Edge of War - isometric turn-based RPG inspired by Finnish folklore from Iron Danger devs - now on Early Access

[Infinitron]

Huh, where did this come from? Not sure why the trailer says it's out.

Edge of War delivers an isometric CRPG experience where your choices carve a unique path through the Northlands inspired by laplands and Finnish Folklore. Engage in intricate grid-based combat, leveraging a deeply interactive environment to outmaneuver foes.

In this world, every quest holds weight and significance, directly influencing your journey and the others around you. With semi-procedural world creation and emergent storytelling, each playthrough offers a distinct narrative and plenty of variety.

Venture forth, but remember: mastering the environment is as crucial as mastering the blade.

Engage in Tough & Tactical Combat​

Trials and tribulations await those who seek redemption in the Northlands. Assemble your squad and scout the wilds beyond Fort Turso. This tough turn-based CRPG will pit you against the dangers and the darkness that inhabit the North. Test your wit, wiles and will in a world inspired by Finnish Folklore and the Kalevala!

A New Story Every Playthrough​

Procedurally-deployed hand-crafted quests along with reactive environments lead to a level emergent gameplay unlike any other, and ensures every playthrough is different. Your decisions affect the fate of the Northlands. Choose your squad, choose your skills, choose your allies.

Make friends or enemies of the locals. Delve in dungeons and discover ancient artefacts. Fight tooth, nail and claw against the mighty beast of the wilds. Commune with the spirits and abide by their ways when traversing their realms. Or tackle indomitable constructs and collect their weird technology.

Each element is taken into account and will shape not just your characters but the Northlands. The smallest decision can rally a faction to come to your aid, or seek your destruction. So be careful where you swing that blade, toss that fireball, or lay a kind word. How you live will determine how you die in Edge of War.

Explore Finnish Folklore​

Your squad is tasked with exploring a region that has seen the corruption of a Compelled God, bears the scars of a warlord, and is marked by histories and peoples long forgotten. And yet, somehow people still eek out an existence amidst all these dangers. The Free Folk and the Barbarian Tribes call it home, as do the many spirits - all of them just waiting for a reason to kill you.

Vaeki infuses every stone, every tree, every stream. It gives rise to life, it is present in death, and it is a gift of the gods. Ukko reigns above, Tuoni below. Their brethren are scattered. Yet all ignore you and your prayers. Such is the way of the North.

Fort Turso is your home, your hub for adventures. From here you can journey to the borders of Pohjola or seek the river to Tuonela. Perhaps you will follow in the footsteps of Tapio or heap praise and prayers upon a shrine to Vetehain. Wherever you go Hiisi and other horrors are never far away.

 

[Axel_am]

Finnish Folklore? Elk Humanoids?? Despicable UI???

This looks like an enjoyable fever dream. Putting on watchlist.

 

[Sentinel]

will it feature mads mikkelsen

 

[Infinitron]

This explains the abruptness of this reveal: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1786070/discussions/3/3815165632066587101/

Basic information (including Discord link)
Hi all,

Thanks for being here with us. I'd like to summarize some basic information about the Early Access and us as a team. But first of all, we will be looking through Steam Discussions as well and try to be responsive, but most likely best way to catch us is through our Discord. We are of course currently doing this as our free-time project, so we are not always available, but will do our best here.

DISCORD SERVER LINK[discord.gg]

Background for us heading into Early Access
We started developing Edge of War in 2020, pretty soon after the release of our previous game Iron Danger. Unfortunately for us, Iron Danger had awful sales and most of the minor income provided by it went to cover publisher's costs and share. Therefore the initial development of the new game was done by me as a solo while most of the team was outsourced to other gaming companies so that we could survive as a company. However, as the time passed, we were able to start bringing others into the project as well.

In early 2022, we were able to land a publishing deal that would see the game to be released in 2024 and would allow us to focus all of our effort in developing the Edge of War. We were able to recruit more people to work in the game and everything was going forward really nicely.

Really nicely until spring 2023.

Just before GDC 2023, we were requested to have an urgent meeting with one person from our publisher that we had not met before. In that meeting, out of a blue sky, we were told that due to internal reasons of our publisher, they would terminate our publishing contract. They said that they considered that everything had gone according to plan with the project and we had even exceeded some expectations, but the reasons were that they could not see themselves suitable to see it to the end anymore. Right. Sounds like the worst kind of teenage break-up excuse.

There we were, having focused all of our efforts for a full release in 2024 and therefore having a game that was built from the perspective of getting the content pipeline running nicely instead of providing a playable version for players anytime soon. Also, we had postponed the announcement of the game multiple times by request of the publisher and the plan was to have a big marketing campaign starting in December 2023. Therefore nobody had even heard about the game. We had also ramped up the team so that our whole cost structure was built on top of development funding from the existing publishing contract.

We tried to hurry to find a new publisher, but with a short period of a couple of months it ended up being an impossible task. We were running out of money and had to let most of the development team go during the summer and even though hoping for miracle we prepared that rest of the team would be gone by end of the August. That miracle never happened.

It was extremely hard also in the way that as we had developed the game for three and half years, we really believed in it and had true passion towards it. Therefore we as developers made a decision to not let it die that easily. We decided to concentrate the last couple of months of effort in trying to get it as playable as possible and to bring it to Early Access. Few of us also agreed that we will then turn even more indie with it and keep on developing and updating it during our free-time. That is the path we are currently walking.

So here we are now, kicked in the teeth by the volatility of the games industry, but still trying to push forward to keep alive something we have poured so much of our love and effort into.

By the end of August 2023, none of us will be working on game for their full-time job (or get paid by working on it) unless some kind of miracle happens and we win in lottery or get massive early EA sales. Few of us are however dedicated on working on it in our free-time.

It means that there will different kind of times in development pace, sometimes being able to provide new things faster and sometimes it takes longer. We aim to have game done by end of 2025, but time will tell what if that is plan keeps.

We want to be totally honest and transparent on this for you.

Also, we don't have massive QA resources in the use to keep on testing the game, so we will break things and we'll try to get those fixed. For spotting those bugs we will need help of you all.


We are truly thankful for all of the persons who join this adventure with us and shares their feedback and (hopefully also pleasant) experiences with us. That is the fuel that can keep us going when there is loads of work and nights become long.

I wonder who the publisher was.

 

[thesecret1]

I wonder who the publisher was.

Daedalic Entertainment is listed as publisher of their previous game, so probably they.

 

[Infinitron]

It's available for purchase now.

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1786070/view/3653036045491531750

Edge of War is out now on Early Access
Welcome to the Northlands. I would wish you luck here... but it looks like you just ran out of it.

Today is an extremely interesting day as we are going to have our latest game released to Early Access. What makes it very strange though, is that by the end of the month none of us are working in the company anymore. And what makes it even stranger is that we have told nobody about the game before the release!

The game itself is a CRPG with grid based combat, called Edge of War. It has some cool features, such as dynamic destructible environments that take advantage of runtime physics simulations. The setting is also pretty unique and takes lots of inspiration from Finnish folklore. However, the main idea that we have built the game around is emergent storytelling and high replayability. Of that, we unfortunately can scratch only the surface in the start of the Early Access journey.

If you feel like CRPGs are your kind of thing or you’d just want to support us somehow, all the feedback, help and support is welcome either through participating in EA or spreading the word around. ¨

 

[Aarwolf]

I bought it. Looks good and I want to help them.

 

[Tyranicon]

Is it good?

 

[hepphep]

Really excited to hear as well if it is any good! (as the lead designer of the game)

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

"By the end of August 2023, none of us will be working on game for their full-time job (or get paid by working on it) unless some kind of miracle happens and we win in lottery or get massive early EA sales. Few of us are however dedicated on working on it in our free-time.

It means that there will different kind of times in development pace, sometimes being able to provide new things faster and sometimes it takes longer. We aim to have game done by end of 2025, but time will tell what if that is plan keeps."

Curious why the developers didn't attempt to raise funds via Kickstarter, even if it would only have delayed the inevitable.

 

[Lord of Riva]

I normally don't buy EA, I might make an exception this time around as the post them very honest, transparent and their decision is understandable while not seemingly in the least greedy.
We were also in a similar situation when we released WFTO into EA so I can relate.

It helps that it looks interesting for sure, in any case good luck with your sales.

 

[hepphep]

"By the end of August 2023, none of us will be working on game for their full-time job (or get paid by working on it) unless some kind of miracle happens and we win in lottery or get massive early EA sales. Few of us are however dedicated on working on it in our free-time.

It means that there will different kind of times in development pace, sometimes being able to provide new things faster and sometimes it takes longer. We aim to have game done by end of 2025, but time will tell what if that is plan keeps."

Curious why the developers didn't attempt to raise funds via Kickstarter, even if it would only have delayed the inevitable.

Excellent question. There are actually couple of reasons which are bit tied to each others. First of all, Kickstarter is quite a big investment and we were discussing with some others who have done it successfully. Quite often the situation is that while Kickstarter can be good for marketing, it is very rare cases where they make remarkable income to fund development itself these days. The cost of successful Kickstarter in both of time it takes to prepare and all marketing required does in most cases consume most of money you can get together with it (with some exceptions of course). So unfortunately, on mid-sized projects, the Kickstarter is nowadays most often marketing device than a real mean to fund the development.

Also successful Kickstarter usually requires that you have community already available, which we did not have there as nobody knew about the game.
Having small team, it would also have consequence that we would have dedicated some of our devs to work full-time on preparing for Kickstarter, which would have risked possibility to get into EA state.

And one big thing is also that we are Finnish company and Finnish legislation actually makes it impossible to use Kickstarter (as gathering money through "donations" has special kind of regulations). Therefore only way would have been to found a partner abroad to take care of money transactions etc. And once again, tight schedule and cost levels would have made it impossible here.

For awareness and marketing, I'd loved to have chance to do Kickstarter.

 

[hepphep]

I normally don't buy EA, I might make an exception this time around as the post them very honest, transparent and their decision is understandable while not seemingly in the least greedy.
We were also in a similar situation when we released WFTO into EA so I can relate.

It helps that it looks interesting for sure, in any case good luck with your sales.

I really appreciate that.

Thank you!

(and now need to check WFTO as was not familiar with it before :D )

 

[Tyranicon]

For awareness and marketing, I'd loved to have chance to do Kickstarter.

Kickstarter would absolutely be a slamdunk for a project like this, especially in that it provides free marketing and a massive audience. I would definitely reconsider the possibility of a non-Finnish partner that you can trust to handle a campaign like this.

It will not (probably) pay for the entirety of development, but extra funds and free marketing are not to be scoffed at.

I've made like six kickstarters by now. Yes, in the beginning it took like a full month to prep each one. But by now I know that as long as you have a couple attractive screenshots, gifs and videos, you're good.

 

[Lord of Riva]

I normally don't buy EA, I might make an exception this time around as the post them very honest, transparent and their decision is understandable while not seemingly in the least greedy.
We were also in a similar situation when we released WFTO into EA so I can relate.

It helps that it looks interesting for sure, in any case good luck with your sales.

I really appreciate that.

Thank you!

(and now need to check WFTO as was not familiar with it before :D )

I'm not working for them anymore, so you don't have to feel like you need to support me or anything.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/230190/War_for_the_Overworld/

 

[Alienman]

And one big thing is also that we are Finnish company and Finnish legislation actually makes it impossible to use Kickstarter (as gathering money through "donations" has special kind of regulations)

Bribe officials with vodka?

Jokes aside, the game looks interesting. Love the part of the video when the guy got a crumpling stone arc on his head. Just that alone sold me on it.

 

[Nikanuur]

1. Being Swedish, ah, is just like being Finnish, ah, just not so, ah, crazy. 2. This particular developer's plight gives me fuzzy feelings around the thoracic cage, I want to help out.
I'll buy it too to support this wet dream of a game. Please, just don't tell anyone I bought an EA.

 

[Jermu]

With semi-procedural world creation

Procedurally-deployed hand-crafted quests

little bit suspicious about these but still going to buy it next week otherwise looks promising.

Tsemppiä projektiin!

 

[Orud]

Backed it. Good luck.

 

[Atlet]

Backed it.

I would wish you luck here... but it looks like you just ran out of it.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Backed it too.
Excited to play the game when it's finished.

 

[Nikanuur]

Hah! The codexers can have heart, I knew it!

 

[Lady Error]

Looks interesting. Good to release a similar TB RPG (even if in early access) right after the BG3 hype. And minus the wokeness.

 

[Aemar]

So how is it?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]