There is an unfinished turn-based RPG that is developed by a small studio that needs your help making it complete. Let's jump right in.
I'm back with a new post that talks about a game that I heard about and played recently. As we know, turn-based RPGs have quite a dedicate fanbase for years and with the success of Expedition 33, it holds the future of turn-based RPGs to follow its footsteps, starting with People of Note. But there is one turn-based RPG that I heard them talk about subtly and it caught my very interest and blew my mind. See, when I was making a post talking about why I am so excited to revisit Mega Man X: Command Mission, I came across upon an unfinished turn-based RPG. I started to read more about it as much I could, so let's jump right into the post.
You would know that indie devs typically have the creative freedom in developing games to be able to take creative risks to provide gameplay innovations and have the tendency to make games without being burdened by shareholders and all that. These games have vibes from AAA games, ranging from Paper Mario-likes to Hearts-likes, Soulslikes and roguelikes. And there is one indie dev I heard about, Doom Turtle.
Doom Turtle is the developer of Ember Knights. And what they have is a turn-based RPG available in its unfinished state. And in a sense, a turn-based RPG that is basically Super Mario RPG meets Final Fantasy taking place in the solar system. No progress on it was made because they are currently working on their new deckbuilding roguelite, Welcome to Harmony. Now, it was originally an open world game, but it is now in a turn-based RPG format. The most accepted name is Legends of Starkadia. Like I said, this is basically Super Mario RPG meets Final Fantasy. From what I heard of, here is the essential story and explanation of the game before I give you the verdict of how I enjoyed. I may have some details wrong here, but this is what I have.
A bored Earthling teen named Mikey got accidentally sent into a Starkadian Empire. He lands face first in a battle between good and evil. Along the way, Mikey meets few of his new allies that he must make in the fight between good and evil and defeat the forces of evil, the Empire.
The field outside of combat has the top down view Super Mario RPG uses. There are enemies visible and simply getting into contact with it normally will get you into battle. Your party strikes first by touching the enemy from behind and an enemy blitzkrieg occurs when it touches you from behind. When you have more than one character, you can switch between leaders using the buttons that switch leaders. There's even the Cores system, but we don't know what does the Cores system do right now.
The combat in Legends of Starkadia is based on a traditional turn-based system and it's similar to Super Mario RPG because there are action commands that amplify a move's effects. They consist of timed button presses during an attack, defense, special move and item usage. And there are two things the Super Mario RPG remake has introduced, the chain system and the use of teamwork abilities.
The chain system uses a gauge that holds up to five levels. When you make a successful action command, you'll increase the chain gauge and keep it intact. The higher the chain, the higher the effects on regeneration and attacks. But blow an action command, you'll break the chain and have to start from square one. Successful action commands also fill up the teamwork gauge. It holds up to three bars and is consumed from using powerful teamwork abilities.
Teamwork abilities are powerful abilities that are quite similar to Triple Attacks in the Super Mario RPG remake. They vary by what characters you have in battle and require 1-3 bars of the teamwork gauge. Example, if you have Mikey, Frank and Drake in combat, they'll perform Rude Trip, which allows them to drive a vehicle and run over enemies, dealing a ton of damage. Each teamwork ability has action commands you must successfully make and the coolest thing about them; unique text cutouts of names of teamwork abilities. They are quite as powerful and proven useful as Super Mario RPG's Triple Attacks, especially on boss battles.
Each enemy has a weakness, so if any of the attacks match the picture, the enemies get stunned and they take a lot of damage. For example, if the enemy has the picture of a sword, sword attacks match the picture to stun the enemy. While stunned, the amount of damage dealt increases.
With the explanation out of the way, here's my verdict to what do I think of Legends of Starkadia so far. I'm gonna say, the game is so near perfect. The combat is great, making successful action commands increasing the chain is an interesting touch. The teamwork abilities are so unique that they each have a unique logo and text cutout.
As I have said, the game is unfinished because it currently spans on Scrap World and has two hours of gameplay on it. Doom Turtle stated that building the remaining planets is a massive gamble that they had to limit the game to Chapter 1. And thankfully, there is some great news for the future of Legends of Starkadia.
Doom Turtle has recently posted an article that tells us that the transition to the pricing model is live and we have changed everything. What does that tell us? Well, if you look closer at the part of the article...
It shows that the game roughly had 28,000 total downloads. As of now, it has officially surpassed 200,000 downloads, which became a huge wake-up call for Doom Turtle to realize how important it is to continue working on future planets beyond Scrap World. It's also more than enough player interest to convince the team to get back to work and offer us more ways to fund the development bucket, so we have several packs available.
The Supporter Edition comes with exclusive skins and the official soundtrack.
And here are the current tracks in the official soundtrack for Legends of Starkadia. There are currently nine tracks. According to the soundtrack as a whole, each planet will have their own combat and boss arrangement like that of Mugen Souls. If we look closer to the last three tracks...
There are three bonus tracks for the next three planets, Sci-Fi World, Library World and Prehistoric World. The soundtrack will have more tracks once the game is in its complete form.
Now, surely, we would see a party of seven. Surely, this game is gonna have a character that throws playing cards and have abilities named after poker hand combinations like Spider. Surely, devs can develop a character that specializes support abilities like Cinnamon, right? Well, sadly, that will not be the case.
According to the splash art, there are four characters to join Mikey's party to make a party of five. The names are Frank, the anthropomorphic pig, Drake, the anthropomorphic duck wearing a red hoodie and Mutt, the fat one holding a claw, who is actually seen at Scrap World, but will not be joining the party yet. The name of a blue-skinned pink-braided girl holding a pistol is unknown and she is likely to be seen at Sci-Fi World looking at her gear. We can be able to find out what her name is now that they are convinced to eventually get back to work on this game. The party is not quite as fleshed out as Mega Man X: Command Mission, but it seemingly contains characters with different weapons, abilities and their personalities and we do have Frank wielding giant axes and hammers like Steel Massimo.
The blurb currently reflects the game in its current state and it will be updated to reflect the game in its complete form. As of today, the news shows that we rallied together to fund and build the development bucket to give the project a fresh and new wave of momentum so that we can see more planets get added and find out what is the name of the girl holding a pistol on the splash art and what the Cores system does.
This brings me to my point. Remember what I said that we won't be seeing the Spider and Cinnamon-likes in Legends of Starkadia because of the party of five? If funding and building the development bucket is gonna help them develop future chapters and planets, then this brings me to hereby believe that funding the development bucket even further should also help Doom Turtle develop the Spider and Cinnamon-like characters for this game to expand the party to seven. But that's just my thoughts. It's just me speculating. We can find out if they are coming to fruition or not.
The latest news from Doom Turtle is indeed hopeful while their time to continue development on Legends of Starkadia is inevitable, but Welcome to Harmony is their main focus right now while whether the Spider and Cinnamon-likes are confirmed or not remains a mystery. It is a bit too early and it's proven to be beyond my sight. Once that's done, then they can get back to work on developing more planets.
The base game is available for $2 and the Supporter Pack is available for $5. Every purchase directly funds the developers' bucket needed to build the remaining chapters beyond Chapter 1, so feel free to donate money to the team while they are working on Welcome to Harmony. The demo version of Welcome to Harmony is available now, so go check it out.
Here's the link to the base game and the link to the Supporter Pack below.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2618160/Legends_of_Starkadia_Chapter_1/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5243840/Legends_of_Starkadia_Supporter_Pack/
This is just the first post in regards to Legends of Starkadia. Stay tuned for follow ups to this post that cover updates.
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