I came across this game at PAX East and what a great surprise it was. My impressions are towards the end of the post.
Kickstarter
Forged of Blood is a fantasy turn-based tactical RPG that focuses on creating a deep tactical gameplay experience centered around meaningful choice in a morally ambiguous world. With this game, we are merging a deep turn-based tactical game with an elaborate RPG experience that takes players on a journey to reclaim a lost kingdom.
A Fantasy World Afire: Our game introduces a morally grey hard fantasy world on the cusp of a predestined upheaval. Forged of Blood will throw you into a beautiful new world filled with both monsters and men across multiple environments in 3D; in a world that has a richly developed history.
Meaningful Choices Throughout the Game: This is a design philosophy that we've truly hammered into every facet of the game. Whether it be the branching narratives, the tactical combat, or the minutia of character building, every choice will have meaningful consequence.
Build Your Characters Your Way: With 9 weapons and weapon ability trees, 6 general ability trees, a vast magic crafting system, the characters under your command are yours to build from the ground up to fit any tactical need.
A True Spellcrafting System: This is the spellcrafting system of our dreams, with a staggering 3822 unique effect combinations and an incalculable number of permutations when you account for effect and global modifiers.
All Things (Tactically) Considered: Once on the battlefield, players will have to take into consideration a plethora of tactical factors. Will you have the right composition of characters to take on a particular challenge? Is the high ground worth taking or would the costs be too high? Build efficiency, positioning, and turn order all matter - will you be able to take advantage of it?
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My PAX East impressions:
I came by the PAX booth... several times. I spoke to the person on the left, in the first day pic on more than a few occasions.
I played two scenarios. The first one in the town with the bridges I was still learning the mechanics, and I think I probably would've won if the casting-magic-through-the-building bug wasn't present. I was victorious on the forest scenario after though.
The game looks fantastic. It was one of my favorite games of the show, and an unexpected surprise for me. I'm a little skeptical on the magic-crafting, mostly because of how difficult that is to achieve properly, but what I heard sounded pretty good. There is some good information on the Kickstarter page too. I do really like the magic with laws though. Having to make sure to take in heat energy through the ice spell in order to continue using the fire spell was a enjoyable consideration to spell casting. Likewise preventing the two-handed maul characters from attacking characters directly next to it, and giving it somewhat of a short range, made them a lot more tactically interesting than simply another front-line warrior, but with different attack rolls. I didn't get to experience it directly in the demo, but it looks like there will some nice reactivity based on where you decide to travel to in time-sensitive situations. The art looks great too. I believe I mentioned that one of the handouts from the booth, the one with the character holding a stone that emanates what appears to be a blinding light, got a lot of positive reactions from other developers as I was holding on to it throughout the day.
Magic had a very long range. They mentioned bows weren't currently in the build, which is perhaps why magic-casters were so strong. Apparently there will be bow-wielding characters whose role is to hunt down magic-users. The other character in the build wielded a dagger which you could throw. He seemed fairly strong when supporting another melee character, although as you would expect not the best choice against heavily armored characters. It was also mentioned that accuracy would be affected by how thick the tree cover was between yourself and your target (for ranged attacks).
In the build, each of the non-magic weapon characters had an ability. The sword and shield character could strengthen his defenses for a round. The maul character could increase his attack of opportunity by one (a total of two, the sword has 0 for comparison) and lowers his initiative (I believe) by one for a round. The dagger character I believe could increase his initiative by one for a round. You could attack after these, but you wouldn't be able to move (I believe; You should still be able to move one square [green] regardless though).
Some clarification from one of the developers:
Being able to cast spells "through" buildings wasn't a bug but a mechanic of the spells that were created. You were not casting through the building so much as having the effect appear at the desired location. In the final build, we will have a sight mechanic that would require you to have sight at the area you wish to cast.
The reason why the two casters were stronger wasn't really due to magic but their race. They were both Juvarians, the strongest Neshalan family line. Juvarians have a statistical advantage in their base attributes and magurite control; they are meant to be stronger.
Every character has a quick action, a move action and a standard action. For those that play tabletop gaming, this should be familiar. Every action has an action cost. The maul ability you referenced requires a full turn action to use while the dagger ability you referenced required a quick action. All standard and full turn actions are attacks or spells and all attacks and spells require either a standard action or a full turn action.
This is an inherent problem with games like ours being demoed though. In the actual game, you play through a tutorial and the mechanics are introduced over time. In the PAX game, you played for 20 minutes without a tutorial. Despite this, hundreds of people genuinely enjoyed our game during PAX, with many bringing friends to see our game. I was quite happy with how well received it was.
Kickstarter
Forged of Blood is a fantasy turn-based tactical RPG that focuses on creating a deep tactical gameplay experience centered around meaningful choice in a morally ambiguous world. With this game, we are merging a deep turn-based tactical game with an elaborate RPG experience that takes players on a journey to reclaim a lost kingdom.
A Fantasy World Afire: Our game introduces a morally grey hard fantasy world on the cusp of a predestined upheaval. Forged of Blood will throw you into a beautiful new world filled with both monsters and men across multiple environments in 3D; in a world that has a richly developed history.
Meaningful Choices Throughout the Game: This is a design philosophy that we've truly hammered into every facet of the game. Whether it be the branching narratives, the tactical combat, or the minutia of character building, every choice will have meaningful consequence.
Build Your Characters Your Way: With 9 weapons and weapon ability trees, 6 general ability trees, a vast magic crafting system, the characters under your command are yours to build from the ground up to fit any tactical need.
A True Spellcrafting System: This is the spellcrafting system of our dreams, with a staggering 3822 unique effect combinations and an incalculable number of permutations when you account for effect and global modifiers.
All Things (Tactically) Considered: Once on the battlefield, players will have to take into consideration a plethora of tactical factors. Will you have the right composition of characters to take on a particular challenge? Is the high ground worth taking or would the costs be too high? Build efficiency, positioning, and turn order all matter - will you be able to take advantage of it?
================================================================
My PAX East impressions:
I came by the PAX booth... several times. I spoke to the person on the left, in the first day pic on more than a few occasions.
I played two scenarios. The first one in the town with the bridges I was still learning the mechanics, and I think I probably would've won if the casting-magic-through-the-building bug wasn't present. I was victorious on the forest scenario after though.
The game looks fantastic. It was one of my favorite games of the show, and an unexpected surprise for me. I'm a little skeptical on the magic-crafting, mostly because of how difficult that is to achieve properly, but what I heard sounded pretty good. There is some good information on the Kickstarter page too. I do really like the magic with laws though. Having to make sure to take in heat energy through the ice spell in order to continue using the fire spell was a enjoyable consideration to spell casting. Likewise preventing the two-handed maul characters from attacking characters directly next to it, and giving it somewhat of a short range, made them a lot more tactically interesting than simply another front-line warrior, but with different attack rolls. I didn't get to experience it directly in the demo, but it looks like there will some nice reactivity based on where you decide to travel to in time-sensitive situations. The art looks great too. I believe I mentioned that one of the handouts from the booth, the one with the character holding a stone that emanates what appears to be a blinding light, got a lot of positive reactions from other developers as I was holding on to it throughout the day.
Magic had a very long range. They mentioned bows weren't currently in the build, which is perhaps why magic-casters were so strong. Apparently there will be bow-wielding characters whose role is to hunt down magic-users. The other character in the build wielded a dagger which you could throw. He seemed fairly strong when supporting another melee character, although as you would expect not the best choice against heavily armored characters. It was also mentioned that accuracy would be affected by how thick the tree cover was between yourself and your target (for ranged attacks).
In the build, each of the non-magic weapon characters had an ability. The sword and shield character could strengthen his defenses for a round. The maul character could increase his attack of opportunity by one (a total of two, the sword has 0 for comparison) and lowers his initiative (I believe) by one for a round. The dagger character I believe could increase his initiative by one for a round. You could attack after these, but you wouldn't be able to move (I believe; You should still be able to move one square [green] regardless though).
Some clarification from one of the developers:
Being able to cast spells "through" buildings wasn't a bug but a mechanic of the spells that were created. You were not casting through the building so much as having the effect appear at the desired location. In the final build, we will have a sight mechanic that would require you to have sight at the area you wish to cast.
The reason why the two casters were stronger wasn't really due to magic but their race. They were both Juvarians, the strongest Neshalan family line. Juvarians have a statistical advantage in their base attributes and magurite control; they are meant to be stronger.
Every character has a quick action, a move action and a standard action. For those that play tabletop gaming, this should be familiar. Every action has an action cost. The maul ability you referenced requires a full turn action to use while the dagger ability you referenced required a quick action. All standard and full turn actions are attacks or spells and all attacks and spells require either a standard action or a full turn action.
This is an inherent problem with games like ours being demoed though. In the actual game, you play through a tutorial and the mechanics are introduced over time. In the PAX game, you played for 20 minutes without a tutorial. Despite this, hundreds of people genuinely enjoyed our game during PAX, with many bringing friends to see our game. I was quite happy with how well received it was.