Hi, Khai from Witching Hour Studios here! Some of you may know our little indie set-up through our first title, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion- an epic tale of warring nations, spread through six campaigns of unforgiving TBS tactical warfare. Lauded by critics from Gamezebo, Pocket Tactics, Gamasutra and many others for its rich lore and depth of gameplay as well as content, the game itself has gone from strength to strength as the team continued to build on the world they've created. Alas, all good things must end and as the team uploaded Scourge of Estellion's last campaign, we fondly bid adieu to a title that we've enjoyed working on so much in the past year. You can view the game here at our website: http://www.ravenmark-saga.com/ Whenever a door closes however, a new one opens, and the team have been busy working on our next title, Ravenmark: Mercenaries! Due for a summer 2013 release, Mercenaries is made as a sequel to our original title and aspires to realise the full potential of its table-top gaming origins, with an emphasis on tense but thoughtful head-to-head battles. Personally, after all that hard work and finally seeing everything starting to come together I am both relieved and excited. I'll be giving you a glimpse of what you can expect from us when Summer comes. Check it out! First up: our latest, nail-biting trailer! Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel What you can expect from Mercenaries in the coming weeks: Multiplayer Asynchronous head-to-head battles, with players fielding two of their own brigades against another opponent’s two brigades. Contracts & Engagements Players can assign brigades to pursue a plethora of contracts and engagements outside of multiplayer. Brigades Players control a mercenary commander who directs brigades to fight the turn-based battles of Mercenaries. Other features planned: Commanders Certain mercenary brigades have no captain and go where the wind takes them, but intrepid commanders lead many other brigades with their auras! The Standard Bearer One of the many new features! The Standard Bearer endows useful auras and abilities to augment your mercenary army’s fighting prowess. Each player controls one Standard Bearer per battle. Commander Traits Customizable traits and bonuses for the players to enhance and boost their playing style. Customisable Standard A customizable graphic that represents players in multiplayer battles! For more details visit our page at http://mercs.ravenmark-saga.com/
Ravenmark: Mercenaries looks promising. Is it correct to assume this will emphasize multiplayer and that the only single player component will be standalone side quests geared towards boosting multiplayer resources, "a plethora of contracts and engagements"?
I like what I'm seeing so far. The screenshots and the trailer look great. It will be great to play a tabletop wargame on the go without having to dedicate huge blocks of time to going somewhere and tediously setting up miniatures. This game really needs more publicity than it's getting. I think the mention on Pocket Tactics will help though.
Sorry, R:SOE is NOT expensive. It is more than worth the price. On a console, it would be a premium title, and priced as such (e.g. 60-70). What is the price, 10? For like 10 episodes that others would market as a standalone game for 1-2 at least? R:SOE is easily the best fantasy strategy title for iOS at the moment (actually, I have no other game like it, and I am a genre player). That out of the way, really looking forward to Mercenaries. Curious how it turns out. And I hope that smaller skirmishes are an option. The one thing I did not like in SOE were the large-scale battles. The smaller skirmishes (e.g. parts of the Deepwood Dragoons campaign, or of the first one) played much better. In my opinion, the way the game works is much better suited to those skirmishes.
Let's try not to let this discussion devolve into quibbling about price. It bothers me whenever it comes up, not because I want to censor anyone but when it's about a game that brings you literally dozens of hours of fun for the price of a meal it seems petty. How is it that a person owns a $300+ device but feels that $10 is too much to pay for a deep professional quality game? I suppose it's a matter of value, but you can always download the episodic version and see if it's for you. Anyway, I wonder if the company standard will come on a special element or if you will get to choose the element that carries it from battle to battle.
I think they'll be introducing a new unit, the Standard Bearer, which will be like the 'flag' in a capture-the-flag scenario, except you'll be trying to kill the opponent's bearer.
Fantastic response fellas! My sentiments exactly good sir! Yes sir, but we do have plans to gear the contracts to to affect the storyline in some way. =D Thank you! We're really trying our best in terms of marketing. Ian and Brian heading to PAX East and GDC will be the first major step while Kevin and myself are heading for a local Singaporean convention for tech start-ups in April. I can't say much... but we will/might be appearing on a certain YouTube channel for a review. So watch out for us! In the meantime, please do help spread the word! XD The good news is that Ravenmark: Mercenaries is free to play, so look out for it! XD Aww! You say the nicest things. <3 I do agree that skirmishes are really fun! Don't know how that will translate to multiplayer though...Some strategical aspects of the Multiplayer experience might be lost if it got any smaller. Think it might've been in the plans for the single-player contracts but I need to get back to you on that. With that said, with only 2 brigades per player on the field, it's actually not really a large scale battle. Thank you! I'll get back to you on that Yup yup! Aww hahaha. Dude, I really lol-ed when I first read his Codex in SOE. Thanks guys for the fantastic response! Cheers!
We apologize Due to our web hosting service experiencing a power outage, our teaser site can't be accessed at the moment. I'll bring you fellas up to speed the minute we have it back up. Sorry for the trouble! *ADD UPDATE* Hey guys our sites are back on! Thanks for the patience guys!
Pax East! Wooo! So a crazy week's just ended for us. PAX East has given us tremendous attention and coverage, and I'm pretty sure both Ian and Brian are pretty pooped from all that. They've had quite a few interviews so you can expect to see us a fair bit the coming days. Here's one; the very first article published on us. http://www.phonearena.com/news/Ravenmark-Mercenaries-hands-on_id41180 as well as an earlier article from BeefJack http://beefjack.com/news/ravenmark-mercenaries/ Total Biscuit mentions us here: http://t.co/4KOnAgHaSi and another article here! http://www.imore.com/ravenmark-mercenaries-promises-deep-strategic-warfare-ipad I'll be editing this space when more updates on PAX comes along, so stay tuned! Cheers!
Haha yeah! It's pretty much been bursting with news from PAX! We're really grateful. I think there'll be more coming soon with GDC coming up next! XD
If multiplayer-centric games really aren't my thing, is there any way I'd be able to still see what the advancements in the storyline are? Still chipping my way through Ravenmark 1, but I'd hate to miss out on something story-wise just because I didn't put time into Mercenaries. All the same, best of luck with the game! Hope it's another success for you fine folks!
Hmm, sure. Actually most of the storyline based stuff will be based on the single player aspect of the game- the contracts. We also have the blog! I'm pretty sure I'll be posting up stuff there from time to time! Cheers!
Hey folks! Hey Guys, so it's been a mad fortnight for us with GDC and PAX. Just wanted to share two insightful interviews Ian did, that explains both the single-player and multi-player aspect of Mercenaries. Here you go! Single-player Multi-player Cheers!
Not an issue sir! I'm a storyline junkie myself so I get where you're coming from. XD *UPDATE* A write-up about us by the guys at TUAW! http://t.co/uxBBZCzlox