Indie RPGs - Roundup: Boot Hill Heroes, Rodina, FTL, Blood Rune

I have a number of indie RPGs in my inbox, so I thought I'd collect them into a roundup.

First off, Experimental Gamer let us know about their Kickstarter for Boot Hill Heroes, a Wild West retro RPG with 1-4 player coop. They are asking for a modest $5000 and seem to have a fair chunk of the game done, needing the money for music, sound and possibly more art:

Take three parts Earthbound, one part Chrono Trigger, add a dash of Final Fantasy VI  - then dip the whole thing in spicy Wild West sauce!  Boot Hill Heroes is a true retro RPG set in the American Wild West.  You'll find all the trappings of a spaghetti western - gunslingers, saloons, Indians, ranches, spittoons,  Mexican standoffs, heroism, villainy, and everything in between.  Boot Hill Heroes has adventure, drama, and a fair helping of humor.  It's just like the classic RPGs you remember from yesteryear but with an inventive new spin! 

Jonathon writes in with Rodina, an indie "space exploration RPG inspired by games like Freelancer, The Elder Scrolls series, Deus Ex and System Shock." The video on their site is pretty rudimentary but the planned scope is quite exciting. This one is self-funded because "I'm not comfortable taking money from people unless I can immediately give them something in return".

• Explore Space, Inside and Out
  In Rodina, you can explore the world both inside of a ship and outside of one. You will find yourself having dogfights in space, gun battles on a planet surface, defending your ship from boarding parties, and capturing ships belonging to your enemies.
• Huge Seamlesss Procedurally Generated World.
  Explore procedurally-generated planets with millions of square kilometers of surface area. Seamlessly travel from a planet's surface to the depths of space, with no loading screens, warp doors, or invisible walls. Investigate asteroids, moons, space stations, and stars.
• Open-Ended, Simulated Gameplay
  Rodina will boast a game world simulation which supports player creativity and rewarding feedback. Release toxic gas into the engine room. Fly a false flag in order to trick your opponents into thinking you are their ally. Hack into the ship's computer and delete the source code that fires the weapons, rendering them useless. In Rodina, experimentation and creativity are valued over following a game script written by a desginer.

FTL (Faster Than Light) was actually the first Kickstarter I contributed to - it's probably a stretch to post it at RPGWatch but jhwisner sent it in, so what the heck. This is a "Roguelike Spaceship Simulation" and their Kickstarter was hugely successful, raising $200k from a $10k goal:

What is FTL?

FTL is a spaceship simulation roguelike-like. Its aim is to recreate the atmosphere of running a spaceship exploring the galaxy (like Firefly/Star Trek/BSG etc.)

What is the gameplay like?

The game is split into two major parts: exploration and combat. You explore by making faster-than-light jumps over vast distances in space; arriving at locations containing text-based events that have a variety of choices and outcomes.  Your crew will improve with experience, while your ship can be upgraded with advanced weaponry and equipment purchased with collected scrap metal. Fighting enemy ships involves real-time management of crew, power distribution and weapons. Check out the video on the front page to see it in action.

That’s too long, what’s a shorter description?

Tom Francis of Gunpoint described it as “Firefly by way of Spelunky.” It has also been compared to Weird Worlds and Battlestations.

Blood Rune is inspired by classics such as the SSI Gold Box series and offers first-person exploration and isometric tactical combat:

Blood Rune is a party based role-playing game where the player initially creates one hero, then soon after three more and is joined later by up two companions during the adventure. The role-playing system itself is name-based, where a character's name part determines his or her fate, and the system utilises multiple character classes and skills. There are five spell casting classes and all of which are available from the start, including the Necromancer.

Blood Rune is part played in a first person, step by step exploration environment -which supports indoor and outdoor adventuring - and part played in an isometric 'blow by blow' tactical battle engine that supports large scale fights with dozens of combatants with ease. There are 400+ items in the game so far and 25 item types. Loot is distributed randomly through the game.

The player must worry about hunger and thirst while in the wilderness and light underground. The party must have a quill, sufficient ink and enough parchment for automatic mapping of areas to occur. Wounds inflicted in battle can bleed, so injuries need not kill immediately to be effective. Spells range from creature summons, like Giant Scorpions, to spells of the mind like the Deathbolt, to spells which knock down walls like Shatter, to massive terrain spells like Hostile Waters which flood whole areas and make them very dangerous to any creature that cannot fly.

The story to the game involves forging allegiances amongst vastly different peoples against a rising tide of doom and even time travel as the heroes take on an enemy that will sweep all people aside and end the age.

Development is on going and the expected release date is 2012. The platform for the game is Windows XP upwards through to Windows 7.