on this.

Vigilantes has come a long way in the 10 months since Kickstarter, in features, content and visual quality, so we decided it was time for a trailer refresh. We've licensed a hard hitting synthwave track from Vector Sector (which will also be added to the game) for the update.

Making a trailer is fairly time consuming, between capturing, cutting, arranging and timing clips, but it's nice work, because it creates a great feeling of 3 years' hard work coming together. So, without further ado...

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We hope you enjoyed the trailer, and if you have any questions or observations, please leave a comment - always happy to have a chat.

Enjoy the weekend!

Daithi (on behalf of Timeslip Softworks)

@IndieRetroNews Hyakki Castle is an Edo Period dungeon crawler RPG.

HYAKKI CASTLE - A dungeon crawler set in the 18th century!

If you're bored of dungeon crawlers then look away now, if however you want to play a dungeon crawler that is set in the 18th century, during the Edo period of Japan, then we have found just the game for you! This is HYAKKI CASTLE developed by Asakusa Studios, a real time RPG crawler in which you as 4 secret agents must investigate a mysterious castle and assassinate the prodigy sorcerer known as Doman Kigata. Beware though this will be a tough task as a slew of creepy monsters and traps, such as the "Yokai" of ancient Japanese literature, have been brought back to life!

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Grimoire got some fixes:

Grimoire 1.2.0.26-R Maintenance Update

This update was released before the official manual goes out just to address many issues fixed over the past two weeks.

Critical bugs that cause asserts and glitches involving items and monsters are repaired here as well as some bugs that just cause mildly aberrant behaviour.

Many issues with balance have been addressed in monster XP and in leveling up for players. Game exploits tapered down. I am not sure any of these were really bugs or unintended but feedback has resulted in them being modified somewhat resulting in many combats, particularly boss combats, becoming much harder to insta-kill and insta-win. Monster and player saving throws against all kinds of effects are more likely in the new tables and combat may be more difficult in general.

The Meridian Shard is 99% finished, but needs some more polish:

Mayday! Mayday! Delay.

Well, they say good things are worth waiting for, but it's hard to see that when you've invested so much of your love, and over 5000hrs of your life into something that is this late to launch. I haven't slept right in close to 2 weeks, as I've been trying to work 16 hrs/day with painful cramps in my hands, and I finally just crashed and burned yesterday, hitting a new low. I love animals, but I yelled some really nasty curse-charged insults at a seagull from my window when it woke me up, then I threw my pillow across the room and unintentionally hit a plant that I cared for very much. The seagull flew away with possible soul scarring, and the plant died—uprooted and crudely snapped in half at the stalk, as if murdered for pleasure by some gore porn-driven deranged faunaphile. 

A cold darkness clouded within me, and I felt horrible. Shameful. Am I a monster? No, said my wife. You're just working way more than a human can without sleep. All night, all day, and now you're probably going a little crazy. I thought of Jack in The Shining, and we laughed. I apologized, and for the first time in 2 weeks, I laid down to rest, sleeping deeply, and awoke today at nearly noon. I feel refreshed, lean, mean and ready to get this last mile behind us. The mind is fragile and must be cared for.

At this junction, The Meridian Shard™ is technically 99.455 % finished from start to end, being entirely mapped, asset packed, item and character weighted and evented, with the following 4 key tasks left to process: 

•  Add and assign background music to each area 
• Add and assign sound fx for the 8 summon spells  
• Type up in-game player's guide 
• Make game trailer  

I know it's only 4 things, but they will take a few days or so each at least to do right. So all in all, this is just where it's at. Instead of feeling defeated by my own expectations, I'm going to smile and put all of my joy, passion and love into these very last few drops we have left to brew. The pot's almost full, and I ain't cookin' crap dinner. I can't possibly work any faster or harder. I guess I'm not the cosmic dream machine I thought I was after all. What's a few more days at this point? Thanks everyone. I share your pain. But let me carry that for you, as no one feels it more than I. 

Every bit of the graphics from the original Kickstarter trailer has been completely replaced or updated over time. That original trailer is now just a proof-of-concept. Here's a sneak peek to show the level of detail I'm crafting at now.

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Soldak Entertainment let us know that they have a sale, on Steam at the moment for Din's Curse and its expansion Demon War, which are both 75% off.

A second Kickstarter campaign for Age of Grit has been started:

Age of Grit - A Steampunk Wild West Adventure

Explore a Wild West inspired world in a steampunk airship! A turn-based, tactical CRPG with a focus on characters and story.

In Age of Grit you play the captain of an old, beat-up, steam-powered airship. You and your crew adventure across a vast, cowboy-themed, steampunk world simply known as "The West." You're looking for whatever work you can find--bounty hunting, smuggling contraband, running guns...maybe even a little train robbery if yer so inclined. 'Bout anything to pay the bills, keep the guns loaded, the boiler stoked, and keep your ship in the sky!

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We previously held a crowdfunding campaign here on Kickstarter and were overwhelmed with the support we received from the community!  We were incredibly grateful to raise over $15,000. Just as importantly: to receive so much support really gave us the confidence to continue with our vision for AOG.

With the money we raised we've done a lot and now have built a working prototype of the game. Most of the art assets are complete and all of the game's major systems are functioning. However it has become clear that in order to make AOG the polished experience it deserves to be--and do so in a timely matter--we will need further funding.  We've discussed this with our original backers and the feedback we received was extremely supportive.

One way or another this game is going to get finished, but with additional funding our team will be able to devote a lot more time to the project--less need for other jobs and side gigs.  We'll also be able to hire on a few more people and get everything wrapped up much faster. 

We turn to the Kickstarter community once again for this final round of crowdfunding. Thank you all for your support and for believing in Age of Grit!

The third and final chapter of the J-RPG Heroes of Legionwood has been released a couple of weeks ago - a complete edition is now available:

Heroes of Legionwood Episode 3: End of Days release!

The end of the Heroes of Legionwood saga is finally here.
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As per usual, Episode 3 is designed to be played with a save file imported from the end of Episode 2, but you can also play it as a standalone adventure with a new level 20 character.

Please check out the Episode 3 FAQ/Troubleshooting thread if you'd like to see specific information before beginning your adventure, but as long as you own Episode 1 on Steam you should be able to install and play the new installment without any trouble.

On behalf of everyone who worked on this game, both at Dark Gaia Studios and Degica, I'd like to say thank you to everyone who stuck with us from the very beginning. It's been a three year journey, but we're finally at the end of the road, so make your choices count!

The latest update for Corven - Path of Redemption shares some music and landscape art.

Music, landscape art, new team member and new domain

Music:

Music was always a major part of almost all my favorite games. That's why I thought a LOT about what kind of music we should have in our game.

I knew from the start that I wanted a strong melody in most of the tracks, but the style of music was not clear right away. After a lot of testing and deliberation I decided to go with a style heavily influenced by 80s synth. Standard medieval music is expected and maybe often ignored in medieval RPGs, unless it is truly exceptional quality. For example Icewind Dale had some truly amazing tunes. I however want to give this game another feel than your usual medieval fantasy game and, while trying not to spoil anything, I can tell you that the game won't be purely medieval anyway. Patrig, our musician, was on board immediately and already created some great tracks. You can listen to one of them right here:

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@RockPaperShotgun Shortest Trip to Earth is on IndieGoGo at the moment seeking $35,000 and is described as an FTL like game.

FTL-y Shortest Trip to Earth blasts crowdfunding demo

One of the developers behind the rock solid top-down shooter Teleglitch: Die More Edition is working on an FTL-inspired spaceship roguelike that, judging by the bits of the demo I've played, looks promising. Shortest Trip to Earth [official site] has just hit Indiegogo, looking for $35,000 (£27k), and the demo contains a tutorial and two sectors of space to blast through.

You deck out a ship with different modules, move your crew about to man different sections, explore far-flung planets and battle alien craft in real-time. The aim is to get to Earth by surviving 10 space sectors, refuelling and collecting valuable resources as you go. It doesn't have the same polish as FTL (not yet, anyway), but watching your crew scamper between their stations is satisfying. What impressed me the most was the writing and the number of individual stories it throws up as you explore.

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The tactical turn-based RPG Celestian Tales: Realms Beyond has been funded on Kickstarter:

Celestian Tales: Realms Beyond

Celestian Tales: Realms Beyond is a role-playing game that combines turn-based tactical combat with a story of questionable morals seen through multiple points of view. You play as the Companions of House Levant, six knights sworn to serve and protect the heir of the noble house, in their journey to survive a world where one's real enemies are often their closest.

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If you have played Celestian Tales: Old North, the game will read your end save and shape the game's world based on the choices you've made. 

If you have not played CTON and do not wish to, you're not missing out: Realms Beyond is designed to accommodate new players into the setting. At the beginning you will be asked about what happened in the past, which defines how the world of Realms Beyond is shaped.

@IndieRetroNews Project Daedalus is a horror themed dungeon crawler and has a new gameplay trailer.

From the same team who brought you Mazes of Karradash, 68k Studios have recently released an updated gameplay trailer for their in development horror dungeon crawler of ' Project Daedalus '. Classed as a creepy crawler with digital artwork by Gaetano Carlucci. This game will be inspired by classic dungeon crawler RPGs from the 90s such as Eye of the Beholder and Dungeon Master, albeit much more menacing living in a nightmare with environments becoming darker and more disturbing.

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The Adventure-RPG Star Story: The Horizon Escape has been released:

Star Story: The Horizon Escape

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The archaeological research mission faced some unexpected difficulties. Your spaceship crashed. Can you escape from this planet? But how? No one can help you. You are here all alone. Or not? Do you have a plan? Will you find what it takes to be a hero?

Meet Star Story: The Horizon Escape - a turn-based adventure game with text-rpg elements. Tune into the story of the aspiring space-archaeologist Van Klik on his mission to the mysterious planet of Horizon!

Nonlinearity of the plot development, 24 alternative endings
Your choices define the story. Totaly. Some will turn out better than others, some will worse and some will be straight up hilarious. You are to find the real true ending among your possible destinies and become a hero. Or maybe something more...

Text-based gameplay diversity
The core classic. Dive into the stories and find a way to exploit EVERY possible situation. Did you know that if you throw a lockpick at an attack droid, it will decide that you are stupid and will deactivate? Build your character, choose your alignments, learn the lore of the world. You will need it all to succeed.

Game mechanics
The story will throw a mix of dialogues, choices, turn-based battles, puzzles, weapon and resource crafting, technology research and more at you. You will use all you can to survive the challenging world of Horizon.

Turn-based philosophy
The player decides on the speed that he wants to play the game at. Everything is turn-based. There is no time-limit for making decisions, no quick-time events, no rush: you can take any amount of time to make your turn.

Beautiful world
Enjoy the wild and crazy sceneries of the world of Horizon. Deserts, jungles, cities, underground caverns… the list goes on.

Colorful characters
Meet the locals! Who is more to your liking? Side with “Bullet King” and uncover an ancient cryptic artifact. Or choose to undermine his brutal regime and make the local revolutionary your friend. Or screw them and go try to play romance with the alien girl? Or blow up the planet? Or… You get it!

Stellar Tactics has a new story trailer.

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Bringing back the nostalgia, excitement and wonder of classic RPG's, Stellar Tactics will thrill you with a compelling narrative, deep strategic squad-based ground combat and rewarding open world space exploration. To survive, you will need to build your team's skills and equip your party and ships with the best weapons, armor and equipment you can find. With 10,000 sectors, tens of thousands of solar systems and millions of planets to discover, you can spend countless hours exploring, fighting, trading and building a party of seasoned veterans that can dominate the challenges of deep space. Stellar Tactics is available on Steam Early Access - http://store.steampowered.com/app/465...

At Fig, you can now pledge for The Good Life, a game that is labeled as a debt repaying life simulation RPG. They are asking for 1.5 Million dollars and are at 11% at the moment.

Play as Naomi, a photographer from New York. After a scandal left her in debt, she took on a job that sent her to 'the happiest town in the world,' a rural English town out in the middle of nowhere.

Photographing evidence of the town's many secrets and sending them back to her client daily will earn her some very nice rewards...

But most of Naomi's comments start with the words "I hate," and she can't stop complaining... Will this city slicker be able to survive out in the British backwoods?

Journey to Rainy Woods... a small town in Northern England surrounded by forests. Nestled in abundant nature, stone houses built in the Middle Ages still stand beside one another. The townspeople look out for each other, love their families, work hard, and enjoy nightly drinks at the local pubs.

All townspeople operate on a 24 hour schedule. Everyone lives a different life.

Each character has a unique personality and lives out a unique life. Even though they live in a game world, they worry, suffer, have fun, love, and hate as much as any real person.

Rainy Woods has a big secret... At night, all the villagers turn into cats.

Villagers aren't the only ones who get to turn into cats. Naomi also gets to turn into a cat at night, of course!

The news about the demo of Bloom is that it is not going as fast as they had hoped.

Basically we made our first build last night that we were going to try out with people...but we immediately realized we had broken the flavor events when we added the intro (which is game breaking, since flavor events will catch you as you explore). 

So, just needs another week or so in the cooker to sort that out and add more tutorialization and some additional keyboard + gamepad support (the controls, especially on keyboard, can be a bit confusing without guidance)....along with a handful of other fixes (like I spawned in some small creatures on one of the screens with a golem....and he was running around killing them, which wasn't ideal :P ). 

...

In the meantime, here are some teaser tests I did the other week. I think for the final teaser I'll do a combo of the two.

The strategy RPG Age of Fear 3: The Legend has been released today:

HERE WE GO!!

Welcome everyone,

I would like to start by thanking you all for your continous support while we were developing our 3rd game!
In such a crowded market, having such a responsive and understanding community is truly a rare phenomenom.

Age of Fear series has come a long way, from it's first release in 2011 when it was started as a simple TBS game. Since then we have implemented many more new features and improved on the existing ones.
I would also like to point out that many of these features were either directly suggested on the forum or developed in cooperation with some of you. So thank you all for that!!

We cannot say that the Age of Fear series is a perfect game, ofcourse it has its own rough edges and imperfections. Although, we may wish to create a truly AAA product, but we are only but a small team. However, we will stay committed to making your experience as exceptional as possible. As many of you know, we are still upgrading our old games and this will continue for the foreseeable future.

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

The first episode of Renegade Grounds has been released today:

Synopsis:

Something very important was stolen from the council – a high value item required for a new device that could bridge the gap between the physical realm and the realm of phantoms. Who did this and why is unknown, but the city guard hired two mercenaries to find and retrieve this item in return for a hefty sum – Agela, a young, somewhat brash, and quick-witted archer, and her smarty pants imp sidekick Ingus.

Agela and Ingus will have to infiltrate their way into crime-ridden slums, as well as a whole host of underground and treacherous locations in order to get the job done. On their journey they are guided by a phantom ally, Angadani, who appears from time to time to update them with useful information. A simple fetch job quickly becomes more complex as more factions become involved and set their eyes on the precious item. It's more than they bargained for, but to Agela and Ingus, giving up is not an option!

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Features:

• Not your typical fantasy setting. Medieval look and non-human races, but more with a modern day dynamic – gangs, crime-infested slums, city councils instead of kings in castles, and science instead of magic.
• Strategic turn-based battle system which includes skills with unique areas of effect.
• Fully voice acted
• Weapon and Armour upgrading – find specific items which can be used to add a variety of stat bonuses to your equipment, but do so wisely, because each weapon and armour has a limited number of upgrade slots.
• First part of a larger story
• In addition to story mode, challenge yourself with consecutive battles in arena mode
• Two difficulty modes: Normal and Brazen
• Puzzles to solve and secret areas to find!

Star Traders 2 will be available as Steam Early Access version in October 2017:

[...]

Next Step: Steam Early Access

As we knew it would be, the Alpha has been invaluable. It has given us a direct line into the challenges, wishes, and play styles of many Captains. Their insights have helped us zero in on the player experiences we want to further build the game around.

This is always how our small studio has always worked. From the original Star Traders to our latest title, Templar Battleforce, we are constantly working with and listening to our player community to drive updates, improvements, new content and better balance. If you’re on our forums or Steam discussion boards, you can see us there every single day, responded to basically every post. To fully realize Star Traders 2, we’ve decided to continue that tradition and launch the game into Steam early access.

When will the game go into Early Access?  

We have a date set in early October to release Star Traders to Steam early access. Following our studio’s process, the game was always planned to launch to Steam first, and then after we would complete the mobile port and UX modifications to better support smaller screens. If you would like to change your reward to receive a Steam key instead of a copy of the game on another platform, please just reach out to us. For those players on mobile, you’ll get the game as soon as the mobile port can be completed and launched. Realistically considering the holidays, that will be sometime in 2018.

Why Early Access?  

We plan to use early access as a platform to continue the two-way communication and feedback loop with a larger player community. The alpha has allowed us to work with hundreds of Captains playing the game, and early access will give us access to thousands of new data points to test the limits of the game’s balance, and we will use this input to further fine tune the political, character, and combat simulators. We know can be reservations about early access games, but we’re focused on releasing a well-built, solid and polished game experience right out of the gate.

What will be the state of the game at Early Access launch?  

Star Traders will be majority feature complete when we launch to early access. As a sandbox game, there is already an immense depth of exciting and fun ways for your Captain and crew to find their way in the big world. We are not plan to add many major new features after early access launch. The early access period instead will allow us to perfect balance the game’s ship and crew combat, improve the map generation, and further study and improve the economic and political simulation and the role that contact’s play within the larger galaxy. As we progress through the early access phase, different sections of the game’s story will also become available for play. That said, plans often change :P

Approximately how long will the game be in Early Access?  

Oh how many times we’ve regretted an ETA. We don’t know at this time, promising dates would be irresponsible. We expect it to be a number of months which can be counted on two hands (that is, 10 or less).

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?  

The game will offered at standard price during the Early Access period and we don’t anticipate its price to change after it transitions to full launch.

[...]

The Templar Battleforce developers have taken the first steps towards adding mod support which would allow user created levels.

Update #74: Patches, Armor Swap, Breaking Ground

18 AUGUST - TRESE BROTHERS

This week's update includes a number fixes and updates suggested by the community, as well as some important work on the game's internals. Here at TB headquarters, we've broken ground on the first steps to support official modding that would allow creation of your own levels. It will be a long road to get there, but if this update seems a little slim, it is because of the work we did under the hood.

If you think that is exciting, please leave a review!

We also finished a bit of armor juggling in this release. The Hydra's Mag-Core Leviathan was not moved from its spot at Hydra Specialist 3, but it was converted to be a Hydra-only armor We have also slightly improved its stats to justify the Gear Level 7. To replace the Mag-Core for Soldiers, Captains and Berserkers, we've added a new Heavy Armor, the Mammoth Leviathan, under Leader-in-the-Ranks 3. The Mammoth is close to the original Mag-Core with some new stat improvements as well.

The details of damage caused by Tact Point defenses is now displayed in their RQ entries. And, we added another library entry clarifying the rules on debuffs and stacking them.

v2.6.35 - 8/17/2017
- Armor Swap: Improved Mag-Core Leviathan, but now only for Hydra's
- Armor Swap: Added Mammoth Leviathan, Heavy for Captain, Soldier, Berserker
- Added details about Tact Point defenses damage to RQ tree
- Fixed display of Buffing Attacks in Templar load out screen
- Fixed issues with level intros
- Added library entry about Debuffs

The summer update for For the King is mainly about the new adventurer mode and that the game is tentatively scheduled for release at the end of February 2018.

The new adventure mode switches things up from the regular story mode in that all locations must first be discovered and any of the dungeons that you find can be tackled in any order. Your starting realm is also randomized for those getting tired of dying in the Guardian Forest. Along with the new Mage Dungeon and Flooded Crypt, we've added some new enemies (Goblins and Gnolls) along with some new Goblin loot to keep things fresh.

This mode is still in beta as we gather more data and feedback, but ultimately it will serve as the framework for other modes and unique adventures. The plan going forward is to introduce a new realm with new enemies and loot and a new custom adventure to go along with it. We have 2 of these planned for, and hopefully many more after full release.

@RockPaperShotgun Sunless Skies has entered Steam early access.

After exploring a cheerygrim subterranean Victorian city in Fallen London, the seas around it in Sunless Sea, then beneath those seas in the Zubmariner expansion, Failbetter Games have blasted off to the dark and dreadful cosmos above with Sunless Skies. Continuing in the same explore-o-trade-a-cannibalise RPG vein as Sunless Sea, Skies today rocketed into early access. The full release should follow in mid-2018 but if you'd like to develop space madness sooner and maybe help shape the game, you can now buy into early access.
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@IndieRetroNews Vaporum will release September 28th. Check out the game blog announcement here.

Throughout the years we've had many great dungeon crawlers posted on Indie Retro News, from the grid based classics such as Eye of the Beholder, to our personal favourite Legend of Grimrock 2 and Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon. Although Grimoire getting a release was a major shock too! So here comes another one that could well be added to that list of coolness, it's the dungeon crawling steam punker 'Vaporum' from FatBot Studio, which is coming to a PC near you, September 28th!
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The ATOM RPG gets better and better:

STATUS UPDATE #5

Hey, guys!

It's update time!

Now, first of all, soon (September 5-15) we will start sending keys for the Steam early access. The early access version will come out approximately in October-November. If you don't have a Steam account - don't worry! You will receive a download link!

[...]

In the last update we told you about the new dialogues (as well as new look) for the Waste dwellers. But we missed one essential part the gives them even more uniqueness! Their portraits!

This is just a little sneak peak and not all of the new characters! :) Some of these guys visit certain locations at the certain time of the day, some you can meet at any time... But everyone of them has a history and something interesting to tell you!

All sorts of improvements

We added a lot of smaller improvements to the game! All of them were requested by the players.

Now the traders in the world are finally renewing their stock! It doesn't sound all that important, but this improvement gave the game a lot more polished feel!

Second, the weapons now have a somewhat realistic ballistic system! For example, you are shooting in a large group of foes! Before, if you missed nothing would happen. The bullet would just magically disappear. That's not the case no more!

[...]

Mount & Blade II Q&A with TaleWorlds’ founder and CEO: Armagan Yavuz:

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Today we start a series of interviews with the different team members of TaleWorlds Entertainment. Every video game is the result of the combined efforts of professionals with very different skills, and that applies to Mount & Blade too. Ours is a varied team, with people from different backgrounds: programmers, artists, musicians and writers (among others) from different parts of the world and varying cultures. Understanding their tasks and their daily struggle is a great way to learn more about games development in general – and Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord in particular! Today we start with TaleWorlds’ founder and CEO: Armagan Yavuz. Every important decision passes through his hands; he is the one that makes sure that everyone and everything stays true to the original vision of the game. But it will be much better if he tells you about it by himself!

NAME
Armagan Yavuz

FROM
Ankara (Turkey)

JOINED TALEWORLDS
2005 (founder)

EDUCATION
Computer Science

OFFICIAL JOB DESCRIPTION
Lead game designer and game director

WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“Most of my day is taken up by meetings. In the time not occupied by meetings, I do my tours around the office, and most team members call me over to their desks to show their work and get feedback, or to ask a question. I also play the game for a couple of hours to see if there are any problems. I no longer code as much as I used to and most of my tasks about coding involve directing other programmers and doing code reviews, however every now and then there is something that picks my interest so much, I give it a shot.”

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“What I like most is seeing how, as the campaign progresses, you as a player write your own story. I am also looking forward to finishing the game and seeing what kinds of mods will come out.”

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“Looking back, the biggest challenge for me was deciding on the general directions to take early in Bannerlord’s development. Should we take the game to have a more fully fledged storyline, or should we aim for huge but less detailed battles? Should we drop the dynamic text and go for full voice over?

Decisions had to be made on the technical side too. We first needed to select which scripting system to use: C# (we picked this at the end), Lua, or something we would roll on our own. And then we had to decide how much of the code we wanted to move from our existing codebase and rewrite in the scripts. (At the end we ended up leaving only the combat engine and lowest level combat AI and write everything else in C#) We then needed to decide how to structure various components, how mods would work, etc.

Some decisions turned out to be exactly right while some caused problems and we had to backtrack and change them, costing a lot of time and effort. For example, we went through three different UI libraries and had to implement some screens several times over.”

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“Today I worked on the design of how army coherence will be affected as an army stays in the field for a long time, and how a player can keep it together longer by arranging its composition and spending influence.”

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“I like to play with Empire, because they are going through a period of crisis, and their situation presents interesting questions and opportunities for the player.”

HAVE YOU TAKEN MAJOR INSPIRATION FROM ANY REAL (OR FICTIONAL) PLACES?
“Back when I had started working on the very first prototypes of Mount & Blade, I had the great fortune of seeing this from our window:
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Thatvideogameblog checked out West of Loathing:

West of Loathing Review

Right … well I’m not sure where to even begin with this one. I’ve either been doing this for to long and I’m hallucinating again or I’ve just spent an exceptionally large amount of time around lethal cows, bandits and immensely silly humor. Wait … no it’s just West of Loathing and boy am I going to have fun telling you about this game.

The first thing I really need you to note here it that this is an RPG. With this in mind, this review is based on more of a this-is-the-story-so-far-type thing. I’m still playing West of Loathing and I’m still thoroughly enjoying it but with tons of side quests and basically all the trappings you’d expect from an epic game I can only base this on what I’ve seen and done so far. If I try and give you a blow by blow you’ll still be reading this review when the sequel comes out.

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All in all, for me at least, West of Loathing is a really refreshing change from other games in it’s genre. I could go into way more detail about the items you’ll find and the combat system but these are things you’ll pick up as you play. I think that this title is well worth a few hours of anybodies time. At the very least you’ll get a chuckle out of it but if you’re anything like me I’ve a feeling that you’ll be as hooked as I am and very pleased that you’re time hasn’t been wasted. This is definitely one that’s staying in my Steam library and may well find a comfortable home in yours.

Score: 8.5/10

Captain Mode for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlords puts you in charge of a detachment of troops in multiplayer battles of 5 vs 5.

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