BEAST: False Prophet - turn-based isometric RPG set in a grimdark medieval world - now available on Early Access

[Infinitron]

The original launch trailer got marked 18+ for being too edgy:

 

[luj1]

The original launch trailer got marked 18+ for being too edgy

Kinda where they are going with this

"come and watch this movie, it has butts"

Im suspecting the devs don't have much faith in the gameplay

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Can't tell that much about the gameplay from the trailer, obviously, but as far as atmosphere/feelz go, looks good. Which in the age of Bear Sexgate 3 and Original Cheese Vendor Shit ande Starfilth, couts for a lot.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Does someone know why is luj1 so butthurt about this game?

I mean he's butthurt about many things, but I mostly see him downgrading people here for some reason

 

[BEAST]

Hey everyone!

I am so thrilled to see such hype over BEAST title here! My name is Maks and I am part of False Prophet Dev Team behind the BEAST game! I can see that you are very resourceful when it comes to the news so I am here to extend that! If you have any questions regarding the game or would like to know more about the lore, setting and culture behind the title feel free to shout out loud! Also if you would like to contact us don't hesitate and join discord.gg/beastvideogame
False Prophet Team is there all the time to support and connect with you! Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns! GL & HF!

 

[Infinitron]

Hey everyone!

I am so thrilled to see such hype over BEAST title here! My name is Maks and I am part of False Prophet Dev Team behind the BEAST game! I can see that you are very resourceful when it comes to the news so I am here to extend that! If you have any questions regarding the game or would like to know more about the lore, setting and culture behind the title feel free to shout out loud! Also if you would like to contact us don't hesitate and join discord.gg/beastvideogame
False Prophet Team is there all the time to support and connect with you! Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns! GL & HF!

This game has a long history. As you can see one of our users first spotted it back in 2019. How long has it been in development?

 

[BEAST]

Hey everyone!

I am so thrilled to see such hype over BEAST title here! My name is Maks and I am part of False Prophet Dev Team behind the BEAST game! I can see that you are very resourceful when it comes to the news so I am here to extend that! If you have any questions regarding the game or would like to know more about the lore, setting and culture behind the title feel free to shout out loud! Also if you would like to contact us don't hesitate and join discord.gg/beastvideogame
False Prophet Team is there all the time to support and connect with you! Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns! GL & HF!

This game has a long history. As you can see one of our users first spotted it back in 2019. How long has it been in development?

We started developing Beast 4 years ago and we plan to release the game in a months rather than a years.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Waazzzup Maks! We also have a Max here, or at least a Maxie, and he has brought us untold benefits over the years.

As far as the game, what is the lore of it based on, purely history or mythology (which one) or some mixture?

The trailers present a very dramatic and visceral atmosphere, how will the game's turn based combat try to capture that, considering that by default turn-based combat is slower-paced than say real time?

Also, as far as the combat, one thing I personally hate about traditional DnD style combat is that it's really bad at representing historical medieval style combat (which it's trying to do). Weapons are all wrong (e.g. longswords are one-handed when historically they were 2-handed), and the general flow of combat is just 2 combatants whittling away each other's hitpoints, whereas in reality, historical combat was a flow of attacks, defenses, feints, parries, dodges, etc. Games do try to incorporate that to some degree, usually with distinct abilities for those things (.e.g Parry ability, Kick ability), but in my experience, there is typically no flow to it, and it doesn't feel anything like the real thing. I realize that something like this is very challenging to implement in a turn-based context, but have you guys thought about that and will BEAST introduce anything new and interesting on this front?

 

[Maxie]

Hey everyone!

I am so thrilled to see such hype over BEAST title here! My name is Maks and I am part of False Prophet Dev Team behind the BEAST game! I can see that you are very resourceful when it comes to the news so I am here to extend that! If you have any questions regarding the game or would like to know more about the lore, setting and culture behind the title feel free to shout out loud! Also if you would like to contact us don't hesitate and join discord.gg/beastvideogame
False Prophet Team is there all the time to support and connect with you! Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns! GL & HF!

i don't give a crap about lore setting or culture behind this game, give us a run down on the mechanics
here rather than on some discord server

 

[cyborgboy95]

Community Patch #1
Greetings travelers!

We are just past the opening of the Early Access and we would like to thank you for being the most amazing community!
We have received a lot of constructive feedback along with congratulations and words of encouragement. Thanks to your amazing activity we have already managed to squash some nasty bugs that have been reported by you!

In this first community patch, we managed to squash some bugs and improve things in cutscenes, SFX/Audio, and UX/UI along with other fixes and implementation of new features. See the full list of updates here:

New Features

• • Added difficulty options when starting a new campaign
  • 3 difficulty options: Easy, Normal, Hard
  • Added an Ironman mode option when starting a new campaign
  • In Ironman mode you only have one autosave slot
  • Added a Hardcore mode option when starting a new campaign
  • In Hardcore mode allied characters don't go into downed state when their Health reaches 0 but die instantly
  • Added Overwatch ability for Igor the Coachman

[/list]
Cutscenes

• Updated visuals for most cutscenes
• Updated audio for cutscenes
• Updated subtitles for cutscenes
• Updated subtitles for level intros

SFX/Audio

• Audio volume rebalance
• Added voiceovers to Commanders’ abilities to increase the clarity of their actions

UX/UI

• Added confirmation popups to Restart Mission and Exit to Menu
• Added a warning screen on trying to start a mission without maximum characters selected in party selection
• Changed the character level icon background to yellow, for it to be more easily distinguished from Action Points icon

Fixes

• Replaced the generic Unreal Engine application icon with our custom BEAST one
• Fixed an issue with Health bars not showing for all characters targeted by area of effect abilities
• Fixed an issue with the player not being able to close Options or Load Game menus while in Pause Menu
• Fixed a potential issue with Overwatch being triggered by characters behind the attacker (outside of the visible cone)
• Fixed a potential issue with VFX not being displayed when applying various bonuses to characters via abilities

When starting a new campaign you can now select between 3 difficulty options: Easy, Normal, Hard and even Ironman mode.

In Ironman mode you only have one autosave slot so take great care or you'll need a new keyboard in no time

In Hardcore mode allied characters don't go into the downed state when their Health reaches 0 but they die instantly instead.[/B]

Once again we thank you for embarking on this fantastic adventure with us and for being such amazing players!

Join our official Discord Server in order to stay up to date with news and updates but most importantly you can contact us directly there and ask the False Prophet Dev Team any question you want! We have prepared for you some giveaways, and trivia along with the Content Creator Program and many more things in the upcoming days!

UNLEASH THE (IMPROVED) BEAST NOW!

False Prophet Dev Team

 

[Harthwain]

Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns!

Is this something like Hard West? Reality permeated with the supernatural? Since there already is the Beast, will there be a counterpart (or the whole other side, instead of it being just all demons)? Or is the Beast IT, be-all end-all?

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Hey everyone!

I am so thrilled to see such hype over BEAST title here! My name is Maks and I am part of False Prophet Dev Team behind the BEAST game! I can see that you are very resourceful when it comes to the news so I am here to extend that! If you have any questions regarding the game or would like to know more about the lore, setting and culture behind the title feel free to shout out loud! Also if you would like to contact us don't hesitate and join discord.gg/beastvideogame
False Prophet Team is there all the time to support and connect with you! Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns! GL & HF!

This game has a long history. As you can see one of our users first spotted it back in 2019. How long has it been in development?

We started developing Beast 4 years ago and we plan to release the game in a months rather than a years.

Is a GOG release planned?

 

[Baron Dupek]

The original launch trailer got marked 18+ for being too edgy

Kinda where they are going with this

"come and watch this movie, it has butts"

Im suspecting the devs don't have much faith in the gameplay

almost like Haterd devs who copypasted Postal and forgot to make good game with anything beyond sheer violence

 

[Harthwain]

almost like Haterd devs who copypasted Postal and forgot to make good game with anything beyond sheer violence

Nothing wrong with having simple games though. I remember playing Hulk (2003) where all you did was smashing things. Or BE-A Walker where a lot of fun comes from stomping not-Ewoks on not-Avatar planet under your mech's legs. Same goes for wrecking sheer havoc with your superpowers in [PROTOTYPE] (the first one). I mean, who doesn't love grabbing a car with your hands, sprinting up the skyscraper and throwing it at a helicopter?

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

First Prototype was awesome.

 

[Serus]

almost like Haterd devs who copypasted Postal and forgot to make good game with anything beyond sheer violence

Nothing wrong with having simple games though. I remember playing Hulk (2003) where all you did was smashing things. Or BE-A Walker where a lot of fun comes from stomping not-Ewoks on not-Avatar planet under your mech's legs. Same goes for wrecking sheer havoc with your superpowers in [PROTOTYPE] (the first one). I mean, who doesn't love grabbing a car with your hands, sprinting up the skyscraper and throwing it at a helicopter?

Except this is supposed to be a turn-based game with tactical combat if i understand correctly. Doesn't seem like the right genre to make a gameplay about smashing things and throwing them at other things. Simple gameplay may be fun but if form and substance don't mesh together it can't end well. I still hope they concentrated on the flashy stuff in trailer because they aren't Frenchmen who can survive on roots alone. Not because they think gameplay is secondary.

 

[Harthwain]

Except this is supposed to be a turn-based game with tactical combat if i understand correctly.

I was talking about Hatred.

This game has classic/standard turn-based tactical combat and from what I've seen it's fine. Killing your enemies is always fun. This was one of the reasons why I enjoyed King Arthur: Knight's Tale (one of a few elements, admittedly, but having fun visceral combat is an important aspect of any combat-related game). The setting also seems fresh, so I am looking forward to this one.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/this-grimda...ome-a-satanic-wolverine-who-barks-like-a-dog/

This grimdark tactical RPG let me become a satanic Wolverine who barks like a dog​

Beast is brutal, janky and out in early access now.

When I first embraced my inner-demon in medieval tactical RPG Beast, I was not expecting to become a kind of satanic, horned Wolverine, ripping enemies to shreds with razor-sharp claws. My foes were equally surprised, as blood spurted out of their veins with comic book exaggeration. As I dashed around the gridless map, the miserable setting—a dimly-lit village ravaged by plague and war—and grim violence was undercut by my character's howls and barks. "Woof woof woof!" I yelled as I cut down another soldier.

Despite the laughs elicited by the barking protagonist—a war veteran returning home after a decade of Ottoman slavery—Beast is a deliberately miserable game. Anti-hero Anton is a gloomy, scarred and vengeful lad, and after a hellish 10 years he's come back to Carpathia during what's basically an apocalypse. Nobody is having a good time.

Beast has launched in early access during an enduring flood of tactical RPGs, many of them leaning into similar grimdark themes. Like others, including the Darkest Dungeon series, it reflects the pressures of conflict and the stresses placed upon Anton thanks to the horrors he regularly witnesses with an "insanity system". The impact of this system, however, and the way you can manipulate it are what sets this tactical RPG apart.

See, when Anton's insanity meter reaches its zenith, he becomes a font of rage, allowing you to activate his most dangerous ability: transforming him into the aforementioned satanic Wolverine. He ditches his swords and guns, instead slaughtering with his demonic claws and his supernatural strength and speed. On top of this, he can teleport directly to enemies and attack them in a single move, or intimidate them, stopping them from using an action that turn by pointing at them and giving them a stern talking to—scary stuff!

This system is very much under your control, as specific things raise and lower the meter. Dealing and taking damage is a surefire way to get the meter up, and it's not just enemies who you can batter. When an ally is downed, for instance, you can finish them off by executing them instead of saving them, embracing the dark side. If you choose to heal them instead, Anton's rage starts to dissipate, which can be helpful if you want to use your ranged weapons.

The one element of the insanity system that doesn't quite make sense, in part because it comes with no explanation, is how it also gives enemies new abilities. I'd get it if going beast mode made you, say, vulnerable to specific attacks, because you favoured offence over defence, but I can't figure out a logical reason why the meter going up would empower your foes and give them new ways to thwart your mission.

Old dog​

Otherwise, Beast sticks to familiar mechanics: overwatch, different levels of cover, attacks of opportunity—you know the score by now. Different classes have, along with their specific weapons, special abilities, allowing them to make multiple attacks with some accuracy penalties or strike an enemy while gaining a defensive bonus. So far, abilities that deal extra damage seem like the least helpful ones, as I've encountered few enemies that can't be taken out instantly by a single basic attack. The defensive and utility abilities, however, prove more useful since you're often swarmed by foes, and allies can go down swiftly.

More than a few times I've been skipping through a mission without a care in the world, only for a pack of enemies to burst out of a door or alley, quickly surrounding my carefree party, rapidly transforming the fight into a stressful fight for survival. This is where scouting becomes so important: even if you think you've got a clear path to the objective, you almost certainly don't. You won't survive unless you start sending canaries into the mine.

Characters benefit from passive abilities, too, determined by both their class and background. This allows some characters to counterattack, while others can heal for a percentage of the damage they've inflicted. A lot of the starting abilities are surprisingly powerful, turning everyone into a deft killing machine, and every character comes with a fairly meaty ability tree with a mix of passive and active abilities, so your allies are not just throwaway minions. This makes the choice to execute them to raise your insanity meter a riskier proposition.

Instead of an XCOM-style non-linear campaign, Beast throws you into missions one after another, sandwiched between cutscenes. There's also a second story running parallel to Anton's, where you're controlling a rebellious prince and his mates. Unfortunately, it all flows together terribly, at first, with missions that are too short and a narrative that doesn't feel cohesive.

This does improve once you're out of the opening section, however, and this is also where Beast starts throwing in some management wrinkles. After around six missions, you'll finally get to customise Anton, picking a premade class and background, or making more granular choices. You can start recruiting soldiers, too, and equipping them with loot pinched from the battlefield between each mission.

There's a spot of resource management from this point on, as your ammunition and healing items will run out quickly and won't be replenished automatically. This balances out the brutal effectiveness of ranged weapons. It's very tempting to wipe out enemies before they can close the gap, but that might leave you vulnerable in your next mission. Guns in particular, then, are to be used sparingly, and come with other downsides, like the need to reload after every shot, wasting an action point.

Even in a short space of time I encountered a solid variety of objectives amid these battles, from castle escapes to protecting wagons to rescuing pals, which will hopefully grow even more diverse once developer False Prophet expands beyond the current 20-mission roster. It's a good foundation, but what it really needs more than anything else is lots and lots of polishing.

"As this is truly an Alpha version of the game (which means actual early code) there is a lot of stuff planned to be implemented, fixed, updated, balanced and optimized before full release," warns the developer. And yeah, it is certainly a bit rough. Character animations are sluggish, with awkward pauses between actions, and the cinematic finishers frequently see characters clipping through each other. Audio, meanwhile, is all over the place, requiring me to constantly raise and lower the volume. I'm already getting really sick of the UI, too, which lacks clarity and demands too many extra clicks while offering too little feedback.

False Prophet says it's "committed to 2024", so Beast is expected to leave early access in a matter of months rather than years. In the meantime, there's fun to be had here, both when it comes to the violent scraps and the squad management. I'd hold off taking it for a spin until it's had a bit more time to stew, however. Give it a few updates first.

 

[Tyranicon]

After around six missions, you'll finally get to customise Anton, picking a premade class and background, or making more granular choices. You can start recruiting soldiers, too, and equipping them with loot pinched from the battlefield between each mission.

That's a pretty lengthy tutorial or whatever...

 

[BEAST]

Waazzzup Maks! We also have a Max here, or at least a Maxie, and he has brought us untold benefits over the years.

As far as the game, what is the lore of it based on, purely history or mythology (which one) or some mixture?

The trailers present a very dramatic and visceral atmosphere, how will the game's turn based combat try to capture that, considering that by default turn-based combat is slower-paced than say real time?

Also, as far as the combat, one thing I personally hate about traditional DnD style combat is that it's really bad at representing historical medieval style combat (which it's trying to do). Weapons are all wrong (e.g. longswords are one-handed when historically they were 2-handed), and the general flow of combat is just 2 combatants whittling away each other's hitpoints, whereas in reality, historical combat was a flow of attacks, defenses, feints, parries, dodges, etc. Games do try to incorporate that to some degree, usually with distinct abilities for those things (.e.g Parry ability, Kick ability), but in my experience, there is typically no flow to it, and it doesn't feel anything like the real thing. I realize that something like this is very challenging to implement in a turn-based context, but have you guys thought about that and will BEAST introduce anything new and interesting on this front?

Hi!

Beast was inspired by games like Gears Tactics, Darkest Dungeon, Mordheim City of Damned, Banner Saga. The setting of the game was inspired through historical, cultural and folkloristic research on Eastern Europe during the late medieval and renaissance period, in particular the 16th century Carpathians region and Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Among the films, the greatest inspiration to show the world in a low/dark fantasy atmosphere, where madness is the main motif, was the following films: Viy (1967), Valhalla Rising (2009), Black Death (2010), The Witch (2015). From the books Dracula by Bram Stocker, The Black Company by Glen Cook, Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. From miniature battle games: Warhammer Mordheim, Rangers of Shadow Deep, and from tabletop RPGs: Vampire The Masquerade, Dzikie Pola.

We are trying to create fast-paced dynamic gameplay so we would like to reflect that dynamix gameplay will allow us to campture this eerie atmosphere that is around you during the progress of the game. Since it is still Early Access we would love to hear your opinion on that. So far we have implemmented and waiting for feedback:

• implemented system of faster selecting the target
• ability to start another character actions while current action is still performing

We are trying to fasten the pace of the flow during the gameplay so the feeling of dramatic and visceral atmosphere stays with you during camps, breaks nad haunts you over and over untill your madness can be seen in your eyes!

When it comes to combat we are not trying to reinvent something that currently exists rather we try implement some part of existing combat mechanics that work for a plyer from different game and implementing that feature in BEAST. In our game there is a difference between characters with more dexterity and strenght, when characters with more dexterity will have more parry/dodge chance. Additionally some weapon attacks are harder to get parried/dodged and some attacks give additional hit chance if used. Under the hood there quite complex system that is absed on rolling dice however during the gameplay it is smooth and unnoticed for a normal player as the gameplay feels a lot easier and more smooth

 

[BEAST]

Feel free to contact us directly though there! We are more than welcome to answers all your questions and address all of your concerns!

Is this something like Hard West? Reality permeated with the supernatural? Since there already is the Beast, will there be a counterpart (or the whole other side, instead of it being just all demons)? Or is the Beast IT, be-all end-all?

There is more paranomral effects, however, we can never be sure as there is no confirmation if what you currently see is from the eyes of Anton, yours or is it a reality? Please remember that the main character suffers from PTSD after being kidnapped by the enemy.

 

[BEAST]

Is a GOG release planned?

Yes, we plan to release the game on GOG, Epic Games and Windows Store

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Is a GOG release planned?

Yes, we plan to release the game on GOG, Epic Games and Windows Store

Glad to hear. A tightly-packed and intense rpg would be nice for a change, especially now that I have finished the lengthy BG3.

 

[M. AQVILA]

 

[Abu Antar]

Any Codex impressions? It looks like a game that I might be interested in, but it looks rough around the edges.