Wartales - PC Preview

Wartales by developer Shiro Games and publisher Shiro Unlimited—PC (Steam) review written by Hayden with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Wartales by Shiro Games and Shiro Unlimited is an evolution of classic isometric RPGs. Billed by the developer as “an open world RPG in which you lead a group of mercenaries in their search for wealth across a massive medieval universe”, this is one early access game where that is exactly what the player will get. From the zoomed in isometric combat view where players can micro-manage every character and action to the zoomed out party-as-tiny-sprites worldview, anyone who has played other isometric RPGs (Pathfinder, Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, Icewind Dale, etc.) will quickly feel right with the way Wartales presents its world.

Taking on the role of a band of mercenaries, players are challenged to survive, grow their group and explore the world. From collecting harvestable resources on the world map for sale to fulfilling combat contracts to theft or raiding merchants, the player needs to choose (and keep) a steady income stream in order to pay their troops. Failure to pay or provide other necessities and comforts will create unhappiness in the band, eventually leading to troops leaving. The game provides a bit of pushback against large parties by having each member of the troop provide a small happiness malus, leading to a cap of around 10 troops unless the player goes hunting for specific traits that sidestep this in their recruiting. Given the need to micromanage every character’s movement and actions during combat, this is really quite sufficient, as larger groups take ever longer to get through each combat round.

Wartales nails quite a few elements of the classic isometric RPG in its core design, and the core game feels quite polished for an Early Access title. Movement, iconography and actions on the world map are clear and intuitive, and there is a sense the world is inhabited with merchant caravans, bandit groups and others moving about. Towns are handled as a halfway level between world movement and combat - zoomed in enough that you can see the buildings and select specific locations, but clear of sprite movement and character micromanagement.

Selecting particular locations (either in a town or finding them out in the world) brings the player into a third level of detail - a fairly static, 3d-like tableau where individual characters or crates and objects can be interacted with. This is what you’ll see when you find a marketplace, forge, or enter a mine - mousing around to see what highlights as interactable and what is just window dressing. Many of these locations contain mini-games for the player - mining and forging are two that are introduced early in the game, and give the player a measure of control over the quality of their output.

Combat in Wartales follows tried-and-true recipes that have worked before, and they still work here without feeling dated. Every character is individually controlled by the player, with available actions and abilities determined by a combination of their equipment and base class. Turn order is represented by a series of icons always visible in the bottom left of the combat UI, showing how many characters the player can use before the next enemy (or NPC Ally in some cases) acts.

A nice extra that Wartales uses here is that the icon for the enemies shows either the specific portrait of who is going to act and highlights them on the map for the player to see on selection ahead of time, or in the case of special “champion” (aka boss) units will show what ability will be used and gives a tooltip description of the effect. These allow for attentive players to plan their own actions around predictions of enemy actions - killing/disabling/debuffing enemies before their turn, using terrain to block LOS, avoiding upcoming charge-up attacks and similar tactics. Combat maps in Wartales use a variety of palettes to illustrate biome, and include both terrain that affects pathing/LOS as well as hazards like ground-based traps and benefits like old spears that can be scooped up for a one-off free ranged attack.

If there is an area that Wartales is weak in right now, it is how it handles pathing on the zoomed out world map. Pathing on this map is very much clicking a point and the party sprite will try to move in a straight line towards it - which means that it can get caught on terrain and the player will then have to point-by-point guide them around to a safe path. Similarly, there are skills that the party can learn that increase movement speeds on roads, but no way lock the party to actually use these, so it's back to point-by-point clicking to keep the group following the curving roads through the world.

Finally, there isn’t any way (or if there is, it isn’t clearly presented to the player) to set up waypoints or similar routing, so you can’t just set up multiple points to approximate the road and let it go - you have to click each point in turn in front of the party, as they get close. A bit tiresome if you really want to take advantage of the ability you spent time to learn, but really quite a minor irritant in terms of the overall gameplay. I should note that the in-combat pathing doesn’t seem to suffer from this weakness, with the game able to automatically handle movement paths that curve around objects and enemies without trouble.

Summary

Overall, Wartales is an enjoyable take on a medieval setting, presented in a hybrid isometric RPG form. Clean, easy-to-understand icons and visuals make jumping into the game fairly quick and intuitive if you have done any gaming previously, and a short-term official roadmap (released on Reddit) gives clarity on where the developers are going to be further fleshing out the game. Overall quite polished for just having entered Early Access, the only fault I can find with this title is a bit of weakness in pathing on its world map - a very minor complaint for a game at this stage of the development cycle.

Score: N/A

In a world of games that get 70-80% review scores due to unfinished or buggy content at release, Wartales is headed solidly for the 90’s if developer Shiro Games can maintain the level of quality they have shown so far.

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Darksburg - PC Review

Darksburg by developer and publisher Shiro Games—PC (Steam) review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Having launched into Early Access back in March, ShiroGames’ Darksburg took the concept of a four player survival like Valve’s Left 4 Dead or Fatshark’s Vermintide and turned it into a top down Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) like experience. Unlike a lot of other titles that go through the Early Access process and continue to refine themselves over time, ShiroGames have instead taken what they had, threw it under a legacy banner and re-worked everything else into a two player cooperation roguelike.

Of anything that I’ve had the chance to cover over the years, this is the first time that I’ve had an experience change so completely that it’s actually kind of neat to be able to cover it as such. At its core, Darksburg is still a dark adventure going through a zombie infested city while trying to escape in one piece. Where things have changed though, and not all for the better unfortunately, is that instead of now leveling up a hero of your choice to become more powerful the more amount of times that you play as them, you’ll instead as per the rules of a Roguelike be starting over from level 1 with nothing every time that you play.

With all characters still available to be chosen from, you and a cohort (or an AI), will set out on a path to escape Darksburg together. What’s really interesting is that while each character no longer levels up on their own to become more powerful over time, instead there’s now a team experience counter that has both players level up at the same time. In probably one of the better “no person left behind” scenarios, it doesn’t matter who does more damage, who kills more specials, or who picks up more gold or crystals, it’s all shared because you need to make it through together.

The purpose of Darksburg is simple. Both players have to cross through five stages together and hopefully make it to the end. With four difficulties to choose from, the first few runs will probably want to be done on normal in order to get a feeling for what can be expected. While the end goals will always remain the same such as waiting for a ferry, repairing a cathedral door or running for your lives in a wheat field, everything in between has become a bit random so you’ll always have a bit of wonder as to what you’ll be facing. Walls that need to be blown open with a cannon or gates that have to be snuck into will randomly pop up in front of you making you have to work together that much harder as you need to get through together.

To get through the stages though, the controls are rather simple (which is a good thing) and can also be modified to suit your needs. By default you move with the left mouse click, attack with the right and use QWER for your abilities. Shift keeps you in place to attack without moving and CTRL shows you what your current abilities do. From there, it’s mow down enemies, pick up loot, and level up which gives you the choice from one of three abilities. Be warned to pick carefully though as you can only level so many times per district AND there is a total level that will cap you out forcing you to finish the adventure with what you have.

In the area of aspects that work very well, Darksburg will adjust itself depending on if you’re playing alone / with an AI, or, if you’re playing with someone else. Taking it for a spin with an AI the first time just to grasp how different things were, it allowed me to settle in rather easily. Once my brother was ready to join up after I had a session or three in though, and what greeted us out of the gate were enemies that I had grown accustomed to only seeing by the third stage. Because the AI can only be so good, I was glad to see that they adjusted the difficulty to reflect that as you can’t strategize with an AI, you can only hope for the best.

Having this kind of scale was awesome as while it was easier to play it with a human player and clear it the first time we went in, I’m still working at clearing it with an AI. That’s what works really well. What didn’t work so well though is that there are a few features that come from being a Roguelike that took away from some of the charm that the Legacy Mode has. Designed to run straight through, you always have to do stages, 1-2-3-4-5 unlike before where you could just load up whichever stage you wanted regardless of the order that it was supposed to be in. Now, you have to do them all instead of being able to just dabble if you really just want a quick match as the later stages are designed with you having already accumulated the levels and the skills to survive it.

The other part that doesn’t work so well, at least not to me, is the unlocking of “items” to help you out. As you are no longer leveling your character, you now have access to a three tier item system that can be unlocked with the crystals that you pick up over the course of your escape. The base tier cost about fifty crystals each so you won’t be seeing any unlocked item until about the third stage as it’ll take two stages to get that amount. Further to that, and I didn’t mind having to unlock new slots, was that you were never sure what you would be unlocking. Split into categories, you have to basically hope for the best that the item you decide to purchase actually works well, or at least works well for your character and play style. It adds some replayability but without a fair amount of items, you’re going to have a much harder time tackling the harder difficulties.

Finally, there’s the total amount of content. Darksburg for Marc and I at the beginning held a lot of promise as we already had five stages and several characters to pick from. Things since then however have moved to basically keeping those five stages but randomizing how they are showcased. Also now, since they are all in a row, there’s just 1-2-3-4-5, Victory Screen, Results Screen, and then play a new match. There’s no chance to keep on running through and just making it harder while keeping the abilities that you currently have. There’s no survival for however long you can with rewards for time or zombies taken out. It just ends and then restarts. The randomness of the levels help spice things up, but, they are the same five levels.

I had really hoped by release to see more in the terms of places to explore. Like does your party take the route A or B from this location. At least something more than the same five locations especially now that you have to do them in the same order every time. The difficulties are there for a challenge, but without new visuals, it just becomes more of the same as you unlock new items to hopefully make the run that much easier the next time.

Summary

So overall, while Darksburg has come a long way from its original version, the final version feels a bit empty once you’ve finished it once or twice. I do hope to see more content and new stages in order to give players more to do. Having kept the original version through a Legacy Mode is great, but it’s going to need more if it plans to be around for a while.

Score: 7 / 10

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Darksburg - PC Preview

Darksburg by developer and publisher Shiro Games—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

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Having just launched onto Steam through Early Access, ShiroGames’ DarksBurg is a top-down team based four player coop / versus that sees a group of adventurer’s needing to band together in order to survive the undead hordes chasing after them. With several levels already available and four different characters to fight the hordes with, there’s already plenty of gameplay available either on your own with three other players or AI controlled substitutes if players aren’t available.

Now upfront, while Darksburg is a lot of fun to play, and while it doesn’t introduce anything new per say, it doesn’t need to. Blending elements from both the four player first person shooter survivors like Left 4 Dead and Warhammer Vermintide and the top down controls and abilities of a MOBAs like DotA and League of Legends, Darksburg is something new in this regard it handles very, very well.

Starting up for the first time you’ll have your choice of characters, as long as others haven’t already locked in, which each have three normal abilities and a fourth ultimate one that takes a good deal of time in order to charge up to be used. Possible character choices are ranged, healer, tank and something somewhere in the middle as your cleric wields a giant crucifix as she basically nails her enemies into the ground. Once you’ve chosen your character and are ready to go, that character will earn experience in order to level up in your account as experience is only granted at the end of a stage regardless of if you’ve succeeded or failed at the objectives.

As you level up your characters, there are benchmarks in which you unlock perks and slots in order to give yourself a bigger edge within each mission. Perks range from anything like gaining temporary health by biting enemies as the Wolfman Varag, or have increased damage and speed if you’re injured because your health has dropped too low. While I would personally say that sticking with one character is a good idea, I know that it isn’t always possible so you should always have a back up!

Now before actually going into a session, you have several choices. The first is pure survival where you and three others go through stages with a list of objectives that you need to complete in order to survive. The second is about the same thing, but, another four players can join up in order to control the special characters from the undead horde against the four heroes. Finally, you can choose whether the game is open to the public, open to your friends, or by invite only.

Once you’ve jumped into the gameplay, you and three others have to charge through the hordes on the way to the exit. Normal enemies while not overly powerful can still get in the way and give you enough of a hard time once a horde charges in. Standard zombies will only claw at you but it won’t take long before spearmen, suicide bombers and special units come into your path. Exploding units if you can maneuver them well enough can only be an advantage for you but the special units? Those you’ll want to take out and fast as they can do some serious damage.

As heroes, other than making it to the end your goal, the in between goals are often simple enough in premise but a bit harder to complete in actuality. The main reason is that often your goals will require you to pick something up and slowly move it to where it needs to be. While you’re carrying a cannon ball or a bale of hay you are to the mercy of the undead and the availability of your teammates. Not exactly being the easiest, AI controlled characters don’t make it easy as they’ll either be following you, or another player character and only ever hitting the closest monsters. Sadly, they don’t get their hands dirty so you’ll at least want one or two actual extra sets of hands.

Finally in terms of neat features, you can buy items, buffs, or possible end level bonuses at the beginning of every stage. Well, you can after your very first run because you’ll need some gold for it. Items range from healing salves and bandages over to a bag of bombs, while buffs can increase your movement speed or make it impossible to be slowed down by running through mud for example. Finally in the level buffs, you’ll need to get a hold of candy which can only as far as my brother and I could see by capturing a chicken if you can see it. Capture the chicken, get candy when the level finishes but only anyone who’s touched the chicken can get candy. Don’t touch it, you’re out of luck and then you don’t get to buy level bonuses like 50% extra gold at the end of a stage as long as you make it there. It doesn’t count if you and your team fail.

So overall, even if it’s fairly early in its launch, Darksburg was a lot of fun and it shows a fair amount of promise. The characters are fun to use, the environments have their own challenges and that’s even before the undead hordes, and if you want to take to being a special undead unit to mess with the heroes instead of being messed with? Go for it! The only thing is, right now there are only five stages with a six coming and if Darksburg wants to keep being in the game for the long run, it’s going to need more content to keep players coming back.

 

Score: N/A

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Northgard - Xbox One Review

Northgard is an interesting mix of real-time and turn-based 4x strategy with an emphasis on a viking setting. The gameplay is familiar right out of games, making it more accessible than many strategy games, but as Northgard continues through its campaign, it reveals more layers and nuance as you juggle your resources against the need for expansion.

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Northgard Expands with new Conquest Mode

Bordeaux, France - July 18, 2019 - French indie studio Shiro Games has revealed today a series of major news for their best-selling Viking strategy game Northgard. The announcements come ahead of the team’s presence at gamescom 2019, where they will show all the Northgard projects behind closed doors.

• Northgard: Conquest is the next major free expansion for the original Steam version (Windows/Mac/Linux) of the popular strategy game and will feature a new procedurally generated campaign mode. Northgard: Conquest allows players to cooperatively chart their way to victory with each player receiving tailor-made missions and objectives, ensuring that each playthrough will be radically different. The new mode is scheduled to be released in October 2019. 
• Shiro Games is also bringing Northgard to the console, announcing today that the popular strategy game will make its debut on the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on the 26th of September 2019. A physical retail version of the game will also be made available at the same time. Northgard on console will feature all the content found in the Steam base version including the major Ragnarok and Relics updates, as well as reworked user interface and controls.
• Northgard: Uncharted Lands is a brand-new board game set in the Northgard universe. It transforms all the Viking clan action, resource gathering, village building, and strategic scheming from the digital original into a visually striking physical game steeped in Norse mythology. Aimed at strategy fans of all ages and experience levels, Northgard: Uncharted Lands is designed to be played by two to five players. As with the popular PC version, players take control of their own Viking clan and explore and conquer new territories, brave the harshest of winters, fight (or befriend) mythical beings and creatures, and defeat any foe on the road to ultimate victory.

Shiro Games will be present at gamescom 2019 to present all three of the above Northgard projects, as well as their upcoming cooperative action survival game Darksburg, to selected media. Appointments are available now.

Northgard was released originally on Steam Early Access on February 22nd, 2017, where it quickly rose to become one of the most popular strategy games on the platform, selling over 1 million copies. The game officially launched out of Early Access on March 7th, 2018, and was one of the highest-rated PC strategy titles to be released in the year, with a Metascore of 80.

More information can be found on the Steam, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

About Shiro Games

Shiro Games is an independent studio created by video games veterans Sebastien Vidal and Nicolas Cannasse to bring new innovative games to life. Based in Bordeaux, France, the small studio released their first title Evoland in 2013, with the acclaimed sequel Evoland 2: A Slight Case of Spacetime Continuum Disorder launching in 2015. Shiro Games released their popular Viking strategy game  Northgard on Steam Early Access in February 2017, officially launching the game a year later, on 7th of March, 2018. The studio is working on their new cooperative survival action game Darksburg, as well as a brand-new board game, and a dedicated console version of Northgard.



Article by Susan N.

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New Darksburg Trailer from Shiro Games!

Darksburg, the upcoming cooperative survival action game from indie French studio Shiro Games of Evoland and Northgard fame, debuts its PvP mode featuring humans versus zombies today, ahead of its playable debut at Gamescom, Aug. 21-24, 2019 in Cologne, Germany.

The new trailer shows how players can take on the role of powerful zombies, the Revenants, and how each class uses their unique abilities and powers to wreak havoc on the pesky humans trying to save the medieval town of Darksburg.

Shiro Games are now booking appointments for journalists to join a cooperative play session of Darksburg at the event in Cologne. If you are interested in checking out the game at Gamescom 2019, please let us know as soon as possible with your preferred appointment times and contact details.

In Darksburg, a top-down cooperative multiplayer game for PC, players can either choose to rid the titular medieval town of Darksburg of the waves of undead that plague it or team up as zombies to oppose the filthy humans in completing their hopeless mission. Four players can team up to play against the computer, or against four other players in a fast-paced PvP game.

Darksburg features a roster of colorful characters to choose from, each featuring a unique set of skills and backgrounds, from the compassionate (but not overly so) Sister Abigail and the escaped werewolf (and man's best friend) Varag to the powerful zombie Revenants such as incendiary Witch or the hulking Brute. Teamwork and great reflexes will be the key to survival.

Shiro Games will also present several interesting new projects related to their popular Viking strategy game Northgard at Gamescom, including the upcoming console version, new details on the next major expansion, as well as a (soon to be unveiled) secret game. Let us know if you want to check out these games as well!

Follow the latest news about Darksburg and Northgard via Shiro Games’ Twitter.

About Shiro Games

Shiro Games is an independent studio located in Bordeaux (France), a beautiful and lively city near the ocean, and created by video games veterans in order to bring new innovative games to life. Each of their games is built with love and passion by a small team of talented and dedicated people. The studio is best known for Northgard and the Evoland series, and has just announced its new multiplayer action game, Darksburg.





Article by Susan N.

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