The adventure pack For The King: Lost Civilization has been released:

For The King: Lost Civilization Out Now

Plus, unlock exclusive new armor on Discord

It's time to dust off your trusty staff and get the party back together. Brand new For The King Adventure Pack 'Lost Civilization' is available now on Steam for £4.99 / $5.99 / €5.99 - plus a 20% launch discount.

Lost Civilization adds a veritable tropical feast of new content for players to unearth including the brand new Jungle Falls zone, two new playable character classes and lots more. Check out the trailer.

loading...

loading...

In a new update for For The King, information is provided on what is happening now and what might/will happen in the future.

You might remember that we promised to give our backers free console keys for either PS4 or XBONE. We will be sending out a survey to each of you to gather the necessary information to get you the key of your choice. Unfortunately it will not be possible to include the Switch as an option for the free key given that Nintendo does not allow developers to generate mass quantities of keys for their games without substantial cost.

...

Language Addition

We have recently added two new languages to For the King: Japanese and Korean! This brings our total up to 12! It’s been really wonderful watching people from across the globe get party wiped in a multitude of languages and we are very excited to expand our Asian market. These will be the final two languages added to the game. 

Seasonal Unlocks

As FTK has now reached a feature complete state, we have added a few more fun ways to keep things fun and interesting in the long term. Seasonal unlocks are now something you can spend some of your extra Lore Points on during any holidays allowing you to get limited time cosmetics for your characters.

...

Future Plans

Deciding the next major steps as a game studio is not something we take lightly. Do we continue to support For the King or is our time best spent starting a new project? That is of course a popular topic around the office these days.

An idea we had been toying with (and have mentioned a few times to gauge interest) is the idea of FTKMaker, an adventure making tool for FTK. We took big strides towards completing such a tool and would love to see what the community would create. Unfortunately we have instead decided to cancel any plans we initially had for it. Weighing the pros and cons we have concluded that FTKMaker would consume too many of our resources in the long term as it would require a tremendous amount of support to be successful. The engineering lessons we learned in building our FTKMaker prototype will prove very valuable for our next project, all is not lost!

For the King has a new adventure update called Into the Deep. The game is currently 50% off on Steam.

Update - New Adventure! Into The Deep

22 November - Jay-Nic

Ahoy, ye scurvy bilge rats!

”err, pardon?”

Sorry Joe Player… I’ve just been spending so much time in character playing our New Adventure...

”You mean… it’s here?!”

Aye! We’re pleased to announce the latest and greatest ocean themed adventure:

Into The Deep

An ancient evil rises. Take to the sea and freely roam the waters and island realms of Fahrul to gear up, level up, and tech up to save Fahrul from its imminent watery doom.

” ‘Key Features’ us, please”

In addition to the standard things we release with any new adventure like: new weapons, and new items - we’ve also got things like new enemies, new water based encounters, a new character to unlock, a new magic/immunity type, new ocean/island based map generation, new boats, and a totally new weapon type: guns!

Let’s break some key points down.

Guns

Guns are high damage dealing weapons that usually have lower number of slots to roll. There are one handed pistols, two handed long guns, and handheld cannons. Once you fire a shot with a gun, you have to reload it via a combat action. Some guns will have a basic melee attack that doesn’t need reloading. There is no such thing as ammo for the gun, you just need to reload after each shot.

Water Encounters/Water Combat

We’ve spent a lot of time filling the ocean realms with as much to do as you have on land. We’ve taken loads of encounters from the land, and made water versions of them. In addition: we’ve added many totally new water encounters. On the combat side: we’ve added both water bround creatures to engage, and grouped enemies on boats.
You’ll fight on a diorama of your boat when you engage water based enemies. Some enemies can do damage to your boat during combat.

Boats and Boat changes

The keen observers of you will have noticed we’ve released a few new features centered around boats in the last few updates. We used the Into The Deep adventure to give us an excuse to expand the features of boats. While most of these changes aren’t new as of today: we’ll still explain them for the sake of completeness.
There are multiple types of boats that can be purchased. Each one has different stats from the last, directly scaling with price. Boats can now be repaired at any port, or town adjacent to a water hex. You can even buy boats from towns adjacent to water hexes - no longer are the limited to purchase at ports only.

Water magic / Wet status

We’ve added a new magic type, and corresponding immunity type. The wet status temporarily removes all immunities on both players, and enemies. That’s right. You can poison a jelly, bleed a skelly, and even remove evasion from Fergus. Of course, it wouldn’t be FTK if we didn’t add items that grant water immunity, and edit some items retroactively.

Combat Revival

Yup. It’s what it says. You can now spend a combat action to revive a fallen character (assuming you have lives left). The character is rushed as well, so he can heal himself, or roll the dice.

Turbo Mode and Attack skipping

In the options menu, you can enable Turbo Mode that will speed the entire game up to 1.5x speed. This only works for offline games - meaning single player, and local coop. On top of that: you can now speed combat animations when double clicking/double pressing your attack. This works online AND offline

New Features / changes

• New Into The Deep Adventure
• 8 new Achievements
• 4 additional boat types. Boats have varying degrees of movement rolls, HP, and even armor.
• New chest types and of course, new mimics
• On ship combat
• Enemy ships
• New magic type, Water. Wet status temporarily removes all immunities for both players AND enemies. Bleed skellys bleed!
• New weapon type, Guns. There are 3 sub classes of guns, Blunderbuss, Musket, and Cannon. Guns typically require a single slot and are very powerful. However they must be reloaded after firing.
• New enemy type, Suicidal. Suicidal enemies will cause massive damage but kill themselves in the process.
• New Island Realms. Ashfall Islands and Forest Isles.
• New Island tech. Some realms now have outlying islands off their coast. Larger continents may now be broken up into smaller archipelagos.
• New and improved Sea Caves.
• New rapier animations for the inner swashbuckler in you.
• Various tweaks to the Kraken battle to take advantage of new Wet status and new boat types.
• Some enemies can now cause boat damage with their attacks.
• 20 new items, 23 new weapons, 1 new character class, 32 new enemies (8 new races), 12 new lore store unlocks, and 24 new encounters
• Boats now purchasable from towns with at least 1 adjacent sea hex
• Improved Shipwreck logic, all characters will now shipwreck to same hex

[...]

The developers of For The King have been working on four new updates for the game and the ports to consoles. These updates are:

Update #1 - Hildebrant's Cellar

As most of you know, our first big update was Hildebrant's Cellar, an Endless Dungeon mode. This was released shortly after launch and was our first attempt at a non-standard adventure mode. It turned out really well and proved to be quite entertaining. We also developed some mechanics for this mode that made their way into other modes, not to mention several new items and enemies.

Update #2 - Gold Rush

You're hearing it here first! Gold Rush is our next update and will go live on October 26th! With the success of the Endless Dungeon Mode, we were keen to try another new mode, so we created what we refer to as an UN-Cooperative mode. In Gold Rush you compete against 2 others to be the first to collect and return 100 gold coins to Lucky's Vault. While you can't attack each other outright, you can and must do everything in your power to screw over your "friends". Fleeing and leaving your friends all alone in combat, hoarding all the loot, stealing Sanctums, or risking it all at a gambling den are among the many ways this new mode flips the traditional mechanics upside down. It's great fun and a refreshing new way to play.

This mode will feature a new realm and several unique Lore Store items are up for grabs, but only if you pull off a win, so get your daggers out and start stabbing some backs!

Update #3 - TBA New Adventure COMING VERY SOON!

This is the big one. It's what we've been spending most of our time on. A whole new adventure, featuring a new story, multiple new realms, tons of new items and enemies, new playable characters, and some really exciting new mechanics. We can't spoil it yet, but it should be arriving late November. Some features from this new adventure may have crept into our next Gold Rush update, so be on the lookout for those as they may be a clue to what's coming! :)

Update #4 - Steam Workshop Integration

This is another huge chunk of what we've been working on. Some of you may have noticed that a while back we introduced House Rules. The ability to mod game rules was a stepping stone for a much greater project we had planned. In fact, the last 2 adventures were created with a new tool we're calling FTK Maker. What's great about this tool is that it's designed to be a standalone, fully functional adventure creator with an improved user interface. That's right. Create and share your own adventures.

While we can't fully promise if or even when this tool will be ready to use, the plan is to make an app that will allow players to create, customize, share, and play other's creations. This includes writing your own story, dialogue, and quests, creating a map layout, and customizing most of the in game mechanics.

We're very excited about this feature and we'll let you know more about it as we make more progress on it. If everything goes according to plan it might see the light of day early 2019. But again, no promises, just want to share with you what we've been up to.

COG has reviewed the rogue-like For the King:

For the King Review – A Tabletop Rogue-Like That You Lose to Win

For The King by Iron Oak Games is a cooperative, tabletop-esque, rogue-like RPG that just happens to live inside your computer. If any of those words appealed to you, For The King is right up your alley. I recommend not even bothering with the rest of this review. Just go get it!. Honestly, how long have you been waiting for such an idea to come forward? Too long in my opinion. Still here? Okay, let’s get into it.

[...]

And there lies the rub. For The King, despite its inviting art style, is a game that you need to play and lose repeatedly before you have a real chance of winning. While this will definitely to appeal to many, I found my enjoyment hampered by the many surprises that were popping up without any means to overcome them in the moment. If you’re not fettered by losing, For The King can be quite enjoyable experience and it’s even better with friends. But be warned, you will earn your victories in this harsh world. And you will earn them only through your many failures.

Score: 70/100

Dualshockers reviewed the tabletop inspired RPG For the King:

For the King Review — An Addictive Tabletop RPG Inspired Roguelike

For the King on PC is saved by its fun tabletop RPG inspired mechanics and multiplayer capabilities, which help it stand out in a sea of roguelikes.

While the roguelike is undoubtedly a crowded genre in the indie scene, I also find it to be one of the most interesting. Having to restart from scratch after a game over is not just punishing, but encourages players to be more methodical in their action and forces developers to be more creative in design to adapt to this deliberate design decision. For the King from IronOak Games and Curve Digital attempts to stand out from other roguelikes with its unique blend of tabletop inspired RPG gameplay and engaging multiplayer.

While some of that early-game roguelike frustration is present here in full force, For the King is a memorable and fun title that both fans of roguelikes and standard turn-based RPGs should have a good time with. The game may be a bit rough around the edges with some glitches and frustrating RNG, but if those things improve post-launch, For the King keeps pulling me back in, and is poised to become a staple roguelike for me.

[...]

As an indie title straight out of Early Access, For the King isn’t without a few rough spots, especially when it comes to the technical side of things. Luckily, the game is saved by its fun tabletop RPG inspired mechanics and multiplayer capabilities, which help it stand out in a sea of roguelikes. As a fan of the genre, I can see myself consistently returning to For the King, and think other roguelike fans and people who enjoy tabletop RPGs will find something to enjoy here.

Score: 8/10

The strategic RPG For the King has been released:

For the King

Full Release is here!

Yes that’s right, Adventurers: Full Release is here!

"Is it everything we’ve dreamed?!"

We sure hope so, Joe Player. We’re so excited and thankful for our wonderful helpful community throughout Early Access.

We’ve experienced the trials and tribulations of all that Early Access had to offer. From great feedback, amazing stories of victory, to terrible bugs that had to be quashed and everything between.

"It was an adventure all on its own"

It sure was. And we’re happy say that we’re not done yet. Of course, we’re going to be in full on support mode for the next while. But once things level off, we will start scheming internally on the next best way to make you all party wipe.

For now, enjoy our three adventures!

Again, thank you so much to our Kickstarter Backers, Early Access Community, and to all you newcomers joining the quest. We wouldn’t be here without you.

Sincerely IronOak Games

p.s. - Keep those discussions coming in on the Discussion forums, and Discord!

For the King is scheduled for release April 19th and will be discounted 20% for a week at that time.

For The King ventures out of Steam Early Access on April 19th
Step onto a new frontier and fight in the daunting Frozen Expanse with a 20% discount at launch

London, Tuesday 10th April 2018 - Multi-award winning publisher Curve Digital, is pleased to announce that IronOak Games' For the King will leave Steam Early Access on 19th April 2018. For the King is a rogue-like RPG adventure for which sees players journey into procedurally generated levels to avenge their recently murdered King.

Mixing up a challenging blend of strategy, tabletop RPG, and rogue-like elements, For The King features both a single player experience as well as the ability for three heroes to play cooperatively both online and locally. Taking place in the gorgeous, hexagonal kingdom of Fahrul, players must strategically explore and battle their way through the fairytale, stylized landscape in a bid to discover and survive, lest they succumb to death.

The game's short run in Early Access allowed for new features to be tested, balanced and tweaked following suggestions from the community. As a result, IronOak Games have added a horde of new features including a Dungeon Crawl Mode, Discord integration, a whole host of multiplayer functionality and, of course, vital enemy and economy balancing. The full list of updates can be found via the game's Steam page.

The exit from Early Access will be accompanied by an extensive free update which adds an all new adventure into the daunting Frozen Expanse. This includes three entirely new realms: The Shivering Woods, Frozen Expanse and the Frigid Sea. Along with these new realms comes two vast new dungeons, a brand-new playable character to unlock and plenty of fiendish traps. Plus over 20 new enemies and encounters, two new Scourges and a wealth of new weapons, armour and loot. For completionists,10 new steam achievements are up for grabs.

For the King will be priced at $19.99 / £15.49 / 19,99€ with a 20% launch week discount, when it leaves Steam Early Access on April 19th. PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch versions of the game are slated for release in early 2019

The For The King team has partnered with Curve Digital Games for publishing, marketing, release of the game next month and the console versions next year.

Greetings! We're extremely excited to announce our partnership with Curve Digital today. Curve has published many great games including Flame in the Flood, Human Fall Flat, Dear Esther, and the recent Bomber Crew. They'll be helping us with the official launch of For The King on PC in early April and with the console versions coming in early 2019.

We're thrilled to have their expertise in publishing, marketing and distribution. It allows us to focus on adding more great content and polishing existing content. They're fairly hands off when it comes to the development of the game, so don't expect any major changes in that regard. It's wins all around for IronOak, Curve, and you guys!

Ther is also a production update, that doesn't provide any new insights, but does have a few new screenshots.

The summer update for For the King is mainly about the new adventurer mode and that the game is tentatively scheduled for release at the end of February 2018.

The new adventure mode switches things up from the regular story mode in that all locations must first be discovered and any of the dungeons that you find can be tackled in any order. Your starting realm is also randomized for those getting tired of dying in the Guardian Forest. Along with the new Mage Dungeon and Flooded Crypt, we've added some new enemies (Goblins and Gnolls) along with some new Goblin loot to keep things fresh.

This mode is still in beta as we gather more data and feedback, but ultimately it will serve as the framework for other modes and unique adventures. The plan going forward is to introduce a new realm with new enemies and loot and a new custom adventure to go along with it. We have 2 of these planned for, and hopefully many more after full release.

A new update for For the King appeared mentioning a few of topics that they have learned from being in Early Access.

The overall response to For The King has been extremely positive, but one thing that keeps coming up is the dreaded Chaos system. While the community is mixed on the Chaos system, our challenge was to improve it for those who disliked it while not alienating those who enjoyed it as is. We've had some ideas for how this could be achieved and finally got some time to implement our plan.

The key to the new system is maintaining some of the pressure that the old timer had, but giving more options to the player for dealing with it. Chaos now increases at a steady rate at all times throughout the game, and in this way behaves more like a food mechanic in a survival game. We've decoupled "lives" with the Chaos so now the two systems must be managed independently from one another which in turn opens the door for more strategies and even more interesting decisions/trade offs.

SidAlpha checked out the strategy RPG For the King:

Is it worth it? For the King

loading...

For the King is a turn based Rogue Lite Strategy RPG by IronOak Games. Even though it is in Early Access, the game shows a good deal of promise.

After being in beta for a while For The King will be available in Early Access on the 28th of this Month.

Greetings! As some of you may know, For The King will be launching into Early Access on Steam on February 28th! For those who didn't get to try out the Beta, this will be a perfect time to have an adventure or two. And for those who did try the Beta, there are significant and exciting updates since the last official Beta release.

How will I receive my Key for Early Access?

Those with Beta keys can continue to play with their same key. Early Access will be replacing the Beta version in Steam so apart from a quick update, the process should be seamless.

Those who pledged at The Traveler tier will be receiving their key via BackerKit. BackerKit will email you directly with a perma-link to your BackerKit. You should already have this link (it's the same one you used to fill out the post Kickstarter survey). But just in case you don't, be on the lookout for a BackerKit email on Tuesday.

What if I ordered a GOG Key? Will I still get to play in Early Access?

You bet! We're sending everyone a Steam Early Access key, regardless of your platform preference. Those who wanted a GOG key will receive a temporary Steam Key. Then, once FTK is up on GOG, we'll send you your permanent GOG key.

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

The full version will add support for a balanced 2 player adventure (currently only the single player and 3 player coop adventures have been balanced). New loot and equipment, including the majority of Kickstarter Backer items will be slowly introduced throughout Early Access. The final version will also contain the Frost Realm and Jungle Realm, along with new enemies and encounters. We’ll also be unlocking several Points of Interest like the Warrior’s Arena, The Mage Dungeon, The Water Temple, and more.

In addition, we'll also be adding support for Steam Trading Cards, Steam Achievements, Cloud Saves and language support for French, Spanish, German, Italian, and possibly Russian.

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

The core adventure is complete from beginning to end and the first couple Acts have received significant polish and balancing. Currently only the single player and 3 player coop adventures have been tuned. All cooperative modes can be played both locally and online. There are still some rough edges which we’ll be polishing based on your feedback and we’ll be adding new content up to and beyond our full release. The Lore Store (which contains persistent unlockables) is functioning but will grow significantly in size prior to full release.

The closed beta that is currently going on for For the King is being updated shortly to version 0.4 and in an update some information is given about it and an upcoming early access of the game.

I’m sure you all know by now that our silence does not indicate a lack of activity. We are hard at work on v0.4 of our closed beta and this will be the biggest update to the game yet by far! We ended up spending longer on this build than we initially anticipated but we got on a roll and were able to check off numerous boxes from our development schedule. We are now in prime position for the final push to early access! Thanks so much for the patience.

This upcoming build will feature a fully operational Act II which brings with it so much new content, new objectives and new locales to explore including the cave, crypt, island, cellar and King’s Maze each with their own unique atmosphere. With new realms to explore we have also reintroduced the mystical Alluring Pools which allow for ease of travel to past explored lands. These were put on the shelf until now to help keep Act I a focused experience.

We have added many combat mechanics as well such as taunting, party buffs and debuffs. These both add a very noticeable element to the game and can make for some very fun strategy. Not only can you buff your fellow players but the enemies are equipped with the same skill sets making for some dynamic battles.

One of our favorite additions is the Goblin Merchant who can be encountered in most dungeons. He is a sight for sore eyes for an unprepared adventurer although his prices are not for those light on gold. He is a shrewd businessman and adjusts his prices accordingly.

In the latest update for For the King, some feedback from PAX is given and also that the beta keys should be going out by the end of next week.

While we were in Seattle we got the go-ahead from Steam to upload our game! So that's what we've been doing the past few days. It's already up and working on Steam as I write this, and there are just a few minor fixes to implement before we send out the beta keys! We're aiming for end of next week so keep a lookout for an email from BackerKit. Also, our website store is back online for any Super Slacker Backers wanting to get in on the beta. So if you know of anyone who missed out on the Kickstarter, let them know it's not too late!

A special thanks to everyone who came and visited us. Getting to meet some of you in person was super cool. I gotta say, we have an awesome little community here. You have been so supportive of us throughout this entire endeavor an we really appreciate it. Especially considering how toxic some game communities can be, it blows our minds how friendly and positive everyone of you we've interacted with have been. THANK YOU!

In Kickstarter update #20 for For the King the release for Xbox One, the short delay to beta and some other stuff are being discussed.

As some of you know, we were down at E3 this past week showing off FTK to the press. We got some great feedback seeing new people play for the first time and made some great contacts. We were also recently announced for Xbox One during their E3 presentation. We're honored to have been included in their Indie Showreel and it was super cool to see For The King on the big screen! As you probably surmised, this means we're 100% coming to consoles but our first priority remains the PC. So what does this mean?

For starters, our release date for console will happen sometime after our launch on PC. How much longer afterwards is hard to gauge, most likely we'll aim for 6 months. For anyone interested in playing the console versions, we'll be sending you an additional key for either XboxOne or PS4 (pending release) on top of your original PC key. This way you don't have to choose between PC and Console. Before we ship we'll send out a survey to gather your preference. Woo hoo!

Moving towards their beta, this development update for For The King is about balance, tuning, and audio integration.

Speaking of quests, we've spent some time tuning the side-quest system (or jobs as we call them). Jobs now account for a lot of a party's motivation in the early game as they serve as an invaluable source of money and XP. And sure, if you split your party up you can complete 3 times as many jobs but it can be ill advised to travel through the wilderness on one's own...

We've finally upgraded the character select screen from it's basic debug form and even through the options are somewhat limited, we all spend far more time creating our party than we'd like to admit. Part of the reason is the new character special abilities that were recently added. Each character now has a special ability they can perform. For instance, Buskers can earn gold by ending their turn in a town, Herbalists have a chance of finding herbs in the wilderness, and Blacksmiths do not break their weapon on a critical fail.

In a new development update for For the King, we learn what they have been working on since the last update.

Now that most of our core systems are in and functioning, we've been gathering feedback from new users in order to tune the user experience (UX) so that first time players are able to understand and enjoy the game. This includes all aspects of the game but is heavily related to the UI presentation. Little things like feedback, tooltips, labels, and bigger things like presentation, clarity, and efficiency are all being addressed.

One of the biggest changes we've made is making the menus for things which are optional to interact with (such as towns) non-modal. It now pops up on the side of the screen where you can choose an option from the list or continue moving uninterrupted. It feels really good and is super streamlined.

We've hired another character artist, Dan Begic, for a couple of months to aid in the final stretch of character creation. Dan, along with Wilson have been cranking out characters and enemies and they're looking awesome! We now have the base 8 playable characters in game, as well as 95% of the enemies. We have roughly 50 unique enemies and 132 including variations.

A new development update for For The King has been made available.

On the music front, John has put together a first pass on the soundtrack. Each realm has unique music that blends organically as you traverse the land. This man is a musical genius, and while you'll have to take my word for it now, you'll understand once you hear his work. It's perfect.

Our audio designer Jordan has the foundation in place for the majority of sound effects. He's built up a library of sounds and is integrating them into the game as we speak. Part of our funding money was able to go towards purchasing a license for WWise, one of the premier audio integration tools. This means top quality mixes and functionality.

Our concept artist Gabe has been knocking out some fantastic concepts for our artist Wilson to build. Since we last spoke, we've added Leprechauns, Bisontaurs, Lizardmen, Imps, Dire Crows, Fox Shaman, Death Knights, Bear Warriors, and several other enemies. While Gabe typically focuses on characters for FTK, he's also started doing some environments, and they're awesome!

The For The King team is bringing us a new update about the state of development.

The three of us have been firing on all cylinders as per usual and we have also been getting loads of fantastic work in from our animation, concept and character model contractors. All of this work and financial investment has paid off in a huge way as our enemy database is really starting to come to life with all sorts of new characters to battle in Fahrul and many more still to come!

Some new additions of note are the thieves, mimics, hags, dry corpses, and jelly cubes which add immense flavor to the game and each bring with them their own fun challenges. Attack abilities have been a popular topic as well these days as we have been expanding our library of weapon proficiencies to many new attack types. Enemies can steal your gold and items, or drain your focus and lore bringing with them new facets of strategy.

Anyone who pledged at the DESIGNER - REAPER tier level and up will be pleased to know that we have a new Dead Adventurer database in game which is designed to store all the specific corpses that players will stumble upon during gameplay. This will include your name and journal entry, custom art asset and also the items you will be dropping. The base level dead adventurer is currently spawning in game and even in its primitive form it brings a somber reminder of the brutality lurking around every corner of Fahrul.

The For The King Kickstarter page has been updated with the latest development status, which is for the most part about new recruitments.

It's been a busy month for us, lots of tech and art has gone into the game and we have several new faces at IronOak. One of the studios we share an office space with, Kemojo, has contracted out to us their lead animator Steve Hart for several months. He has been reworking all the animations in game and is now onto special animation sets. It's really great to see these custom animations in game and have them match our fast, brutal and occasionally hilarious combat.

We also hired Wilson Aguilar, a recent graduate from VFS here in Vancouver. He's just started on making additional characters based off of Gabe Kralik's concepts. His Triclops is awesome and coupled with Steve's animations it's really fun fighting these guys.

We officially signed our audio engineer Jordan Ivey for the complete project as well! Once we get his tools integrated with the project we'll be hearing new sounds flowing in any day!

On the world art side of things we have a new environment built, the Dropstone Badlands. The Fire Crag seen above looks quite at home here but you'll tend to encounter him in the lava fields from active volcanoes that an overzealous scourge creates on the overworld map. Speaking of which our scourge system has been recently fully fleshed out and is now awaiting our backer scourges!

Lots of technical stuff like serialization, combat sequencing, and weapon databases were improved. Our lore and enemy databases were filled out a lot as well.

In a recent production update for For the King, we learn about the progress that was made in the last weeks.

We've made a ton of progress over the last couple of weeks. After the dust of the campaign had settled, we began planning out all the additional features and systems derived from our stretch goals. We also did some house cleaning and tidying up as many things were quickly implemented immediately before and during the campaign. We're now in a great position to start adding a lot of the new features.

On the tech side we now have a basic save/load function, and awesome new in-engine spreadsheet editor (we have a TON of spreadsheets so trust me this one is huge), and a more robust way of scaling the size of our generated maps.

On the gameplay front we have more fleshed out time of day mechanics, blocked out statues in game, an improved encounter draw system, and a more finalized monster manual.

For art, we've had 3 new complete sets of animations go in, and they look spectacular. Our friends at Kemojo with whom we share an office with have lent us their senior animator for a few months and he's just killing it. Thanks Kemojo! The Poison Bog received an art pass too

Just 16 hours left in the Kickstarter campaign of For the King and there are two updates to list.

The last update urges everybody to pledge and the one before that does the same, but also notes that you can get an in-game statue.

To show our support we're giving away an in-game statue. For the next 48 hours every time you send out a post, tweet, or update on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Imgur or Tumblr we'll add your name to the draw to have your own statue in game. Just make sure to link to our Kickstarter page and use #ForTheKing. Bonus points for reddit posts!

In a Kickstarter update for For The King, we learn more about combat.

Combat in For The King is quick and brutal. Battles are short and can often be decided by a few blows or a well placed shot. It’s important to know when you’ve got the upper hand, or when you need to retreat and come back when you’re more prepared.

Basic actions in combat hinge around the slot system. Offensive and defensive actions and flee attempts are all governed by the slots which appear after you’ve selected the action for your character to attempt. A slot can show success or failure as well as be taken up by certain conditions, debuffs, and item use.

In a basic attack, the number of successful slots showing determines the overall power of that attack, with respect to the player’s weapon and level. Weapons have a variable number of slots that roll, ranging from 1 to 6. Scoring a hit in all slots will do full damage, whereas missing a slot will reduce the damage output proportionally and missing all slots results in your weapon breaking! An important and unique aspect in For The King is that every player has the same maximum damage when using any type of weapon. The difference lies in their accuracy, or odds of rolling a successful slot. The Woodcutter will have a much easier time rolling successful slots with an axe than the Herbalist for example, so their effect average damage will be much higher. However with some luck, or through focus points, the Herbalist can achieve the same damage in a single blow. This is important because your weapons can and will break forcing your character to use whatever they have on them at the time.....

Thanks Eye.

The For the King Kickstarter campaign is very successful - 61 hours to go!

Gamasutra:

IronOak Crushes Kickstarter Goal for Roguelike RPG, For The King

VANCOUVER, Canada - Oct. 13, 2015 - With less than a week to go, IronOak Games announced today that the Kickstarter campaign for their upcoming roguelike RPG, For The King has nearly tripled its goal of $30,000. In fact, the game was fully funded by day two, selling out of top reward tiers and unleashing all sorts of stretchy speculation on the Kickstarter comment section.

The game was also greenlit on Steam in that same week.

The For The King campaign has now raised over $87,500, and IronOak has been quick to thank backers with several stretch goals including a chilly new realm, furry companions, special character skins and musical instruments for playable characters. Future stretch goals offer more additional realms, enemies, equipment and more.

Detailing the road from AAA to indie, complete with struggles and successes along the way, developer IronOak Games has released an infographic about diving into the indie underworld. Check it out. 

“When AAA developers venture out into indie territory, the whole industry wins. For The King is a great example of a game that wouldn’t get made in a traditional publisher setting,” said Gordon Moran, Art Director for IronOak Games. “Pushing genre boundaries, like adding multiplayer co-op to a roguelike, takes the freedom and passion only found in independent development. Support from nearly 3,000 fans on Kickstarter is a good indicator that we’re making the right moves.”

Featuring modern low-poly visuals, turn-based combat and persistent choices, For The King aims to deliver the legendary adventures of traditional RPGs all in one single play session. Heroes will need to survive cunning creatures, wicked weather and brutal dungeons as they solve the mysterious death of the king to bring order to the land.

Support For The King on Kickstarter.

Watch the teaser trailer.

In addition to single-player mode, For The King offers online cooperative play, a unique feature for roguelikes. Quest hunters can embark on journeys with up to three players online. Fight together through a procedurally generated world that makes every encounter, every challenge, every weapon and every location an exclusive adventure for friends and solitary heroes alike.

For The King will be available for PC and Mac via Steam in Summer 2016.

View the press kit and download assets here.

About IronOak Games

Founded in 2015, IronOak Games is an independent videogame developer based in Vancouver, BC. The team consists of AAA game industry veterans, who previously worked on such titles such as Dead Rising 2, Sleeping Dogs, Turok and Need for Speed. Influenced by old school RPGS, For The King is the studio’s first foray into building a roguelike fantasy RPG based off the Black Gate boardgame, designed and created by Colby Young, Game Designer for IronOak Games. For more information, please visit http://www.ironoakgames.com .

The $110K stretch goal for For the King has been reached and it is now also possible to fund the game through Paypal as this update teaches us.

We just unlocked our $110K stretch goal which is the Moose Helmet Skin for all of our Quest Runner and above backers. If you are currently at the Traveler level you will be missing out on a great exclusive. We are down to the last week of the campaign, let’s keep pushing for “Above The Clouds”!

For those of you who were asking about pledging via PayPal we now have that option available! Please note that we are limiting the physical goods to Kickstarter only! If you were eyeing up a t-shirt or a physical copy of the Illustrated Adventuring Guide, this is available through Kickstarter exclusively in order to prevent any awkward print runs down the road. This also goes for the all the exclusive hat skins and character skins, these are Kickstarter only and will NOT be available after October 16th, 2015!

That being said, if you do not have a credit card but still want to have your very own Ghost or Wraith in For The King, these are available through paypal. Please note that this option will only be available until we hit Early Access, after that all Ghost and Wraiths we have at that point will be the final set that gets shipped and locked permanently into FTK until the end of time!

Robert Lashley (MMO RPG) has interviewed Iron Oak Games about their new game:

Midway through an already funded Kickstarter we interviewed IronOak Games to find out just what an “Online Roguelike Tabletop RPG” was. Read on to find out what they had to say about that string of buzzwords and what interesting rewards they are throwing at their Kickstarter backers.

MMORPG: For the King is billed as a "online roguelike tabletop RPG." What is an online roguelike tabletop RPG?

IronOak Games: For The King (FTK) is an online cooperative roguelike with turn based JRPG combat and board game-like mechanics. We use the term roguelike loosely, even though it accurately describes the experience one can expect when playing FTK. This includes turn based gameplay, procedural worlds, perma-death, grid based movement (hexes in our case), semi-randomized combat outcomes, challenging difficulty, and a fantasy setting. Many of these mechanics are also present in traditional table top games, and it's important to note that FTK's prototype was actually a table top board game. Our goal has been to retain as much of that tabletop experience as possible while simultaneously taking advantage of a digital platform.

MMORPG: There has been a rash of "roguelikes" making their way to Steam Greenlight or Kickstarter lately, what makes For the King different?

IOG: First and foremost, For The King is a cooperative roguelike. It can also be played solo, but it's one of the few roguelikes out there that supports multiplayer games. This feature is super important to us as we're trying to mimic the table top experience that you have with a group of friends.

We've also strayed from traditional roguelikes in that we resolve combat through turn based JRPG combat. We're huge RPG fans, and we felt this would be the most exciting way to present combat. Our overworld movement works slightly differently too. While it's still turn based and grid based, it blends in random encounters from JRPGs along with enemies that you can see on the map like in traditional roguelikes. And it's not all combat, you'll encounter various scenarios and challeneges that can be interacted with in a variety of ways.

Another defining feature of FTK is the vastness of our worlds. For The King will have you traveling across expansive realms, sailing the seas, and exploring many different dungeons. It's much much more than a procedural death labyrinth, it's an epic adventure.

MMORPG: How does the multiplayer part play out in For the King?

IOG: Players can play solo, controlling up to 3 characters, or they can play online with everyone controlling a single character. You can split up and explore the world on your own or remain together for safety in numbers. Time is a factor in FTK, so it's not always possible to stick together and quite often the party needs to split up to cover more ground and scout new locations. However solo adventurers will be quite vulnerable to groups of enemies and other less favorable encounters.

FTK is turn-based gameplay, so every player takes their turn in order. During your off-turn you can use items, equip newly acquired gear, and most importantly be drawn into combat and encounters by nearby friends and enemies. If one player stirs up enemies on the overworld map, then all players within a certain radius are drawn into a JRPG style combat. Managing combat and being careful when drawing in injured or weaker party members into battle is one of the many keys to success.

MMORPG:  Why Kickstarter? What is the money for?

IOG: Let's just get this out of the way, our goal of $40,000 is not enough to make a game of this complexity by itself. Fortunately, our core team has saved enough money to self fund ourselves through the entire development cycle. This means we won't be making a penny from this Kickstarter campaign. Instead, the money raised will go towards areas like audio, music, and animation. The areas that are outside our wheel house. As we're nearing our 4th stretch goal already, the additional funds will go towards hiring temporary help on both the art side and the programming side so that we can implement the new features without pushing back the release date while simultaneously improving the overall quality of the game.

MMORPG:  What are some of the rewards for backing the Kickstarter?

IOG: The most exciting rewards are the ghosts and wraiths in my opinion. Backers who choose the ghost reward will have a ghost appear in game with their name. You can upgrade your ghost to a wraith to cause even more carnage in other player's games. There's something sinister about being the cause of death for other adventurers, and the response to these tiers has been great!

Other rewards give backers a chance to craft their own in game item, or become a dead adventurer with their own backstory and backpack full of goodies for others to find. You can even create your own scourge or main playable character (these are currently all sold out). We really wanted the community to get involved in the design of this game, and these designer tiers allow for just that. We'll obviously make sure everything fits into the FTK universe, but we're asking backers to be creative.

We're also offering several Kickstarter exclusive skins (cosmetic only) for hats, helmets, backpacks, even undead player skins, so you can adventure in style!

MMORPG:  What are some of the other projects this team has worked on?

IOG: Our team has over 27 years of experience in the video game industry. We've worked at such companies as Klei, Microsoft, United Front Games, Propaganda, EA, Capcom (formerly Blue Castle), among others. We've worked on titles like Sleeping Dogs, Ryse, Turok, Dead Rising 2, Need For Speed Series, Little Big Planet Karting, among many others. Our diverse background and experience is one of the reasons we're confident that we can deliver a tight, polished, and fun experience. This is very much a passion project for us and an homage to the RPG genre.

Trailer:

loading...

As the For the King Kickstarter has reached 6 digits a vote on the $155K stretch goal is explained. All backers can select if the $155K stretch goal adds dragons, pirates or werewolves.

If backers select the Dragons stretch goal option we will be expanding our existing Dropstone Badlands realm to include a long history of dragons. The Dropstone dragons are solitary creatures and even in their homeland they are still an uncommon encounter. Dragons are not limited to this realm as they have been known to migrate to other environments. They tend to not bother those who give them space but there is no fury like that of an angry Dragon, the most powerful force in all of Fahrul.

If backers select the Pirates stretch goal option we will be creating an entirely new realm with a tropical theme. It will be a water based biome that is littered with islands which require an alternative form of travel to navigate through. With this biome we will include a new type of dungeon, the Pirate Cave! Complete with it’s own unique flavor of traps and treasure!

If backers selected the Werewolves option we will be creating an entirely new realm called the Twisted Hollows themed in a Halloween/Transylvanian aesthetic. At nighttime is when this realms evil underside reveals itself for here lurks the werewolf. If an adventurer encounters this creature in the Hollows and also gets "the bite", that player will then carry the curse of lycanthropy for the rest of the game.

In this update for the For the King Kickstarter an update of the campaign is provided and more information on how the game works is given.

One of the most common things we hear about For The King is “Looks fun! How does it work?” So let’s talk about it. I am going to give a very general overview of the game experience to hopefully shine some additional light on how the game works.

When you play For The King, you aren’t sitting down to play a 40 hour fantasy epic, think of it more as a roguelike experience similar to Faster Than Light or a cooperative boardgame you may have played in the past. Players choose a starting character class, give him or her a name, identifying colors, a special ability and a new, random adventure begins! You know that 1.) The king is dead 2.) Fahrul is in chaos 3.) The queen wants your help. And with that the clock starts ticking down. Players will set out into the overworld playing as everyday citizens who have varying strengths and weakness depending on their chosen class.

For The King is structured like a boardgame, so each round players get a turn rolling action points, exploring what lies beneath the fog of war, and dealing with the challenges and situations they encounter. One player might venture off on a quest to the Burning Forest to find the mystical town of Fire Elm, another might stay closer to home and fight nearby Beastmen to increase their conviction, and another might be saving up to purchase a boat and explore the seas. Each turn only lasts approximately a minute and during your offturn you are shown other players every decision, from their movement to their combat encounters so you are never missing out on any action. During this time you can offer advice, manage your inventory, perform certain abilities, use various items, plan your next move, replenish your health, stock up your belt or just sit back and watch the show. Things can go horribly wrong very quickly which is highly entertaining when it’s not you!

In For the King Kickstarter update #5 composer John Robert Matz is telling a bit about himself and his work on the game:

Hi all! I'm John Robert Matz, and I'm the composer for For the King's musical score. For the King is an exciting project with an interesting setting, and I'm looking forward to getting to capture that world in music.

A Little About Me

I come from a primarily classical background: I was a music education major who acquired a taste for composition; the multi-instrumental training I received feeding back into my compositions and orchestration, providing me with new insights into instrumental techniques, uses, and unique timbres. In addition, during my time at school, and through a series of excellent music history professors, I developed a keen interest in the sounds, instruments, and techniques located at two different points of the classical music timeline: the Late Romantic period of the late 1800's (stretching to the early 20th century), and what musicologists refer to as the Early period, which encompasses music as far back to 500 AD through to the late Renaissance. I loved the bombast, grandeur, sweeping themes, orchestration possibilities, and harmonic complexities of the Romantic, while the primitivism, alienness of harmonic structure, and the very unique timbres delivered by the ever evolving assortment of historical instruments and techniques of the Early period captured my imagination. How incredibly fortunate, then, to have the opportunity to combine both aspects into one project; to get to color my compositional voice with these disparate timbres and styles.

The Two Worlds of For the King's Musical Design

One of the earliest topics I discussed with the rest of the team was the sound of For the King's musical landscape, and something we agreed on immediately was the idea of avoiding the wall-to-wall traditional "big epic fantasy score" sound for much of the game, and instead focusing on a small, intimate ensemble of instruments that felt primitive, yet expressive.

The idea was that the instruments in this small ensemble would be (or sound like they could be) man-portable, that they could literally be accompanying the player's party through the world. To that end, I began to look at instruments that were simpler, less mechanically complex, more crude, were portable, and would have had been around during, or have had direct ancestors in the medieval and early renaissance eras. I've always had a strong interest in early music, and getting to delve into that period led me to consider the sounds of wind instruments like recorders, Irish whistles, and pipes, plucked and hammered string instruments like dulcimers and zithers, a variety of hand drums and hand percussion, and some more "unique" bowed (or pseudo-bowed) string instruments, like the ancient Scandinavian tagelharpa (tail-harp), and the more modern (and widespread) hurdy-gurdy. [...]

Thanks Eye!

For the King has been Greenlit recently, so the game will be available on Steam next year.

First things first, we were just Greenlit by Steam and the community! A heartfelt thanks to all those who supported us. We climbed quickly to the top 10 in only 5 days and woke up this morning to the good news. We are so thankful to have been Greenlit so quickly and we owe it all to you.

And there is some more information on the music stretch goal:

As we near the inevitable Furry Companions stretch goal, we have our sites now on The Sound of Music stretch goal. The Sound of Music will add musicians and musical instruments to the game along with some potentially awesome mechanics. Primarily a support class, musicians make everyone around them better through their inspiring songs and ballads.

We'll be experimenting with some unique mechanics for this class like having them guarantee a successful slot for other party members if they successfully play an inspiring ballad. However if they miss a few notes it may have the opposite effect, so you'll have to use this ability wisely. They can potentially use the reverse of this ability against their enemies, forcing them to fail a slot. In this manner they can neutralize enemy special attacks and critical strikes if they're on key.

Different instruments will allow for different abilities so the option will also be there for them to play ballads of destruction doing AOE type damage to groups of enemies. Think Fire Lutes! We're really excited about this class and can't wait to share our ideas and progress on it with you.

With 27 days to go the RPG For the King is already funded. Congratulations!

In Kickstarter update #3 you can lkear about new tiers and stretch goals:

Day 3: Campaign Update

First things first....we got Kickstarter Staff Picked today! We are so honored, thank you to the KS staff!

Yesterday we were pleased to learn that engadget did a nice feature on us and had some nice things to say. It was a pretty big deal for us to see our project on such a big stage, you can follow the link below.

Also to note, our early bird reward tiers have nearly been cleaned right out! When did that happen? Thank you so much to everyone who is involved in the campaign, we are having a blast with all of you and can’t wait to see what the future holds!Today we added the CO-OP - PARTY UP tier. [...]

And Add-Ons are coming shortly!

More news, yesterday we revealed Furry Companions on the stretch goals which means of course....pets! Pet’s will add a unique flavor to your travels, my favorite mechanic being that they can scavenge for resources. Fahrul has a wide variety of herbs that are used to combat ailments but at times they are in short supply. Sending your four legged friend out to scavenge can get you out of a bind. You’ll be glad to see them returning with something useful or maybe even far less common items. [...]

Spotted by Format92

Eye spotted a new Kickstarter that is almost funded already:

For The King by IronOak Games

Embark on a perilous adventure with turn-based combat and strategic exploration in this single player and online cooperative roguelike.

Trailer: