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Information Telepath Tactics Now on Kickstarter

Crooked Bee

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Tags: Sinister Design; Telepath Tactics

Craig Stern of Sinister Design has launched a Kickstarter campaign for his tactical RPG Telepath Tactics for PC, Mac and Linux. The funding goal is $25,500, and $10 gets you a digital copy of the game.

Telepath Tactics is a turn-based tactical RPG in the tradition of Fire Emblem and Disgaea. It features a single player campaign with well-written characters embroiled in a tale of war and political intrigue, as well as 2-to-6 player multiplayer with support for hotseat play (i.e. you and your friends playing together in the same room, Super Smash Brothers style).

Telepath Tactics takes a highly deterministic approach to combat mechanics. Attack damage is 100% predictable, and attacks always hit unless there is some intervening factor (such as the attacker having been blinded, or the target having some special defensive status effect). In this regard, it is very much a game of skill akin to chess—chance will seldom determine the outcome of a battle.

Telepath Tactics borrows liberally from the best tactics games around to provide a wide variety of available strategies. Throw enemies off of cliffs; push enemies into water or lava; fling friends across gaps; set your enemies on fire; freeze them; blind them; cripple them; stun them; use hit-and-run tactics with cavalry and bowmen; teleport; grab item drops; stick your ranged units on the high ground to boost their effectiveness; the list goes on and on.

Telepath Tactics also brings fresh new environmental manipulation mechanics to the table. Push boulders, barrels and tables in the way to block off certain routes; build bridges to create new routes across water or lava; build barricades to brunt an incoming attack; destroy walls, doors and bridges to open up or close off routes of attack; shoot through open windows; place down explosive charges to create a trap for an unwary opponent. Telepath Tactics supports all of this and more.

The enemy AI in Telepath Tactics is aggressive and reactive. The enemy will not just sit around the battlefield waiting for your characters to wander into aggro range or trigger a script—instead, the AI will actively maneuver and seek out ways to get at your most vulnerable characters.

Telepath Tactics multiplayer comes with 22 unique character classes, each with its own strengths, weaknesses, and battlefield roles. The single player campaign features unique, named characters based off of these classes, each with its own custom stats and leveling schemes.

You don't have to be content with the selection the game ships with, however. Telepath Tactics features extensive mod support that allows you to create custom multiplayer maps, custom tilesets, custom destructible objects, custom items, custom attacks, custom character classes, and even whole single player campaigns filled with unique characters, enemies, dialog and cut scenes. Everything is stored in easy-to-edit .xml files, so modding is a cinch.

The game also comes with a full-featured map editor to make creating new battles fast and simple. Create your own, or download someone else's: Telepath Tactics supports all of the above.​

If the above sounds good to you, be sure to visit the game's Kickstarter page to read more about it and study the screenshots and the reward tiers.
 

evdk

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:bounce:
EDIT: The "give me money for a marketing campaign" part of the pitch is pretty dumb (going to PAX, haha) but I'll treat it as a preorder, so he can do whatever, as long as he delivers. It might discourage people though.
 

felipepepe

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Oh yeah, just backed it! :bounce:

I'm very happy that this is gonna get a single-player campaign, I don't exactly know many people to play this kind of multiplayer game. But Craig Stern, could you give us more detail about how the campaign will be like?

Also, a weird question: I got really bad eyesight and have a bad time with games with tons of small things, and your game has some gorgeous sprites animation that really shine when you show them zoomed in on the trailer or other videos; my question is, will I be able to zoom the camera a bit when playing?
 

Infinitron

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Trash needs to be more assertive about claiming what's his. I was actually quite surprised that Banner Saga posts weren't on RPGCodex as well.
 

almondblight

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Here are the things your contribution will fund:
  • Hiring a sound designer to create all of the sound effects for every last button click, movement, attack, character death, item usage, and action in the game. Estimated cost: $12,000
  • Hiring a composer to flesh out the game's soundtrack with more music. Estimated cost: $4,000
  • Hiring artists to create more art: tilesets, destructible objects, character portraits, NPC sprites, and a second gender for each character class. Estimated cost: $4,000.00
  • Promoting Telepath Tactics* at PAX East. Estimated cost: $2,000.00
  • Hiring a web designer to build a proper website* for Telepath Tactics. Estimated cost: $1,000.00
Now, if you're good at math, you might be scratching your head right now. "Craig," you might say, "that's only $23,000. What is the last $2,500 for?" Good eye. The last $2,500 is to cover the estimated 10% cut that Amazon and Kickstarter take from whatever we raise. (For instance: if we raise $25,500.00, I estimate that these guys will take a $2,550 cut; that leaves just about $23,000, the amount I need to cover the expenses listed above.)

That's a nice amount of transparency.
 

PorkaMorka

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On one hand, the transparency is nice. On the other hand, it's ensuring that I won't contribute money to this game. $16,000 is going to sound, which isn't that important. $3,000 is going to marketing which I don't care about. That leaves only the $4,000 going to art which really seems worth it.

If there was no transparency I might be able to fool myself into thinking that more of the money was going to worthy causes.
 

Mother Russia

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Wait a fucking minute. I just the screenies, it looks GORGEOUS!!

But wait, I could have sworn I saw a trailer for this 2 years ago, and it looked totally different. Isn't this based off of a single player game he has already released, with a top down view? Telepath the rpg or something??

How come everything has totally changed?
 

Bruma Hobo

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This is based on JRPGs (aka strategy games with stats at best, never real RPGs :troll: ), you can safely move it to TCancer. Looks pretty good, btw.
 

Pope Amole II

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Those dudes who are happy to support him probably didn't play his already available games. The guy is a terrible hack. 'Nuff said.

Also, spending 12k on sound designer and just 4k per composer and artist is a wee bit unrealistic, not to mention wasteful - I mean, the sounds there will be crap anyways so it's easier to buy a pack of them in the unity store or whatever, music is also hardly important (as, chances are, it will be shit) so lots of players will play with original sounds off and some of their favourite music on. However, as you can't really turn off the graphics, that's where those twelve grands should've been headed. But, as I've said, the guy is a terrible hack with zero understanding as how a good RPG works, so what'd ya expect of him?
 

wormix

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I was right!!

http://sinisterdesign.net/products/telepath-rpg-servants-of-god/

The original Telepath Tactics was based on the engine of the above game. I remember seeing a gameplay video of it. It was top down just like Telepath the RPG. WTF?? Why didn't he mention it in his kickstarter pitch??
He did at the bottom.

Meanwhile, I am my own programmer, so there is zero chance of someone taking off and leaving me with code I can't read or use. I do not like to leave projects unfinished; it's just my personality. I stuck with my last game (Telepath RPG: Servants of God) for more than four years, then released it when it was done. Unless I am abducted by government agents or run over by a truck, Telepath Tactics is going to be completed. Period.
 

Wizfall

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It doesn't look bad but for those who are interested by this kind of game :
http://www.wesnoth.org/
The above is free and awesome (it's the only free game i would have been ready to buy full AAA price)
 

J1M

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On one hand, the transparency is nice. On the other hand, it's ensuring that I won't contribute money to this game. $16,000 is going to sound, which isn't that important. $3,000 is going to marketing which I don't care about. That leaves only the $4,000 going to art which really seems worth it.

If there was no transparency I might be able to fool myself into thinking that more of the money was going to worthy causes.
He has already invested money of his own into all of the existing artwork. Editing the existing classes so the sprites have long/short hair is not going to cost as much as what he has already put into the art himself.

I take issue with some of the things this guy says on his blog about game design, but I will probably back this because he obviously cares about his project and his pitch was way better than Thorvalla/HeroU.
 

Craig Stern

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Oh yeah, just backed it! :bounce:

I'm very happy that this is gonna get a single-player campaign, I don't exactly know many people to play this kind of multiplayer game. But Craig Stern, could you give us more detail about how the campaign will be like?

Thanks for supporting the game! Keep an eye on the Kickstarter page: I expect you'll find information on that front forthcoming in an update fairly soon. ;)

Also, a weird question: I got really bad eyesight and have a bad time with games with tons of small things, and your game has some gorgeous sprites animation that really shine when you show them zoomed in on the trailer or other videos; my question is, will I be able to zoom the camera a bit when playing?

I'm definitely planning to support a 2x zoom mode, though I'm not sure just yet what method I'll be using to make it happen.
 

Craig Stern

Sinister Design
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Wait a fucking minute. I just the screenies, it looks GORGEOUS!!

But wait, I could have sworn I saw a trailer for this 2 years ago, and it looked totally different. Isn't this based off of a single player game he has already released, with a top down view? Telepath the rpg or something??

How come everything has totally changed?

Short version: it's a new engine.

Long version: the Telepath RPG engine was awful to work with. Everything was baked-in and hard-coded, which made creating new content or adding new features a nightmare (and simultaneously, foreclosed any possibility of mod support). I actually started working on the Telepath Tactics engine out of disgust while I was still developing Telepath RPG: Servants of God.

So no, Telepath Tactics has never been in any other engine: the new engine came first, and the game evolved out of it. You're probably thinking of Telepath RPG: Servants of God or Telepath Psy Arena 2, which were in the old engine.
 

Livonya

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$10... sure I am in. I prefer single player but if your game has a player matching system then would play multi-player...

I like Wesnoth and had a lot of fun with it (http://www.wesnoth.org/)... Telepath Tactics looks similar though more complex, and I guess less random stuff... Wesnoth has a lot of randomness.

Good luck with it.
 

OSK

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Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
It doesn't look bad but for those who are interested by this kind of game :
http://www.wesnoth.org/
The above is free and awesome (it's the only free game i would have been ready to buy full AAA price)

Wesnoth is fun, but my biggest problem with the game is with how random combat results are. This game claims to take the opposite approach.
 

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