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6 CommentsThe Banner Saga: Factions soft-launched by Stoic, launching publicly Feb. 25
By Samit Sarkar on Feb 20, 2013 02.20.13
The Banner Saga: Factions developer Stoic Games soft-launched the game earlier this week, making it available exclusively to backers until the public launch Feb. 25. Factions is the standalone multiplayer title related to The Banner Saga, which will launch later this year with a full single-player component. Any progress players make during the soft-launch week will carry over to the public Factions release. The studio called the Factions launch "the first major milestone on the road to success, explaining that it can shift its focus to the single-player game now that Factions is out. "We've effectively worked out the thick and thin of combat and we're soon on to travel and conversation outlined in the previous update, and thus, the [single-player] campaign," said Stoic. Check out...
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4 CommentsIndie dev collective Juegos Rancheros offers guidance on going indie
By Tracey Lien on Feb 03, 2013 02.03.13
Texas-based indie game development collective Juegos Rancheros is holding a free one-day symposium to offer guidance to developers on how to achieve sustainable independent game development. The event, Nation of Indies, is designed to help developers "take back control" and is targeted at developers who have recently been laid off from their studio jobs, are dissatisfied with the direction of their current job, are recent graduates or are just curious about how indie developers "keep things together." The event will cover topics such as what indie developers do for income, how long severance income from a studio job will last, whether an indie should find investors, whether an indie should take a project to Kickstarter or look for contract work and how indies pitch games to...
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4 CommentsThe Banner Saga single-player story affected by travel, conversation and decision-making
By Alexa Ray Corriea on Feb 01, 2013 02.01.13
Stoic Studio's RPG The Banner Saga will have a dialogue-driven story affected by events triggered during travel and exploration, with players furthering the plot through NPC conversations and making decisions with wide-ranging implications, according to an update on the game's Kickstarter page posted by creative director Alex Thomas. Traveling in Banner Saga will shift between moving across the world map and side-scrolling segments featuring players' caravans. Players will need to budget their time accordingly as they move towards a specific goal. They will have to plot their own routes, deciding what towns to stop in, which territories to brave, what news to share, how long to rest and which roads are the safest in addition to budgeting supplies. Each individual decision will have a...
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0 CommentsThe Banner Saga developers offer instant access to open beta for $15
By Emily Gera on Nov 19, 2012 11.19.12
Those who missed out on funding The Banner Saga Kickstarter campaign earlier in the year can still receive instant access to the RPG's multiplayer beta by paying a $15 fee to a PayPal account set up by developer Stoic Studio. The Banner Saga: Factions is the multiplayer standalone title based on combat from the full Banner Saga game. Early adopters receive two Steam keys, a head start on creating and upgrading teams, an exclusive Veteran gem for in-game banners and multiplayer updates for early access to new classes and expansion content. "We've gotten a lot of requests from people who missed the Kickstarter campaign who would like to join the beta," reads a statement from the studio, "As our backers have already generously donated we feel that charging a small amount for access to...
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9 CommentsThe Banner Saga is a strategy-RPG that makes stats matter
By Griffin McElroy on Sep 28, 2012 09.28.12
Stoic Games' Kickstarter-funded strategy RPG The Banner Saga is cut from a different cloth than its predecessors in the genre. That much is evident at first blush; just by looking at the game's stark, bright characters and backdrops — an art style inspired by Eyvind Earle's work on the original Sleeping Beauty — you can tell that it's not like most other strategy games, which feature busy battlefields and even busier user interfaces. But when you get down into the guts of Banner Saga, and dissect the brains upon which its strategic battles are precariously built — that's where the real differences lie. When Banner Saga launches later this year, it won't include a single-player campaign — that mode will be in development until early next year. Instead, the initial, November...
'Hotline Miami' wins 'Most Fantastic' award during Fantastic Arcade 2012
By Griffin McElroy on Sep 25, 2012 09.25.12
Hotline Miami, the hyperviolent top-down brawler from Dennation Games and Devolver Digital, won top honors during this year's installment of Fantastic Arcade, the annual round-up of noteworthy indie games held in Austin, Texas. The game won the title of "Most Fantastic" — the Fantastic Arcade equivalent of "Best in Show" — beating out other worthy contenders like Sos Sosowski's McPixel, Stoic Games' The Banner Saga, and Capy's Super Time Force, to name a few. The Austin Chronicle outlines some of the other, far more verbose titles which were handed out to other games in attendance. Terry Cavanagh's Super Hexagon managed to win the Audience Award, while Subset Games' FTL: Faster than Light won the "Most Fantastic Way to Learn That if You're Ever Put in Charge of Anything...
