KickStarter The Iron Oath - turn-based strategy RPG with awesome pixel art

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[anvi]

The less narrative the better. But the combat better be good.

 

[pm_675]

New update!

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...th-dark-turn-based-tactical-rpg/posts/2911020

Company Renown and Upgrades

Hey everyone, we hope you're all doing well! In today's update we're going to be talking about the specifics of how you go about upgrading your company, and what type of options are available.

Renown and how to purchase Company Upgrades

Upgrades can be purchased via the management menu by spending Renown Points. Renown is a secondary resource that you primarily earn by completing missions. It can also be acquired during certain overworld encounters based on the outcome (like helping someone out). Renown is essentially XP for your company and is a measure of how well-known you are. After reaching certain thresholds of total Renown you will gain a Renown Point which can be spent in the upgrade screen. There is no limit to how many renown points you can acquire, so given enough time you will be able to upgrade everything you possibly can.

We decided to go with this type of resource/upgrade system because the game already had quite a few elements that put a drain on your coin, and we want to ensure that the player is always able to improve their company over time, regardless of how rich or poor they are. Aside from upgrades, your total renown also plays a part in determining which type and difficulty of missions are available to you. Special organizations and Houses won't entrust their tasks to just anybody, and you will need to reach a certain amount of renown before you gain their attention.

Spending your Renown Points

To spend your points, you can head into the 'Company Upgrade' screen to purchase whatever is most relevant to your current situation. Each upgrade costs 1 Point, however some upgrades require you to have amassed a specific amount of Renown, or to research certain prerequisite upgrades beforehand. Some upgrades are broken up into 2 or 3 segments and can be purchased multiple times to increase the effectiveness of that upgrade.

Upgrades are split up into 4 different categories. The General tab covers things that have to do with your company and caravan as a whole, such as training faster horses and increasing roster capacity.

Expeditions has upgrades related to dungeon exploration and combat. From here you can increase the amount of provisions you can take with into a dungeon (as well as providing a better selection of provisions), and other things like improving your scouting efficiency in the exploration phase.

The Council tab is where you can hire a Battlemaster, Emissary and Spymaster and unlock their various unique actions and passive abilities (here is an older post on the council, we'll have a deeper dive into it at a later date once we feel ready to make a video about it).

The final tab is Alchemy, which is where you research magical incenses for you to burn when camping, providing you with various primary and secondary effects that aid you in combat and dungeon exploration. We'll go over this part more in our upcoming 'Camping' update which will likely be one of the next two.

On the art side of the game things are progressing steadily as we get closer to finishing all the enemies and characters that we plan to launch with. Here are two newer timelapses for those who like to see the process!

Lastly we'd like to give a shout-out to Fae Tactics, a turn-based tactical game very much in the style of FFT that just released this past Friday. They're part of the Humble publishing family and we'd like to congratulate them on the launch and encourage you to check the game out on Steam!


See you next time!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[AwesomeButton]

Still in my wishlist. I wish they would do an android/iOS version too.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Tom Baker's Arse]

Removed from Steam wishlist. Wondering if this title is entering into early stages of vapourware.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

It's fucked up and I doubt it.

However I was just thinking the same thing you were. When was the last time we saw legit gameplay or a gameplay discussion on this from the dev team? Like something newsworthy.

 

[Infinitron]

In June, when they released a demo.

 

[baud]

It's fucked up and I doubt it.

However I was just thinking the same thing you were. When was the last time we saw legit gameplay or a gameplay discussion on this from the dev team? Like something newsworthy.

Perhaps they're too busy developing the game to write about it?

 

[anvi]

Perhaps they're too busy jerking each other off over pixel art.

 

[Zombra]

It's exhausting scrolling up sometimes!

In June, when they released a demo.

Even more recently than that, there was a big post on merc company management in August.

 

[Abu Antar]

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...th-dark-turn-based-tactical-rpg/posts/2971162

Development Status Update

Hey everyone, we hope you are all doin well! As we are reaching the last few months of the year, we wanted to give you an update on the game's current status and release date. 2020 has been a strange and challenging year for everyone, so it's probably not much of a shock to hear that it's impacted the game's development.

We went into this year with the hopes of releasing in late 2020 or early 2021. Development was going well and and we took the game to PAX East at the end of February. We had a great show, met a lot of existing and new fans and received tons of positive feedback, so we were feeling pretty good on our way back home.

Of course it was around this time that the lockdowns began and development slowed down. Chris has 3 young kids, so when schools shut down he had to begin dividing his time between programming and helping to homeschool his kids. More recently his wife got a new job in Ohio, so figuring out their move from Florida further detracted from his ability to work as much. Progress had still been made during this time, but just not at the rate we had expected or hoped in order to release this year.

For now, things are about as "normal" as they will be for the foreseeable future and we've settled back into a steady rhythm. His kids are doing virtual schooling at home so he still has to devote some time to looking after them during the day. All things considered, we're doing our best under the circumstances we're in now, and we've begun looking for a few additional programmers to help speed things up.

Concerning the release date, it is still TBD. We don't want to rush out an incomplete product, so all we can say for now is that the game will be out when it's ready. As for some good news, the game is now what we consider "Alpha", meaning all the game's features are in place and all that remains is adding more polish and content. So we're excited about that at least, and it brings us one step closer to the closed Beta! We will also be putting out another updated demo on Steam in the future like we did a few months ago. So if you missed the previous event and don't have access to the Beta, you'll still have a chance to check out the game prior to release. As always, we'll continue to keep you apprised of our progress, and we hope you all can understand our need for some extra time to complete the game properly.

On the art side we've continued to make good progress with our animator Rafael producing some awesome work with our designs. Here's a look at a design timelapse and final animation result of two recently completed enemy characters:


Outlaw Scout

Flayer Demon

Spoiler

We've also begun to work on the final art assets for the city hubs (we've had crappy placeholders in the meantime hah). I don't think we've talked too much about this yet, but cities are being done at the same scale as our characters and combat environments. We wanted each city to look unique and immersive rather than just a simple menu. Since we've done it this way we can also occasionally have combat engagements and missions take place within the city streets (as they use the same assets). We can't share the final look yet as we still need some more building variants and other assets (such as citizens standing and walking around), but here's a taste of the building styles for the 3 main cultures within the game:


Midden

Nurren

Tyrosene

That about wraps it up, thanks for reading and for your continued support! As always, if you haven't yet please take a moment to wishlist the game on Steam (helps with visibility) and join our official Discord server. We'll see you next time!

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[anvi]

What is this game like a KOTC or like Darkest Dungeon?

 

[Bara]

Darkest Dungeon but with a hex grid for combat and a overworld map to travel.

I'd say more like battle brothers overall.

 

[Zombra]

Some new details on town stuff and company management, plus more great art as always:
Note a new option of particular interest to Codexers since you are all basically powergaming murderers, it's the last bullet point in town gameplay features ...

Happy Holidays!

Hey everyone, we hope you are all doing well and enjoying the Holiday season despite the unusual circumstances! We've taken a little bit of time off but are getting back at it, and wanted to share some of our recent developments on the game with you all.

As we mentioned in the last update, the game is now in an alpha state which means all of our features are done, but we still need to polish them and add more content to the game. In that spirit we wanted to share a video that displays the core gameplay loop of accepting and completing missions. There's still a lot of polish to be done (and placeholder assets to replace!), but we wanted to give you a glimpse of the progress we've made on that front since we haven't shown much of it previously.


The main thing that will be new to you is the city hubs. In there you can find an Inn, Marketplace, Infirmary and an option to Pillage.

• Inn: You can visit an Inn to rest and recover Fatigue of your characters. This is also where you will come to recruit new ones. Currently the recruitment process you see in the video is a bit bare-bones and there aren't many details to view on recruits, but this will all be more robust in the future. The last thing you can do in an Inn is buy a round of ale for your company to temporarily raise their Loyalty. You can't do this too often though!
• Marketplace: For buying and selling goods. Prices and available items will fluctuate depending on the city's size, its status (whether they are at war, or experiencing bandit raids etc), and what type of goods they are in need of or have excess of. Your reputation within a city will also affect prices.
• Infirmary: If your characters get injured too severely to recover on their own, or you want them to heal faster, you will have to admit them to the infirmary. Characters will rejoin your company on their own after they have recovered, so you won't have to come back and pick them up.
• Pillage: We've added a new pillage option where you can raid a city for supplies and wealth at the cost of a severe reputation hit (and a high chance of being thrown into combat with the city guards). It's not something you'll want to do too often, but if you're in a bind for funds or just want to stir up some trouble, the option is available to you!

On the art front, the most recent enemy Nik designed was the Magus, which was then handed off to our animator, Rafael. Here is the design process for this enemy:

Spoiler

This enemy also had a lot of skins and variants for different factions, so it was quite a big task overall.

Different variants of the Magus
Each magic element has 5 associated spells, here's a small preview of one from each school:

Eldritch Lashers

Bury

Rupture

Winter's Touch

Mortal Condemnation

Overload
Rafael did an awesome job on them and we're excited to get them into the game as they should add a lot of variation to combat!

----

Finally we'd like to wish you a Happy New Year, as I'm sure we're all looking forward to moving onto 2021 Thanks for reading!

 

[Bara]

Codexers since you are all basically powergaming murderers,

Well I mean the genre was founded on the tradition of rpg players being a bunch of murderhobos. :D

 

[ntonystinson]

Wonder why a lot of games don't just adopt the hub/menu view of towns/cities. Lots more preferably to walking to and fro looking for locations

 

[Zombra]

sennin, Please tell me you can turn off the excruciatingly slow text crawl and just have the words appear like for normal people who read.

@everyone_else, I know sennin hasn't posted for 3 years, but this is important enough to try to get him to come back.

 

[baud]

I asked on YT:

 

[Zombra]

Ah, good old "left click to make the rest of the text appear, also left click to skip to the next dialogue". @()#*%&@#(*%^#@*$&^#@*($&^@#($*@#%&^!#)*

I hope they add that option in sooner rather than later, shit like this kills games dead for me.

 

[sennin]

sennin, Please tell me you can turn off the excruciatingly slow text crawl and just have the words appear like for normal people who read.

@everyone_else, I know sennin hasn't posted for 3 years, but this is important enough to try to get him to come back.

I do lurk around every couple months, haha. You'll be happy to know that Chris has already added an option for variable text speed

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I really want this game.