Game News Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor gets trailer and Steam page, coming Fall 2022

[Infinitron]

Tags: Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor; Spiderweb Software

Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor, the second chapter in Jeff Vogel's latest non-remake trilogy, was successfully crowdfunded on Kickstarter last year. This time the campaign raised only $65k, but these diminishing returns are still enough to keep the Spiderweb Software machine running. As before, development has reached the stage where it's time to unveil the game's Steam page and trailer, along with the release window of Fall 2022.

You are a child of the dread Queen of the mighty empire of Haven. Alas, your life of happy luxury has been stripped from you. The Queen, your mother, is desperately ill, so you have been forced to travel to the savage Rokaj. It is a poor and brutal land of warriors, constantly prone to rebellion.

You find yourself in the middle of a vicious power struggle, between your masters back home and the raiders and assassins of the wilderness. A rebellion is brewing. If you can’t prove yourself and master the wild Ro, it will be a bloody disaster. Can you take control of your Empire’s lands? And what will you do with them once you have it?

Explore a vast nation full of cities, forts, and dungeons. Fight clever, carefully designed turn-based battles. Deal with misbehaving vassals with bribery, diplomacy, or violence. Build new forts and customize them, choosing among upgrades that give your adventurers powerful bonuses.

Queen's Wish 2: The Tormentor features:

• Epic fantasy adventure with over 50 hours of gameplay.
  
• Open-ended story in the barbarian lands of the Rokaj. Make the choices you want, and enjoy the terrifying consequences.
  
• Suspenseful tactical combat. Select from sixty different abilities. Build and rebuild your warriors to face rapidly changing foes.
  
• Gain strength with a unique fortress system. Build and equip fortresses. Customize your Empire to gain power or please the locals.
  
• Explore (Conquer?) an enormous outdoors and a huge variety of dungeons and enemy fortresses.
  
• Not just orcs and elves. Explore one of the fascinating, detailed worlds that make Spiderweb Software adventures unique.
  
• Over 100 quests and hundreds of magical artifacts to hunt for.

Enjoy a new adventure from Spiderweb Software, now celebrating 28 years of making fine indie fantasy role-playing goodness.
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Well, it's definitely a Queen's Wish game. The graphics are a lost cause, but we'll see in the fall whether Jeff has really learned any lessons from the first game's design failures.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Not with a bang but a whimper.

28 year career.

 

[talan]

Can't wait!

 

[thesecret1]

we'll see in the fall whether Jeff has really learned any lessons from the first game's design failures.

Jeff? Learning new tricks?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Didn't play the first one. Any good?

 

[Mortmal]

Didn't play the first one. Any good?

KickStarter - Queen's Wish: The Conqueror - the Jeff Vogel Kickstarter | rpgcodex > At some point in future time, the Codex will be down for maintenance

 

[Correct_Carlo]

I love Spiderweb. A lot. I somehow missed this whole kickstarter. The first game was dull and I'm still puzzled by the weird top-down graphics that somehow still use sprites that look like they were drawn for isometric perspective, so this is going to be the first Spiderweb game I likely won't rush to play.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

at least

 

[PatataFamilia]

Didn't play the first one. Any good?

It had some good ideas, decent writing, and a serviceable at best combat system.

Since your character was empowered by the society that produced them, you're not looking for epic loot, you're expanding your territory. Expanding your territory brings you more resources, which lets you get better craftsmen to make better weapons, potions, etc. It's a interesting subversion of the murderhobo loop. Similarly, when you conquer new places, you get new races working for you, and the expertise of those races is another powerup. So he did a really good job integrating the themes of Colonialism into gameplay. He also made it so that dungeons have to be done in one go; it makes the strategic aspect more important, but is very, very, very gamey and more than a little jarring. These decisions mean that fights are frequently meaningless, and most dungeons grant you more wood, herbs, or stone weekly. When you already have a rich economy, what's the point? [I think finding specialized NPCs as loot, and convincing them to work for you would have been much more interesting while fitting the themes.]

Most NPCs are generic, which makes sense given the themes of the game, but gets a bit dull. There's just enough going on to keep it interesting, but less so than a world like Geneforge or Exile. The combat system can frequently be a slog, especially if you're in high evade fights.

I felt like it's what Avadon wanted to be. It did the themes better, family was a significant sideplot, and was at least experimenting in interesting ways. I think with more polish the system could really carve out a place for itself.

 

[Contagium]

I despised the dungeon gimmick in the first one. I like being able to go back into a dungeon without respawning enemies.

Does anyone know if he plans to do this in the new game?

 

[Contagium]

Not a lot a buzz on the Steam page yet. In fact... only forum post so far is mine.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Not a lot a buzz on the Steam page yet. In fact... only forum post so far is mine.

View attachment 23865

Looks like you're having a fun conversation with all your friends.

 

[Haba]

Not with a bang but a whimper.

28 year career.

A fart, not a whimper.

 

[Falksi]

Didn't play the first one. Any good?

First hour or so it sets everything up nicely, then it descends from potential high adventure into bullshit as the main focus switches to you building "Boringsville"

I see this includes a Fort building segment too, and for that alone it can go fuck itself.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

Well, at least he has his finances under control.
I read here on rpg-codex that other indie developers had to sell (?!) their houses.
Here are some old numbers from his GDC talk "Failing to Fail: The Spiderweb Software Way".
You can find the talk on youtube.

1995 (1 employee):
$32829 ($53757 in 2017) Time: 28:15

1997 (1 employee):
$207172.37 ($329360.89 in 2017) Time: 28:15

2003 (3 employees):
$212998 ($291100 in 2017) Time: 39:04

2004 (3 employees):
$168357 ($222739 in 2017) Time: 39:04

2011 (3 employees):
$750666 ($843353 in 2017) Time: 43:10

That said, as long as he doesn't make serious money hiring someone to change the design, his games will have the old crappy art style.
He plays it safe.

 

[thesheeep]

That said, as long as he doesn't make serious money hiring someone to change the design, his games will have the old crappy art style.
He plays it safe.

But the old crappy art style was still a lot better than the new crappy art style. At least it was consistent and not a mess of different styles and perspectives.
That's the problem with it - not that it looks "indie".

 

[Curratum]

I will never comprehend how that man manages to make money from producing the same game with a slightly different script over nearly 3 decades, with the graphics and UI/UX still stuck somewhere in the first half of the first decade.

He's the Todd Howard of indies, but on a much lengthier scale in terms of time.

 

[Nazrim Eldrak]

That said, as long as he doesn't make serious money hiring someone to change the design, his games will have the old crappy art style.
He plays it safe.

But the old crappy art style was still a lot better than the new crappy art style. At least it was consistent and not a mess of different styles and perspectives.
That's the problem with it - not that it looks "indie".

Well, I never wrote that the indie look is a problem here.
I don't know the old art style but I'm pretty sure if he changes it he won't take the old ones and for that he needs money.
Also, I'm pretty sure if he changes it he'll keep the indie look otherwise he could potentially lose his fan base.

The magnitude of the changes I envision can be compared to Knight of Chalice 2.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

That said, as long as he doesn't make serious money hiring someone to change the design, his games will have the old crappy art style.
He plays it safe.

But the old crappy art style was still a lot better than the new crappy art style. At least it was consistent and not a mess of different styles and perspectives.
That's the problem with it - not that it looks "indie".

Well, I never wrote that the indie look is a problem here.
I don't know the old art style but I'm pretty sure if he changes it he won't take the old ones and for that he needs money.
Also, I'm pretty sure if he changes it he'll keep the indie look otherwise he could potentially lose his fan base.

The magnitude of the changes I envision can be compared to Knight of Chalice 2.

Kotc2 is a revolution compared to ole Jeff

 

[thesheeep]

Yeah, my comment was more aiming at the "playing it safe".
At least when it comes to art style, he really didn't. Maybe he tried to and failed, I'm not sure.

 

[MicoSelva]

I have not actual played any of Jeff Vogel's games, but his blog is usually an interesting read, pretty insightful and occassionally funny.
He seems to be a very self-aware (you can tell even from the blog's name) and down to earth guy.

https://bottomfeeder.substack.com/

 

[Kem0sabe]

Yet another game where all the choices you made in the previous one are useless. He might as well remove all c&c from his games.

 

[Modron]

we'll see in the fall whether Jeff has really learned any lessons from the first game's design failures.

Jeff? Learning new tricks?

Avadon was super bland and yet he managed to make Avadon 2 which was pretty good. More codexers should give Avadon 2 (and 3) a shot. We'll see if he can do that again in a handful of months.

 

[Infinitron]

He's the Todd Howard of indies, but on a much lengthier scale in terms of time.

Todd and Jeff's first credited games were actually both released in the same year (1995).

 

[Haba]

I read here on rpg-codex that other indie developers had to sell (?!) their houses.

And hair.

Another dev eats roots.

One lost their family and lives under a bridge and sleeps with kangaroos.

Art is suffering.