Advance Notice Wars: Telepath Tactics Out This Week
The storm rages. A torrent of new games, released in numbers greater than any human kind could possibly track, let alone play. It batters inboxes and databases and Twitter feeds at high velocity, a cloud of names and ideas spun into a frenzy by the hopes and dreams and ingenuity of countless game-makers. Once in a while a wonderful concept finds its way to the front of the whirlwind, or a familiar name briefly shines through the chaotic cloud. Today, somewhere in this swirling cavalcade of releases, I caught a glimpse of Telepath Tactics amidst the maelstrom.
This promising army-based RPG with more-than-your-average-bear strategy aspects and destructible terrain caught the eye of Adam back in 2012, but all of a sudden it's out on Thursday. How time very slowly flies.
TT's style and setting mixes vaguely Middle Eastern aesthetics with steampunk shenanigans, while its mechanics nod to the likes of Fire Emblem and Advance Wars and, apparently, Super Smash Bros. As the name suggests, this is a far more tactical affair than the Ooh A Dilemma / Ooh A Hundred Thousand Things To Collect/ Ooh Who Shall I Sex routine many modern RPGs go for lately, although it is apparently still story-based too. You also get a map and campaign editor to tinker with.
You'll build a small army then have them do rotten stuff like shove people off cliffs, throw lava around and blow up walls, and there'll also be a big (but optional) focus on multiplayer battles. These are fights with lots of people and lots of attack types, which hope to scratch turn-based strategy itches as much as they roleplaying ones.
Here's some five-month-old footage of a big old dust-up in the hills to give you a sense of what this is about:
Craig 'Sinister Design' Stern has been working on this for a long time now, and on April 16th we'll find out whether his dedication has paid off. Hopefully we'll be able to tell you more about it soon, but yeah, as above, so many games right now. TT was originally planned for March, but the dev felt that was too busy a month for big new releases, so, er, ended up putting it two days after GTA V instead. Righto then.