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[KellyD20Studios]

^{Scaly terrors are on their way...}

Fan of Lizardmen? 

You're in luck - we are working on adding some incredible new playable Lizardmen to Summoners Fate. Here's some of the art for characters and weapons we are working on.

Who's excited to control these vicious reptilians?

[KellyD20Studios]

^{Do NOT sing "Be Our Guest"  ...}

Meet the Minotaur!

Part bull and part man, Minotaur escaped the Greek labyrinth and has stumbled onto the Summoners Fate battlefield. He struggles daily against his darker, savage side to hold on to his humanity. But with sharp horns and axe by his side, he can't hold out any longer...

What do you think? This character will ram into his enemies that he charges, dealing damage equal to the distance moved. He will likely have Knockback ability, too.

Would you play as this beast?

[KellyD20Studios]

Follow-up to our previous post - here is our Summoners Fate Minotaur - and he's charging stuff on the battlefield (sound included!).

What do you think? 

[KellyD20Studios]

It's dark, it's cold, it's musty...is that blood on the ground? The Dungeon for Summoners Fate!  

This environment includes so many incredible components that we couldn't include them all here. What we featured: dungeon floor tileset, dungeon walls, wooden and stone furniture (used for ambiance, line-of-sight considerations, and barriers), playable characters - the Armored Rat and the Goblin Champion, and other miscellaneous decorations (spiderwebs, old bones of defeated enemies, blood splatters, etc.!).

Summoners Fate will feature many different environments, including village, desert, jungle, ice/snowy environment, and much more!

What do you think of the Dungeon Environment?

[Cogenic]

Ross, It would seem that weapons by class would be easiest to understand and implement. Some weapons could be multi-class. Most could be upgrades. (Short bow, long bow, hunter bow, Elven bow, etc. for example) Each could have it's own power factor and/or special ability. Not sure what you're thinking about the cards, though. Would they be stacked, do they have turn limits, can be be traded out? That may be a deciding factor.

[KellyD20Studios]

Yes...let the chaos flow through you

Follow up to a previous Chaos Weapon sketch post from 7/11 with the finished weapons.

Chaos Warriors, equipped with these weapons, coming soon...

SummonersFate.com

[RossD20Studios]

Ross, It would seem that weapons by class would be easiest to understand and implement. Some weapons could be multi-class. Most could be upgrades. (Short bow, long bow, hunter bow, Elven bow, etc. for example) Each could have it's own power factor and/or special ability. Not sure what you're thinking about the cards, though. Would they be stacked, do they have turn limits, can be be traded out? That may be a deciding factor.

Thanks, Cogenic! I think you're right with weapons sorted by class being the most easy to understand.

Equipment cards could be weapons, armor or helmet. The way I am envisioning them working is that you "drop" the card onto the character to equip. Doing so changes the appropriate skin and animation stance/SFX as needed. The equipment would work like a permanent status effect for the duration of an entire dungeon. This means you can equip an item in one room, and move on to the next room continuing to use that item. Equipping a new item with the same "slot" (ex: helmet over helmet) would replace the existing item. Magic/abilities, such as a "Rust" card could also destroy equipped cards. Doing so would revert the character back to their base skin that comes standard with their card (these weapons/equipment are indestructible).

I've almost finished implementing the equipment system (design restrictions on who can equip what aside) - I'll aim to post a video here in the next few days for further feedback.

[KellyD20Studios]

^{Wonder what a wet Orc would smell like...}


Our Banner Art for Summoners Fate is really coming along, with 2 more finished characters! Here is our original sketch:



What do you think?

**For those wondering about our Orc Chief's name, we had a community-naming-contest back in February, and we loved what the community came up with!

[KellyD20Studios]

^{And you thought Fidget Spinners were sick...}

See our Iron Golem's spin attack! Who would love to take out their enemies like this?  

Iron Golem and his over 200 friends...coming soon SummonersFate.com

[KellyD20Studios]

Hey, we could use your help. We can't decide which coloring of the Flesh Golem we like best.

Our Flesh Golem in Summoners Fate is a summoned creature made up of sewn- and strewn-together humanoid body parts! He's one of our favorite characters we used in Hero Mages; in that game, when the Mage was attacked, the Golem took the damage for the Mage. He also had a strong attack, making his exceedingly powerful (although costly to summon).

Which Flesh Golem coloring do YOU like best - 1, 2, or 3?

[KellyD20Studios]

On our social media pages (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook) this weekend, we've been featuring our Bandit race for Summoners Fate. Here are some of our posts of these roguish outlaws:


<sup>Bandits on the Battlefield! Screenshot from Summoners Fate


She leads her team of outlaws in the forgotten areas of Summoners Fate. But one stab of her deadly sword, and you won't soon forget her...


He forged his axe himself, motivated by anger, frustration, and bloodlust. He's not an officially trained soldier, he learned his battling skills in alleys and dark corners - but on the battlefield, you won't be able to tell as he wields his two-handed weapon of death.



No one would describe her life as easy - she has a troubled past and many enemies. With her trusty dagger by her side, her eye is on the prize: not to make her enemies life easy either...


She's not an official member of the Bandits, but the Thief often finds herself fighting alongside them. She's cunning, she's swift, and she's sneaking up on you with two daggers...RUN!</sup>

What do you think? Would you like to play as a Bandit in Summoners Fate?

[KellyD20Studios]

We posted our Bandit race yesterday. Now here's a video - Bandits in action!

What do you think?

[Kevin G]

Did you guys consider including a guard action?  The reason I'm asking is that it might help to prevent the, "now I'm behind you"  backstabbing I'm seeing going on in some of vids.  I know it's not easy thing to implement, but it was a fundamental action for all those old school gold box D&D games.

Otherwise, the game looks great.   


btw, polyhedral dice are cool

[RossD20Studios]

Did you guys consider including a guard action?  The reason I'm asking is that it might help to prevent the, "now I'm behind you"  backstabbing I'm seeing going on in some of vids.  I know it's not easy thing to implement, but it was a fundamental action for all those old school gold box D&D games.

Hi Kevin, thanks for the comment! As a matter of fact, yes, we have done several iterations at creating a guard mechanic. Here's a GIF showing an early concept:



The image shows three characters initially in the "guard" pose: Barbarian on the left, Druid on the bottom, and the Orc. When the Barbarian on the right enters proximity of the guarding enemy Orc, the Orc attacks him (which, had it killed him, would have prevented the backstab). When the Orc is knocked back into the Barbarian, his guard triggers, hitting the Orc again, causing knockback into the Druid, which causes her guard attack to activate.

While I was initially very excited about this mechanic (due to the feel of those old D&D games it provoked), our early play testing showed that players were turned off by it. Reasons included: not understanding why the enemy was attacking them, finding situations where they couldn't kill a unit because a more powerful guarding unit prevented anything from approaching, not being able to understand when guard would/would not trigger, and a perceived "too much brain pain" to compute how to use/exploit the mechanic. Finally, the guard allegedly made it "too hard" to back stab. 

In the current iteration, I've done my best to keep the "spirit" of the mechanic and simplified how it works:
1. All units counter attack after being attacked (So you have to choose to engage a unit for their "guard" attack to work)
2. Each unit gets 1 counter attack per round.
3. If a unit is "overkilled" (the attacker deals more damage than their remaining life) they will be killed without getting a counter attack.
4. In order to counter attack, the attacked unit must be within attack range of their attacker. So if an archer shoots a melee unit from a distance, the melee unit cannot counter. If an archer shoots another archer, the attacked archer will counter.
5. If a unit is "back stabbed" they will not counter - but - if they survive, they can still use their counter attack opportunity if attacked by another enemy from the front/sides.

So, while it's not quite the same as old school D&D, there are a lot of elements to strategize with - and other mechanics (like shields) that you can use to position units in ways that will make it very hard for your enemy to get behind you. I might still consider certain units having a "sentry" ability which would allow them to "guard" like in the GIF above. Also, I really like the concept that units who get "pushed" into an enemy can get attacked by that enemy, so I might make that a special case exception as well so that cunning players can setup kill combos like the one shown above.

Let me know what you think 

[KellyD20Studios]

^{Nobody better mention Casper...}


Can you help us rename this Summoners Fate character?

We originally called him the Ghost; however, we've received much feedback from the community that this isn't the best name for him. Other suggestions we've received is Reaper and Dark Shadow.

A little about this character - he moves by flying. When he attacks, he drains your life and heals himself. He attacks with either claws or a scythe.

What would YOU call this character?  

[KellyD20Studios]

Sketch for an upcoming Chaos Sorcerer for Summoners Fate - what do you think?

[KellyD20Studios]

^{Drumroll please...}

We will be unveiling our new Summoners Fate logo tomorrow - Friday. Our Bard and Samurai are already thrilled to show it to you, so check back! As I'm sure you all know, it is quite tough to get the logo just right - be we think we've done it for our game! Can't wait to share it with you guys and get your expert opinions   

[KellyD20Studios]

Summoners Fate...the logo!

We had some awesome community feedback throughout this process (http://ow.ly/uPt030e9qgg) to make sure it would be EPIC 

What do you think? Pumped to play Summoners Fate?! 

[KellyD20Studios]

Recently we posted about renaming our "Ghost" character for Summoners Fate because the community feedback was that they didn't like this name: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=61234.msg1346483#msg1346483

We received so many amazing name ideas, some good laughs, and some awesome interaction with our community - and we are just blown away by your creativity. There's no way we would have thought of even half of these!

We will be looking through all the names and voting in the coming days. We'll let you know what we decide...if we can!  

[KellyD20Studios]

Sunday Sketches! These will be playable characters for our game.

Some characters currently in development for Summoners Fate - what do you think?