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[Massive Chalice] Double Fine Productions' version of fantasy XCOM
valiance
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I didn't see a thread here on PA, and it's launch day and I think the game totally deserves some attention so here we go...
short version: roughly fantasy X-COM on the tactical layer + a generation spanning timeline and eugenic management of heroic bloodlines on the strategic layer. Only $16 from the Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/massivechalice_storefront and also on XBOX ONE
from their wiki
website: http://www.massivechalice.com/
launch trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTFiooCFh7Y
wiki: http://massivechalice.gamepedia.com/Massive_Chalice_Wiki
blog: http://blog.massivechalice.com/
I think @QuestionMarkMan and @DrIanMalcolm wrote for the game
and @MuddBudd has a nice post on it here: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/32660765#Comment_32660765
I slacker backed (kicked in money after the kickstarter ended for some--but not all--of the kickstarter rewards) the game for $100 and even before launch I felt like I'd gotten more than my moneys worth. I'd had early access to the game, a lot of opportunity to talk the devs during the process, and the ability to add a custom house/bloodline to the game. It was really cool for me to watch the game develop over the last couple years, and I think a lot of people on here will enjoy playing it. If you're into game development check out the teamstreams--livestreams where the dev team talked about the development of the game: decisions they made, their progress, the resources they had to work with etc:
Available for the XBOX ONE and PC
Also: "Massive Chalice is now available for Xbox One as this month's free Games with Gold": http://www.windowscentral.com/massive-chalice-now-available-xbox-one
so "if you're a Xbox Gold member, you have no reason to not download the game since it is free for you."
reviews:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/massive-chalice
http://www.pcgamer.com/massive-chalice-review/
GAMEPLAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxEhU75OHzo&index=1&list=PL5dr1EHvfwpOTz5nLoNKWrpiOy4LcMiTy
MORE GAMEPLAY: 1 HR+ GAMESPOT QUICKLOOK
http://www.gamespot.com/videos/quick-look-massive-chalice/2300-6425149/
short version: roughly fantasy X-COM on the tactical layer + a generation spanning timeline and eugenic management of heroic bloodlines on the strategic layer. Only $16 from the Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/massivechalice_storefront and also on XBOX ONE
from their wiki
Massive Chalice is a single player turn-based tactics game within a multi-generational strategy campaign built for replayability.
As an immortal King or Queen, you must unite your kingdom under a powerful dynasty, eliminate the demonic threat, and reforge the Massive Chalice!
The game is structured into two main layers: strategy and tactics. In the strategy layer, you oversee your kingdom, arrange royal marriages, conduct research, and make the far-reaching decisions that will determine the fate of your legacy.
In the tactics layer, you fight brutal turn-based battles to defend your kingdom using small squads of customizable heroes.
Permadeath is inevitable: your heroes will grow, age, and eventually die. You'll have to choose between keeping your favorite heroes on the battlefield or retiring them from combat to foster a new generation of warriors.
Drawing from roguelikes we love, content is modular and randomized. Each playthrough begins with a random assortment of male and female heroes from various bloodlines, guaranteeing that each game is unique. Your knowledge and skill will increase over multiple playthroughs, but the details of every game will change based on your decisions and the whims of fate.
website: http://www.massivechalice.com/
launch trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTFiooCFh7Ywiki: http://massivechalice.gamepedia.com/Massive_Chalice_Wiki
blog: http://blog.massivechalice.com/
I think @QuestionMarkMan and @DrIanMalcolm wrote for the game
and @MuddBudd has a nice post on it here: http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/32660765#Comment_32660765
I slacker backed (kicked in money after the kickstarter ended for some--but not all--of the kickstarter rewards) the game for $100 and even before launch I felt like I'd gotten more than my moneys worth. I'd had early access to the game, a lot of opportunity to talk the devs during the process, and the ability to add a custom house/bloodline to the game. It was really cool for me to watch the game develop over the last couple years, and I think a lot of people on here will enjoy playing it. If you're into game development check out the teamstreams--livestreams where the dev team talked about the development of the game: decisions they made, their progress, the resources they had to work with etc:
Available for the XBOX ONE and PC
Also: "Massive Chalice is now available for Xbox One as this month's free Games with Gold": http://www.windowscentral.com/massive-chalice-now-available-xbox-one
so "if you're a Xbox Gold member, you have no reason to not download the game since it is free for you."
reviews:
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/massive-chalice
http://www.pcgamer.com/massive-chalice-review/
GAMEPLAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxEhU75OHzo&index=1&list=PL5dr1EHvfwpOTz5nLoNKWrpiOy4LcMiTyMORE GAMEPLAY: 1 HR+ GAMESPOT QUICKLOOK
http://www.gamespot.com/videos/quick-look-massive-chalice/2300-6425149/
valiance on
+1
Posts
I like the graphics, but they're definitely very stylized and a bit lo-fi maybe? dunno. its an indie game really
these guys liked it:
http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2015/06/02/review-massive-chalice/151549/
-edit-
Since this is on the first page, copying over my most recent Steam Thread post. I'll try to keep it updated if anything changes.
Here's a slightly updated version of my first post about it, from when it was Early Access Kickstarter material. I was a backer, and while it still has some rough edges, it's probably the best thing I ever backed. I've had so much fun with it.
Here's some tips:
-I have found my personal preference for initial research is 'improved hero recruitment', then recruit a new batch of heroes. It gives you more options for regents and strong bloodlines early on, and helps with some of the demographic problems that can arise later. (too many girls, too many boys, etc...)
-Research the health potions. Try to have a couple on hand in every mission.
-Build a Crucible early.
-You unlock more research options by killing. When you've killed enough Lapses (XP drainers) and Wrinklers (aging attack), you can make an item that nullifies those attacks.
-Some classes can carry two items, so they can bring extra potions, etc... (Brewtalist, Trickshot, Blastcapper, IIRC) I find that to be a VERY powerful ability. Staggeringly so.
-Kill enough Lapses and you can research Veil Armor, which lets hunter classes stealth anywhere. Get it.
-Personally, right now, I find the 'monster' armors lackluster for Caberjack/Alchemist, so research the upgrades to their regular armor. It does wonders to keep people alive.
-Researched weapons seem a bit underpowered to me atm, at least when compared to relics. You can probably ignore those for now. (Possible exception, Ramcap Caber)
Bloodlines:
Your starting heroes are all going to have a few negative traits, there's not much you can do about it. As long as one of them isn't a reduction of their primary stat or reduced XP gain, they are a candidate for regent. Pick the least awful heroes you have and have them start breeding. When their children come of age, pick out those with the best traits and start leveling them up. Make them a regent when their parent finally dies. Pick them a partner with complimentary stats (if both parents have the same trait, it is more likely to pass on).
Keep doing this and each generation will start at a higher level than the last, with better stats and traits. Infertile heroes or those with bad traits can get pawned off on the Sagewrights to speed up research times. Or you can put them in the Crucible to give all active heroes bonus xp. (and possibly pass on a trait or two). The goal is to have a set of good heroes at level 10 or close to it when year 300 rolls around.
Spoilering the rest because wall'o'text:
Children will take their primary class from the regent, and their subclass from their parent. The hybrid class will play like the primary, but with differences based on the subclass. The short version:
Caberjack subclass gives them more smashystun
Alchemist sublcass gives them more explodeymelt
Hunter sublcass gives them more shootysneak
Relics:
Keep in mind when these start appearing, that if you give a relic to a hero and make them a regent, they keep that relic with them until they die and pass it on. So you might not want to give it to that Caberjack with the amazing traits you are going to make regent next, and instead give it to her younger, nearsighted brother. Relics level up when used in combat, and you need them out in the world putting the smackdown on cadence. A level 10 relic is a very scary thing.
Stuns:
Learn to stun. I repeat. Learn to stun. Caberjacks get a straight up stun attack, but any attack with knockback will stun an enemy if you can knock them into terrain or even another cadence. Brewtalists (Alchemist/Caberjack) get a particularly nice AOE one. Ranged enemies like Bulwarks and Cradles can be particularly bad if you can't get close enough to finish them off first turn, so stunning them buys you time to get into position.
Stealth:
Hunters (or any hybrid with stealth, in a pinch) can stealth ahead around terrain and should be doing do. You want to know where enemies are placed, so you don't accidentally pull 2-4 extra packs when you attack. Veil Armor helps with this immensely because it removes some restrictions on hunter classes and lets them stealth basically anywhere, as long as an enemy isn't watching them when they go into stealth initially.
Remember, you don't have a timer! Take your time, scout things out. Figure out the best approach. Sometimes you just have to charge in and try to take things down quick, but often you can use line of sight blocks to your advantage to get within striking distance without taking a lot of hits.
Choose your battles:
When the Cadence attack, they attack in several places at once. If you can afford to choose (IE neither of them will be fully corrupted if ignored), check out the bonus you get for each mission. Double XP is really good, or sometimes a higher level hero of a class you are low on.
Bonuses:
The outer territories of your nation also confer bonuses if you build on them. These are a bit randomized but can be very powerful to have. The downside is that you are more likely to lose those territories first if the Cadence overwhelm you. The boost to Crucible XP and Sagewright research bonus are great, as are the stat bonuses for the three primary classes.
I highly recommend the purchase.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Which, when you first encountered it, was terrifying.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
*bah* for Xbox One, not 360.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
first mission was a cakewalk, X-COM Ironman/Impossible this is not. But I've played enough to know it gets harder. I am of course using my custom house for one of the 5 starting bloodlines, and a buddy also has a custom house which im using.
also read this review, which does a pretty good explanation of what the game is about. I especially like the focus on the strategic layer matchmaking as the killer app part of the game, which I agree with. I really, really enjoy the strategic layer and the min-maxing matchmaking.
http://www.bagogames.com/sacred-bloodlines-massive-chalice-review/
Also definitely the potions.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
1. keep#2
2. crucible
3. armor or keep#3
I'm trying to decide whether that holds up in retail.
Your fertility--having enough people for a fighting force, for regents and partners, for sagewrights and crucibles, and enough redundancy in case the worst happens, is a huge priority. You can supplement with hero recruitment, but being self sufficient is important I think.
Probably the second biggest priority is your experience gain. If you can get ahead of the level curve, you'll have a much easier time. So the early crucible is really nice, and feeding the proper heroes XP in the first few battles can make a big difference. My very first keep has a level 3 regent and level 3 partner at year 0.
Early on you also probably want to have some tactical advantage: potions, or vitalibands or armor before you go up against the first sets of really tough enemies, usually cradles at year 60 and wrinklers at year 70. Don't invest it all in the strategic layer: keeps, crucibles, sagewrights, and neglect the ability to actually win battles!
--
I'm having a lot of fun with the XP farming and the challenge of brutal level difficulty. I am also really enjoying setting up matches and balancing age, class, traits, and XP while doing so.
A good order might be...
1. Recruit new heroes (because generally only one or two of your starters will be really appealing for Regent work)
2. Keep #2
3. Crucible
4. Armor/Weapon research, etc...
I got lucky with my new game and had a pretty strong Alchemist I was able to start a bloodline with, who also had my backer relic. A few years later a random event gave both parents in that keep the Patriotic trait as well, which has started to filter into my Vanguard soldiers. Woo!
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Anything specific in it that you wrote?
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
When we came on they had already been working on the game for a year and basically just had the premise and that was it. So we did all the worldbuilding, dialogue, random events, enemy names, item descriptions, etc.
- It's like XCOM, but soldiers who don't fall in combat will eventually die of old age.
- There is an enemy called "The Wrinkler" that ages characters when it touches them.
- WHAT
- WHAT?!
Still, Wrinklers and Lapses suck especially hard.
Lapse, when they hit you, drain your XP. This can result in your hero losing levels. Wrinklers age your hero by about 5 years PER HIT.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
In anything?
Crusader Kings II.
Granted, 'fun' is a relative term when dealing with succession crises, but at least it's an exciting period of great activity before everything settles down again into stability.
And your new jacks coming up start out better than their predecessors did, so the "my awesome dude died so now I'm stuck with this crappy new guy" effect is mitigated somewhat.
Are there any other trailers, maybe that showcase more gameplay? The one in the OP only shows like 3-4 seconds of actual combat gameplay.
go to youtube and search for Massive Chalice gameplay.
I kind of wish they did that "general direction noise" that XCOM does. Can be annoying finding the last tucked away enemy at times.
If they killed enough Cadence before they died, you might get a Relic.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
It is indeed on steam, and I added someone's lets play to the OP. Thanks for the suggestion.
:biggrin: its as awful/amazing as it sounds. The idea is you're fighting a multigenerational 300 year war against demonic enemies. So your heroes settle down and have kids, and the kids continue the war, and then their kids the same thing, until you get to the end. So having people naturally age and die is a part of the chosen timescale of the game, and part of the reasoning behind it was to actually making perma-death sting *less*. Since everyone is going to die anyway, you're perhaps less miffed if you lose any individual unit. Anyone interested in the design decisions is encouraged to watch the teamstreams to see how they came up with their ideas, its all really fun, well thought out stuff.
Anyway the Wrinklers ages characters on touch, and its horrible, but an amazing concept. If you enjoy difficult games, well MC is right up your alley.
I was a backer and I wanted to get my own house into the game but lacked the funds to do so at the time. I messaged Double Fine on Kickstarter and asked if they planned to allow users to also create at least one custom house per game even if they didn't back at the $100 tier. They said yes that would be an option and I was satisfied with that. Actual quote:
Now that option isn't there at release, and I can see why some would feel it would cheapen their backing to get their own house into the game, but, there are also many people who will come to this game just on Steam or Xbox and find the lack of customization disappointing. From what I've heard they might add in later, but it really should have been in there at launch.
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
I have to totally disagree with you. Putting that in the game wouldn't just cheapen it for the backers, but would basically be saying "Hey, all you people who paid $100 so you could have your custom house in the game, fuck you!" to them. If the custom house was like a $10 or $15 reward, sure, putting it in the game wouldn't be a big deal, but it was the $100 tier, and doing that would be a huge dick move.
I will agree, though, that them even telling you it would be available and then not doing it is also a dick move. But not as big a dick move as it would have been to include it.
Well, they do if you have good management.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
in my experience DF staff have been really friendly and easy to talk to, I would send your concerns over to them, I'd be curious to see what they say if you don't mind sharing. Having followed development extensively, I never heard of this feature, but I agree it'd be a good one to add, especially if it was promised.
I think the most common cause of a failed run (on the strategic layer at least) is some kind of demographic crisis: not enough boys, not enough girls, or most commonly not enough heroes in general. I think your early recruitment boost strategy might actually be optimal. I'm running into some rough patches now and recruiting level 1 heroes to patch the holes in my lineup isn't going to work for long. I made the early crucible and I'm regretting it now. Those 19 years could have been spent researching a recruitment boost, which would have finished just as I started to get all these holes in my lineup.
I also have to second the potion love. I used to always go vitalibands in beta, back when they gave 30% health and not the current 20%, but I think potions are better as of right now: faster to research, give more health, and more versatile. Don't get me wrong, vitalibands are great, especially if you have 2 item slots: they give you an hp buffer to not get 1 shot, the extra health is always on and not potential health sitting in an item, you dont have to spend an action to use them (which is huge!) and so on. But I think for the early tactical advantage health potions are the way to go right now.
Scenario A:
-Throw Potion at wounded ally
-Wait a Turn
-Elixir ability is now gray with a counter of zero, you are done healing
Scenario B:
-Walk up to a hero and heal them with an elixir
-Wait a Turn
-Thrown Item ability is still available, allowing you to heal a second hero without having carried two elixirs.
If they haven't fixed that, abuse the hell out of it.
-edit-
Also, having the double items is great but basically one of those slots, for me, always goes to Wunderpants to make my people immune the negative effects of Lapses and Wrinklers.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The thing is, the $100 reward allows you to get your own sigil in the game and allows your house to populate every game. Your name could show up for everyone who has bought it. I would just like the ability to create a house for just my own personal game.
I agree it would cheapen those who backed at that level, so maybe that reward wasn't a good idea in the first place, as it locks them out of this customization option. The game is quite simple in many ways (which is not a problem necessarily) and not being able to name at least one house takes away from the interest I have in playing it.
Steam: abunchofdaftpunk | PSN: noautomobilesgo | Lastfm: sjchszeppelin | Backloggery: colincummings | 3DS FC: 1392-6019-0219 |
I'm actually torn on what is best in this regard.
Recruitment boost, then Recruit
or
Recruit, then Crucible
The recruitment boost does give you a bit of a jumpstart on your bloodlines, but in the long run, the Crucible is the more efficient use of research time. That recruitment boost won't be as useful in year 250 when your bloodlines are hopefully giving you lvl 8-10 heroes.
Either way, an early recruitment seems critical, as I rarely seem to find myself with enough heroes to start up alchemist, hunter, and caberjack bloodlines and still be able to field a competent vanguard. Not to mention that I tend to like having two alchemists bloodlines (or two keeps of the same alchemist bloodline), because I like the hunter/caber + alchemist hybrids the best and want to make sure there are enough of them to go around.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
I won't argue that it might not have been the best allowed, but we gotta live in the world where they did it, and thus releasing the customization (at least at launch) to everyone devalues that particular goal, and could cost them good will on the next project they decide to Kickstart. Its certainly a nasty balancing game they ended up in.
As someone who kickstarted at $100 I wouldn't really mind if people got to put their own houses in their own games. After all my house is in everyone's game, your house is just in your own. Maybe some sort of house renamer at the low end, with a full on sigil customizer at the high end.
Honestly I'm good with whatever added features allow them to do an expansion or a sequel. So if patching something in gets them the sales they need for an expansion pack, I'm all for it.
I'm surprised at your description of the game as simple though. What makes you say that?
Which house is yours? I'll have to start using it.
I'm House Touray. Buddy of mine is House Marino. Wish I was more of an artist. My banner does not bode well for any future careers in art...
To expand on my previous point about complexity, I felt like the X-COM strategic layer was a very simplistic satellite spam with some interceptor spam for flavor. Not a ton to think about, even in Long War.
Sure the tactical layer in MC is a bit simpler than in X-COM: no overwatch, no cover system, less enemy types; but the strategic layer is way more complex in MC than in X-COM. You're balancing age, traits, experience, gender and class to make your matches. You have to think about how to rotate troops in and out of combat so you can get high level regents in your keeps. You need to balance buildings and research. Tactical investments to win fights, like healing potions and armor research need to be balanced against strategic considerations like fertility research and buildings.