Tortured Hearts - Released

After a long developmentment time Tortured Hearts has been released:

Tortured Hearts - Or How I Saved The Universe. Again

Tortured Hearts - Or How I Saved The Universe. Again. was created by 1 person with the occasional help of a few others, in 12.5 years. It's a quasi sequel of 2 NWN-1 mods by the title of Tortured Hearts I & II.
This is an old fashioned, hard-core CRPG featuring turn-based combat and an estimated 200 hours play time, minimum. TH is supposed to be speed-run proof. The story of the game is about a Seasoned Adventurer who merely was out for a little loot and glory, but finds him/herself getting to the bottom of who actually runs the universe.
The story is conversation driven and spans 185 areas in a multiverse, with a potential 8 major henchmen plus a few lesser ones available. Hundreds of NPCs and many meaningful conversations await you. Your behavior and answers in conversation will result in lasting consequences through the game, influencing the henchmen available to you and your relationships with them, the quests available, and the outcomes of quests and the final outcome.
There is a very versatile, non-class based character development system. By using different character builds and choosing different actions, there is great re-playability.

Click to expand...

More information.

Thank you for the support.

I'm watching Fluent's new TH video at the moment.

Lovely, lovely RPG. I feel as though it was specially made just for me! Can't wait to explore more of the huge, immersive world that is offered here.

I'm a sucker for this kind of thing but the lack of an inverted mouse option is making it difficult to get immersed. If they don't patch it in soon I'll have to see about a third party program. Can't be worse than dealing with NWN2's camera.

Not in a rush, just started Geneforge, but this looks fun.

Mosaic said:

...but the lack of an inverted mouse option is making it difficult to get immersed...

Click to expand...

I'll see what I can do.

I have implemented the inverted mouse. The next update will feature it, although I'll wait a bit for more "issues", if any.

If anyone has problems with the wasd controls, try the alternative control scheme and see if it helps.

I'm in the market for a new game inspired by D&D at the moment, but for some reason your game doesn't appeal to me.

I've read the Steam page, watched the video, looked at the screenshots and read Fluent's review and dipped in to some of his videos.

Firstly, the title is really weird. If the expected market for the game is only people who've played the NWN mod, then that's fine, but aside from that, it sounds like a generic JRPG title. To which there's nothing wrong with that, other than non-fans of JRPGs likely wont look while JRPG fans will look and not find a JRPG.

Further, it implies its a love story, so, again, you might just get people looking for a porn game and, again, being disappointed.

After getting past the title, the screenshots don't show anything other than an empty environment other than assets, and the assets by themselves are not of any interesting uniqueness to arouse any kind of interest.

The video trailer is quite a mish-mash of random facts thrown randomly at the viewer, always in a tone of excessive humour. This has quite a serious tonal impact on the viewer which, combined with the odd assets, suggests the game might be a parody game or possibly even a meme game.

And this conflicts sharply with the description and Fluent's review that suggests the game is predominantly a serious attempt at making an epic adventure with no-end of character choices and consequences - AKA, it's not really just a big gag-fest.

The description and Fluent's review both seem to imply the game is more of a puzzling and talking adventure game than an RPG, where the emphasis is on dialogues and pixel hunting for treasure.

Combat seems to be an after-thought and is barely mentioned anywhere and loot seems to come from non-combat situations. It seems to have combat, but its not really a talking point.

There's an appeal to D&D fans but in the description you make reference to a classless character system, which, again, seems counter-intuitive and confusing to any potential customer.

I commend Fluent on his Let's Play of it, but games with such a high priority given to dialogue screens don't really watch that well, so I probably missed a lot of stuff by constantly flicking through the vids before turning off.

And yet I feel bad for feeling all these things while looking into your game's pitch. However, when I saw you were asking £30 for it, I didn't feel so bad in finding myself in a very critical mindset. And since there hasn't been much else in the way of feedback I thought I'd say all this stuff as it might be the kind of feedback you're looking for if you're not understanding why you're not getting any other feedback?

This game doesn't want to appeal to everyone.

It's really meant for the Fluent-type RPG-ers. And as you can see, he enjoys it.

If one plays the game a bit, he will find the answer to the question of the title.

I love the game. It's got an entirely handcrafted world, with everything in its right place. I imagine some loot is random, such as some combat loot, but it all feels really special and handmade. It has the same sort of handcraftedness as a Gothic game.

It's also hard to explain, but the game is so huge you should expect a lot of talking and fumbling thru combat at the start. Once u get some buff items (musical instruments, potions, store bought buffs) and a decent weapon, you will start appreciating combat more. Especially when u recruit a companion.

The game appeals to me because I played the entire Tortured Hearts NWN module, the first one, and spent 100 hours with it and had a lot of fun. This is like that but also much different, and very good for my tastes.

I can answer questions if you guys have some.

Sure, can you explain in more detail what is involved with the classless character system and how this impacts and what are the character choices?

lackblogger said:

Sure, can you explain in more detail what is involved with the classless character system and how this impacts and what are the character choices?

Click to expand...

It's classless but there are archetypes u can choose, such as Bard, Rogue, Melee (Bare Handed), Ranged, Melee (Small Weapons), etc.. Or, you can create a character from scratch and develop your own skill choices.

There are tons of skills that are mostly D&D-ish. There are many skill checks everywhere for the various skills.

You can be either a human or dwarf, male or female, and this likely affects things in the game as well, such as dialogue and what choices you'll have available (you'll have to ask subbassman more about this since i've only played now as a human male.)

There are many choices in character creation. There are various forms of magic that take different stat pools to operate - psionics, bardic, healing, arcane, etc. etc.. There are a lot of advanced calcuations for how you deal damage in combat.

Combat is based on an overall archetype package u choose to see the AI carry out. You can be hands on and use potions, cast buffs, use musical instruments and whatever other boons u have at your disposal, but the combat is AI based. You select how "strong" you want to be in terms of what level of anger, power or aid you want to deploy, each affecting your combat performance in different ways. Also, you can pick an overall archetype such as Rogue, Martial, Music, etc., and your character will pull abilities from that archetype during combat. It's pretty interesting and cool and satisfying when u know what you are doing.

Hope that answers your questions. There is plenty of loot combat, too. Lots of little items to tinker with, for sure.

This is an adventure game as the combat is behind the scenes, basically. The game mostly consists of walking around talking to the same few people over and over. If you pick the right dialog choice, then the game progresses. If you guess wrong, just come back later. I fought a couple battles and saw that the game was severely limited in build potential and never went back. However, I appreciate all the work SB did, so will buy a copy next time I make a Steam purchase. A lot of the loot is hidden behind conversational choices.

If you gain levels in a particular combat skill, the AI will use new options.
So, you will not only deal greater damage or have a greater chance of landing a successful attack, but your character will do new things.

crpgnut said:

This is an adventure game as the combat is behind the scenes, basically. The game mostly consists of walking around talking to the same few people over and over. If you pick the right dialog choice, then the game progresses. If you guess wrong, just come back later. I fought a couple battles and saw that the game was severely limited in build potential and never went back. However, I appreciate all the work SB did, so will buy a copy next time I make a Steam purchase. A lot of the loot is hidden behind conversational choices.

Click to expand...

Let me address this. The early game definitely consists of talking to a lot of people and a lot of dialogue. But you could easily dip out at any time and start exploring the early level areas with combat.

Also, there is an element of having to continue the conversation to get to the ending point (for the moment, NPCs will open up with new dialogue later.) You could say you have to figure out the right thing to say to continue the conversation, but u don't have to come back later. Just talk to the NPC again and choose the proper answer to continue the conversation.

Finally, I thought there was quite a lot of build variety. Ranged, melee small weapons, melee large weapons, bardic magic with or without instruments, psionics, arcane, healing, rogue abilities, etc.. And you can also boost Communication and Animal Lover if you want to try a mostly passive approach. There is also Combat Tactics, small and large weapon skills, Dirty Tricks, etc., and the individual STR/AGI/DEX/etc. stats to boost that directly affect your combat build. Loot also makes a big difference, and you'll have to figure out the best strategy for picking an archetype based on what gear you're using as well.

Edit - There's also plenty of dungeon diving, which is fun.

This game looks pretty good and I think the content fits the price. I'll be picking it up.

It's always advisable to try the demo first and also watch Fluent's videos.

It's cheap. Just buy a copy. We need more people making games like this, even if it isn't my cuppa

As they mentioned, though, the game doesn't want to appeal to everyone, and I'm afraid that includes me. The whole style and tone just isn't my bag, baby. Best of luck to them, though - seems like a legit project.

i'm 25 hours in and there's a great game to be had here. it has a steep entry level but once u dig in u will find a lot to like here. i recommend it whole heartedly but with a caveat that u must spend time with it to see it shine. if u have patience and are looking for something epicly huge and new, with tons of RPG features, give this a go.

any chance on a gog version ?