Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades - Battle Brothers-Like Turn-Based Tactical RPG from the Maker of Fell Seal

[cyborgboy95]

ABOUT THIS GAME​

Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades is a turn-based tactical RPG in which you lead a company of mercenaries through the harsh lands of the Stormtossed Isle. Select one of many origin stories, or create your own, and make your mark through the world. Hire your crew, train, and outfit them. How will your company operate? Will you favor the traditional mercenary life, grab contracts and slowly build up your reputation? Will you instead focus on the lucrative trading opportunities to be found on the Isle? Or perhaps you'll don the mantle of a consummate explorer, discover and chart the numerous dungeons and secrets throughout. Then again, why not a mix of it all? One thing is for certain, though: it'll be a dangerous and bloody journey, and you'd better prepare your company for it, and prepare well.



The world of Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades consists of a procedurally generated world map, teeming with enemies, dungeons, towns and secrets to discover. Assemble your company and roam the lands, looking for opportunities, fortune, and bloody combat. Maintaining a mercenary company isn't cheap, so you'll have to earn some coin on the way. Contracts, trading, looting, discovering and pilfering will all serve you well on that front. Battles are a big part of the gameplay and take place on a tactical hex grid, in turn-based mode. Deploy up to 6 units, each with their own class and skill tree, and engage a variety of enemies intent on seeing your crew lie face down in the dirt. Dungeon exploration is another major component in Pathbreakers. Select a small elite force from your crew and delve into a dungeon. Once inside, you'll face traps, hidden paths, vicious enemies and your ever dwindling oil reserves, as you explore the darkness, hoping for treasures and renown.

• Build your own Company​

  Assemble and customize your roster from a selection of 8 classes, each branching to 2 different advanced classes and with their own skill tree. Mercenaries start with background traits and can learn new ones, adding an extra layer of customization.
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  Multiple Company paths​

  Your company can amass reputation on 3 different fronts: Mercenary, Trader and Explorer. A high reputation grants new opportunities tied to its field. More contracts, trading options, and special commissions become available to those who have proven themselves.
  
  
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  Never quite the same​

  The campaign's open world, dungeons, and most battle maps are procedurally generated, making each new game a different experience. Nothing is ever quite the same and it will keep you on your toes.
  
  
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  Multiple origin stories​

  Select one of many origin stories, or create your own. Each origin character has their own custom plot and story events, with different strengths and weaknesses and different goals and objectives.
  
  
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  Interesting enemies and tough encounters​

  The game features a large cast of enemies, ranging from opposing mercenaries to a multitude of unique monstrous creatures. Enemies have access to their own classes and abilities and understanding them will be a key difference between victory and a shallow grave.
  
  
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  Dynamic events​

  Contracts and story events have multiple resolutions and branching outcomes, never being quite the same from playthrough to playthrough. You'll face some hard choices that will influence how your company is perceived.
  
  
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  Modding​

  Pathbreakers has been designed to be modder friendly. The game features Workshop support, a map editor, a spell editor, and data files relying on easy-to-edit-and-understand json files, which facilitates adding classes, skills, and new languages.

 

[Haba]

I feel that this game just doesn't have a leg to stand on.

 

[Fargus]

More tactical games like BB are always welcome.

 

[Gandalf]

The art style looks rather JRPG-ish. 6 eyes studio are:

Pierre Leclerc


Pierre Leclerc started programming when he was 14 years old, and quickly went from a large array of personal projects and games, to working in the video game industry for big studios like EA, Activison and Gameloft.
In time though, the lure of creating his own games was too strong, and with the help of Christina Leclerc, 6 Eyes Studio was formed.
Pierre is credited in multiple games, including Madden Console, Madden Mobile, many mobile games and, his favorite, Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled.
His favorite titles include Final Fantasy IV, V, and VI, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy Tactics, and a whole lot of Bioware titles.

Christina "Pixelestial" Leclerc


Christina is an artist who has who has worked on everything from botany guides, to museum workbooks, to tabletop gaming books. She was employed by the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago and Judges Guild, a venerable tabletop game company.
But her passion has always been video games, and after freelancing for many up-and-coming developers over the years, she joined Studio Archcraft to work on the unreleased Nintendo DS game Black Sigil 2. After the studio closed, she and Pierre went on to form 6 Eyes Studio.
Some of her favorite games include Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy Tactics, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, and Xenoblade Chronicles.

 

[Infinitron]

Fell Seal thread in JRPG forum: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/fell-seal-arbiters-mark-final-fantasy-tactics-like-rpg.117203/

Post if you can find an official YouTube channel for this game.

 

[Fedora Master]

Disgusting weebshit that will in no way achieve the nuance of BB.

 

[Jacob]

if you mix western gameplay design and jrpg artstyle you will put off the casuals.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Looks promising. BB is a great concept, but it and most all of it's clones tend to have shitty balance that encourages savescumming or insanely autistic shit like surrounding a guy and poking him to death with butterknives to get his armour, and a bunch of retarded 'gotcha' shit with their monster designs to kill anyone that didn't read a fucking wiki entry beforehand.

Fellseal had excellent mechanics, so hopefully they can do an equally good job with this and we'll finally have an open world mercenary game that is more about planning and tactics than meta knowledge and luck.

Not a fan of thatcombat art; outlines are too thin and colours too muddy. It makes everyone look like they're in studio lighting with no shadows and they lack definition while the background has no contrast. Overworld looks much better. I do like the way that archer looks inside the tall grass though, that's a nice touch.

 

[Fargus]

I haven't played that many BB clones but the ones i did were easier than BB on easiest difficulty: Iron Oath and Wartales. Urtuk on the other hand makes your life a living nightmare when you move to the next worldmap because monsters are instantly twice stronger and you have shit gear from the first map. Gets really boring at that point too, just grind, grind and more grind. But grind is the nature of these games unfortunately.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Noun-noun-er: generic subtitle

 

[lametta]

looks interesting tbh

 

[Serus]

I'm not a great fan of the art style but otherwise, i'm somewhat interested.

 

[Nonary]

It's totally unfair to compare this game's artstyle to any tactical jRPG. Look at how much more lively the sprites in Disgaea 1, or Knights in the Nightmare are.
These are more like isometric Terraria characters.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Nice to see Horizon Gate by Eldiran get some appreciation it deserves from 6 Eyes Studio by serving as one of the main 3 inspiration for Pathbreakers Roaming Blades

The current state of Pathbreakers
Hello everyone!

Now that Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades has been officially announced, we've received questions about our plans and timelines and such, so here's what we have so far.

Release Date
We don't currently have a clear idea of the release date, and there's still a lot of work to be done. It's an ambitious project, and as usual, we're not willing to compromise on quality to get it out the door faster. We believe sometime in 2026 for the final release is probably likely.

That being said, we are strongly considering an Early Access on Steam. We were very happy with the amount and quality of feedback we got for our previous game, Fell Seal, during its Early Access, and we're hoping for a similar result with Pathbreakers. As such, an Early Access sometime in 2025 is likely.


General flow of the game
Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades is going to be a less "well defined" genre than Fell Seal was. It has more varied systems and gameplay mechanics and is, in essence, more "multi-dimensional" than Fell Seal in terms of gameplay.

When the game starts, you'll get to select one of many origin stories. An origin story has a protagonist, with their backstory, goals, and starting situation. There'll be an option to create a custom one as well.

From there, you'll start somewhere on the Stormtossed Isle, a large island populated by multiple factions, some friendly, some hostile. You'll be controlling a troop of mercenaries, with a general goal defined by your origin story. The game is meant to be very open-ended and you can pretty much do whatever you want for the most part. Each origin story character has their own story and goal, but you could put it on hold and focus on exploring the world instead. Think of something somewhat like Skyrim on that front.

As time passes, you have take care of your expenses: salaries, food supplies, new gear, recovering from battle injuries, etc., so you'll need some income. You can focus on contracts for your company, trading across the various cities, or exploring the wild island in search of grand discoveries. Or you could do all of those things, or even resort to banditry (which won't exactly give your company a sterling reputation, but it'll pay the bills).

Map exploration takes place on a large world map, filled with roaming enemies and populated with cities, dungeons, and lairs to discover. Lairs contain hostile faction leaders, often barricaded and enjoying favorable terrain. Battling them will yield rich spoils, but it'll be dangerous. Dungeons will have your protagonist walk around in dark and dangerous environments, filled with traps, patrolling enemies, and hidden passages. But dungeons can be as rewarding as they are dangerous, and unique riches can be found at their heart, including legendary equipment and holy statues that will bestow powerful traits upon your company.

As you progress through the game, your overall goal is to amass worthy mercenaries and equipment. Mold them up into glorious combatants through your selection of advanced classes, stats, abilities, passives and traits. Only in this way will you truly be ready for whatever awaits you at the end of your origin story.


Inspirations
I think the closest match to what Pathbreakers is, would be a hybrid between Uncharted Waters: New Horizon (or Horizon's Gate) and Battle Brothers, which one could say are the 3 main inspirations for the game.

Pathbreakers has the same focus on exploration, trading, and combat as Uncharted Waters and Horizon's Gate, but with a combat system and contracts system more akin to Battle Brothers. The overall feel is closest to Battle Brothers, but with a significantly more complex trading system, a dungeon exploration system, and battles with more diverse options, through a system of classes and abilities. Each unit, at max level, will have access to 5 active abilities to use in combat, on top of the basic attack option and their equipped items. This leads to a lot more options on the battlefield and a more fantasy feel overall.


Visual style
Anyone familiar with Fell Seal can easily tell that we've decided on a very different art style for Pathbreakers. We've opted for a more traditional pixelart style for this one. There's always pros and cons to these choices, but all in all, we're hoping this will be a net positive. The biggest upside of the new style is going to be much more detailed and smooth animations across the board for sprites.

Otherwise, just like for Fell Seal, Pathbreakers will be boasting a lot of customization options for your mercenary units and you'll be able to change the colors of various pieces of their attire.

Another style change is going to be on the UI front, where we've decided to design the game from the ground up for keyboard and mouse primarily. It should have a much more PC-style UI, with easy-to-access tooltips and a very mouse/hotkey driven UI. We'll have full gamepad functionality as well (we are targeting consoles as well after all, although nothing is confirmed yet), but the recommended input is going to be mouse and keyboard this time around.


In closing
Remember to follow the Steam Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades page if you want the latest information about the game: we'll be focusing all our announcements right here!

- 6 Eyes Studio team

 

[notpl]

It's totally unfair to compare this game's artstyle to any tactical jRPG. Look at how much more lively the sprites in Disgaea 1, or Knights in the Nightmare are.
These are more like isometric Terraria characters.

It's unfair to compare anything about it to a "jRPG" because ths devs live in fucking Orlando, Florida. Words mean things.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Globalisation is a thing.
Japanese Retarded-Playing Games can now be made all over the world.

 

[notpl]

Globalisation is a thing.
Japanese Retarded-Playing Games can now be made all over the world.

Then put action games, crpgs, blobbers, and everything else made in the east in their respective forums. Pick a fucking definition. Either EVERYTHING from the orient goes in the jrpg forum - meaning you keep putrid western trash out entirely, which I am all for - or it's based on gameplay, and shit like dark souls and neo-wizardry don't go there.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Urtuk on the other hand makes your life a living nightmare when you move to the next worldmap because monsters are instantly twice stronger and you have shit gear from the first map.

Can't remember if I ever went to the second worldmap in Urtuk. I do remember recruiting some insanely overpowered boss dude that could just solo everything without even trying and I lost interest at that point because it made all the careful team building up to that point totally meaningless.

 

[Jaesun]

jRPG Weeaboo Discussion
For all your DESUDESUDESU needs, where everything released in an asian language or from an asian developer can be discussed. If it remotely smells Japanese, put it in here.

 

[Damned Registrations]

everything released in an asian language

Seems like we need to move everything there then; hard to find a game not released in moonrunes these days. We can make western rpg discussion a minor subforum for lovers of diablo 3 and bear sex.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Lord_Potato]

So, another tactical rpg from a guy called "Pierre"?

Oh, but this Pierre actually managed to get laid and that's why his game has actual visual style & art direction!

Now that's what I call

 

[rojay]

That animation reminded me of the Australian break dancer at the last Olympics.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]