Octopus Overlords

As if Warlock: Master of the Arcane and Elemental: Fallen Enchantress were not enough fantasy 4x TBS goodness for us to look forward to in 2012, we also have the new "Masters of the Broken World" developed by a Russian dev chosen by Snowberry Connection as their new indie development project. All I have to say is thank god for the Russians. They keep developing the type of games I love to play. This one will have a non-linear campaign and lots of innovation in gameplay. To me it looks very exciting.

Here is an earlier September preview from RPS

And here is some more earlier background infomation from Gamescom 2011 coverage. It looks to be released sometime in 2012 if all goes well.

Snowberry Connection, the independent international production fund previously responsible for funding and developing such award-winning (but niche) products as …Combat Mission: Afghanistan and Mount & Blade™: With Fire & Sword, today announced its next big project: the non-linear fantasy turn-based strategy, MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD™. Offering global, strategic and tactical levels of gameplay, MBW features the traditional “good vs. evil” decision dilemma, where the consequences of players’ choices significantly influence the outcome of the main game. Rebellions are best put out with a few legions of zombies … but if you’ll need this particular province at a later time, you’ll live to regret some of your easy decisions.

The game is currently confirmed for the PC platform with a tentative 2012 release date (there is also a possibility of a further Mac release, once the developers complete surgical removal of their “PC only and forever” knuckle tattoos). The product will arrive via traditional retail in Russia, Poland and Germany, with the international version becoming available digitally in the rest of the world. A Collector’s Edition, featuring the complete art-book and the encyclopedia of the Broken World, is also in the plan for retail markets, with the possibility of ordering it from the US together with a free copy of the extensive German or Russian dictionaries.

The story behind MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD is perhaps telling of today’s return of the video games industry to its glorious roots: one talented designer builds a prototype in his garage (Alexey Bokulev); one curious publisher picks it up for a local Russian release (Snowball Studios), to receive 80%+ ratings from the press and the community (proof link: http://www.ag.ru/games/eador_sotvorenie" target="_blank); finally, one stubborn producer (Alexander Souslov) puts this designer together with the determined indie team that has an excellent proprietary engine (Unicorn Games Studio), to discover that an indie fund is willing to pay not only for the full-cycle production of a proper remake, but also for a few international press-releases and a small booth at GamesCom 2011 (Snowberry Connection). And look Mum, no hands – here we come!

MASTERS OF THE BROKEN WORLD is often written about as one of the first children of the new age of publishing – where opportunities for direct digital distribution make it possible to create games focused just on the quality of the gameplay, and not the marketing noise that surrounds the traditional games business. It seems that nowadays, especially in the indie scene, one can recoup the budget without selling one’s soul to a multinational publisher who knows how to screw up one’s product by trying to make it appeal to retired Estonian schoolteachers in order to reach the ultimate mass-market bonanza. How do you make a profit making games? Well, you make it by making good games; it’s that simple.

“I’ve been publishing games in Russia for 15 years, with a variety of content becoming available as the industry evolved, and every single year we had perhaps three games that made us proud of our industry and thirty-three that flew by like bananas in the jungle,” says Sergei Klimov, Snowberry Connection’s Director of Business. “After we sold our Russian publishing operation last year, my partners and I were looking for a way to go back to that happy place where you love to play what you develop and publish. With MBW, we believe that we have found it: Alexey is a very gifted designer, and we’re going to help his project unleash its commercial potential through the policy of not messing up his creative decisions, but just providing the production support that he needs for the product. Snowberry’s role as the publisher is to help the right audience find this game. We loved Battle Isle, Incubation, Spellcross, as well as the older HoMM games, and we’re confident that in the genre of turn-based strategies, Masters of the Broken World will set a pretty high standard when the game goes out next year or whenever it is ready.”

Edit: Fixed title

Thanks for the info; I hadn't heard of this one. I'm crossing my fingers (yet again) with the hope that it turns out well.

This game is on Steam Greenlight now. Go vote!

Deep, turn based, and quite different.

Sounds really interesting!

Voted for it. We'll see!

When I asked this (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=82305) about it, no one answered, so I guess no one here would see it as a sequel or reboot. Me neither, I only heard about the original when news about this game started circulating.

You have to be patient with the speaker's limited English fluency, but still quite interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_73sMlKBtU" target="_blank

Here's to hoping the CEO doesn't tell his marketing people their nipples look better than his.

/clink!

Great read here: http://www.tacticularcancer.com/content.php?id=3817" target="_blank

Game definitely tops my wish list.

Alexey has worked on that game for 3 years; it was his ‘dream game’ combining many cool features from his favorite strategy titles – Sid Meier’s Civilization, HoMM III and Master of Magic.

This game looks really promising! What is it with games from Russia -- for the past few years if it is Russian it almost always 1) is a failure in terms of sales and 2) is perfectly what I want from a game. Here's to hoping for more Russian developers to make games that get ported in crappy English translations!

Butterknife wrote:This game looks really promising! What is it with games from Russia -- for the past few years if it is Russian it almost always 1) is a failure in terms of sales and 2) is perfectly what I want from a game. Here's to hoping for more Russian developers to make games that get ported in crappy English translations!

Usually because Russia has talented programers, who very passionate about fantry/ sci fi, but they have no marketing experience and money can be tight since pirating in russia is a giant problem. Since people dont make that much money there compared to first world country.

Sergei said Battle Isle, Incubation and Spellcross all in one breath.

Another video out, this time about play on the strategic map:

http://www.snowbirdgames.com/forum/inde ... l-video.8/" target="_blank

Beta sign up: http://snowbirdgames.com/?lang=en" target="_blank

Got into the beta. I know tgb is there, too. Don't know about anyone else from these boards.

There is no NDA. I asked and was told I was free to post about the game, so here goes. Hopefully tgb and anyone else will join in.

After a couple intense days of gameplay I'd say the game is quite similar to Eador: Genesis, but visually more polished. Specific things I have noticed:
* Shards are more differentiated from each other. When you select a shard to attack, you may see some of them with labels such as "world of faith" or "world of war" or "world of death" or "world of knowledge" or "developed world". Gameplay is significantly different on the various kinds of shards.
* The campaign now has something like a dozen possible endings, depending on the choices you make and the success you have.
* Graphical representation of morale and stamina (as well as hit points) has been added and this is very helpful. First, you do not have to keep clicking to access the information. Plus this draws your attention to morale and stamina, which are very important. (Failure to realize this is one reason, I think, most are finding the game so tough.) Floating numbers also show loss of all three stats during battle, thus reinforcing good strategy.
* And, of course, the game is all now 3D. I leave it to others to evaluate the merit of this particular 3D: I am old and like strategy games in 2D just fine. I'd like Civ better if it had stuck to 2D. At the moment, animations are kind of slow, but the documentation that came with the beta indicated that the animations are still being worked on.
* The icons for giving tasks to the hero (explore province, plunder, hire troops, etc.) and the province (hire guard, build a building, etc.) have been reorganized into a circle of icons that appear when you mouse over the hero or province. Clearly this is an improvement.

The gameplay remains much the same, which is to say it is outstanding. The beta is set up to run at the very easiest level by default, and, even at that level, the AI gives you an honest battle on both the strategic and the tactical map. Part of this is that the AI seems to do very well at running down your units' stamina. But it also seems to me that AI opponents have the same keen sense of when to go on the offensive on the strategic map -- in this sense, it reminds me of the original Heroes of Might and Magic.

The game seems to do an especially good job of avoiding tedium. Shards are varied, battlefields are varied, and opponents are varied, and you had better pay attention to the differences, because your margin for error is small, except maybe in the first ring of provinces around your stronghold. One secret to the game being so good, though, is the way the campaign is structured. We (at least I) tend to forget that all those great old strategy games -- Civ, Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic, etc. all shared an Achilles' Heel. You started out in a tense, interesting situation and struggled to survive. Early on you felt vulnerable so you had to claw for every advantage, making the gameplay extremely compelling. But somewhere around mid-game, you became invulnerable, or nearly so. And as a result, your decisions no longer mattered much. So these great games devolved into tedious mopup operations. But Eador avoids this. Each shard, you start out vulnerable, and you feel motivated to consider the nuance of every little decision. (Of course, it helps that you have so many options in terms of hero types, hero development, and stronghold development.) But even if you do everything perfectly and get some good breaks, that only means you win the particular shard. And moments later you are back to starting a new shard, totally vulnerable. Yet, it is not like starting a new game -- each shard you conquer does give you permanent advantages on future shards. It is a system that works extremely well, in my opinion.

As to the main complaint about Eador: Genesis -- this time there is a regular saved game system, although it seems to need some technical work at this point.

I'll post more when I have played more. Nothing I have seen, though, has changed my view from playing Eador:Genesis that MBW shapes up as one of the best turn based strategy games ever made.

Hey! We're over in the Genesis thread! I'll put a cold one up for you.

tgb wrote:Hey! We're over in the Genesis thread! I'll put a cold one up for you.

Seemed like that thread was more about Genesis than the new game, but I have no problem with sticking to that thread if you want.

Excellent preview of the game dbemont , I like your take on the way the shard system helps to keep you from being too overpowered in the game.
Keep us posted on anything else that impresses you in the beta.

dbemont wrote: Nothing I have seen, though, has changed my view from playing Eador:Genesis that MBW shapes up as one of the best turn based strategy games ever made.

That's a bold statement! I'm definitely following this one.

And I like the implication that the bane of strategy games (being that point in the game where you're not really in any danger but haven't crushed all opposition and you've become an executioner of the unfit rather than a wily leader navigating dangerous waters) may be minimized.

From their website/dev blog: Instead of identical shards, there will be "special" shards, with different conditions/settings....sounds interesting.

I notice that in Eador: Genesis there are a lot of events that occur every turn once you get a bunch of provinces. Many of them are the same events over and over again and it gets to be a bit much with the spam after a while.

Can anyone that's in the beta comment on if any of this has been adjusted in the updated version of the game? Personally I think that the events should scale down some based on the number of provinces you have so that you don't end up having 3 or 4 events spamming you per turn.

The events are an important mechanic since how you respond to them affects morale in every one of your provinces. That said, I haven't seen any repetition (yet) in the beta.

They've posted that the second round of beta testing starts in about a week.

To sign up, go here: http://www.snowbirdgames.com/forum/inde ... n-up.1058/" target="_blank

You can sign up even if you did not participate the first time.
And even those who did participate still need to follow the directions in that thread.

Posting just so I can follow along...looks awesome!

Just sent in my request for a new key.

tgb wrote:Just sent in my request for a new key.

Me too!

-Lyno

Me too.

I missed this announcement. So thanks for the heads-up!

Thanks for heads up. Signing up now. Hoping to get in. Even in the everyone gets in betas I never seem to get in.

I put Eador: Genesis on my Acer netbook where it runs great. Still playing it a lot on there. The game is pure awesome.

I'm playing the Eador campaign as a wizard leveling up necromancy and summoning. At one point, I think before I crossed the river, I had the summon skeleton spell, now I don't. I have built all the buildings in my home province and do not see any necromancy spells. Does this just come later in the campaign or am I missing something? Also, I think I built the four magic buildings. Am I screwed and not able to get necromancy spells now since I maxed out my magic buildings at four?

And I agree, this game is awesome! Especially for $5.99. It reminds me a lot of Dominions, one of my all time favorite games.

Heya

The starting spells you can buy on the tutorial side of the sea are not immediately available on the side where you own your first City.

You would generally lose them by replacing them with "new" magic to try things out, then discover that they don't go into a Library / Compendium to pull from later.

There are buildings you can build to regain them, plus they do appear as loot.

silvaril wrote:Heya

The starting spells you can buy on the tutorial side of the sea are not immediately available on the side where you own your first City.

You would generally lose them by replacing them with "new" magic to try things out, then discover that they don't go into a Library / Compendium to pull from later.

There are buildings you can build to regain them, plus they do appear as loot.

Thanks!

Has it been about a week yet? Did I not get an invite?

LordMortis wrote:Has it been about a week yet? Did I not get an invite?

Today is Feb 6. 1+7=8. As to whether or not you got an invite, I don't have access to your email.

I was going to finally break down and ask again but it looks like someone answered yesterday:

http://www.snowbirdgames.com/forum/inde ... 058/page-8" target="_blank

I sent the e-mail month ago and there is still no respond.No matter if I 'll be the tester,a reply is necessary and polite in my opinion.

You did not get a reply because nobody did so far. Beta 2 has been delayed to the end of the month (and could be delayed again, depending on the amount of work required to complete this phase). So don't take it personally, just check here periodically and when you see people dancing for joy you'll know that beta 2 has arrived...

Eador: Genesis is on sale at GOG this weekend for $2.99. This has been a public service announcement.

Purchased. No idea when I'll play.

ColdSteel wrote:Eador: Genesis is on sale at GOG this weekend for $2.99. This has been a public service announcement.

Is it worth the time investment to play or wait for the improved version?

Jag wrote:

ColdSteel wrote:Eador: Genesis is on sale at GOG this weekend for $2.99. This has been a public service announcement.

Is it worth the time investment to play or wait for the improved version?

As one of the best strategy games I've played in years, it's worth it, and will give you a good foundation for the new game as well.