Tag: Turn based RPG »

In some ways the original Shadowrun was a little before my time. Only a little, though. I was actually just too young to appreciate tabletop role playing games when I was eight. But I did appreciate the kick-ass SNES video game spin-off, and I even managed to come back to (and run) the pen and paper original in high school. Like many people I have very fond memories of street samurai and wage mages, so the news that Jordan Weisman (the original creator) plans to bring it back to PC, Mac, and tablets fills me with glee and makes me squeal like an excited school girl. Complete with jumping up and down repeatedly.

As is the apparently very successful trend right now, Harebrained Schemes has taken their idea to the Kickstarter community instead of a publisher. Ordinarily I’d try to rally the troops in an attempt to ensure that they meet their goal but that’s already happened. Like, a while ago. The developer is already at three times their goal to start working on the turn-based, player-driven RPG. That’s not to say that people should stop donating, though. If they can make another 200K or so (reaching 1.75 million) then Physical Adepts will be added. As one of many who have “seen” what physical adepts are capable of, this excites me.

The project still has a little over two days before it’s finished so we all have time to make our pledges. Virtually all of the game is pure speculation at this point, but I have every confidence in Mr. Weisman and his team. And I could not be looking forward to raiding mega corporations more.

[Via Kickstarter]

Ash was one of the first RPGs I downloaded when I was a new initiate to the wonders of iOS gaming. I recall being thoroughly impressed by the quality. Well, that quality just got a boost. The original game was released with graphics licensed from RPG Maker, but SRRN Games has replaced all of it with totally original artwork. The new style shares a few basic similarities with the older one, but overall it's a huge visual change. Especially the character portraits.

Another less obvious but still notable change has to do with the random encounters. One of the game's initial shortcomings was that there were just so freaking many of them it kind of made getting from point A to point B a pain. This has been rebalanced, so now random encounters are a bit less frequent. They'll still happen, and they're still essential to not being caught in a boss battle with one's pants down, but the decrease will go a long way to making the game more accessible and overall more fun.

Last and most important, Ash is getting an 80% prince drop for the holidays. What was once a great RPG that could be had for $4.99 is now a great RPG made slightly greater and available for a buck. One dollar. $0.99. I'd gladly recommend this game to any RPG fans at $5, but $1? That's, like, "don't even think about it just buy it" pricing. So yeah; don't even think about it, just buy it.