A Sinister Valentine’s Day

Posted by Rampant Coyote on February 14, 2012

Craig Stern’s Telepath RPG: Servants of God is a top-down, 2D, story-heavy, turn-based tactical RPG that has been in development over three years (at least it’s been over three years since I first heard about it and played the original demo). It’s been available for pre-order for something like eighteen months now. But, as previously announced, today is release day for the epic Steampunk / Middle-East flavored indie RPG.

Telepath RPG: Servants of God by Sinister Design

It’s strong on tactics, flavor, theme, world design, and characters. Tons of voice-acting, tons of thought, tons of choices, inter-character relations, turn-based tactical combat, etc. On the surface, this should be a dream indie RPG. Now that it’s released (or rather, should be shortly) and that crunch mode may be finally receding this week, I look forward to getting a chance to devote a few hours to it.

The world of Telepath RPG is one of oppression under a totalitarian theocratic regime. As a religious guy, I do worry about the anti-theocracy message turning into an anti-religion message. But considering how a study of medieval history in high school left me horrified at the atrocities committed in the name of Christianity, and similar acts committed right now in the middle eastern world under the guise of religion, I do feel I can be sympathetic to the theme. We’ll see how I feel if / when I manage to finish the dang thing. Hopefully it avoids preachiness and strikes a good balance. There was nothing that I encountered in my short previous playthroughs that led me to believe otherwise.

Another minor area of concern for me has been the purely deterministic results of combat. It’s all tactics, with no invisible dice determining hit chances or damage. This makes it more of a pure strategy game, like Chess or Go, and less like a traditional war game where players must contend with a chance of failure for even the best-laid tactics, and be prepared to revert to a plan B. Again, in practice with the demo, it didn’t bug me. Maybe several hours into the game this results in a tedious repetition of tactics, but this is a concern with any RPG, whether it has randomness or not.

But ultimately, I’m looking forward to the story, writing, and characters. From what I have seen and played, these look great, and the entire game looks like a winner. Telepath RPG: Servants of God is a fresh concept in RPGs, with a unique world and approach to the genre.  I’m a big fan of tactical combat in RPGs, so this should be a lot of fun to try out. I’m really excited about giving this one a more thorough test-drive.

But maybe not tonight. Valentine’s day and all that. I’m lucky enough to have plans with the lady. 🙂  But soon.

 

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