RPGs and Tactics 2018. Part I: Already released.

I decided to post my yearly overview of released and upcoming RPGs and tactics in English this time. Some explanations before I proceed further.

This list will only included games released, or announced for 2018, and only those games that I consider to be of interest to me. This means it mostly consist of turn-based and/or isometric RPGs and tactics, though sometimes I make exceptions for high-profile games or titles I consider to be interesting because of something else. However, there will be almost no mentions of non-tactical JRPGs, as I’m completely uninterested in the genre and can’t provide any comments on it, as well as most action-RPGs, including AAA titles. Oh, yeah, and the list is text-only, but with links to game’s site, for the sake of brevity.

Projects that I consider to be the most interesting are marked with ☆ sign.

With that in mind, let’s recount what titles have already been released in 2018 at this point.
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Ludum Dare 33

Hey, everybody! This weekend, I took a part in creating a game for Ludum Dare competition. The result is called “Play”, and is made with Unity. You can check it out here.

Competition’s theme, selected by voting, was “You are monster”. We thought long and hard about different kind of gameplay and setting that would fit it, and came up with a number of really interesting ideas. Unfortunately, most of them were just too resource-heavy for a three-day competition, so we had to settle for a simpler one. Player controls Monster Under The Bed, but our monster is not evil. Quite the opposite: he wants to help his child, a small girl, to overcame her fears. The girl fears monsters and fire. We can’t do much about the first one, beyond avoiding getting into her sight, but to help her with fear of fire, we can make her play with the right toys. First, a random toy needs to be dislodged from its place on a shelf, which can be accomplished by bumping into its leg. Then, we should nudge they toy into girl’s path, so she would notice it, without being seen ourselves. To complicate the problem a bit, other, evil monsters, represented by tongues of flame, wander around the room, trying to scare the girl. If she sees too much of them, or of us, she will get really scared, and the games is over.

And that’s pretty much all. It’s a simple game, I would even say a bit too simple for my tastes, but three-day limit makes it hard to do something more complex. At least, I think, we have nice visuals. And it’s fun to play volleyball with the toy ball, even if it has nothing to do with game’s goal 🙂

Weekly Update: Time Is Running Out

I have nothing to show you from Return of Dr. Destructo this week, since the changes I’ve made are important, but invisible. So let’s talk instead about other people’s games.

For the last few weeks, I’ve been replaying one of the lesser-known, but still much loved turn-based squad tactic games, Blue Byte’s Incubation: Time is running out. I bought it on Good Old Games as a part of Battle Isle pack some time in the past year, but I have already played it before, long ago, and remembered it fondly. Well, let me tell you that replaying it didn’t disappoint me at all! Even though I found graphics ass-ugly and camera just awful.

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