Banquet for Fools - party-based RTwP in Serpent of the Staglands setting - now available on Early Access

[Abu Antar]

This x Swordhaven?

 

[Sensuki]

I wonder if some of the weirdness involved in changing characters during combat would be reduced if changing characters were to automatically cue the new character's "action bubble". Though obviously the game would be better turn-based, especially since there seems to be friendly fire and positioning your characters looks like a real headache with this system. But H&J gonna do their own crazy thing as usual.

Or even just make it normal real time with pause I guess, and use the action bubbles to indicate range (pause, choose actions for party members, unpause until their action cooldown ends and/or to move them, pause again to issue commands, etc.). Inferior to true turn based, but would make the combat in this game less annoying I bet.

also, the sex slider at character creation lol. I foresee many triggered codexers

It's not *too far* off though, I think it just needs a bit of a tweak to feel fun.

I'm not bothered by the sex slider, it is definitely politically correct but it's somewhat of a middle ground I would say between having more than two set options, and only having two.

 

[almondblight]

Imagine if, at some point, they make enough money with this one and maybe the next and the buy Mechajammer back to repair/finally finish it.

No, they should get around to finally making Copper Dreams after this.

 

[Infinitron]

If I were Joe and Hannah, the thought of touching Mechajammer again would give me panic attacks.

 

[Harthwain]

also, the sex slider at character creation lol. I foresee many triggered codexers

Why? The slider seems to go between male and female and the models are so alien that anything in-between the extremes isn't too noticeable.

 

[Tyranicon]

If I were Joe and Hannah, the thought of touching Mechajammer again would give me panic attacks.

Last time Joe was here, he mentioned doing something with Mechajammer again, separate from the publisher.

In the end we loved the ideas going into it and how they managed to capture everything we needed for the adventure we wanted to provide, but without the time for ruleset balance, the story with the crew, and a clean launch it was DOA. The publisher has the rights for all releases and post-releases, so we can't update the game without their approval. We deeply regret not having time to implement a back-door so we could continue to update it unofficially without getting into some hazy legal territory.

Our hope at this point is to release a shareware Copper Dreams game realizing the unused concepts during the development of this game we think people also resonated with, in a tighter package with our new 3d things we have going on now. That wouldn't be until next year.

This year we're working on a SitS follow up exploring that world more, we'll have something to share soon. If you've written us off, all good, sometimes these things don't work out.

Hope they make it. I think it's a good sign that codex is still supportive. There's something to be said for people whose hearts are in the right place, even if they stumble.

 

[Martyr]

what the actual fuck. SitS is one of my top 5 games of the past decade. I don't do this crap anymore and I know this'll be buggy as hell and I'm going to suffer, but this will be a day 1 purchase.

 

[buffalo bill]

also, the sex slider at character creation lol. I foresee many triggered codexers

Why? The slider seems to go between male and female and the models are so alien that anything in-between the extremes isn't too noticeable.

I guarantee that certain Codexers will see a sex slider rather than a binary sex selection as catering to a particular political agenda.

perhaps I should say that I absolutely don't give a fuck either way, personally

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Didn't see this posted.

 

[Gandalf]

Didn't see this posted.

If one look at the left side of the screen, there one can see the chalice and other props used for the intro / outro sequence of the video.

 

[buffalo bill]

Didn't see this posted.

Looks like a nice place that they're living. One of them must have some family money I guess if they're living somewhere like that after making no money for like ten years and now deciding to continue to do game development.

 

[Tom Selleck]

yeah but look how sleepy and happy that cat is

 

[scytheavatar]

As a side note, how depressing must it be for the Spiders dev that even a tiny studio can make better looking RTWP combat than them?

 

[Martyr]

I get that it is a step up in perceived quality but I liked the visuals of SitS much more than this.
Banquet's characters look like claymation and their animations (for example the finishing move and the jumping onto the boat) make this game feel whimsical.
SitS's visuals on the other hand reminded me of my beloved Shadowlands and the setting/atmosphere was dark and brooding. plus 2D is always superior to both 2.5D and 3D.
still a though.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Well, that came out of nowhere and it's not even April. Hopefully it turns out well. I imagine they learned a lot from the Mechajammer dumpster fire.

 

[Darkozric]

It has a distinct visual style, whether one likes it or not. One certainly can't accuse it of having no character.

And songs that can be configured to trigger automatically during specific battle moments is a neat idea, adds some nice combat momentum.

I'm interested in this as long as the combat is faster than Staglands, but the floating damage numbers should definitely be removed or at least a toggle option should be added.

 

[Sensuki]

So on the steam forums of the game, the developers are active. There's been a few people that have played the demo and posted feedback and I think all of us had similar issues with the combat in it's current state. The Hannah&Joe account has replied to say they will be changing it. Currently waiting on a bit of clarification but I think it's going to go a bit more towards the realtime/action combat style and away from the pause/turn style.

Judging by their comments you're supposed to dodge and block attacks while your action bar is recovering.

Personally I'm fine with that as outside of combat, the game feels more oldschool ARPG-like with the graphics, the camera centered on the single character with no panning and the hold left-mouse to move around.

 

[buffalo bill]

that sucks

 

[Sensuki]

I'll wait until I get a response about it but I think the way it currently works where you have to manually invoke an action selection state that pauses combat, I think it's going to be changed to regular RTwP, but there won't be 'auto-attack' on the character that you control.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Sure I'll play this, but they have a lot to prove after two fairly trash games, even if Serpent had some cool ideas and visuals.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Judging by their comments you're supposed to dodge and block attacks while your action bar is recovering.

It looked kind of silly, kiting fools like that.

 

[roshan]

They keep coming up with odd combat systems when they should really just do turn based!

 

[Gandalf]

Well, I don't have super high hopes. I wish it to be a masterpiece. Their games look interesting, have some originality in them, heck, even the soul is there (

soul of course ), but they're not super polished gameplay-wise. They feel more like a flawed gems to me or diamonds in the making. I'm not super familiar with sex sliders, but maybe you're right that it is some kind of bad omen...

They stopped posting here cause you commit 1000 microagressions with every breath you take according to Hanna

 

[buffalo bill]

They keep coming up with odd combat systems when they should really just do turn based!

They should hire someone (or get a charitable soul) to do game system design for them. I remember when Mechajammer/Copper Dreams was being developed and they made a decision that as weapon skill advanced, number of damage dice would be removed and replaced with sides on the damage dice (I don't know if this "feature" survived to the final game, but it doesn't matter). That was the moment I realized they are fundamentally not competent game designers. It kind of shows lack of understanding of some basic math. H&J should do art (though I'm having doubts about that too, given how lame the visuals for this look and Mechajammer ended up looking) and setting design and perhaps some of the programming, and someone else should make the core gameplay. But alas I suspect they think that they are capable of gameplay design.

(also ofc they should have a project manager for many obvious reasons)

 

[Lyre Mors]

given how lame the visuals for this look

You have to realize this is a weird take, right? The visuals are striking and unique in this. Truly eye-catching.