Together in Battle - the next strategy RPG from Telepath Tactics developer - now available on Early Access

[Infinitron]

https://sinisterdesign.net/products/together-in-battle/

Spoiler

https://sinisterdesign.net/announcing-together-in-battle/

Announcing Together in Battle!

Today, I am pleased to announce Sinister Design’s next video game: Together in Battle!

Set in the Telepath universe, Together in Battle is a strategy RPG and team management game of love, friendship, and turn-based tactical combat.

You’ve arrived in the island kingdom of Dese with a sack of coins and a secret mission to enter the gladiatorial games to find loyal fighters under the guise of competing.

Recruit and manage charming characters with their own distinct personalities, interests, and histories. Each day, you’ll have the chance to field them in glorious turn-based tactical battles; and each night, they’ll build relationships with each other, face personal crises, and come to you for advice.

You must manage your group’s resources. Stay stocked on food, maintain enough money to make payroll, and ensure that your characters practice regularly to continue improving. But beware: they have feelings! Allow their friends to fall in battle, and they may become depressed. Fail to address their needs, and you’ll risk resentment and desertion. Keep them happy, however, and they will grow close to one another, form fond memories, give each other nicknames–even share their special combat skills! With skill and patience, you will emerge victorious…together in battle.

Key Features
An evolution of the lauded Telepath Tactics combat engine!
With a simple deterministic core that never wastes your time, combat in Together in Battle nonetheless features dizzying tactical depth. Shove enemies into environmental hazards, or into each other; take up defensive positions in tall grass, or hack it down to deny that same advantage to the enemy; set traps and detonate explosives; build bridges and barricades; freeze water; burn down trees. The battlefield environment is yours to command!

Tons of content!
Together in Battle features dozens of random events and side quests; six different playable species; two dozen base classes with branching promotion options for a total of 72 distinct character classes; more than 150 different character skills; and hundreds of thousands of possible procedurally generated weapons and pieces of armor. Oh, and then there’s the characters…

Deep procedurally generated characters!
Every character has a distinct personality, appearance, stat line, skill progression, personal history, named family members, religious beliefs, life skills, hobbies, physical traits, romantic preferences, preferred gifts, hidden secrets–even non-verbal tics and ways of laughing!

These details are not just for flavor: they also have consequences for how characters behave in their free time. A baker may use up some of your food to produce cookies and cakes you can eat or sell; a jokester may do funny impressions to boost morale; a blacksmith may repair the group’s weapons. Dancers are nimble; sailors are superior swimmers. Some characters will even undertake long-term projects like growing food, making dolls, or writing a novel!

A campaign creation suite!
Together in Battle comes with a very capable campaign creation suite to let you build your own full-fledged SRPG campaigns! Build characters in the character creator; place them in cut scenes using the cut scene editor; add branching dialogue trees using the dialogue editor; sculpt battlefields and place armies in the map editor; create skills for your characters to learn in the skill editor, and items for them to loot in the item editor.

Want to get really fancy? Construct your own scripts, then assign them to items and character skills for whatever custom effects you can dream up!

When is it coming out?
Together in Battle is planned for release in 2021.

To get more info as it becomes available, join our mailing list and follow Sinister Design on Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube!

 

[Luka-boy]

But will you be able to save the game in the middle of a battle?

 

[Infinitron]

But will you be able to save the game in the middle of a battle?

I assume the game is using Craig Stern's new Telepath Tactics engine: https://steamcommunity.com/games/357940/announcements/detail/1712990655046472876

you can now save the game mid-battle!

 

[Craig Stern]

Infinitron is correct; mid-battle saving is supported.

 

[Razzoriel]

How does the robot have feelings, emotions and need food?

 

[Craig Stern]

How does the robot have feelings, emotions and need food?

I assume you're asking about the bronze golem shown in the title art? Golems don't consume food or form relationships with other characters--but they're also very expensive and cannot be acquired by normal recruitment, so you're unlikely to end up with more than one or two of them in your group.

 

[PrettyDeadman]

I would play this game on my smartphone.

 

[ColCol]

Telepath tactics, even with some of its issues, is good enough to justify a day one purchase of this game.

 

[Craig Stern]

Telepath tactics, even with some of its issues, is good enough to justify a day one purchase of this game.

Thanks ColCol!

 

[Viata]

Infinitron is correct; mid-battle saving is supported.

I believe every game should either have a "save at any point" or do something like JRPG that only allows you to save in some location(church in Dragon Quest series): save and quit option. Whenever you load, you delete that quick save so the only way to have permanent saves is saving in those location, but the "save and quit" option gives people an option to play the game even when they have a short free time.

 

[Craig Stern]

I believe every game should either have a "save at any point" or do something like JRPG that only allows you to save in some location(church in Dragon Quest series): save and quit option. Whenever you load, you delete that quick save so the only way to have permanent saves is saving in those location, but the "save and quit" option gives people an option to play the game even when they have a short free time.

Yeah. Supporting that was a priority for me this time around!

 

[Craig Stern]

Hey folks! Are you going to be at PAX East next week? Well, so is Together in Battle! Why not stop by Booth 18066 and give it a try?

 

[Craig Stern]

All right--one of you asked for video, and here it is! The game remains in alpha, so bear in mind that what you see here isn't final:

 

[Grauken]

Those portraits are Deviantart-tier, otherwise, it looks better than I expected

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Dem faces

 

[MRY]

The mechanics look amazing, but something seems very off to me about the presentation -- almost as if you're making choices designed specifically to turn players off from your game rather than attracting them. Examples, in roughly chronological order:

- The pan across the lizard man's naked torso. Maybe I'm just not your target demographic.
- The cheap, seemingly default font used for the interstitial texts.
- The use of ! after everything, which reads as if you're making fun of the features you're offering, even though the features are actually meaningful. (This jumps out especially on "FEEELINGS!"
- Prominently highlighting a character surnamed Gigglemore. Again, maybe I'm just not your target demo.
- I realize you're doing the RPGMaker thing of composite anime character portraits, but the goofy to not-goofy ratio seems off. Also, again, perhaps this is your demographic, but if you compare your portraits to the rosters of any successful RPG, I don't think you're doing a good job of providing characters that players are likely going to want to play. You should, of course, hew to your values on these things, and I think in general you're trying to present non-traditional heroes, but I guess I'd say that no one looks very appealing when I compare to rosters in Wesnoth, Shining Force, etc.
- Same goes for the romance options. You know your demographic best, but it might not hurt to include one male human protagonist wooing a female human protagonist. Cf. "Aphrodite has developed something of a crush on Baron Parchsprout."
- Previously noted concerns re: how sprites and background tiling mesh. It seems like even a very low investment could improve things like how terrain types interact. (Particularly involving elevation changes.)
- FWIW, the robed lizardman looks like a platypus to me.
- Showing the throw animation in a way that specifically highlights it using the wrong "landing" animation when you throw someone into a pit.
- Closing on an awkward romance scene.

I guess what I'm a bit baffled by is that you seem to be making a game that requires the player to be into both twee, ironic, non-traditional dating sims (e.g., Dream Daddy, Hatoful Boyfriend, etc.) and complex, systems-rich turn-based tactical battles. I've long believed the best thing about indie game design is that developers don't need to worry about the commercial side of things and can just express themselves. This game seems like an earnest expression of your own preferences, so you might as well make it and just see what happens commercially. If you want to succeed commercially, I think you would want to tailor the non-combat aspects of the game to those things that grognards are more likely to enjoy -- in other words, more traditionally heroic characters, more traditional player-pandering in terms of narrative and party interactions, etc. As it stands, limiting your self to that tiny overlap between two already small circles of players seems likely to yield a commercial flop (though I think you might be able to get Marc Laidlaw to cover it, he actually seems to really enjoy those two things based on what shows up in my twitter feed).*

* Disgaea may have shown that players will buy a game with systems-rich turn-based tactical battles and a "this is all a joke" ridiculous story, but Disgaea is very appealing in terms of its audio-visuals.

 

[Alpan]

The mechanics look amazing, but something seems very off to me about the presentation --

There is also the quite bombastic music; that, with the points you've made, leaves no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Craig Stern is absolutely psyched about this game. On one hand it's the indie ideal; on the other, like you say, it may be of questionable commercial viability.

 

[MRY]

Ah, I always watch videos with the sound off, so I didn't notice music.

 

[Craig Stern]

Aesthetic critiques noted.

The one thing I'll say is that this isn't a dating sim. You're not playing as these characters (outside of battle, they're largely autonomous)--you're managing them, giving them advice, helping ensure their morale doesn't dip too low, etc. Very little of what you see in the trailer actually involves romance; they're mostly just growing more familiar with each other and building friendships. (I get that the use of little hearts to denote that might seem misleading, though I've yet to think up a better symbol to get that sort of non-romantic-relationship-building across.) I''ll work on getting this all across better in future marketing!

 

[MRY]

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If anything that may make matters worse. Requiring the player to manage photo-booth-mustache-man's romance with platypus-lizard-man in order to avoid maluses in the combat aspect of the game -- rather than just including that content as a minigame a la Bioware -- strikes me as more invasive and frustrating. Of course there will be a cadre of players who will think it's hilarious when the floating bomb woos the embarrassed looking gargoyle, but I just wonder whether that cadre is substantial enough to make it work. I know "this zany thing happened in Rimworld / DF / Prison Architect" is a popular genre of reportage, though, so perhaps I'm underestimating things.

 

[Craig Stern]

Inter-species romance isn't supported in the game; there's no Hatoful Boyfriend stuff here.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Please get completely different character art and portraits. It was a huge turn off in Telepath Tactics, and is even worse here. Same with the font.

Gameplay wise, things are looking like they're of to a great start!

 

[MRY]

Inter-species romance isn't supported in the game; there's no Hatoful Boyfriend stuff here.

Maybe reconsider the hearts that explode out of people in the various dialogues shown around 2:10 mark? The lizard-human bedroom scene talking about the beautiful stars combined with heart explosion certainly seems like romance minigame, same with the gargoyle-human "late night sparring" session followed by the heart explosion. And is "Baron Parchsprout" a person?? I assumed he was one of the fireballs or something. (Or the lady-lizard pairing at ~20 seconds that follows "Friendship and Romance.")

 

[SausageInYourFace]

How about better art & presentation but going all in on the inter-species romance and dating sim aspects?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Aesthetic critiques noted.

The one thing I'll say is that this isn't a dating sim. You're not playing as these characters (outside of battle, they're largely autonomous)--you're managing them, giving them advice, helping ensure their morale doesn't dip too low, etc. Very little of what you see in the trailer actually involves romance; they're mostly just growing more familiar with each other and building friendships. (I get that the use of little hearts to denote that might seem misleading, though I've yet to think up a better symbol to get that sort of non-romantic-relationship-building across.) I''ll work on getting this all across better in future marketing!

On top of everything MRY said, i think you should add an option to skip battle animations or better to speed them up x2 or x3.

I guess i'll probably love the tactical battle part (according it's not sluggish) and hate the NPC interactions.