Despite failing its Kickstarter campaign, Forged of Blood, a turn-based tactical RPG from the team at Critical Forge, is now live on Steam. You can purchase it for $29.99 or your regional equivalent. The game features a strategic layer, plenty of turn-based tactical battles, a curious “tri-axis” morality system, and a complex magic system that lets you craft your own spells. Here’s the game’s description and its key features:
Forged of Blood is pushing the boundaries of depth and mechanical complexity for the modern turn-based tactical RPG. Classless character building, strategic management, and small unit tactical gameplay combine to create a multi-layered experience that puts players in the middle of a civil war in a morally grey fantasy world.
A game of hard decisions and harsher consequences, Forged of Blood will challenge players to make decisions across every layer of the game. On the battlefield, character builds, turn-order efficiency, and positioning will be key to victory. While off the battlefield, your choices on the world map will determine the fate of your kingdom and future of your people.
Key Features:
- Tactical Fantasy: Take to the field with sword and shield or cast powerful spells in deep turn-based tactical combat against monsters and men.
- Classless Warfare: With 9 unique weapons and a vast magic system, Forged of Blood lets you build your characters any way you want – without being constrained by the typical tank/DPS/healer roles.
- Science in Magic: Explore the freedom and mysteries of one of the most complex and unique magic systems ever attempted in video games.
- Kingdom at War: Command up to three parties of heroic characters on the strategic layer in your fight to reclaim the empire you lost.
- Meaningful Choice: Your choices matter. From character building to your choices in the game narrative, your decisions will reverberate across the Strategic and Tactical layers of the game.
- Your ends; your means: In a world of grays and unique perspectives, it is up to you to decide what is “right” and “wrong” for the future of Attiras. Forged of Blood will introduce a new Tri-axis Personality Plot (TAPP) system in lieu of the traditional Good vs. Evil scale common in most RPG settings.
Tactical fantasy, unbound.
Building your own character has rarely been so liberating with 9 weapon types – each with its own ability trees – along with 6 general ability trees. Going into battle, players will be able to take customized parties of up to five characters, each with two weapon sets and abilities to respond to any tactical situation.
Spellcrafting, as it should be.
Few systems will match the freedom of our Magurite Spellcrafting mechanics. Forged of Blood puts players in direct control of the powerful magical forces they can wield in battle, allowing the creation of spells from 6 different “Primordials” each with 8 Effect Classes, that can be individually modified with 12 Effect Modifiers. The spell is then shaped and tuned through 12 unique Global Modifiers. This is spellcrafting the way it should be.
Philosophy in War.
Focusing on player choice, Forged of Blood accentuates the morally grey world of Attiras with a personality trait system that follows the player’s actions on a Tri-Axis Personality Index. With no light or dark, good or bad, right or wrong – actions are judged by three philosophies: Altruism, Rationalism, and Hedonism.
Small Unit Tactics on a World Scale.
Your forces are few, but the world is large. Forged of Blood is a game that will be won on and off the field of battle as players manage 3 parties across the great continent of Attiras. Striking the balance between outright conquest, appeasing conquered territories, and managing your own character’s growth will prove that while tactics may win the battle, strategy will win the war.
And here’s a message from the developers:
Hello and welcome!
We are so pleased to welcome you to the world of Attiras. A world, Forged of Blood, is now yours for the taking.
As you take on the role of Prince Tavias Caenican, you will be presented with a world of grey moral choices and difficult decisions in the war ahead. The forty-two regions of Attiras are yours to claim in conquest, and the three varied faction arcs will place the fate of this world in your hands.
Forged of Blood is a complex and expansive game. As you recruit and build characters in your retinues, you will have at your disposal an array of 10 Weapon Categories and 6 General Ability trees. Each weapon has a place on the battlefield, and various synergies with the General Ability trees are available for you to discover as you explore and experiment our character systems.
Beyond the confines of the medieval armory are the unending mysteries of magurite – our vast system of magical energies. Here, we put at your fingertips one of the largest spellcrafting systems ever made in a video game and empower you with freedom to experiment and explore to your heart’s content. In Forged of Blood, players will wield 3 “types” of energies, and 2 energy “states” for each that add up to 6 unique “primordials.” Each of these 6 “primordials” will have 8 unique effects, with each spell able to contain 5 effects at any single time. Each of these effects can then be modified through the use of the 12 “effect modifiers” before the entirety of the spell can be shaped through the 12 “global modifiers.” All this is to say that there will literally be an almost incalculable amount of spell combinations for you to play with.
Finally, in keeping with our general theme of choices and consequences, we come to the philosophies that will drive the narrative and endgame mechanics of our game. Gone are the binary good and evil tropes of old, and in its stead we present the Tri-axis Philosophical Index. Choices throughout the game will move you along three axes that follow the world’s philosophies of Altruism, Hedonism, and Rationalism. Your movement and placement in this index will have narrative, gameplay, and endgame consequences as you conduct your war in Attiras, and the outcomes of your campaign are myriad.
As gamers and game makers, we lean into the complexities we’ve built in Forged of Blood. Through the complex depth of our mechanics we’ve found freedom in gameplay, and we are extremely proud of that. However, we do know that it is not for everyone, and we have gone to great lengths to make sure that everyone can play and enjoy our game. For our weapons, we have provided two archetypes that will auto-level your characters as they gain ability points. With our spellcrafting we provide a selection of pre-set spells that will scale in power as your character grows more powerful. And finally, we provide gameplay sliders that will give players the freedom to play our game the way they want to.
It had taken us three years, five months, and seventeen days to get here, but the studio and I are by no means “done with this game. In the coming weeks and months we will continue to refine and tune the game. In the immediate days that will follow our launch, we will be watching, listening and reacting to your feedback and we hope to smooth any rough edges as we go. Internally, we have our own back-log of refinements that we will be taking on and we will share these updates with you as we go.
From all of us here at Critical Forge, I welcome you to Attiras and hope that you will enjoy our game.
On a personal note to my team: Sharing this announcement, this game, and this moment with you is one that I will never forget. We are fortunate to have had fans, friends, and family pushing us ever forward in the long years of development. We have had the chance to work with some incredible talent from around the world; and none of this would have been possible without you and the work you have put into this game.
Thank you.
– Igor
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