Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Turn-Based Tactics Showgunners (formerly Homicidal All-Stars) - turn-based tactics in a brutal late 21st century reality show from Hard West creators

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,623
It's weird that Kacper won't just come out and say if they use a straight, un-fudged RNG system of if it's fudged to help the player.
lol i almost literally said that we do*
wanna know something else
we did in HW and PD as well

i pity the fool who implements a pure rng

*not on hard tho
dont trust rng that isnt open source.

now that I cooled down a bit Im ready to address the most insane part of your post from 1st page
its just a good rng
you'll like it, its great
no way in hell I will openly state it
I might create alt account to do so if its so amazing
 
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2014
Messages
107
you're uhh... not doing the writing, i hope?
no, and i hope youre not the one responsible for reading anything of significance for your life! :* <3

I might create alt account to do so if its so amazing
work.jpg



(omg this forum is, like, straight from '99, i should hang out more, it's like the time froze here, i love it)
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,764
you're uhh... not doing the writing, i hope?
no, and i hope youre not the one responsible for reading anything of significance for your life! :* <3

eh, i have no problem reading between the lines. it's just that people that want to mislead rely on the interpretation of their vague statements by others. people that want to communicate clearly, do.

i'll assume this is either ESL (<3) or you can't talk more about it without giving away something, so I'll wait and see!
 
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2014
Messages
107
I honestly dont know all the details, more in the creative dir hat than designer nowadays. But I do know we do plenty of gimmics to keep things pleastant for an average gamer. We did plenty playtests on it.
But you can have your no-cheatin' rng on hard.

I'll even raise the stakes here - if you find there's any foul play on hard that I didnt know of, I'll make the team patch it out.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
to be fair, he did include me in the playtest and I pretty much exclusively play these games on whatever the hardest difficulty is + ironman if available
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,690
There are two problems that we see in a fully deterministic system:
I don't think you want to go for a FULLY deterministic system. I loved Hard West, because it really did create this western atmosphere by having to use cover to reduce the amount of incoming damage and using various interesting skills to go around cover (bouncing bullet, for example) as well as cards that helped to tweak your "build". But Luck was a great concept and was very well executed.

For similar reasons I do enjoy King Arthur: Knight's Tale - a lot of it is the atmosphere (of knights in the grim setting), but a large part of it is thanks to a deterministic system with caveats (you always hit, but the amount of damage tend to be randomized to a certain degree, and there are some percentage-based things involved you have to take into account when planning your moves) and some work required to make your skills and game knowledge to shine through.
 

Üstad

Arcane
Joined
Aug 27, 2019
Messages
8,487
Location
Türkiye
Seems really nice, wishlisted and joined the hype train. Altough I'm wondering is there rigid class system or is it just variety of skills and stats? How does different classes work tactical wise? Too many games offer you choice to play as different classes but it doesn't offer any tactical depth, doesn't feel like a different gameplay experience and no reason to replay the game at all.
 
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2014
Messages
107
Altough I'm wondering is there rigid class system or is it just variety of skills and stats? How does different classes work tactical wise? Too many games offer you choice to play as different classes but it doesn't offer any tactical depth, doesn't feel like a different gameplay experience and no reason to replay the game at all.
There are no classes.
You come across several characters that join your team as you progress, and each has a completely different skill set and skill tree.
This was a top tier priority as we worked on the game: we made sure no two characters play the same or even similarly, and combo together in different ways. While replayability wasnt something we chose to invest in, choosing a different team setup for various missions will change the gameplay drastically.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,623
you are even more secretive about it than with your evil rng implementation
Well I'm trying not to be but not sure what the question is other than if its in some other game I havent played xD
to pull some info:

hard west almost felt like rpg. Even though it didnt have skill trees.
Now we have mention of distinct skill trees, xp gathering in battles(from steam desc). How much freedom do they give?
I'm trying to provide tranny examples to showcase what I mean so you can fill the gaps:
- in tranny each character was of clear archetype: tank, dual wielding dps and so on. Yet provided unique skill trees had options that went way past numerical/percentages game. Said dual wielding dps teammate could be turned into 1st class tank fir example.
So to reiterate: assuming that you have shotgun jesus character in there, can you through choices change completely how is he played?
- from steam 'In each battle your teammates gather experience points to be used for leveling up your character.' <- is xp shared or only characters who participated go up?
- from steam 'The more you succeed, the more fans you earn; and your growing fame will yield increasingly beneficial sponsorship deals.' <- Is there charismatic PC tree to pump your street rep?
- can you give more excuses to call it rpg so I can bug Infinitron to move this thread?
- can you go solo, concentrate xp on single character and complete the game? Not that you tried but do you envision it being possible to pull of by some basement dweller
 
Developer
Joined
Aug 9, 2014
Messages
107
hard west almost felt like rpg. Even though it didnt have skill trees.
Now we have mention of distinct skill trees, xp gathering in battles(from steam desc). How much freedom do they give?
Plenty. The way you build your skilltrees affects gameplay quite a lot. Plus, which weapons, what team setup, what tools.

I'm trying to provide tranny examples to showcase what I mean so you can fill the gaps:
- in tranny each character was of clear archetype: tank, dual wielding dps and so on. Yet provided unique skill trees had options that went way past numerical/percentages game. Said dual wielding dps teammate could be turned into 1st class tank fir example.
So to reiterate: assuming that you have shotgun jesus character in there, can you through choices change completely how is he played?
Not completely, because characters arent broad archetypes, but quite specific designs. They way you go through them makes a difference. At the end of the game, if you do all there is to do, you get to max out the trees.

- from steam 'In each battle your teammates gather experience points to be used for leveling up your character.' <- is xp shared or only characters who participated go up?
Sitting a battle out doesnt penalize a character with no xp gain. We want the players to fiddle with their team set.

- from steam 'The more you succeed, the more fans you earn; and your growing fame will yield increasingly beneficial sponsorship deals.' <- Is there charismatic PC tree to pump your street rep?
A very simple tree, but yes.

- can you give more excuses to call it rpg so I can bug Infinitron to move this thread?
uhh has character progression, significant story, and uhh, all that?

- can you go solo, concentrate xp on single character and complete the game? Not that you tried but do you envision it being possible to pull of by some basement dweller
no
 
Joined
Aug 27, 2021
Messages
698
OK I like this dev. It's hard to hit the sweet spot here of being a sarcastic asshole where appropriate but not being a defensive sarcastic asshole. You nailed it.

Also game looks like it might be fun, always a plus.
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://www.pcgamesn.com/homicidal-all-stars/running-man-strategy-game

Homicidal All-Stars is the Running Man strategy game of our dreams​

XCOM meets Running Man in Homicidal All-Stars, a forthcoming turn-based strategy game with dystopian game show antics, permadeath, and buckets of gore
Homicidal All-Stars is a Running Man strategy game: two heroes flanked by minibosses on an '80s-isnpired piece of key art


Running Man strategy game Homicidal All-Stars wasn’t something I expected to rank among my top Gamescom 2022 picks, but developer Artificer’s cheesy delivery and robust turn-based tactics gameplay won me over from the first gratuitous blood spatter.

You play as a contestant on the titular bloody reality game show, trying to work your way up the ranks and get signed by big-spending sponsors. Each mission takes part in a labyrinthine death pit built on the decaying bones of an old city district. There’s a clear sense of staging in the stacks of tyres that have been thoughtfully placed around each open area to form banks of cover, and pristine metal platforms and bridges have been made to look more Mad Max-y with massive spiky welds and copious razor wire. This doesn’t look like a ‘real’ dystopian battleground, but it’s as close to one as the game show’s prop team could hack together – you get the feeling that you could lean on a wall, and it’d slowly creak backwards before bringing the whole set down.

That sense of artifice vanishes when you come up against your first wave of nondescript thugs, and it all gets very real. Shifting your team around the arena and isolating one of them leads to a gruesome cinematic finisher in which body parts are severed and slop to the floor under a hail of bullets – think XCOM but with far, far more blood.

Combat follows the turn-based tactics mould. You arrange your troops around the battlefield using action points to move and either shoot or use an ability. When you’ve queued up all of your characters’ moves you get to watch them play out before the enemy team takes their turn. There’s full and partial cover, percentage chances for most actions, a wide range of enemy archetypes, and permadeath to make you feel obsessively attached to your squad.

And while the aesthetic is cartoonish and stylised, this is game for hardcore strategists. The screen is covered in UI, tooltips, and icons, under which you’ll find details on hit percentages, crit chances, bonus multipliers, damage ranges, effects, and pretty much anything else you could possibly want to know before committing to your turn. It’s a ton of information, but somehow it’s presented in a way that’s just about parsable, with key details in bold and additional considerations sensibly nested beneath.

Homicidal All-Stars is a Running Man strategy game: a top-down view of a dystopian game show set, with UI showing available options for the player to steer their troops

The team at Artificer, which previously made Hard West and Phantom Doctrine, is also aiming to fix a couple of the genre’s biggest problems: RNG frustration and the long wait for an inevitable result to come to fruition.

That first problem will be instantly recognisable to XCOM fans who are used to seeing their hero place the barrel of their gun down an alien throat and still miss. Homicidal All-Stars still has percentage hit chances, but melee attacks and abilities will never miss, which should shave some frustration off the experience.

Similarly, pacing has been a big focus for the studio, and it leans on the game show setting to ensure you can never get ahead of yourself. New enemies enter just as you’re picking off the last remaining scumbags from the current tranche, and if you’re making really good progress then the slimy Homicidal All-Stars host will start dropping in minibosses and environmental hazards to create a bit more chaos. And there’s still plenty of space for immaculately choreographed attacks in which you wipe the slate clean in a single turn – multi-kills and other stylish feats will reward you with heaps of fame, which you can cash between missions for better sponsors and upgrades.

Homicidal All-Stars is a Running Man strategy game: ordering a troop to take cover in a dystopian game show setting

This being a dystopian game show setting, minibosses are steroidal monstrosities with unique quirks that you need to get the better of. It’s not quite as theatrical as a lycra-clad Arnie skating circles around Subzero, but expect Bane-like beefcakes and toxin-spewing ninjas to drop from the ceiling as soon as you hit your stride.

Thankfully, your squad is also composed of unique characters, each with a set of distinct abilities that promise to make team selection a real head-scratcher. My favourite is Tybalt, a stylish technician who can clone and swap places with a selected enemy, allowing you to ambush minibosses or receive health from enemy medics so long as he remains disguised – best of all, the goon you swapped bodies with will find themselves under fire from their own teammates.

As a fan of both dystopian bloodsports and turn-based strategy games, Homicidal All-Stars has me very excited. The setting has been brilliantly harnessed to bring in absurd new threats, outlandish abilities, and rewards for players who like to over-engineer their turns, but it’s the attention to detail that’ll make the difference between me sinking a few hours into this game, or a few dozen hours. Less frustrating actions, more information, more consistent pressure – they’re features I didn’t know I wanted, but now I want them in every tactics game.

There’s no firm release date for Homicidal All-Stars, so why not check out our roundups of the best turn-based RPGs and apocalypse games on PC for more like this.
 

Galdred

Studio Draconis
Patron
Developer
Joined
May 6, 2011
Messages
4,346
Location
Middle Empire
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Turn-based Smash TV huh?
Well actually it's [my lawyer has advised me to censor this content] which I found quite enjoyable.
What, bloodbowl with guns?
(And without the ball?)
Looks more like that minigame from Saints row 3 though.
There was a Blood Bowl with gun minigame in Shadowrun. It was called Urban brawl. I'm not 100% sure the ball part served much of a purpose (it felt more like a capture the flag than a real ball given how you seldom outrange a firearm range with your passing skills). But the trailer gives similar vibes.
Here is the scenario it was introduced in.
IMG_2702_eb500986-8024-472b-b03f-2767176b88dd_1024x1024.jpg
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom