Wildermyth
Wildermyth is very special. Combat is turn based, with lots of story and character interaction through comics. The engine that drives the story is really clever. There's a series of fixed stories to play through, plus randomly generated ones, and community content. Each story starts out with a set of heroes. Each character can be completely customised in terms of face, body etc giving you unique characters to play with. The story unfolds through comics which are also randomly generated including your characters and dialogue. The artwork is beautiful. All the characters have their own classes and skills, and consequences last. It's really well put together and highly memorable.
Pros
- Very clever engine for generating the story and character interaction
- Character figures show their equipment in battle and comics
- The mystic has a really unique mechanic I haven't seen in other games. Instead of a book of spells, they can draw power from inanimate objects on the scene and use them to cast different effects. Wooden furniture can explode into splinters, chairs can be turned into lances, plants can grab enemies etc. And the spell effects originate from where the object is, not the Mystic which gives you lots of options for line of sight.
- Really good turn based combat
- Characters are unique. There's a clever facial/body generation system to make everyone different
- Characters also have unique traits and personalities, which actually affect their dialogue
- The UI and the game world is made of paper, and all hand drawn
- The overworld gives you a good amount of choice on how you want to use your resources. One big party to do things quicker, or split up, be slower, and risk getting ambushed?
- If a character suffers some permanent effect like a facial disfigurement, or loses an arm, that shows on their character and affects their dialogue
- Loads of really cool events to discover. One of my characters got a gem embedded in her head that let her see the future. Another one got a flaming fiery hand.
Cons
- The language in the comics can be a little weird. I think this is a side effect of the random generation, but some of it is definitely deliberate. It's not a problem, just kind of weird. I assumed it was developed by a non-English team, but it's American
- The game generally snowballs a bit. If you're doing well, you tend to keep doing well. But if you lose some heroes, the game gets harder. Doesn't take too long before it feels unwinnable