Northern Shadow - A New First Person RPG

Couchpotato

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Northern Shadow is the labor of love from a small team of Turkish developers. They describe the game as a first person perspective RPG.

Here is the usual video, and more information to see if your interested.



Release date: Summer 2014 for Early Access

Northern Shadow is a first person perspective RPG where you can build and manage your own kingdom. It has both sandbox elements, and a classical RPG story.

Game starts after the great defeat of the Northern Kingdom, at the hands of an unknown enemy. Some of the survivors have traveled to distant lands in hopes of rebuilding the now fallen kingdom.

Features

Your kingdom, your people

Build and improve your own city. Communicate with other kingdoms, negotiate trade agreements and build alliances. Defend your city and your lands.

RPG systems with a skill based focus

In combat, depend on your own skills, rather than statistics on your character sheet. Use spells or weapons, you can play the game your way. Craft weapons for your use, or for your troops.

Living World
Living economy allows you to see the ripples of your own actions all around the world. Your steward will take care of your city while you are gone.

Explore

Discover worlds both above, and beneath the earth. Find precious mineral veins and other treasures.

Gameplay

You can only control your own character. Build your city by talking to your steward, or workers and selecting an appropriate lot from a miniature map. Protect your surrounding lands by ordering patrols and giving special missions to your troops. Troop effectiveness is determined by their training and weapons/armor quality.

Your cities can produce different wares, which you can trade with other kingdoms if you wish, but you have to protect your roads and provide safe environment for traders first. Wage war or form alliances with other computer controlled kingdoms as you see fit.

It is all text based (no voice overs), but has an expanding story with many arcs.
The game looks interesting to me, but what do you all think?

More information.
 
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It sounds like a similar story to Civcraft, though I prefer the genre. I might be interested, but would like to learn more. For me its a competitor for Lichedom and Malevolence, two games I might also eventually purchase, if the reviews turn out positive.
 
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What's with that vid?
I live in a country where I can see impressive helicoptercam nature vids everyday. Probably that's one of reasons I was bored with New Zealand ducumentary footage captured in crap movies by Peter Jackson.

Can I see some ingame action?
 
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Looks great. Interesting they said a lot of those assets are from the Unity Store. Can't work out if that's a fantastic system for small devs or a shovelware-inviting mistake :)
 
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What's with that vid?
I live in a country where I can see impressive helicoptercam nature vids everyday. Probably that's one of reasons I was bored with New Zealand ducumentary footage captured in crap movies by Peter Jackson.

Can I see some ingame action?

Some of us live in Sweden and enjoy the helicoptercam :)
 
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Some of us live in Sweden and enjoy the helicoptercam :)

I really liked it too, although I don't know if it's harder for us in Sweden to look at vids of helicoptercams, and the scenery looks kind of Swedish doesn't it?

"RPG systems with a skill based focus
In combat, depend on your own skills, rather than statistics on your character sheet."

Not actually a good thing in my book, but that depends on implementation, in a real time First-person game I want it to bea little bit of both.

"It is all text based (no voice overs), but has an expanding story with many arcs."

Pure positive to me.

I'm intrigued and might actually by the early access of this if it's reasonably priced just to try it out. It's got some tough competition this summer though, Xenonauts just went 1.0 and D:OS is right around the corner...
 
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What's with that vid?
I live in a country where I can see impressive helicoptercam nature vids everyday. Probably that's one of reasons I was bored with New Zealand ducumentary footage captured in crap movies by Peter Jackson.

Can I see some ingame action?

"Everything is amazing right now... and nobody is happy" - Louis CK
 
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Actually, this is looking like a hybrid RPG/real time strategy/city builder. That's quite a bit for one tiny team to pull off but, if they do, it sure looks like fun!
 
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Definite thumbs up on Greenlight. I prefer stat-based combat, but it still looks interesting.
 
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Looks really good. If they are doing early access, does that mean they are close to release?
 
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Graphics look good. And I like that it is all text no voice overs. But combat based on skills not stats???? Why is it an RPG???? I too will have to wait for word of mouth on this one . . .
 
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this game sounds great and I am looking forward to it.
 
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It does look really good. Sky-cams aside, why all the hate for voice-overs? I think a big sprawling world would be better with characters speaking(I know they're just a small studio)
I am also wondering how much of the game is done. Getting to dislike early access. I have quite a few on my steam account where developers have disappeared after a short time.
 
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It does look really good. Sky-cams aside, why all the hate for voice-overs? I think a big sprawling world would be better with characters speaking(I know they're just a small studio)
I am also wondering how much of the game is done. Getting to dislike early access. I have quite a few on my steam account where developers have disappeared after a short time.

To me, several reasons.

1. Voice overs are expensive. I'd rather that time, effort and money were spent on things I actually enjoy.
2. If everything is voiced, most of the times alot of content has to be cut.
3. If done poorly it makes me lose immersion instead of gaining it.
4. Even if the voice overs are done well, you can read so damn much faster than they speak, so I just skip to next line anyway. Sometimes in games with full voice overs (I'm looking at you Mass Effect) this leads to missed dialogue because it skips further ahead than the next subtitle line. In games that have no voice overs this is never a problem.
5. They're expensive. (So expensive in fact I had to put it on the list twice.)

EDIT: I agree with you on the Early access thing, it's becoming quite the jungle.
 
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To me, several reasons.

1. Voice overs are expensive. I'd rather that time, effort and money were spent on things I actually enjoy.
5. They're expensive. (So expensive in fact I had to put it on the list twice.)

EDIT: I agree with you on the Early access thing, it's becoming quite the jungle.

What he said. There's no hate. I love voice overs but for small developers it is usually a waste of money. I'm not a graphic whore but I would take an upgrade in graphics over voice narration if precious developer funds have to be squeezed to make the best game possible.

When the first Land of Lore came out it had no voice over narration (or very limited). And to this day it would be listed among my best RPGs ever. However the game came out on the cusp of CD roms and an update was soon manufactured to include the voice of Patrick Steward. I have not played the version but I look forward to it.
 
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