Age of Decadence - One Week to Release Patch

Just one week to go and Age of Decadence is finally there. Some fine tuning comes with this patch:

Improvements:

• Added extra option to sneakily knock out merchant in TG4.
• TAB toggles an icon over interactive objects and container 20 tiles around the player character.
• You can now take the airship to Maadoran, plus SP and reputation gain for flying it successfuly.
• Better feedback on SP and money changes on dialogue screen.
• Improved visuals in many levels, especially TG in GNZ, TG5 and HA2.
• Added more sounds to the game.
• Improved save screen functionality.
• Added the Ordu to Maadoran.
• Improvements to crafting screen: Best Material selected automatically, inventory lists only decomposable items.

Fixes:

• Fixed checkless Paullus option in MDN Palace Centurion.
• Fixed issue with Healing Machine from AG and Ganezzar.
• Fixed issue with kebab encounter triggering in TG3.
• Clemens charges the same as other doctors.
• Added missing gold rewards from TG questline.
• Added missing SP from some fights and quests.
• Better closure for TG questline, chat with Levir and Glabrio.
• Fixed issue with Maadoran main gate encounter trader speaking from beyond the grave.
• Fixed issues with siege combat in the monastery.
• Fixed wrong cursor staying in dialogue window.
• Fixed HD crossbowmen in Al-Akia not fighting.
• Fixed issue with killing Agathoth for Balzaar ending.
• Fixed issue with not being able to decompose dreamweaver.
• Fixed issues with boatmen not being hurt in TG5.
• Fixed issue with IG8 fight if you loaded a combat save.
• Fixed issue with getting the gem from Silvanus twice.
• Fixed and improved TG GNZ ending sequence.
• Fixed an issue in which the mercenary who found the sphere never got the map quest.
• Fixed issue with permanent highlight of map icons.

Changes:

• TG3: Cart interaction made more clear after merc fight, you can also press the map screen to leave.
• More clear way to leave Vardanis battle area.
• Rebalanced alchemy prices.
• Improved Isandros dialogue flow.

Combat Balance:

• Al Sahir has more alchemy knowledge and a bit higher skills and equipment.

More information.

Thank you for the info, Pladio!

Pladio wrote a Steam-review as well:

Background

• The game takes place in a post-apocalyptic Roman world. You are just one man who lives or arrived in the small town of Teron. The game starts you out as one of eight different backgrounds. These can be:
  
• Preator: A member of the nobility. What more can be said ?
• Loremaster: A learned master in the pre-apocalyptic matters, and there's a lot more to learn
• Assassin: The guild of assassins is a reputable guild in this world and you can be part of them
• Mercenary: As a mercenary, you normally take whatever people throw at you
• Thief: The Thieves' guild has managed to carve out a little empire for themselves.
• Merchant: As a merchant, you may alter the course of history
• Grifter: Grifters tend to con people out of money.
• Drifter: You just came to Teron with the clothes on your back. No one knows you, and no one cares.

Character creation
You start out by creating your character in the game. You do this by allocating attribute and skill points and no matter what your chosen background is, you may distribute these points however you want.

Note that being a Jack of All Trades and a Master of None is very difficult to play in this game.
Focus on a few skills and this will help you out.

Since there are almost 20 skills to choose from, you will notice that it might not be good to just put one point into each of them.

Gameplay
The game plays out on what I would call an isometric view of yourself. (Techy people say it's better to say bird's eye-view)
You control your character using the mouse and most actions are mouse based. The game is text-heavy and will require to read a lot. Luckily, the text and story are well-written and very interestingly, all of the stories interweave into one.
So playing as one background will feel very different than playing as another. This is the main selling point of this game.
No single playthrough will be the same due to so many different ways of completing quests.

Combat is turn-based and requires a lot of planning and investment, so do not think your highly intelligent and charismatic loremaster with zero combat skills will be able to win any fight in this game.
Combat includes such things as aimed attacks, nets, bolas, fire bombs and more. These should all be used if you want to win fights in this game.

Conclusion
For me the major selling point of this game is all of the interweaving story arcs. I have played the game as both a Merchant and a Mercenary and the game played out completely differently based on my actions.

I would recommend this game to anyone who likes turn-based combat systems and good stories and who is not afraid of challenges.

I would not recommend this game to people who dislike turn-based combat systems, reading or are too much into graphics to enjoy older-looking games.

Pros:

• Amazing writing
• Lots of interweaving stories and arcs
• Challenging combat: with old style aimed attacks a la Fallout
• Lots of different skills and attributes affecting almost all questlines
• Interesting guilds and backgrounds to choose from

Cons:

• Old-looking graphics
• Some feelings of being gated sometimes due to missing just one skill point (not enough to not continue the game, but enough to feel a bit annoyed )

Another perspective for any remaining fence-sitters.

Beautiful fine-tuning

Cant wait one more week for the full release

Exciting! Does anyone know whether they're planning on doing anything with the IP post-release (other than bugfixing, I assume)? Expansion? Sequel? *cough*DLC?*cough*

Though I guess that depends on how well the game does…

Vince said he wants to make a tactical combat game first using the same engine.

Then he would like to build a completely new RPG based in space I think.

He needs to sell well for this to happen, as he can't afford doing the same thing again…

i just hope it doesnt need n patches after the "full" release

Originally Posted by Pladio
Then he would like to build a completely new RPG based in space I think.

Yes please!

Originally Posted by wiretripped
Exciting! Does anyone know whether they're planning on doing anything with the IP post-release (other than bugfixing, I assume)? Expansion? Sequel? *cough*DLC?*cough*

Though I guess that depends on how well the game does…

I dislike DLCs, so we won't charge anything for all extra content related to the game. The dungeon crawler is a different story but it will be a stand-alone game with different features (party-based combat, etc).

As for the planned content, we've allocated 3 months to support the game no matter what. During these 3 months we'll work on extra content because why not? Let's call it minor content: extra dialogues, extra quest solutions, minor quests.

If the game sells well enough to extent that time by another 3 months (i.e. we aren't forced to drop everything and start working on the dungeon crawler to stay in business), then we'll add 'major' content: extra quests and sub-locations. This isn't cut content but ideas that occurred to us during development but weren't part of the original design.

The dungeon crawler was always our plan B - what happens if AoD doesn't sell enough to pay for the generation ship game's development: do we give up, take our ball and go home or try something else? Trying something else (a quick and inexpensive game that's all about combat) seems like a better idea.

While our goal is to put together the dungeon crawler in 8-10 months (otherwise it doesn't make sense), we'll do our best to offer new features to make the game more interesting for people who are well familiar with AoD. The setting does call for a reworked armor system (individual pieces you can scavenge and swap around), but we'll see.

Just to be clear, we aren't aiming to make a full-scale crawler a-la Wiz 8. We're aiming to make an $8 game that we can put together in under a year. Fight your way out of a prison mine, probably 40 fights in total.

Oh, ok.

I'll buy this game just for support.

Not my cup of tea, but the above was kinda heart-breaking

It's gonna be a good couple months.

I avoided playing this 'tll it was done (except the early combat demos) and will be buying it the day it's available on gog (it's on the upcoming tab but can't pre-order yet).

I also put off Wasteland 2 & Divinity OS for their updated versions so I guess I know what I'll be playing for a bit.

Good luck on the sales, the generation ship sci-fi game has potential.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Oh, ok.

I'll buy this game just for support.

Ditto. Well, I was going to buy it anyway, but I'll make sure to buy it at full price to support the devs.

Originally Posted by VDweller
I dislike DLCs, so we won't charge anything for all extra content related to the game. The dungeon crawler is a different story but it will be a stand-alone game with different features (party-based combat, etc).

As for the planned content, we've allocated 3 months to support the game no matter what. During these 3 months we'll work on extra content because why not? Let's call it minor content: extra dialogues, extra quest solutions, minor quests.

If the game sells well enough to extent that time by another 3 months (i.e. we aren't forced to drop everything and start working on the dungeon crawler to stay in business), then we'll add 'major' content: extra quests and sub-locations. This isn't cut content but ideas that occurred to us during development but weren't part of the original design.

The dungeon crawler was always our plan B - what happens if AoD doesn't sell enough to pay for the generation ship game's development: do we give up, take our ball and go home or try something else? Trying something else (a quick and inexpensive game that's all about combat) seems like a better idea.

While our goal is to put together the dungeon crawler in 8-10 months (otherwise it doesn't make sense), we'll do our best to offer new features to make the game more interesting for people who are well familiar with AoD. The setting does call for a reworked armor system (individual pieces you can scavenge and swap around), but we'll see.

Just to be clear, we aren't aiming to make a full-scale crawler a-la Wiz 8. We're aiming to make an $8 game that we can put together in under a year. Fight your way out of a prison mine, probably 40 fights in total.

Well good luck to you Vince. I will be buying this game and supporting you at full retail on steam. I read alot of your comments on RPGCodex the past few years, and those angry nerds gave you alot of hassle over your game for no reason because they are jelly they dont have the fortitude to make a game like yours for 10 years. I hope you make enough to create more complex games.

My fantasy space rpg would be XCOM like where your marines run cover to cover and fight aliens on space stations and planet landing zones. Your marine or troops will level up and will have a great branching storyline. Also upgrading equipment and gear etc. More than 7 levels unlike XCOMs soldiers lol.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Oh, ok.

I'll buy this game just for support.

Not my cup of tea, but the above was kinda heart-breaking

I am interested and planned to buy anyway, but pretty much agree with you.

They waited all this time to polish and repolish their game to perfection. That is a very wise attitude and better than 95% of indies.

It remains to see though if it plays too much like a choose your own adventure game.

Originally Posted by Humanity has risen!
It remains to see though if it plays too much like a choose your own adventure game.

It comes fairly close. Your choices *really* do matter. Every subsequent interaction will have an 'imprint' of your past actions on it. No game replay will be the same, ever. I really do enjoy reading walls of text and playing a non-combat character though. I feel the game was made that way.