COG has reviewed the tactical RPG Acaratus:

Acaratus Review - Steampunk Tactics Tango

Mech combat laced in Steampunk couture, Acaratus is a tactical RPG whose curious aesthetic belies a compelling set of guts. While there a couple dents in the armour, this game’s overall presentation is a well-burnished blend of addictive and satisfying.

Acaratus takes place in a world lorded over by a confluence of narrative cliches. Shortly after mechs (I mean battle suits) are developed, one nation uses them to seize power and then outlaw the tech immediately after. The story properly begins with a slave trader being sold out by one of her slaves. The empire’s goons reveal their adherence to the “stitches for snitches” justice system, the two flee in an illegal battle suit, and the game begins! I see-sawed between bored and fascinated throughout the whole story. Maybe it’s the text-based delivery system, maybe it’s the genre’s necessary dependence on cliche, but the story was a hard sell for me. There were still moments of levity and heart, however, and they managed to pull me back in from time to time.

[...]

All in all, I enjoyed my time with Acaratus. The story hangs a little thin in spots and the combat gets hard at random times, but I found myself going back repeatedly until a given challenge was finished. Yes, the game gets tough. And yes, it can feel unfair at times. However, I learned that a little patience and a little experimentation was often enough to overcome seemingly impossible hurdles. Whether or not the setting appeals to you, the tactical combat has sufficient hooks to get lodged in your brain with little trouble. If you have an eye for turn-based combat with a heady dose of micromanagement, Acaratus is worth checking out.

Score: 78

The Good

• Combat is fast-paced and fun
• Loads of customization options
• Deep strategies abound

The Bad

• Story is a little flat
• Sudden difficulty spikes
• Why is exhaustion a problem for battle suits

The medieval/steampunk RPG Acaratus will launch this night on Steam:

Acaratus Launch trailerw

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Acaratus is launching this 25th of may! It's is a tactical turn-based rpg set in a medieval steampunk world where you build your own mecha units (aka battle suits).

The tactical turn based RPG Acaratus will be released on May 25:

Acaratus Announcement Trailer

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Acaratus is a tactical turn-based rpg set in a medieval steampunk world where you build your own mecha units (aka battle suits).

You customize them to your play style by adding attachments and building a deck of ability cards. Then explore the vast randomized world map and fight it out on gridbased battles! It’s a mashup between Heroes of Might and Magic and Hearthstone.

Patch 0.9.0 for Acaratus is out - here are the patchnotes:

Patchnotes 0.9.0

The biggest one month patch so far

CAMPAIGN

• Content of map sections are now much more predictable and will always have chests and windmills for example, this also removed a lot more of the issues that occurred from the random map generation.
• Existing dungeons have been removed and replaced with a specialized dungeon that will contain big chest with cards and a unique item that requires a key too get to.
• A bigger chest has been added that contains much more gold but is also guarded by stronger enemies.
• Forges now exists randomly across the maps and requires a key.
• Quests rewards you with a key now when completed.
• Normal enemy encounters now grant you some additional gold.
• You need more experience for higher levels now, but town fights reward you more and the next patch will improve the actual fight.
• Incremental improvements to items and unique items, enemy mobs and progression on the map.
• Use Q for armory and E for card menu

GENERAL / GAMEPLAY

• We have added more cards and cards the perform mass functionality, these will be better marked and mechanically different later.
• Armory now longer has a list of units you built on the top of the screen and instead all build management will occur in your loadout, to display the unit in the middle of the armory you just drag it to the center area.
• To remove a unit you just drag it away from your loadout. This could lead to a lot of lost units but we will improve on this at a later patch.
• Removed the actions panel in the loadout and added dummies that you can use to test your attacks as if you were using them in a real battle.
• Skirmish and multiplayer now behaves similarly to the campaign in that you no longer have infinite amount of parts/cards but instead work with unique units and tiered items.
• Commander creation has been changed to grant you slots and items based on their price and give you the remaining gold to do whatever you want and to start over you create a new commander. In the current release there is no store you can buy additional items from but there will be in the future.
• F10 switches seamlessly between borderless fullscreen and your windowed setting.

PERFORMANCE

• The memory consumption has been drastically reduced all around to perform better on laptops, this also caused multiple crashes earlier and those should have been fixed as well.
• Switching between armory and other scenes have been sped up drastically and the same for editing units.

MULTIPLAYER

• Multiplayer has been disabled for now since we did not have the time to fix the existing issues and merge it with the new armory.

All your previous units in skirmish will be removed with this patch because of the new armory. If you have any feedback please post them on the steam forums.

Acaratus is a tactical turn-based rpg set in a medieval steampunk world - here are the patchnotes for version 0.7.8:

Patchnotes 0.7.8

Post summer patch coming up. its not large but its something. We will get more stuff coming up towards the new patches.

Due to the delay in some parts of the production we will have to push the official release to late May 2017 (more precise date will be up soon) and we are sorry for this. Its also because Martin has had some personal issues to get through and is back in full force now though we have lost a lot of tracktion due to this so we had to move the date. Hope you all have an understanding of this and we thank you all for the support!

GENERAL

• Modified camera to only go down when zooming and turning to a side.
• Action camera now only focuses on the shooter and the target and not on the projectiles (causing less unwanted camera movements).
• Cleaned up some gui elements.

GAMEPLAY

• Added a ground effect system to the engine so we can add more interesting mechanics to units and battles, this has caused the campaign update to be delayed but we will use ground effects in the new encounter types.
• Added new item Flamer, that creates burning ground randomly in a cone while also damaging any units.
• Burning ground gets weaker every second turn and any unit standing in it will receive the burning debuff that causes units to take 30% more damage and do 30% less damage, burning ground also does damage to any unit that passes through it.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed issue with grid graphics disappeared during tutorial encounter and various other times

A new patch for Acaratus is coming soon:

May 1, 2016

We are working hard on the patch that is due out today! meanwhile have a look at whats going to be in the patch and what we are working on at the moment,

FLIP COVER

Top image shows our new card that is a bit of a special thing. You can drop it anywhere nere a friendly unit in order to build up a cover that flips up. This can be shot passed by your enemy so they have to destory it or go around it.

Also the level called Sewer is going to be available to play that you can see in the first image

NEW PARTS

This is only one of the new things coming in to the new patch. Lots of helia parts are added and additional booster and so on. 

Last but not least we wanted to share a picture on one of the cage cores we will have in the campaign. Not available in this patch because its still work in progress.

The turn-based RPG Acaratus is now available on Steam Early Access, with a 10% discount.

Here is the early access trailer.

Acaratus is a turnbased tactical RPG set in a medieval steampunk world where you build and fight with your mechanized battle suits to help Adina free the enslaved people by the oppressing emperor Helios.

Story
Since the Valerian Conflict ended the land has been ruled by emperor Helios. A rich slave dealer called Adina unwillingly becomes the leader of a small rebellion against the oppression. She starts recruiting slaves to fight back against the regime and in the process setting an example for human rights.

Features

• Deep tactical turn-based gameplay with medieval mechs
• Explore a vast randomized map with random encounters and surprises.
• Construct your battle suits with modular attachments.
• Find collectable cards that fit your play style
• Fight it out against other players in the battle arenas

And here is the cinematic trailer.

Eye found this annoucement for Acaratus on Steam:

10 Days to Early Access, What's included?

Hi everyone!

We have now less than 10 days left till the game hits Early Access and we are so excited! Lots of fans have stated that they want to know more in detail on what's to be in the early access release, so here it comes.

We know the stigma that is looming upon Early Access titles here on Steam but we want to make good on that and keep an open dialogue with our community, either here or through our twitter and facebook. This game is a passion project and we want it to be the best it can be and we want to share that process with you!

This is an early beta in the rawest form, what does that mean?

We will have smaller quickfixes every other week, followed by bigger updates every month. After the monthly upload we will summarize what that update includes with this months focus tip.

• Features will be added
• Skirmish with bots and Multiplayer is in (no server list yet, only steam friend invite)
• only a fraction of all attachments and cards (will roll out monthly with new parts and cards)
• 4-5 levels available (new levels will roll out after internal testing on each one is done)
• Basic tutorial and tease of the campaign map with some features is available
• Balancing is a bit off (we need your help on this!)
• YOU STILL have the opportunity to shape Acaratus into something better! so if you feel something is missing, having ideas for parts or cards please don't hesitate to write in our forums.
• Options menu needs reworking
• Cinematic videos to campaign missing

Lastly we want to thank you for the support!

The turn based tactical RPG Acaratus will be released on February 25 in 2016. Here's a development update:

Progress Report

New progression is on the way and what means is that we are adding Merchant and Slave trader to the map view. There you will  be able to sell, trade or buy Unit Points, Ability cards and Attachments to your mechs. This allows the player to customize the loadout even more with the parts that fit to the playstyle of your choice.

Insight

Another thing we are working on at the moment that we never before talked about is the “leveling” in the game that we call Insight. This is a gradual thing that the player will be able to hone down the playstyle closer to what you want. For example your units are more melee based then you add more points into that as opposed to the ranged and maybe want more power in your hits then you can add more to the actions instead of ability cards. All this and how you will obtain insight will be explained more as we start to implement the feature.

Overview:

Acaratus is a turnbased tactical RPG set in a medieval steampunk world where you build and fight with your mechanized battle suits to help Adina free the enslaved people by the oppressing emperor Helios.

Story
Since the Valerian Conflict ended the land has been ruled by emperor Helios. A rich slave dealer called Adina unwillingly becomes the leader of a small rebellion against the oppression. She starts recruiting slaves to fight back against the regime and in the process setting an example for human rights.

Features

• Deep tactical turn-based gameplay with medieval mechs
• Explore a vast randomized map with random encounters and surprises.
• Construct your battle suits with modular attachments.
• Find collectable cards that fit your play style
• Fight it out against other players in the battle arenas

A new trailer for tactical turn-based CRPG Acaratus was published earlier this month, showing alpha footage from the game.

Acaratus is (..) set in a medieval steampunk world where you build your own mecha units (aka battle suits).

You customize them to your play style by adding attachments and building a deck of ability cards. Then explore the vast randomized world map and fight it out on gridbased battles! It's a mashup between Heroes of Might and Magic and Hearthstone. 

Features 

• Deep tactical turn-based gameplay with medieval mechs
• Explore a vast randomized map with random encounters and surprises
• Construct your battle suits with modular attachments.
• Find collectable cards that fit your play style.
• Fight it out against other players in the battle arenas

The game is going to hit Steam Early Access in February, 2016.

Website: www.acaratus.com

Thanks Couch.

Acaratus is a new online episodic turn-based tactical RPG set in a medevil steampunk world, and  being developed by a studio called Nodbrim Interactive.

So give the trailer a watch to see if you're interested.

Each player commands giant battle-suits, fighting in an episodic story on various arenas over the known world. The game will have a dialogue driven gameplay with conflicts along the way with emphasis on tactical manoeuvring and character management.

The multiplayer will contain a lobbysystem where all players can meet up and fight on arenas with their own loadouts.  Imagine Heroes of Might and Magic meets Hearthstone