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Game News Dungeon Rats, Iron Tower Studio's Age of Decadence dungeon crawler, officially announced

Infinitron

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Tags: Dungeon Rats; Iron Tower Studios; Vault Dweller

We've known that Iron Tower Studio have had plans to develop a party-based dungeon crawler set in the world of The Age of Decadence for a long time. Vault Dweller revealed some information about it in AoD's two post-release updates last year, and in June he revealed that it was planned for an October release, but compared to what we know about the Colony Ship RPG, details have been quite sparse. Until today, that is, when he published a news update on AoD's Steam community hub officially announcing it. The game's title: Dungeon Rats. Its official website was unveiled several hours later, with more details and a collection of screenshots:



Your adventure starts in the dusty shadows of a prison mine many leagues from any trading post or settlement. The 'Second Chance' (as in your second chance to become a productive member of society) is the most feared of all ‘hard labor’ and ‘gladiator camp’ prisons. Once the jewel in a string of rich iron mines, the shafts were long ago exhausted and the ore spent. No longer profitable using conventional slave labor, the prisoners who work it now trade whatever ore they can scratch from the rock for scraps of food.

Having already tested the futility of fighting the guards, you do not resist when you are hurled into a cage suspended above the main shaft. The barred door crashes shut, the crack of a whip signals a pair of slaves to the crank, and the cage begins its slow and creaking descent. A one way trip to hell awaits, past bright fires, screaming faces, and beyond, into the impenetrable blackness of the lower levels.

Dungeon Rats, named after the 7th Heavy Armored Division of the Imperial Guards, is a turn-based, party-based dungeon crawler set in the same world as Age of Decadence. This is an RPG focused almost exclusively on squad level tactical combat for players who enjoy turn-based games in general, and AoD's combat systems in particular. If fighting your way out of a prison mine - and frequently dying in the attempt - is your idea of a good time, you've come to the right place.

Starting out as a new prisoner at the bottom of the gangs-ruled prison hierarchy, and of the prison itself, you must fight to survive and develop your combat skills, acquiring better weapons and equipment as you go. Recruit allies to your struggle or carry on as a lone wolf, and kill anyone foolish enough to stand in your way.

Features include:
  • Tactical combat system, including standard attacks, aimed attacks targeting specific body parts, and per-weapon special attacks such as Whirlwind and Impale.
  • Detailed crafting and alchemy systems: forge your own weapons, brew potions and poisons, experiment with Liquid Fire and Black Powder.
  • 8 weapon types: Daggers, Swords, Axes, Hammers, Spears, Bows, Crossbows, and Throwing Weapons, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
  • Fully customizable main character, as well as 10 possible companions, not all of them human (maximum party size is 4).
  • 50 challenging fights
Notable changes from the Age of Decadence:
  • Party-based - the most frequently requested feature.
  • Flanking and other strategic bonuses. Positioning matters a lot.
  • Manual placement of your characters before a fight.
  • Charisma determines the number and quality of your party members.
  • Skill points are split between the party members: more people means fewer skills points per person and slower level ups.
  • New weapons, armor, and creatures.
  • 3 difficulty levels: Nice Guy, Tough Bastard, Murderous Psychopath
According to Vault Dweller, Dungeon Rats is still tentatively scheduled for release next month, and definitely no later than November. After all of the RPGs that have been delayed this year, that's welcome news.
 
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Lurker King

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inb4 someone make vaporware jokes about having to wait ten more years for another ITS game.

They changed the main ITS site too:

Iron Tower Studio is a premier destination for all your hardcore RPG needs. Proudly serving 0.003% of the Global Gaming Market since 2015. The remaining 99.997% need not apply.

Isn't it awesome or what?
 

IHaveHugeNick

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Wow. Just wow. Shameless reusing of textures from AoD. Icons that look like vomited out by my dog. Portraits so horrible VD probably painted them with his dick. Four health bars instead of one represent blatant consolization. Archaic dialogue interface taking 80% of screen. Graphics are so dated, they look could probably run on ENIAC.

Do not want.
 

MuscleSpark

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Looks neat, I'm more of a The Dark Spire first-person blobber kind of guy, but I can give this a shot.
 
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To the people who complain, do you prefer this, or 1000 other shitty unbalanced indie rogue-likes with no content?

Like Vince explained many times it makes perfect business sense to make a little more money from a cheap product that will satisfy a certain niche. And it's not like he's holding a gun to your head so you buy it.

Also it was a good idea to make a 50% off sale on AoD just one month before releasing this to generate more interest. I finally was able to convince my cousin to buy it. Have they added all the additional content to the base game that they planned to add yet?
 
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ZagorTeNej

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Wow. Just wow. Shameless reusing of textures from AoD. Icons that look like vomited out by my dog. Portraits so horrible VD probably painted them with his dick. Four health bars instead of one represent blatant consolization. Archaic dialogue interface taking 80% of screen. Graphics are so dated, they look could probably run on ENIAC.

Do not want.

It's all relative man. For example, compared to low-tier console garbage Dungeon Rats looks positively exquisite.
 
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aweigh

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the name doesn't suck but it's not going to help Steam sales. it's going to make the Steam-tards and steamkiddies think it's a nu-Roguelike because it has 'dungeon' in the title, i.e. a fake-Roguelike, and once they watch the videos and see that it features tactical turn-based combat and lots of text they will immediately turn away.

age of decadence was a better Steam-friendly title because it doesn't paint an immediate genre picture and it externalizes the concept rather than distill it.
 

Mastermind

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
To the people who complain, do you prefer this, or 1000 other shitty unbalanced indie rogue-likes with no content?

Like Vince explained many times it makes perfect business sense to make a little more money from a cheap product that will satisfy a certain niche. And it's not like he's holding a gun to your head so you buy it.

I'm sure something they shat out in a couple of months is gonna be loaded with content on par with one of many free roguelikes that have been in development for years.
 

Goral

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So no roleplaying elements at all ?
In the screens above you have examples of charisma check (persuasion) and perception checks. Also, recruiting the rest of your team will depend on your stats (and the whole combat of course). What more would you want in a dungeon crawler?

the name doesn't suck but it's not going to help Steam sales. it's going to make the Steam-tards and steamkiddies think it's a nu-Roguelike because it has 'dungeon' in the title, i.e. a fake-Roguelike, and once they watch the videos and see that it features tactical turn-based combat and lots of text they will immediately turn away.
It's a game targeted at AoD consumers so it won't matter that much. In fact, considering much lower price and various difficulty settings it might sell better than AoD.
 

Zanzoken

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Not the greatest name I've ever seen but to be fair "Dungeon Siege III" was already taken.
 
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aweigh

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it probably will sell better than AoD mostly because it is party based. Vince and Co. always underestimated right from the beginning just how powerful of a feature it is in the mind of the RPG consumer.
 

Aenra

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Will buy, no questions asked, even though i'm probably the only one wishing it was party-less. The more time goes by, the less i can be asked managing multiple PCs for the job of one.
Hope they make more than they expect out of it, they've earned it after AoD :)

On a random note, i see HHR is back?
/south LORD 'ave mercy on us! Hallelujah!
 

Achiman

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Sweet. It's not actually a rogue-like though right?
Get your preorder shit up on steam vault dweller and I'll give ye my cards trading money now.
 

duanth123

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The name sucks.

Rest assured I will be buying the shit out of this game as I fall within the niche who already would anyway, but, honestly, I don't know what kind of new player you'll be attracting with that title.

You do realize the worst game on Steam is named "Bad Ratz" and has associated that word with meme-level incompetence.

Like as an eager, new, but not particularly experienced player who regularly peruses Steam my first impression, at that critical moment where I decide to click, might actually be "Is this some shitty 1 hour puzzle game in which I play as a rat?"

At the very least it turns out any notion of a power fantasy, which I get you don't want, or even the grittiness of the setting.

I mean it's a reference to what sounds like s minor piece of lore, but comes off as totally generic, if not outright goofy, to the neophyte, even if he jumps the aforementioned mental hurdle.

There are so many more evocative titles for the essential premise of the game, I just don't get it.

And the worst sin is that with Steam opening the floodgates to trash unity games of all shapes and sizes , the awkwardness of the title, in conjunction with the graphics, could easily reinforce an erroneous but not uncommon belief that it's (like AoD) just some cheap trash title that will come packing with horrible animations, shitty mechanics, and m bad, or nonexistent writing, the two latter of which are your strengths

You face enough of an uphill battle just getting people to try your games. Don't compound the issue.

In a single word, the title is chintzy.
 
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