Information Telepath Tactics Kickstarter Relaunched

[Crooked Bee]

Tags: Sinister Design; Telepath Tactics

Craig Stern of Sinister Design has taken a new attempt at kickstarting Telepath Tactics, a "Fire Emblem-style tactical RPG with modding, custom campaigns, bridge-building, destructible battlefields, and hotseat multiplayer" for Windows, Mac and Linux. There is an updated public demo of the game available (linked is the Win version; check out the Kickstarter page for Mac and Linux versions), as well as the manual.

Gameplay

Telepath Tactics borrows the best parts of our favorite tactics games to create a dream team of available strategies in battle.



Throw enemies off of cliffs; push enemies into water or lava; fling friends across gaps; set your enemies on fire; freeze them; blind them; cripple them; stun them; use hit-and-run tactics with cavalry and bowmen; teleport; grab item drops; stick your ranged units on the high ground to boost their effectiveness; the list goes on and on.

Telepath Tactics also brings fresh, brand new new environmental manipulation mechanics to the table. Freeze water and build bridges to create new routes across water or lava; build barricades to brunt an incoming attack; destroy walls, doors and bridges to open up or close off routes of attack; push boulders, barrels and tables in the way to block off certain routes; shoot through open windows; place down explosive charges to create a trap for an unwary opponent. Telepath Tactics supports all of this and more.

Attack damage is 100% predictable, and attacks always hit unless there is some intervening factor (such as the attacker having been blinded, or the target having some special defensive status effect). In this regard, it is very much a game of skill akin to chess. Chance will seldom determine the outcome of a battle; victory depends on you and your wits.

And you'll need all the wits you can get: the enemy AI in Telepath Tactics is aggressive and reactive. The enemy will not just sit around the battlefield waiting for your characters to wander into aggro range or trigger a script—the AI will actively maneuver and seek out ways to get at your most vulnerable characters. It will backstab you, compete with you to grab useful items, break down your barricades, and shove you right into the lava every chance it gets.​

The pitch also promises 22 different classes, as well as a map editor and a dialogue editor. You can study the Kickstarter page for more details. $10 gets you a copy of the game, with the funding goal set at $15,000.

 

[MicoSelva]

I was mildly interested in this during the dark year of 2012, but now, as things are looking better and better on many fronts, I kind of don't care any more.

 

[Maelflux]

I really like that you get an editor you can do do much with. Am much tempted to use the 25$ on it, to get access to whatever is available asap.

EDIT: Ergh, seems like its 50$ to get the Map editor now. Hmm.

 

[Helly]

You do eventually get the editor with the basic 10$ pledge, the 50$ one only give it to you immediately.

 

[felipepepe]

Game will have map editor even at $10, $50 is just for early access (dumb thing, if you ask me...)

I haven't followed how this evolved since last time, I hope he managed to fix the ranged combat and make the game feel more "alive".

 

[Irenaeus]

He seems to have made some improved, I'll check the updates later. For now, pledged the $10 to give this a push.

 

[Maelflux]

You do eventually get the editor with the basic 10$ pledge, the 50$ one only give it to you immediately.

Yes, but that's in a year or so, compared to have something to play around with next month..

 

[St. Toxic]

10 sounds reasonable.

 

[Horus]

They really need a better name than that.

 

[Severian Silk]

Name is fine. Quit bitching.

 

[Zed]

The name is good if he wants to appeal to the console Blah: Tactics crowd. That's probably his target audience.

Telepath Tactics is playable, but there's still a lot of content to create for the game. It needs a lot more art, for one thing. Specifically:

Character portraits;
gender variants for each character class (all characters are currently just male or just female);

That's 2x the art of every character (with 4x angles and animation). Sounds a little unnecessary in a "unit" based game where gender is superficial.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

The name is good if he wants to appeal to the console Blah: Tactics crowd. That's probably his target audience.

Telepath Tactics is playable, but there's still a lot of content to create for the game. It needs a lot more art, for one thing. Specifically:

Character portraits;
gender variants for each character class (all characters are currently just male or just female);

That's 2x the art of every character (with 4x angles and animation). Sounds a little unnecessary in a "unit" based game where gender is superficial.

GENDER IS NEVER SUPERFICIAL

 

[Kron]

Art direction sucks.
Name sucks.
The end.

 

[eric__s]

Looking forward to this. Craig Stern is a good guy who runs Indie RPGs and it looks like the game has gotten better since his last attempt. I'll be contributing soon.

 

[Galdred]

I don't share his hatred for randomness. Removing randomness and making the game 100% predictable turns each encounter into a puzzle to me. And if something should not be 100% predictable, it's warfare based activities...

 

[Jaesun]

Am curious on felipepepe thought's on this version.

 

[Craig Stern]

Howdy, fellow Codexers! I just wanted to pop in and mention that I actually added in a few of the suggestions I got on these forums since the last campaign. Among them:

1. You can now move your entire force simultaneously using the Rally function. Good for turns where all you want to do is move your units without worrying about the resulting formation.
2. The enemy AI is nastier. Among other things, it now busts down your barricades if you try hiding behind them. I'm still not done working on the AI by any means, but it's steadily evolving to the point that you can get a good challenge without needing a ton of randomization to gum up your tactical choices.
3. There is now a "sniper" unit in single player that fulfills the role of artillery. It has a long-range attack called "Arched Shot" that can hit any space within a 5-square radius (6 squares if shooting from the high ground). I've replaced four of the bowmen from the Ploutos Weapons Depot battle with snipers; I think it makes the battle much more interesting. (Note: Arched Shot is one of the only attacks in the game with a built-in chance to miss; I felt it necessary to do that for the sake of balance.)

I've also added in branching dialog and expanded the game's scripting options. I just updated the public alpha demo yesterday, so if you haven't given the latest version a shot, feel free to nab it. It's linked near the top of the page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426761469/telepath-tactics-a-strategy-rpg

 

[80Maxwell08]

Howdy, fellow Codexers! I just wanted to pop in and mention that I actually added in a few of the suggestions I got on these forums since the last campaign. Among them:

1. You can now move your entire force simultaneously using the Rally function. Good for turns where all you want to do is move your units without worrying about the resulting formation.
2. The enemy AI is nastier. Among other things, it now busts down your barricades if you try hiding behind them. I'm still not done working on the AI by any means, but it's steadily evolving to the point that you can get a good challenge without needing a ton of randomization to gum up your tactical choices.
3. There is now a "sniper" unit in single player that fulfills the role of artillery. It has a long-range attack called "Arched Shot" that can hit any space within a 5-square radius (6 squares if shooting from the high ground). I've replaced four of the bowmen from the Ploutos Weapons Depot battle with snipers; I think it makes the battle much more interesting. (Note: Arched Shot is one of the only attacks in the game with a built-in chance to miss; I felt it necessary to do that for the sake of balance.)

I've also added in branching dialog and expanded the game's scripting options. I just updated the public alpha demo yesterday, so if you haven't given the latest version a shot, feel free to nab it. It's linked near the top of the page here: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1426761469/telepath-tactics-a-strategy-rpg

Hey I tried out the demo and I have to say it's alright so far. Not a fan of the art style but that's negligible. You might want to look up some let's plays of the earlier Fire Emblem games since there's a lot of ideas that were never used again that seemed pretty cool.

Unfortunately I have no spare money to back this but I'll be keeping an eye on it. Hope everything goes well for you.

 

[Horus]

Name is fine. Quit bitching.

1. There is now a "sniper" unit in single player that fulfills the role of artillery. It has a long-range attack called "Arched Shot" that can hit any space within a 5-square radius (6 squares if shooting from the high ground). I've replaced four of the bowmen from the Ploutos Weapons Depot battle with snipers; I think it makes the battle much more interesting. (Note: Arched Shot is one of the only attacks in the game with a built-in chance to miss; I felt it necessary to do that for the sake of balance.)

[/quote]

Does the range bonus stack as you go higher like final fantasy tactics?
Do you plan to implent bleeding mechanics(possibly effecting the movement points)
Without causing some kind of status effects archers are generally useless and are forsaken to make spaces for the mages.
Though it's fair to say that it does not efffect the player much but it really damages the most of the story encounters because most of the story encounters have 2-3 archers in most games.

 

[Craig Stern]

Thanks, Maxwell!

Does the range bonus stack as you go higher like final fantasy tactics?
Do you plan to implent bleeding mechanics(possibly effecting the movement points)
Without causing some kind of status effects archers are generally useless and are forsaken to make spaces for the mages.
Though it's fair to say that it does not efffect the player much but it really damages the most of the story encounters because most of the story encounters have 2-3 archers in most games.

The range bonus does not stack, no.

Bleeding is not a status effect in the game right now, but you can set enemies on fire and/or cripple them, which deals continuous damage and affects movement points, respectively.

There are a lot of reasons why psy fighters (i.e. this game's mages) are not a great substitute for bowmen. Psy abilities all cost energy, of which psy fighters have limited supply; the default bow attack, by constrast, costs no energy at all. Bowmen have a big damage bonus against flying enemies that psy fighters do not. Bowmen have better range and bowmen can move, attack, then move again. These last two properties mean that bowmen actually complement psy fighters really well! All other things being equal, you're generally better off having a bowman and a psy fighter teaming up than you are having two psy fighters. (Though there are occasions where that might not be true, like when dealing with enemies that have Dodge or high physical resistance.)

 

[J1M]

Banner Saga also ditched damage spreads.

Banner Saga also has archers that can only shoot 5 squares.

Banner Saga is not very fun.

Why not let archers fire a decent distance? I've only held a bow once in my life and hitting a human-sized target at the distance I could move in 5 seconds is trivial. If it is an impossible balance problem, call them knife-throwers and write a lore blurb about how there are no good materials for making a bow in your world.

 

[Horus]

There are a lot of reasons why psy fighters (i.e. this game's mages) are not a great substitute for bowmen. Psy abilities all cost energy, of which psy fighters have limited supply; the default bow attack, by constrast, costs no energy at all. Bowmen have a big damage bonus against flying enemies that psy fighters do not. Bowmen have better range and bowmen can move, attack, then move again. These last two properties mean that bowmen actually complement psy fighters really well! All other things being equal, you're generally better off having a bowman and a psy fighter teaming up than you are having two psy fighters. (Though there are occasions where that might not be true, like when dealing with enemies that have Dodge or high physical resistance.)

You're forgetting the most important aspect of the mages which is area spells that make them desirable against every class in nearly all games.
In my opinion is that most of these tactical games with hp system favors mages above every class and as you get closer to the end after you optimize your party,you really don't need support characters at all(item users,terrain users,buffers,archers....)

Archers in the end should be real pain in the butt for most of the time(like real time) and you should give them several status effect to make every support character useful regardless of damage.
Other idea would be to give these type of ranged characters charged attacks that hurts a lot if it's not interrupted.

If you ask me these type of games really could use better balanced class systems that forces the player to adapt to map,enemies and environment not just go with mages+meat shield parties.

All in all except the name everything looks good and i will try to support it next month.

 

[Craig Stern]

All in all except the name everything looks good and i will try to support it next month.

Much appreciated!

 

[Mraston]

Looks like this campaign is going much, much better than the previous one! Congrats on getting funded.

 

[eric__s]

Congrats on getting funded Craig! Just contributed, really looking forward to the finished product.