Following my time at PAX EAST, I plan on doing weekly pieces on some of my personal favorite finds during my time on the floor.  This will be the first in the series.

Full disclosure: I played a demo for this game at PAX EAST 2015 and had a good time speaking to game developers.  After my time with the game, I was given the gift of a small compass from the game developers as a thank you for playing their game.

Now that the official disclaimer is out of the way, I’d like to speak to you, the Enthusiacs, briefly about Renowned Explorers: International Society, by Abbey Games.  Renowned Explorers is a turn based strategy game that put me in command of a team of three explorers in some of the creepiest dark woods I’ve seen rendered in the Indie scene.  My mission was to make contact with a potential questionable mayor of a town across the map.

Exploration takes place by moving from node to node.  It’s up to me to decide which node I wish to visit, and whether or not to take a straight path or a round-about route to explore.  Nodes indicated possible threats and potential loot hiding out before I visited them.

The threats I encountered were primarily wolves, though being procedurally based, I’m told I had a likely chance of also running into hostile villagers instead.  My crew consists of a magic sorcerer, a squishy support character which reminded me of a shaman, and a luchador wrestler.  An eclectic bunch, certainly, but it would seem Renowned Explorers isn’t going to let historical accuracy get in the way of fun.

The combat of the game is intuitive, consisting of main attacks, special attacks that need a certain number of turns to cool down before use again.  The turn consists of one attack and one movement, but neither is considered mandatory. Enemy AI was also quite clever.  On the occasions when I tried to create my own Thermopylae pass, enemies new to go around.  They would gang up on my party members and keep strength in numbers to their attacks.  It certainly kept it interesting.

There’s also the ability to intimidate or be friendly with the enemy.  Oddly enough, these tactics will cause the opponent to lose the intent to fight, the result of which is a lowering of the health bar.  This can lead to some interesting interactions when a rifle wielding old lady was sweet talked by my shaman, only to be subsequently knocked out by my luchador.  It takes good cop, bad cop to a bit of an extreme.

Ultimately, my journey allowed me to discover that the mayor was actually a murdering tyrant, which opens up new options at the final encounter of the game.  Of course, lean paragon, so I had to oust the mayor the only way I saw fit: violence.  I can’t let a murdering tyrant keep power.  I am the law.

To be perfectly honest, turn based RPG’s just aren’t in my wheelhouse, so I may not be the most discerning, but I can honestly say I had fun playing the demo for this game.  I appreciated the focus on storytelling in the second person, and aesthetics were really quite pleasing.  It was simple enough for somebody like me to jump in and play, but I ignored plenty of buttons in the interface which would suggest there is more in store for those who prefer depth.  It’s a fun game and I’d recommend anybody who enjoys this kind of thing to, at the very minimum, give it a look.

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Renowned Explorers: International Society is expected to be released 3rd quarter 2015 on Steam.