Greetings TouchArcade, I'm Ross, an indie game developer known for my making an iOS game called Hero Mages which was popular here on TouchArcade back in 2012 (http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?threadid=129962) I very much enjoyed my interactions with the community and learned a lot from you. One of the most successful features for Hero Mages was asynchronous multiplayer, a request made by you that I was happy to add to the game. I never stopped thinking about the other most heavily requested feature: single player adventure, and today I am pleased to share with you that I'm picking up where I left off in Hero Mages with it's spiritual successor, Summoners Fate. Summoners Fate Coming 2018 to iOS / Android / PC / Mac Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Summoners Fate is a top-down adventure that combines exploration, card collecting and tactical combat. You control the fate of your Summoner and command an ever-changing band of companions. You explore the world through a series of cryptic maps called Prophecies that reveal entrances to dungeons that you battle through in turn-based tactical combat. By defeating monstrous hordes and progressing deeper through the dungeons, you reap rewards of new collectible cards that grant you additional allies to bring to your party, powerful spells, weapons and armor. ... ... Features ●Tactical Turn Based Combat: Enjoy battles that are immediately fun and accessible. Intuitive controls let you keep your focus on the battlefield and master gameplay through tactile response and trial and error. ●Combat Physics: Manipulate gravity, time and space and execute gratifying combos with unique mechanics that alter the battlefield in ways never before seen in a tactical RPG. Destroy and transform environments to have a meaningful impact on your tactical decisions. ●Unique Top-Down Perspective: Take absolute control of the battle from a unique birds-eye view where characters literally look up at you to command them. Enjoy colorful animations reminiscent of a board game brought to life that are easy to read on mobile and beautifully detailed on PC. ●Rich Single Player Campaign: Explore dungeons, travel through diverse terrain, and encounter monstrous creatures in a world thats constantly evolving through procedural generation, hand crafted levels, and regular content updates. Lightweight atmospheric storytelling invites your imagination to derive your own narrative - or unravel ours. ●Strategic Resource Management: Each area you explore seamlessly connects to another. Your choices, surviving heroes, and remaining cards carry over to the next battle. Plan carefully before raiding dungeons - will you escape with the treasure or succumb to the dangers within? ●Crossplatform Multiplayer: Play anywhere with asynchronous, real-time and on-demand, "desynchronous" cross-platform multiplayer. Play how you want with support for both landscape and portrait modes. ●Deck Building: Build teams of heroes ripe with diversity and suited to your playstyle from a set of over 400 cards planned for launch including over 200 playable characters. ●Community Driven Development: Enjoy regular content updates with new cards, characters and features inspired by you! Summoners Fate is inspired by classic tabletop miniature and RPG board games like D&D, Hero Quest and Warhammer Why am I making this game? My goal with Summoners Fate is to capture the excitement of board games, RPGs and card games I love to play with friends but dont have a lot of time to play anymore. I am making this game for the time-strapped gamer that wants to have the joy of these experiences again. I was inspired by TouchArcade community members that played my first game, Hero Mages, and who really wanted to see a single player campaign element. Summoners Fate has been carefully designed to deliver an optimal adventure for mobile gamers. Battles are quick, averaging just 3 minutes to complete. When you finish a battle, the dungeon transitions seamlessly to the next room, carrying over your remaining cards and surviving heroes to the next encounter. When you complete a mission, you explore new locations on treasure-like adventure maps, which each contain a lightweight story intended to provide atmosphere and cryptic riddles that let your imagination fire up like when you play pen & paper RPGs. Completing missions rewards collectible cards that let you cast spells, summon allies, and equip weapons. Collectible cards replace traditional RPG progression and ability bars. Cards intuitively drag onto the board, eliminating complex menus and allowing your attention to focus on the battlefield and enjoying the experience. I have plans for over 400 unique cards including over 200 unique playable characters for launch. Characters literally look up at you to command them Our game perspective is a unique top-down, designed to recreate the feel of a tabletop miniature game. It's also a part of the story - you play as a deity of fate to the inhabitants to the world. On your turn, they look up at you for commands (literally). Commands are executed with an intuitive drag mechanic that lets you directly control the path of movement. This allows characters to factor directional facing and powers some original combat mechanics never before scene in a tactics game. Move and attack are combined in a single gesture that makes gameplay more fluid Community Driven Development My top goal for Summoners Fate is to build a game that fans of these genres absolutely love and enjoy. I want to do this by making a game that's driven by your feedback. TouchArcade members were instrumental to helping improve my first game with your great ideas and suggestions. That's why I am here. To start a dialog, share regular updates on our development progress, get your feedback, and show you that I care about it by implementing it in the game. Let me know what you think so far and what questions I can help answer. Together, we can make the definitive tactical adventure for iOS! Yes, we have dragons! And they will be as epic and awesome as you expect!
Oh Cool! I'm looking forward to this. I saw your article over on Gamasutra. This kind of game is definitely my jam. I recommend the article to other community members; it explains quite nicely some of the game mechanics, and how Ross came up with them.
Thank you, Buzzrick! I'm glad you enjoyed it and I really appreciate you sharing this with the community. I'll be posting updates here regularly, so please let me know what feedback/suggestions you have. You got it! I aiming for a closed-beta early next year. Please help me out in the meantime by letting me know what questions you have about the game and what gameplay capabilities you'd like to see so I can have as much incorporated before we start the fun. For you, absolutely! With our game being cross-platform, we'll have an account login system so you can pick up and play seamlessly across your various devices. I know that not everyone is keen on game-specific accounts, so adding an iCloud specific authentication and save system is a great solution for the iOS-only folks. Happy to oblige. Let me know what else I can do.
Thank you, Unstablefan! With Halloween tomorrow, I thought I'd share an update appropriate for the holiday. Here's a few playable cards and characters inspired by the horror genre. The Withereds Withereds are the potato sack husk-like remains of once thriving individuals that have been afflicted by blight. While they are technically alive, their physical form and spiritual energy has been depleted to the point of exhaustion, resulting in their wrinkled appearance. They are virtually blind and are driven to their targets by an innate hunger that can detect positive energy to absorb and sustain their being. Legends of the blight often speak of a king who, so obsessed with the persistence of his own rule, contracted an agreement with a dark shadow entity of the Void, who granted him a powerful curse that would enable him to sustain his life by taking directly from others. Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Void Magic Void magic in Summoners Fate is represented by dark, spider-web like bordered cards. Skeletons are among the most prolific of the races represented by Void cards. I wanted to go above the typical expectations of summoning a lone skeleton, so when I created Skeletal Legion, the idea was to have a real impact, a badass moment of summoning a small army of warriors to throw at the opponent. While skeletons on their own are not notably strong, their shield actually makes them very tough to kill (see my previous article that discusses the Shield Block mechanic). Additionally, when linked with other cards, such as Skeleton Champion, who buffs all skeletons, they become quite formidable pretty quick. The Flesh Golem is a classic creature returning from Hero Mages. When spawned, the Flesh Golem creates a "blood pact" with its controller, allowing it to absorb all damage received. The player loses if their Summoner is defeated, so this ability makes Flesh Golem a very high-value card. Note that his abilities only redirect life, and other effects (such as Freeze) will still affect the Summoner even as life is redirected. Mysterious Little Girl This character is an idea my wife, Kelly, really wanted to see in the game. She has a bit of a twisted side to her, no? Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel
If this was any other upcoming game Id say it looks to good to be true but after hero mages being such a big part of my iOS gaming over the past years Im here to say Ive got faith that this is going to be awesome. One suggestion would be dont forget about a password reset option as I remember when I forgot mine that time and had to get you to reset it for me from your end # Other than that i look forward to all the updates I like seeing a game grow and reading interviews with the devs.
I appreciate the confidence, SexyPirate. I recognize you from your former handle, of course, btw I've risked a lot so far to get here, 18 months full-time, as you probably know, plus a lot of personal expense on the artwork production - I'm committed to seeing it through. You know it's crazy, there was another game I found on the forums here that looked very similar to our concept, Quest Heroes, but the dev hasn't posted in the past couple years. It's too bad, because it looks like he shares the same kind of passion that I do and I would have loved to chat with him and bounce ideas off each other. Regarding the password - absolutely. I'll be building the multiplayer using Player.IO this time around, so overall I'm hoping that creates a more stable experience and easier way to manage your account. Another player had asked for iCloud which I'll be looking into as well with native extensions.
After watching the mysterious girl attacks video , I have a suggestion. Why not have her drop her teddy bear on the ground next to her ,when she changes into Mrs Ugly? After a turn or so ,the teddy bear comes alive and attacks as well. Just a thought. Thanks
The game looks pretty interesting. However, this landscape view bother me. Is it not better to go full portrait, like Clash Royale? The game looks like as made to be portrait.
Wow, that is an AWESOME idea!! I have officially added "tattered teddy bear monster" to our art production list. Any particular name you feel would be appropriate for this character? I'll post a concept sketch here as soon as its ready. Thank you for the suggestion. It just makes the whole thing so much creepier and unexpected.
Hi Menezesmai, I'm so glad you asked about this. From its inception, I considered the feedback I received from players in Hero Mages and I designed Summoners Fate to be completely adaptable to any orientation play-style. Here are some screenshots and videos showcasing portrait mode. The only reason I hadn't shared these earlier is that they tend to take up a lot of vertical space in the post: Portrait Mode Click to enlarge and view image in HD Controls are designed to be able to play with one-hand using your thumb - Note for this GIF I hadn't yet installed phone capture, but you can see how this would work Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel Here's an early play-through video where I walk through the equipment system while playing in portrait mode Mobile Design Considerations Here's some other design considerations specific to the requests of mobile users that are featured in Summoners Fate: 1. App Filesize - Many mobile users don't it like it when games eat up 500MB-1GB of space on their phone. By using dynamic texture atlases, I've reduced the foot print of Summoners Fate to <50MB (Note: This is the full install size, the download package is even smaller). All of our content can be updated via server hosted DLC, and a package containing over 100 unique characters is <2MB. 2. Orientation - Summoners Fate supports portrait, landscape left and landscape right orientation. You control the orientation by turning the device, and the lifebars/cards/etc. orbit according to the rotation. 3. One-Hand Controls - Summoners Fate has been designed to play with one-hand in portrait mode using your thumb to drag spells and move characters. Auto-lock targeting is used to enable player to select targets on the upper half of the phone by lining by dragging along the bottom row. There are some exceptions (ex: AOE spells that target specific spaces) where the finger must drag to a precise location, but overall, it's pretty comfortable to play this game while waiting in line and holding something with your other hand. 4. Load Time - Summoners Fate's cold boot time (pressing the app launch to getting in the game) is < 7 seconds. 5. Performance - Summoners Fate runs at 60FPS and supports devices as old as the iPad 2. 6. Animation Skip - Summoners Fate animations run on a parallel, dependency based system. Unlike Hero Mages, where player had to wait for animations to resolve before issuing the next command, Summoners Fate allows the player to command units as fast as they desire. Animations will work in parallel, and you can even order a unit already in motion to do something else and the game will seamlessly jump their animation to the correct state to keep up with your input. The computer turn animations can also be skipped and replayed, so you never have to "wait". 7. Undo - Nothing is worse than "making the wrong move by accident", so Summoners Fate supports undo action. This also allows the player to learn by "trial and error", as many of the game's actions result in cascading cause and effect chains. Instead of having to mentally simulate the outcome, just try it, see what happens, and if you don't like results, undo and try again. The only exception to this is during real-time multiplayer (async allows undo) and when a surprise event is triggered (ex: you cannot undo being hit by a trap or counter spell). 8. Color Blind Considerations - Several of my friends are colorblind. I wanted to make sure the game is accessible, so in addition to color-coding, all game elements also use distinctive patterns and symbols to denote ally vs. enemy, card spell type, and movement (straight arrow) vs. attack (curved arrow).
Wow, this is awesome. I can see there's a lot a passion on it. This is a kind of developer I'm looking for to support. I would be glad to be a beta tester of the game in case of need. Good luck and I hope the game release soon.
Just because I'm warped... Building on Gemineye's idea, if you kill the Deady Bear before her, she turns back into the little girl for 1 turn and cries over her now dead toy. Then she turns back into the Banshee, with some kind of buff, because of her emotional upheaval. Really makes you think about whether or not you want to take out the bear quickly. Just my 2 cents.
Not impressed with the "little girl" myself, much less the "warped" and "twisted" suggestions. Hopefully the game doesn't go too far in some kind of unpleasant direction that doesn't have much to do with tactics.
Oh hey, I remember you...maybe because I had a professor Przybylski in medical school. Anyway, I get what you are going for, but the characters turning their faces towards the sky like they do is kind of creepy. On the plus side, thanks for designing the game to work in both orientations.
Ah come on, it's Halloween, have a little fun! But I do agree... This idea (while definitely fun) can get pretty tricky to implement and write clear card rules for. We've been toying around with an idea of a "drop" mechanic where a character would drop a card upon death as a "pick up". When another character moves over the item, the card is drawn into that player's hand. When I heard the bear idea this morning, it occurred to me that this might be an interesting way to integrate this mechanic. If a caster (ally or enemy) picks up the bear as a card, they can then cast it as a spell that summons the bear as a creature. Because "drops" are neutral, it creates some interesting choices for the player. Do you kill the girl to steal the bear at the expense of facing the banshee? Or do you use a removal spell to get rid of her altogether? The same drop mechanic might also work for magical weapons or other artifacts carried by powerful characters.
Przybylski is actually a common name, so my dad always told me. Having the characters look up is creepy to some at first, but it's an important aesthetic and design mechanic. The challenge with most top-down is that you always see the top of heads and never connect with your characters. Looking up gives you emotional connection to characters. Second, the lore of the game: To the characters of this world, you are a deity that represents the personification of fate. It is within their nature to look up to you for commands, and this ties directly with gameplay: they look up at you to signal they are ready to be commanded. Don't worry, all of the inhabits of Summoners Fate are born with a specialized neck joint so they never get back pain
