This is game director Trent Kusters’ salute, apparently.
The one I’m giving him is similar, I suppose. ;)
Is the subtext that they are worried about piracy?
I’ll tell you what is their subtext. They want to sell character skins and dice skins as cosmetic DLC (and build a market around that like the one in DOTA 2 or CSGO), and there’s a good chance they will make MP “seasons” and the like around those. GOG doesn’t support those things (and its DRM-free nature is not exactly “friendly” to that kind of business model), and they don’t want to “waste time” supporting a different version, because they want to maximize their profits.
I think you’re right, honestly. GOG has no infrastructure for stuff like this:
Which, by the way, is amazing to me. I never thought I’d see the CS:GO loot chest model in a strategy game, but here we are.
I think they’re also massively overestimating the size of that market, at least when it comes to a niche indie game like Armello. At some point they might even see that move as a mistake. But then it might be a bit too little too late.
Oh wow, I haven’t been following this closely and had no idea they were planning a skin, chest, and key economy. That is crazy.
That seems misguided with an all-time player peak of 1,543. Seems like the route Ironclad was trying to take with their failed MOBA Sins of a Dark Age.
Hello world!
So, somewhere along the line this game got…good? I’ve been playing against the AI on ps4 and quite enjoying myself. Has anyone else been playing? Has anyone given the new characters out on pc a whirl yet?
Have they made it so you can see the whole board yet? Without it being covered by blinding fog? Because until they fix that, I’m not re-installing it.
I bought this game on sale a few weeks ago after waiting for a long time for it to hit the price point I was looking for. I didn’t care for it at all and refunded it after playing through the tutorial. I especially hate how your chance at getting bonus items from quests relies on a dice roll. Maybe there’s some strategy in there, but the randomness of a lot of the game’s elements really turned me off.
Well, the bonus items are just that, bonuses. You can ignore the roll, which I often do, but in any case you have influence over it based on which attribute you choose. Pick something you are strong in and you have a better chance, but you are putting more of your eggs in that basket. You can also use spells to increase attributes, and often the penalty for losing is one you can live with. If I’m a fighter type character, I don’t really care about losing a bit of magic, especially if it’s daytime. Lost health might not be a big deal if circles are nearby, or if you have a restorative item or spell, or if you’re going for a spirit stone or kingslayer win and care less about the lost prestige from dying.
Uh. When they gimped the GOG version for no good reason other then greed, I walked away (BTW, I have the Steam version). I don’t think I’ll buy another game from that studio anytime soon.
That was a pretty crappy move. I am still waiting on my iPad version which was the reason I backed the kickstarter way back when. They did give me a PC key, but I didn’t really imagine sitting at a PC to play it and I didn’t care for what little I did play. It is in the pile of kickstarters that was a total waste for me.
Someone gifted this game to me a couple of months back, and I just fired it up over the weekend to try it out.
So far its fun. I like the short play time, the multiple paths to victory and the way the characters are designed with those paths in mind. Many of the cards are well thought out and can be used in clever ways. I had one in one of my games that removed any bounty and made me immune to bounty, and the very next turn one of my choices as high prestige owner for the king’s decree was to declare bounty on myself in exchange for prestige…which I did, the bounty didn’t stick, but the prestige did. Ended up winning a prestige victory that game with like 9 prestige.
So far I’ve played half a dozen games with 4 of the 8 characters (I wanted to win with each one before trying another). The unlock system is neat as it promotes doing just this sort of thing, and it is cool to try the different victory strategies with the different characters. Thane was ridiculously easy, as was Barnaby (the tinker rabbit). Both of the Rat characters were far more difficult, requiring me to play two games with each before I could secure a win, and one of those wins was pure luck (two other characters killed each other on the same turn I captured a village and the King died of rot, putting me 1 Prestige ahead of everyone else when he died).
I don’t see much replay value in the game though once I have secured a victory with each of the 8 characters. I mean, I guess I might play another game or two if I want to try winning by out-rotting the King or building one of the weaker characters into a combat powerhouse using items and followers or something, but that’s doubtful.
I did see there is DLC that adds characters/clans and additional cards. It seems expensive though for what it adds to the game. Also, what is the deal with the microtransactions?! What do the chests contain that would possibly be worth spending money on? Overpowered cards to add to the game?
I believe the chests are just cosmetic stuff. As for replayability, well, it’s a board game, so it is supposed to produce enough variability to entertain through multiple plays. I find the multitude of player powers and different cards mixed with the variability of the map does that rather nicely, but YMMV of course. I think it would be great in multi, but unfortunately I have not been able to find opponents so I can’t comment there.
Played a couple more games last night. Lost the first one as Amber the Bunny because I got saddled with “The Stranger”, a follower who randomly moves you one tile at the beginning of each turn, which doesn’t sound that bad until you realize it’s almost always the opposite direction you wanted to go and often directly into danger (Stranger danger?).
Won my second Amber game on a Prestige win when Thane killed the King and died in the process. Won another game as Sana the Druid Bear on a Stones victory, which seems to be the path she’s cut out for. I got lucky in that the stones quests I took were always either Body or Spirit, both of which were high (60%-70%). It’s rough when a stat is at 2 or 3, as you pretty much have to ignore quests that require it.
Two more characters to go until I’ve won a game with each one.
Sana can kill the king, too, as he is corrupted, thus letting her fight using Spirit.
Have you had any games end in anything other than a Prestige victory? That was another of my complaints about the game; there are theoretically several (3? 4?) ways to win, but I never saw anything except Prestige victories.
There are 4 ways to win. Prestige victory, kill the King yourself outright (though you must survive the battle, otherwise it becomes a Prestige victory for whomever holds the most prestige), defeat the King with 4 spirit stones (not even fight him, just reach him with 4 stones in your possession and he is “cleansed” and you are crowned king), and the hardest one, having more rot than the King.
I’ve done 3 of the 4 now. I haven’t won a rot victory, though a couple of times I had enough rot cards in hand that I might have been able to try it by equipping/casting them all at once. Surviving with that much rot is nearly impossible though.
Well once you hit 4, you gain health from every kill…
Oh…I didn’t know that! Hmmm…in theory then, a rot victory with Thane or the combat bear guy should be feasible provided you have the equipment to beef up your dice in every combat.
Won a Stones/Prestige victory (technically stones, but I was also prestige leader) with River, the archer Wolf. Was well into winning with the combat bear when the game decided to simply pause forever. It was Sana’s turn, and she just sat there, doing nothing. Even hitting the 2X button didn’t budge her. Tried playing a card to her…still nothing. First time that’s happened to me, and I have to wonder if they broke something in the massive update they pushed out Wednesday.