Paradox Interactive Message Board older than one year ago

I played Impire last week, although my hands-on time just about saw me through the tutorial so I didn’t get to summon any truly horrible minions. My dungeon was packed with scurrying imps of various sorts though and, later, with heroes too. The brief hands-on session revealed Impire to be a solid take on dungeon management, with a neat incorporation of simple overworld missions and combat that is more engaging than it first appears. It’s also an attractive game and while you’ll have to wait a couple of days for my full impressions, you can watch a few minutes of playthrough footage from the first scenario right now, which gives a good look at the all-important interface.

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#pc Niche PC publishers Paradox held a big event earlier today, unveiling a range of new titles and DLC for existing ones. The one I'm most excited for is The Old Gods, a Viking expansion for my 2012 GOTY nominee Crusader Kings II. More »

Impire is apparently due for release in early Q1 2013, which translates as ‘soon’. I’ll be seeing more of the game, which revolves around those PC staples of dungeon construction and monster management. During my brief look at the game, I was impressed by the impact the animations had on the impartation of character. The minions were already polished little blighters, likeable in a comically cruel sort of way. The overworld missions should add some longevity and tactical depth to the tunnelling and torturing. I shall be seeing more of the game in the very near future soon and will report back then. In the meantime, here’s a new video with music that may have come from Fred Wester’s personal collection.

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Annoyingly, Mr Walker has already provided an excellent impersonation of map-loving Adam In his Crusader Kings II expansion post. I can’t compete with his skewering of him, so instead I’m going to copy him, but in Afrikaans, because it has the best translation of “mumble”. Thanks to Google Translate. “If you listen, you can hear him mumbling to himself about how much he loves Crusader Kings II March Of The Eagles. Listen now… [mompel mompel awrite ourkid ek is lief vir Maart van die Arende mal vir dit mompel mompel]“. What prompted this erudite expression of map-lust? This talking head with the excellently named Chris King talking about his Napoleonic War game.

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#crusaderkings You may have noticed. I like Crusader Kings II. I like it a lot. But I like it for all kinds of reasons, many of which I didn't get space, or time, to dwell on last year. More »

A few years back, seeing a game was published by Paradox meant you could be sure it was going to be something like March Of The Eagles – a hardcore-looking RTS, more map than bump mapping. The Napoleonic warmongering follows a decade of the era, from 1805 to 1815 (see how I didn’t do a lame “ten minutes!” joke – that’s how you know I love you), and is shown off in a new trailer.

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Unlike intrepid magely adventurer Craig Pearson, I haven’t played Dungeonland but when Paradox publish a fantasy-themed game in which players co-operate and die pathetically and hilariously, I reserve the right to compare that game to Magicka. Of course, I also reserve the right to say it doesn’t actually sound all that similar to that particular four-player farce, with an emphasis on unique class abilities rather than confused sorcericide. Beta signups for the theme park themed ARPG are now open. A random selection of applicants will receive access and signups close on December 1st. You can also watch a video below. It’s not new or anything like that, I just thought someone might have missed it.

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The latest trailer for Paradox's A Game of Dwarves takes a look at the many classes of dwarves that players will encounter. Like the digger dwarf, known as "Diggy." Strangely, fighter dwarves don't seem to be known as "Fighty" or "Stabby."

A new batch of DLC has been released for Magicka. Entitled "Dungeons & Daemons," it plops the game's enrobed heroes into a dank (probably smelly) dungeon, where they battle monsters and demons. The DLC seems awfully familiar - let's just say that Magicka's wizards (and designers) have been practicing their blizzard spells.

'Dungeons & Daemons' is available now for $4 on Steam.

I love maps and I love horror, but is it possible for a map to be frightening? Defcon says ‘yes, they most certainly can’, and then the next thing it says is a a sequence of numbers, a countdown, a terrible unnerving countdown. Maps communicate events and some events, nuclear war being a notable example, are certainly the stuff of horror. Today, Paradox announced a new Hearts of Iron game, East Vs West, which takes place between 1946 and 1991. All nations are playable and there are “a host of tense features, from taking issues in front of the UN Security Council to nervously watching the game’s Doomsday clock.” The horror. Large words and historical footage make up the trailer below.

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TaleWorlds Entertainment urges you to suit up and get your ax swinging arm primed because its Mount & Blade series is set to continue in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord.

Though the game takes place in a time where boisterous fanfare would have been the norm for major announcements, publisher Paradox Interactive only quietly confirmed the continuation of the medieval hybrid RPG series with a detail-free teaser. You know, small details like release time frame and platforms (though, PC is a given).

In the YouTube description of the teaser, TaleWorlds promises the upcoming action-RPG strategy hybrid "will take players on a journey into a fictional world of up-close and personal medieval combat on a huge scale." The developer doesn't go into details on new features but says additions include those that have been "highly requested."

Oh, and there's going to be a lot more blood. Bring a sponge.Ride again in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord

#waroftheroses Most developers creating games set in the present day do some amount of research. They go shoot the guns the game will feature, or go drive the cars, take some pictures of the city streets they'll be recreating, that sort of thing. More »

It’s not all CKII and EUIV over at Paradox’s grand strategy development studio, with another expansion for Hearts of Iron III due at the end of this month and the recent announcement of Napoleonic warmongerer March of the Eagles. It’s a smaller game, at least in terms of the time it covers, and the first part of a developer diary from studio manager Johan Andersson contains more information on what it’s all about: “It has the war focus from Hearts of Iron, the time frame and visuals from Europa Universalis, and victory conditions similar to those you’ve seen in Sengoku.” I’ll be speaking to Johan soon to find out more. In the meantime, here’s a trailer because I know that everybody likes to watch maps being maps.

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#pc As hinted at a month ago, Paradox Interactive, masters of the big PC strategy game, will be shrinking one down for play on something a little more portable. More »

Europa Universalis IV won’t be out for a long time but it’s already looking polished and that could be the most important fact of all. Whatever new features are in place, whatever old ones have been kicked to the courtly curb, the time that Paradox Development Studio are spending to make the sequel the most stable entry in the series is clear evidence that previous praise hasn’t drowned out criticism and commentary. In terms of development and content alike, this is a timely tale of choices, consequences and progress.

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If there was no Europa Universalis there almost certainly wouldn’t be a Victoria, a Hearts of Iron or a Crusader Kings. There probably wouldn’t be a Paradox, at least not in its current form. The success of the game, with all its complexities and oddities, led to sequels, expansions and Caesarean spin-offs. Earlier today, the company announced that Europa Universalis IV is in development and we’ll hopefully find out much more at Gamescom next week, but through skilled diplomacy we have managed to secure some early details and screens.

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If you’re not quite as obsessed with grand strategy games as me, it’s entirely conceivable that you don’t know that Paradox have been teasing an announcement from their internal development studio. They’ve done this in typical humurous style, dropping obscure hints that are far from obscure and building up to a video announcement that should be streamed on their twitch.tv channel very shortly, which is to say 3pm UK time (4pm CET, 10am EST). You may have missed it already, but it should be archived there for a short while and if not I’ll find a copy and link/embed it somewhere hereabouts. We’ll have more details on the announcement later this evening, so do check back. In the meantime, why not join in the discussion and speculation over at the Paradox forums.

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The gates open wide, and three cheery adventurers step forward into Dungeonland: a stocky warrior; a thin and nimble rogue; and a big-bellied mage. Dungeonland is the titular amusement park where heroes can mindlessly slaughter hordes of ne'er-do-wells to their heart's content.

However, beyond the groups of enemies and bright facade of the park lies a devious mind that controls the waves of brutes impeding the heroes' progress. This is the dungeon master, another player who has the same job as those controlling the adventurers. Kill the other guys!

War of the Roses’ ranged combat is as messily violent as the up close and personal sheathing of swords in skulls, as shown in a video of arrows puncturing arteries and organs. Impressively horrible and anarchically comedic at the same time, my deathmatch instincts quiver with anticipation. The way that arrows bend as they lodge in a target is the kind of detail that could make every kill all the more deliciously memorable. The footage is edited together from tournament footage gathered during Paradox’s trip to San Francisco and the entire conflict can be viewed here.

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Impire, a new strategy game from Cyanide Studios, was announced by Paradox Interactive today at the Paradox On Tour event.

Impire stars Bjal-Abaddon, a demon imp who's out to reclaim his once-great status with your help. Bjal-Abaddon can "evolve into a powerful dungeon lord" while you customize his weapons and armor, build a dungeon and kill crusading heroes attempting to take down your army of darkness. Not all of it takes place underground, however, as Impire also lets you send raiding parties to the surface for loot.

The campaign is playable both in single-player and co-op, and Impire will also have some multiplayer modes for up to four people (Paradox will share more on those later). Impire is slated to launch on the PC during the first quarter of 2013.

Strategic spell-biffing is now available in a multiplayer form with the release of Warlock’s 1.2 patch. Multiplayer is still in beta and you can read what happened when I tested it or, if you own the game, jump into a match yourself. The patch also adds Lords and Artifacts, powerful heroes and items to bolster your uncanny forces, as well as addressing balance issues and tweaking the AI. Patch notes are here, although there seem to be lots of minor alterations that people are discovering, so it’s worth reading deeper into the thread if you want to know more. There’s no hotseat, unfortunately, with multiplayer working solely through Steam, but maybe that could change if there’s enough demand.

When Warlock was announced I was so pleased at the prospect of turn-based spellbiffing that I didn’t notice that multiplayer was missing from the list of features. By the time someone pointed out to me that I’d be unable to challenge other budding masters of magic to spelling bees I’d already imagined raining fire on the armies of friends and enemies alike, so I just chose to accept multiplayer would be added closer to release. It wasn’t. But a multiplayer mode will be going into beta in the not too distant future and, being one of the foremost magicians in the land, I was invited to try it out. Four players, four and a half hours, stalemate. So why do I feel like I lost?

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Would you like to help build a virtual dwarven civilization? Would you like the super exclusive opportunity to do it before other like-minded dwarf-lovers get a chance? If so, the upcoming closed beta for A Game of Dwarves is for you! Paradox Interactive has announced that applications for the beta are now being accepted, with the beta itself set to kick off on Friday, July 13.

If you still don't know what this whole A Game of Dwarves thing is about, the trailer above should lay it all out rather nicely. The beta application deadline is July 2.

#waroftheroses Back at PAX East, Stephen Totilo spent some time with War of the Roses by Fatshark, a studio that unapologetically credits Call of Duty and Battlefield as inspirations in this ultra-throwback to combat shoot—uh, stabbers? More »

#crusaderkingsii Given the fact most big games are made by Westerners for Westerners, we don't often get the chance to assume the role of a serious, proper Islamic character. And no, Ubisoft, a fairy-tale, clichéd ideal of a Persian Prince doesn't count. More »

Magicka – much like a vampire or reality television – is seemingly incapable of death. Somewhat brilliantly, it’s traversed locations as far flung as Cthulhu’s stomping grounds and, er, Vietnam and lived to tell the incredibly silly tale. And now, it’s letting you play as a villain, because how else do you impress people after exploring the two least likely settings possible? So this time around, you’re Alucart the vampire, and your goal is to make a bunch of fantasy cliches hate each other. “But how,” you’re probably wondering, probing the deepest dungeons of your brain only to find cobwebs, bats, and repressed memories. Well, er, you know: with magic. Like it says in the title. See for yourself after the break.

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Perhaps it was a mistake to send a jack of few trades to become a master of one, but strategic sorcery monsterbasher, Warlock: Master of the Arcane, has been in my sights for a good while now. After a great deal of conjuring and conquering, with very little in between, I have the flowing beard and haunted visage of a man who is accustomed to peeling back the fabric of reality and fashioning new life from the celestial clay that lurks beyond. I’ve also got a pretty good idea wot I think about this Warlocking business.

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With only a few days until release, we asked some of the questions raised by beta experiences in Warlock: Master of the Arcane, and also found out how much of an influence Master of Magic really was and why. Plans for multiplayer are discussed, as is the reasoning for avoiding tactical battle screens and sticking to the strategic map.

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When I play a big multiplayer combat game, I like to stop fighting and look around. I judge a lot of games on what I see at those moments, seeing how the battle feels when I’m not a part of it: In Battlefield, it’s thrilling to see jets gracefully curving through the air as tanks blast them from below; In Team Fortress 2, ubered Heavies leading a charge as the enemy hastily rework their defenses makes me happy. During a lull in my hands-on of War of the Roses, I took stock: to my right, through grasses and the trees, I watched a knight stand up, yanking his sword up out of the face of an unseen body on the ground. The effort it took to wrench metal from skull was beautifully transparent from the animation. Behind him, a galloping horse dropped in that heavy way horses do, crashing to the ground and out of sight in seconds, spilling its lance-wielding rider. A lot of intimate battles formed as the slow, deliberate combat locked people together.(more…)

#fanfeedback "The very first death threat I got was when we decided not to support dedicated servers in Modern Warfare 2," Robert Bowling the former public face for the Call of Duty series recently told me. More »