The recent talk of
Clairvoyance reminded me of one of my all-time favorite turn-based games that really doesn't get enough love:
Toribash
After talking about it with Toma for a little bit, he asked me to bring the game to the attention of the thread.
And yes, it's not an upcoming game or something recently released, but it is quite indie and worth checking out.
So, this is Toribash:
Before getting into it, a little background: Toribash is a turn-based, physics-based fighting game. How it works is that there are two combatants (I'm the green-and-blue one), and each of those balls that the characters are made out of is a joint that you manipulate on your turn. Each joint can either be rigid, relaxed, bend one way, or bend another. On top of that, you can grab the other player (basically just stick your hand to them). What happens in a match is that while you're doing this, the other player is doing the same, and once a timer runs down, the game progresses for a set number of frames while both characters move according to the way the joints were set, then the game pauses again while the players adjust their joints again. Just as an example, I'll use a single-player game I set up, which is just practice against a dummy.
After my first move, I press the space bar, and 70 frames pass:
And I've grabbed the dummy's arm with one hand while throwing the rest of my body off to my left.
See the blue ghosts in that picture? Those show when it's time to take your turn and illustrate what the current move for you will play out like.
So right now, I've got a good grip on poor Uke here, and most of me is off to one side. If I can pull him to the left while throwing my leg over to the right, I should be able to do some damage. I adjust my joints again and let the next 70 frames play out...
Success! It might be hard to tell from the still picture, but I've managed to a sort of backwards kick to the training dummy which cut him right in half. There are lots of different game modes which allow for different victory conditions, but in this one, an opponent is disqualified if anything other than his hands or feet touches the ground. Those legs are going down fast, so I think this match against a training dummy is as good as mine...
And that's that. Once a match is done, the game shows you a replay without the pauses, which looks like so:
So while messing around with a lifeless dummy is actually loads of fun and great practice, the meat of the game is its multiplayer. There are no pre-made moves here, any punch/kick/throw/whatever you do here is done entirely by your manipulation of the joints. It's almost QWOP-ish in how clumsy it can be, but once you get used to it, the results can be spectacular. You can....
Pick a guy up and drop him on his head.
Drop down to the floor, grab your opponent's hand, then use your leverage to whip him around, slamming him to the floor.
Or, if you're feeling like being a jerk, just picking a guy up and sort of lunge-tossing him out of the arena entirely.
The mode in those gifs is a little different from the first one, in that anybody going outside the arena with any body part gets DQed, which allows for a different strategy.
But hey, don't feel like a straight-up fight? Then try one of the game's 1,500+ included mods, like fighting in front of a cannon.
Or under a giant pendulum:
Best of all, the game is entirely
free to play, and not that crappy kind of "free to play", either. You can use real money to buy in-game money, but all of it is for cosmetic stuff.
Currently, I wouldnt even know whether I am interested in helping with your project/giving feedback, so there is no reason to spend 4 on the current build.
