Game News The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Bitmen Studios; The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming

The Storm Guard: Darkness is Coming is an interesting-looking turn-based indie RPG by Bitmen Studios that came out of Early Access a couple of days ago. It bills itself as a "roguelike role-playing game inspired by the Night’s Watch in Game of Thrones", with gameplay inspired by XCOM, FTL and Guild Wars(?), but a lot of people on Steam seem to think it's like Darkest Dungeon. All I know is it looks a hell of a lot like a module for the original Neverwinter Nights. Here's the launch teaser and description:

The Storm Guard is a challenging turn-based roguelike role-playing game inspired by the Night’s Watch in the Game of Thrones.

You assume the role of the Lord Commander of the Storm Guard leading the order during difficult times. An ancient dragon and its minions have returned, threatening the realm of men. While in your base, you must recruit, train and develop a team of heroes in their quest to restore peace. Make smart decisions during the random events you will run into and battle countless different creatures ranging from mere goblins to huge abominable creatures like wyverns, golems, ogres and worse. On the tactical combat map, put the skills you have learned to the test to defeat powerful opponents.

Your chances in battle not only depend on your tactical decisions but also on your preparation. Assemble well-rounded teams and pick from dozens of different skills to creature unique synergies between your team members that work for you and your preferred playstyle.

• Rich turn-based combat with a wide range of interesting mechanics, including numerous conditions (bleeding, burning, weakened, blind, crippled, ...), knockdowns, shouts, buffs, enchantments, and hexes.
  
• Interesting combat mechanics that allow flanking, tying up, disengaging, and smart combinations of skills.
  
• Numerous playable hero classes to pick from to add to your team with dozens of unique abilities to specialize in.
  
• Challenging encounters against close to 40 different creature types each with their own abilities. Ever since the Ancient Dragon returned, Orks, Giants, Undead and Mystic Creatures roam the realm of men causing death and destruction.
  
• Defeat intelligent monsters that collaborate, heal and buff their allies and have their own strategy on how to put your heroes to the grave.
  
• Use your gold wisely on the strategy layer to invest into skill development, equipment, consumables or additional heroes.
  
• Rest in town to recover from injuries that reduce your constitution or gain morale boosts by exceptional performance in battle.
  
• Classic RPG/roguelike features like permadeath, procedural dungeons, and random events result in high replayability.

The Storm Guard is available on Steam now for $20. The few people on our forums who have played it seem to like it. Give it a try and tell us if it's curation-worthy.

 

[Excidium II]

Looks boring.

 

[Mozg]

Tactics games need to figure out a way advertise themselves with some kind of tactical maneuver I can imagine being interesting to execute instead of showing single attack animations and glowstorms.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

Seems like a variation of the darkest dungeon formula, the game seems okay and solid, playing it right now, will give my thoughts later.

 

[Jedi Exile]

Does it have rotating camera? Most likely yes because 3D, so I'll pass.

 

[Krraloth]

As far as synergy between skills go it's interesting. Hell it should be because they lifted almost all the skills from Guild Wars 1, even the 8 skills per hero thing is there.

 

[Kev Inkline]

As far as synergy between skills go it's interesting. Hell it should be because they lifted almost all the skills from Guild Wars 1, even the 8 skills per hero thing is there.

Condition stacking and deck building were the strengths of GW, however, hero battles' cliick fest (pvp) and PVE with no human party membersin general was one of the most boring things in GW1. I wonder how that translates to turn-based 'rogueilike'. Will it make a more interesting setup?

 

[dream expert]

Tactics games need to figure out a way advertise themselves with some kind of tactical maneuver I can imagine being interesting to execute instead of showing single attack animations and glowstorms.

It's been done before but devs are retarded at copying shit that works.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

So yeah after a couple of hours its basically Darkest Dungeon, combat is okay but gets old fast. A pretty decent attempt, especially the simple but workable graphics.

 

[Krraloth]

As far as synergy between skills go it's interesting. Hell it should be because they lifted almost all the skills from Guild Wars 1, even the 8 skills per hero thing is there.

Condition stacking and deck building were the strengths of GW, however, hero battles' cliick fest (pvp) and PVE with no human party membersin general was one of the most boring things in GW1. I wonder how that translates to turn-based 'rogueilike'. Will it make a more interesting setup?

Well the experience is different, you move between rooms in a small map like in darkest dungeon but when you encounter enemies you move to a 3d map where you fight turn based vs enemies. So far I can only use 3 units, I'm not sure if you can field more later on. There's some interesting things done with the panic meter, basically it works like in XCOM where at the end of a time period you get money but you get a lower amount based off the percentage of panic. You can lower it doing missions or placing a unit on duty.

 

[DarkArcher]

This is an example of a game I want to like. Unfortunately, I see the early build and think it looks like a mobile game. It just seems a bit blocky and generic. Then it tries to tap into Game of Thrones as a marketing hook.It doesn't have to be completely original, but it should look like it is finding it's own path. Isn't that what titles like Legend of Grimrock did?