We're excited to announce that Summoners Fate was selected by PAX to be included in the PAX10!
The PAX10 are a collection of the 10 highest quality indie games critiqued and picked by the PAX staff from nearly 100 entries to exhibit at PAX West in a specially curated section of the expo hall. We are honored to have been selected for 2021 and stand alongside such outstanding game developers.
We'll be showcasing Summoners Fate at PAX West 2021 this week at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington on Friday September 3rd - Monday September 6th. It's going to be a blast! Be sure to stop by so we can meet you in person :)
Demo Available!
During the PAX West event, we're also providing our free online demo of Summoners Fate on Steam. You can pick this up on our store page here:
PAX will also be hosting a Steam Event during PAX featuring the games exhibited. During this event, we'll be providing developer streaming of the gameplay so you can check out the other awesome features that will be available in Summoners Fate.
Guide Part 6: Meaningful Environment
During early development of Summoners Fate, we reached out to players to discuss what makes turn-based tactics gameplay so compelling. In contrast to card battlers, a tactical grid provides the dimensions of terrain and position. Obstacles must overcome, hazards avoided, cover from enemy fire taken. There is an innate satisfaction in the realism and creative solutions that the battlefield environment can bring to gameplay. A compelling turn-based tactics game has meaningful environment.
Terrain in Summoners Fate is destructible and persistent. In this example, a fireball destroys a patch of the earth, flings goblins across the map, and detonates spore pods, poisoning the Orc chief.
Meaningful Environment
To make a meaningful environment, three key pieces are needed:
Tactical Significance
Interactivity
Persistence
Tactical Significance
Terrain in Summoners Fate has tactical significance. Large rocks, trees and other structures block movement and line of sight. Hazardous terrain such as lava and spikes cause damage. Furniture such as weapon racks, armor stands and spell tombs can be looted for cards.
Trees block Goblin's line of sight to Barbarian
While the Skeleton Captain's shield protects it from frontal damage, the Barbarian's knockback attack pushes it into the spike traps to a poof-filled demise.
Tactical significance is what drives compelling decision making: Do I take cover in these trees to avoid enemy fire? Do I go for the weapons rack or spell tomb to acquire an advantage?
Interactivity
With spells, you can interact with the environment to turn the tide of battle in your favor. Create walls of fire to stop the enemy advance. Open chasms and watch enemies plummet to their doom. Transform the environment into living creatures such as Treants and elementals.
Environment can be destroyed or transformed into powerful allies.
Persistence
Decisions are more meaningful when they have permanent consequences. The battlefield in Summoners Fate changes, for better or for worse, in response to player decisions. Fire spells can burn down the forest, exposing covered enemies - but likewise, potential cover you may taken advantage of later is now gone. Scorch marks from your incursions will also linger in the world, providing a lasting marker of the destruction left in your wake.
Pyromancer casts Conflagration to burn down the forest. The burnt trees still block movement, but no longer block line of sight, leaving the insectoids exposed to enemy fire.
By creating meaningful environment, each battlefield in Summoners Fate offers unique challenges and possibilities for players to win in creative and satisfying ways.
Enjoying our content?
Give this article a thumbs up and share Summoners Fate with a friend.
Guide Part 5: Team and Deckbuilding
Hey everyone,
Welcome to Part 5 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we’ll be discussing our fourth and final core gameplay mechanic: Team and Deck Building.
The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:
Summoners Fate is a game about mastering creative strategies to achieve the most satisfying victories. To make introducing new mechanics easy and fun, all characters, spells and equipment are represented as cards. With your cards, you can build a team consisting of a Summoner, two heroic companions called Guardians, and a deck of 20 cards. With over 400 distinct cards including 200 diverse characters, players have near limitless freedom to unleash their imagination.
Card Collecting
Throughout your adventures, you collect cards. Cards expand your available strategies so you can tackle challenges with new and exciting solutions. While your collection resets with each new adventure, you’ll have some agency to choose from cards previously discovered to populate your starting deck. Successfully completing an adventure also permanently unlocks cards for Battle mode where you can construct custom decks and play head-to-head against the AI or other players in real-time and asynchronous multiplayer modes.
From the mightiest dragon to the lowliest squirrel, every card in Summoners Fate provides a distinct tactical value. Curious when you might choose a squirrel over a dragon? Continue reading to learn how squirrels can synergize with other cards.
We describe the cards in Summoners Fate as being “strategically diverse” rather than “common”, “uncommon” or “rare” as this best represents the spirit of our card collection mechanic. Other games may require the player to “dust” hundreds of powerless common cards to evolve them into a desired rare card. But in Summoners Fate, there is no grinding, no dusting, no card fusion: each card is distinct, balanced, and tactically useful in the right deck build. Instead of grinding to attain the highest power value, our card-driven system fosters a desire to experiment with new and creative ways to win.
Balance
One of the questions we are asked most often is “How do you balance a game with so many distinct cards and characters?” Imagine a game of rock-paper-scissors and take that to a grand scale. The key is to provide a natural counter for each card. There should never be a silver bullet set of cards or strategies that reigns as most powerful. Rather, choosing the right card, the right strategy at the right timing to counter your opponent’s tactics leads to a victory filled with surprise and excitement.
To satisfy our high quality standard for balance and engaging gameplay, every card and character in Summoners Fate must adhere to three core design principles:
Provide a distinct tactical value
Feel awesome and fun to play (either on its own or in synergy with other cards)
Have another card that counters it
How do we know whether or not a card meets these standards? We bring it to our player community. If a card isn’t balanced or fun, it becomes obvious through player feedback and how often a card gets used or not used. We discuss the design in collaboration with our players and adapt the design as needed.
Managing Your Team
During adventure mode, you can customize your team while resting at camp. Interact with characters to manage your party. Interact with the Cosmic Tortoise to manage your deck.
Hint: If a character is sitting by the campfire and holding a marshmallow stick, they’re in your party. If a character is off to the side without a marshmallow, they’re in your reserve. Interact with characters to manage your team.
The Cosmic Tortoise carries the burden of your card collection. Interact with the tortoise to view your cards. Customize your deck by dragging cards from your collection (bottom) to your deck (top). In Battle Mode, switch tabs to choose your Summoner and Guardians.
Synergy
Characters are carefully designed to not only look unique and distinctive, but to play strategically different. Characters have natural strengths and weaknesses that complement each other to create strategies where the sum is greater than the whole. For example, the presence of a Skeleton Captain on the board enhances the power of all ally skeletons. Build a team of all animals, and you can guarantee that all of your characters are going to benefit from spells like Animal Growth and Breed.
You hurl a squirrel at an Orc. With a satisfying thud, it donks the orc and jumps to the ground. What do you do next? A) Mutate it into the Super Human Hulk Squirrel B) Turn it into a furry suicide bomber C) Breed it into an army of ankle biter rodents
Factions
There are multitudes of factions: Orcs, Skeletons, Dreadnoughts, Ironclads, Animals, Insects, Dragons, Demons, etc. Additionally, you’ve got schools of magic and card types to consider. Build a deck of all Arcane spells and enjoy cost discounts and continuous draw combos with everything in your deck using an Arch Mage as your Summoner. Build a deck of Chaos spells and receive a damage bonus to your cards with the Pyromancer. (Note: We'll dive more into the different kinds of magic in the coming weeks).
No Right or Wrong Way To Build a Deck
The moment you boot up, you’ll be having fun blasting away enemies with all kinds of spells. As you advance to harder levels, the game will present challenges that require you to build strategically focused teams. There’s no right or wrong strategy. Some players like the raw power of destruction spells and blowing things up. Some like to swarm the board with hordes of squirrels. Others still like the cunning approach of holding back and manipulating your opponent to the brink of madness. If we haven’t added enough choices to build your dream strategy, we will listen to you and make it happen.
Coming Next
With over 400 cards including 200 diverse playable characters, Summoners Fate allows you to unleash your creativity, build your dream team and achieve the most satisfying victories. With our four core gameplay mechanics now covered, we’re ready to deep-dive further into the gameplay itself. Coming up next, we’ll discuss how we’ve made the environment meaningful in Summoners Fate.
Enjoying our content?
Give this article a thumbs up and share Summoners Fate with a friend.
Guide Part 4: Turn-Based Tactics
Hey everyone,
Thanks for following Summoners Fate and welcome to Part 4 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we talk about our Turn-Based Tactical Combat system and some of the ways we've made the turn-based genre more fast, fun and accessible without sacrificing deep strategy.
The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:
On your turn, you are able to issue one command to each of your characters on the board and play as many cards as you have available. Each of these actions can be performed in any order that you wish.
Cora the Ice Queen freezes an enemy.
Accessible Depth
We believe the appeal of turn-based tactics games are deep mechanics that enable a wide array of creative strategies and solutions to achieve victory. But, what good is depth if the game is too complex and overwhelming to learn? To solve this, we took the tried-and-tested combat system of our first game, Hero Mages, and worked collaboratively with our players to evolve it. Through player driven development, we designed intuitive mechanics that make combat easy to pick-up and play without sacrificing the desired deep strategy.
Single Gesture Commands
To accelerate the pace of combat and make commanding characters intuitive and fun, each character’s movement and action are combined into a single gesture. At the start of your turn, each of your characters looks up at you (literally!) indicating they are ready for your orders.
To issue a command, drag a path from your character to your target. As soon as the dragging starts, all possible targets for the character are highlighted on screen. When you release, your command is executed and your character moves and attacks.
Command your units to move and attack with a single gesture.
The single gesture mechanic replaces the traditional “two action point” system used in most turn based games. It also seamlessly merges a third action step of choosing your character's facing, as the directional aspect of the gesture automatically assigns the facing of your character to align with its movement path.
Now, this may sound like we’ve lost some depth by condensing choices into a single command. However, in practice, and verified over the past few years of playtesting with turn-based fans, we’ve discovered that this actually enhances gameplay by empowering a natural flow of command and eliminating cognitive overload. For many players, the vastly higher number of permutations presented in the two-step action system creates an “analysis paralysis” effect where you’re often second guessing yourself over insubstational gains in the consideration of move move attack, or attack move attack type assessments. The end result of this? The game pace is dramatical slower. We’ve observed play patterns where players would stare for 45+ seconds before even attempting a move. This behavior fatigues the brain and denies time that could otherwise be spent enjoying the outcome of your creative strategies.
By contrast, the one-gesture mechanic system, working in tandem with our other accessible mechanics, results in a state of “flow” where your strategy is driven intuitively. Your time spent in the game is laser-focused to satisfying moments of your carefully planned positioning and combos paying off in a glorious spectacle of sequential animations.
Fluid Response (No Waiting for Animations)
Further contributing to the flow-state of our one gesture commands is our fluid response mechanic. In some games, you’re forced to wait for the character’s animation to resolve before you can issue a new command. This delay builds friction that slows the pace of gameplay and prevents you from playing as fast as your mind is thinking.
In Summoners Fate, we’ve taught our animation system to prioritize player response over animations. Not only can you rapidly command a series of units in parallel (and observe their simultaneous moves and attacks) you can intuitively skip ahead by issuing the next order. For example, you can chain together multiple unit orders or drag and drop cards in succession without having to wait for the first card to resolve. As needed, the game will detect dependent animations and skip ahead to catch up. Likewise, the AI will do the same - detecting dependencies where needed to show you important event chains (like a surprise effect being triggered) and running non-dependent animations (like a series of moves and attacks) in parallel. You also have the freedom to skip enemy turn animations all together.
Summoners Fate is responsive to your commands. Unleash your ankle-biter squirrels on the skeletal legion!
Undo and Tactile Learning
For those who’ve played games with intricate stack chains (like Magic the Gathering) where a series of effects can trigger a complex series of additional effects, you can recognize when your opponent has got something sneaky planned when they start asking to look at all of your cards on the table and read their abilities aloud. Indeed, a lot of the fun of deep strategy games comes from cascade effects creating a surprising outcome. But, it’s not very fun to brain-crunch your way through all the variables when all you really want to know is “Will playing this card give the result I intended?”
Summoners Fate provides the “Undo” button as a way to learn through tactile response. Not sure exactly how a gravity blast is going to affect all the units on the board? Drop the card down and find out. Don’t like the results? Want to try a different target? Undo and try again. All that mental energy spent calculating is handled by the game, and what’s left is the pure joy of your action yielding your intended response.
No Submenus - Actions are Context Based
There are no submenus or ability buttons in Summoners Fate. Instead, characters automatically perform the appropriate action for the target you select. For example, Paladins have a melee attack and a healing ability. If you want to attack, drag to an enemy unit. If you want to heal, drag to an injured ally.
Cleric can attack the Skeleton Breaker or heal the injured Fighter Mage. She heals her injured ally.
Intuitive Casting: Drag and Drop
Casting spells, equipping items, and summoning characters are also intuitive: just take the card you want to play and drag it from your hand onto the battlefield.
Want to blast enemies with a fireball? Just drag and drop your card onto the battlefield.
Cards follow a few rules:
You need mana to play a card equal to the number shown on the card.
Cards range in cost from 0-5 mana.
You generate 3 mana each turn and can store up to 5 mana.
If you are awarded first turn, you generate 2 mana on your first turn instead of 3.
You hold three cards in your hand and draw new cards at the end of your turn until you have three cards.
Coming Up Next
Today, we covered the basics of how turn-based combat works in Summoners Fate and outlined how we bring accessibility to the genre without sacrificing deep strategy. We have much more tactics to share: combos, backstabbing, blocking and more! We'll cover these in the future, but for next time, we'll conclude our discussion of the core gameplay mechanics with Team and Deckbuilding.
Enjoying our content?
Give this article a thumbs up and share Summoners Fate with a friend.
Guide Part 3: Strategic Resources
Hey everyone,
Welcome to Part 3 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Last time, we discussed our exploration mechanics including the mist of mayhem, lore and our unique fate encounters system. Today, we’ll examine the second key gameplay mechanic of our adventures mode: Strategic Resource Management.
The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:
Your survival in Summoners Fate depends heavily on your ability to carefully manage the resources of your expeditions. These resources include your Summoner, your hero companions, your deck of cards, lives, gold, dice, and… marshmallows? Oh yes! Marshmallows. What bonfire at the camp would be complete without them? Let’s explore each resource and how it connects to the meta strategy layer.
Summoners
Your Summoner is your primary character and conduit to the game world. If your Summoner dies, your entire party is defeated and you’ll need to spend one of your lives to continue. The number of lives you have is determined by the difficulty you chose for your adventure. If you’re playing on hardcore, for instance, it’s game over if your summoner is killed. But, assuming you have lives left, you’ll have the option to retry and continue your game. When you retry, you’ll return to your last auto-save point (typically, right before you entered the mist that started a battle or right before the encounter feature you interacted with). You’ll also regain some health and cards to help give you a fighting chance.
Cards
Your deck of cards represents magical spells, enchantments, weapons, equipment and characters that you can call into battle.
Explore creative strategies with over 400 unique cards to choose from.
On your first adventure, your initial deck is randomly selected from a set of signature spells matching the primary color of your chosen Summoner. You begin the game with 3 cards. Your first goal is to first build up your deck to 20 cards. Next, you’ll aim to optimize your deck for your desired strategy by selectively replacing cards within the 20-card max while resting at campsites.
In the first chapter of your adventure, you can quickly build up your deck by defeating enemies and destroying crates and barrels to find cards. Defeating elites (enemy Summoners) will frequently yield an option to choose one of three possible cards to further hone your deck in the direction you want to take it. As you progress through chapters, card drops will become more scarce, so you’ll need to acquire gold to buy cards from shopkeepers.
Shops
Each world is populated with a number of shops that range from mercenaries to merchants. The nice thing about merchants is that they have a wide selection of inventory, as well as a set of cards exclusively found in shops.
Sides' Roadside Shop is one of many merchants you'll encounter in the game. Tip: Shopkeepers prefer to setup near roads so they can sell to as many travelers as possible. Consider following the path if you're in the market for buying some new cards.
Gold
Gold can be found in crates and barrels as well as dropped by enemies. As you progress through chapters and face harder enemies, the frequency and amount of gold dropped will also increase. The primary source of gold in Summoners Fate, however, is treasure chests. Each world has a number of hidden treasure rooms filled with chests of gold. You may have to get past some tough enemies to find them or navigate a safe route around them.
Oooooh! Shiny! (Goblins love gold)
Dice
Dice are an essential resource that provide you with some agency during fate encounters. Recall in our talk about Exploration that Fate Encounters are story driven scenarios where the outcome is a combination of your decision and the roll of dice. You can spend this resource to roll additional dice during these encounters and increase your chance of a desired outcome.
Want to impress a fairy with your smooching skills? Spend some dice.
Like other resources, dice can be found in objects and dropped by enemies. The best source of dice are elites and bosses who will typically drop a set of 3 or more dice.
Retreat
In addition to being useful for fate encounters, dice can also help you avoid an undesirable defeat in combat by bolstering your chance of a successful retreat. You can scout and retreat from most areas in the world without consequence using the retreat command. However, if you decide to engage in battle, your units will become locked into the fray. You can still command them to retreat, but now it will require a roll of the dice. Be sure to have dice on hand if you decide to take on a battle you might not survive.
Campsites
Campsites can be used to rest and recover your party’s health and reshuffle discarded cards back into your deck. When you set up camp, the cosmic tortoise and additional party members you’ve recruited will join you at the campsite. The cosmic tortoise carries all of the cards in your collection. You can interact with the tortoise to customize your deck by adding and removing cards you’ve found.
Warmed by the fire and satiated by the taste of roasted marshmallows, your battle weary heroes rest and recover their strength.
Each world has a limited number of campsites available. Since campsites are depleted of their supplies after use, it is very important to consider when to rest and when to conserve this invaluable resource.
Guardians
During your adventures, you’ll have opportunities to recruit permanent team members known as Guardians. Guardians will always match one of the magic types your Summoner can cast, so you’ll always find different characters depending on which Summoner you choose to play. Guardians will follow your Summoner as you explore the world and, unlike the creatures you summon in battle from your deck, will remain with you after combat is over. You can have up to two Guardians in your party at the same time. Additionally, any character that can serve as a guardian can also be placed in your deck and summoned during battle instead.
You can customize your party while resting at camp or whenever you recruit a new character. Defeated guardians will also rejoin your party at camp.
Loyal Units
In addition to guardians, you may also encounter loyal units. Like Guardians, they will follow you and stay in your party after battle. However, they cannot be removed from your party and are not recovered at camp if they are defeated in battle. Effectively, these are “extra” characters that can bolster your team with added numbers for the limited time they manage to survive. So, consider carefully how you protect these characters, as it may be desirable to bring them into battle with you when fighting challenging enemies like a boss.
Marshmallows
No campsite is complete without marshmallows to toast on the fire. Not only are marshmallows a favored treat to the characters of Summoners Fate, they are an essential resource that allow you to restock used campsites. If you find a stocked campsite but don’t need to rest, you can take the supplies to restock a campsite later in your adventure. Later in your adventures, enemies may also drop small quantities of marshmallows.
Strategic Metagame
Your resources, your cards and the health of your heroes are limited and carry over with you in each new area of the world you explore. This adds a strategic layer to Summoners Fate where you must carefully consider how you approach surviving the dungeon.
Do you blast the mob of goblins with a fireball or save this spell for the boss fight and attack them directly with your warriors instead? This may cost you health instead of cards. What if you lose your Cleric in the fight? You may be in trouble if you encounter poisonous snakes in the next room. Should you use your dice to free the bear, or save them to impress a fairy wish giver with a satisfying kiss?
Summoners Fate challenges you to contemplate your high-level strategy as you engage in turn-based tactical battles, which we shall cover next time in the Guide to Summoners Fate.
Enjoying our content?
Give this article a thumbs up and share Summoners Fate with a friend.
Summoners Fate at Dreamhack Beyond: Demo & Livestream
We're excited to announce that Summoners Fate has been featured in the Dreamhack Beyond Event on Steam that runs from Saturday July 24th-July 31st.
To celebrate, we're offering a free demo of Summoners Fate on our store page that will be available during the Dreamhack Event. The demo features the Prelude chapter that will introduce you to combat and exploration and challenges you to fight one of the many powerful bosses at the end, should you dare...
We'll also be streaming our full adventures mode and battle mode throughout this week so you can get a sneak peak of the gameplay in store for you in the upcoming full version. I'll be live tonight broadcasting here on Steam between 7PM-1AM MT. Be sure to check it out and share your questions and comments in the chat.
We look forward to seeing you there!
~Ross
Guide Part 2: Exploration
Hey everyone,
Welcome to Part 2 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. In Part 1, we revealed why the characters of Summoners Fate look up at you. We also talked about the four key gameplay mechanics of adventures in Summoners Fate:
Today, we talk about what’s involved in an adventure and deep-dive into our distinctive exploration mechanics.
Adventures
Your goal in Summoners Fate is to guide your chosen summoner on an adventure to fulfill the cosmic prophecy. An adventure starts with you choosing your summoner and difficulty.
Difficulty determines your number of lives (or continues), enemy health and the kinds of monsters you’ll face in battles. Casual mode is designed to help players who are new to the genre learn how to play, while Hardcore mode offers a roguelike experience with permadeath. The standard difficulty is balanced for those seasoned in turn-based tactics and deckbuilding games and new to the unique mechanics of Summoners Fate.
Adventures are divided into 3 chapters. Each chapter contains a world populated with hand-crafted levels and encounters that are selected through our innovative procedural curation system to ensure you'll have a unique experience each time you play. I call out our term “procedural curation” to address concerns that the quality of content might suffer from “procedural generation”. All of our game’s content is designed by hand, not randomly generated, and each level and encounter is carefully tested for quality. What our procedural algorithm does is choose random combinations of content and distributes it into a solvable puzzle.
To complete a chapter, you must find the boss’s lair and defeat the boss to open a portal to the next world. Chapters increase progressively in difficulty and take about an hour to complete.
Fun Fact: With 20 distinctive summoners to choose from, there’s 60 hours of quality gameplay to complete one adventure with each.
Exploration
Each chapter of a Summoners Fate adventure begins in a new procedurally generated world where you must find and defeat a powerful boss who guards the portal to the next world. The world itself is a series of seamlessly connected grid-based levels that may be dungeons, caves or wilderness. Navigating the world is as easy as clicking or dragging where you want your party to go. With our open-world design, you’re free to move in any direction and complete challenges in any order you wish. Your map will help you avoid getting lost by indicating your current position and the areas you’ve explored.
Exploring a forest world
Consult your map to avoid getting lost in the depths of the dungeon.
Mist of Mayhem
Unexplored areas are shrouded in darkness by the “mist of mayhem”. Entering the mist is a bit of a thrill, as you never know what wondrous surprise or formidable challenge awaits you. Take a deep breath and a bold step into the unknown to reveal whether you’ve found a shop, treasure, campsite, enemies or something special we call Fate Encounters.
An orc ambush is one of many possibilities you may encounter when entering the mist of mayhem
Fate Encounters - Roll Dice to Change Your Fate
Fate Encounters are light role-playing story scenarios where you get to make choices on behalf of your summoner. The outcome of your decision is decided by “fate”, which is represented by the roll of a twenty sided die or D20. During your adventures, you'll acquire additional dice which you can use to increase your odds of a successful outcome.
Here’s an example where we’ve found a caged bear who’s been abandoned in the woods. Freeing the bear could be risky (I mean, it’s a bear after all…) but there’s a chance that the bear may like us and join our team. Let’s roll the dice and find out…
Bear joins our party as a Guardian. Guardians are permanent allies that protect your Summoner throughout your adventure.
Fate encounters are a signature part of exploration in Summoners Fate and include a wide-variety of exciting possibilities such as helping a fallen angel, turning lead into gold at an alchemy table, or stumbling on a goblin birthday party.
Fun Fact: Our company name, D20Studios, comes from the twenty-sided dice commonly used to resolve the outcome of player choices in role-playing games. D20’s played a significant role in our first game, Hero Mages, as well as in Summoners Fate.
Lore - Our Unique Way of Telling Stories
Summoners Fate has a unique approach to storytelling. There are no complex names, politics or locations to burden your memory. There is no character dialog to scroll through. What remains is a personalized and emergent story experience that unfolds through your interactions in the game. This is accomplished by our signature lore mechanic.
Lore is a collection of knowledge and secrets about the uniquely generated world you are exploring. Scrolls containing lore can be dropped by defeated enemies and discovered while searching objects. Lore scrolls will:
Reveal secrets about specific characters or events you will encounter in the uniquely generated world you are currently exploring
Reveal the identity of the world boss and tactics useful for defeating them
Reveal intriguing insights about the world of Summoners Fate (this is called "universal lore")
Lore certainly paints a picture, doesn't it? If you see this lore, a Skeleton Dragon inhabits your world.
The writing style in Summoners Fate is a combination of atmospheric and sensory-driven storytelling, playful humor and informative tactics. In conjunction with the world’s procedural curation, lore cultivates emergent storytelling that makes each adventure unique and connects you to the characters you so diligently command in battle.
Coming Up Next
I hope you enjoyed this entry in the Guide of Summoners Fate. Next time, we'll examine how strategic resource management plays a role in your dungeon crawling adventures.
Guide Part 1: Why do we look up?
Hey everyone!
Thanks for stopping by our page. Today, I’ll be kicking off a series of posts dedicated to introducing you to the lore, characters and mechanics of Summoners Fate.
For those new to Summoners Fate - it’s a turn-based tactics and deckbuilding game that challenges you to command fantasy characters in novel ways and master creative strategies.
The gameplay of Summoners Fate revolves around 4 key gameplay elements:
Exploration
Strategic resource management
Tactical turn-based combat
Team and Deck Building
But before we dive into that, let’s start with answering your first burning question: What is this intriguing game and why are the characters looking up at me? Well, read on my friends.
The world of Summoners Fate isn’t a single realm or land. Rather, it is a multiverse of infinite worlds, each representing a manifestation of the cosmic potential. Unlike other games where you play as a single character, in Summoners Fate, you command the destiny of hundreds of diverse characters through ever-changing adventures. Each time you begin a new adventure, you’re presented with this prophecy:
You, the player, are what Summoners call the Guide. You see, to the Summoners, you are extremely important because you decide their destiny. Only with your wits and creativity can they hope to survive in their journey, defeat the bosses in each world, and fulfill the cosmic prophecy. This is why you see your Summoner and other characters you recruit look up at you (literally). Their eye contact connects you to them and their world, and it signals that they are ready to receive your commands.
Through your Summoner, you play the “hand of fate,” a literal hand of cards representing magical spells, equipment and characters you can bring into the world. The spells themselves divide into five schools of magic, each representing a different emanation of creation that brings the world into existence (we’ll cover this in a future post). Should your Summoner perish in battle, your link to the world will sever and your heroes will be defeated.
One of our goals for Summoners Fate is to capture the feeling of playing a classic, miniature-based tabletop board game. I want the game to feel both familiar to fans of this genre and approachable to new players. And as you can see, there’s also a very important connection between the world perspective and the characters you command.
Thanks for reading! In our next update, we’ll talk about how Exploration works. Follow us to be notified.
Introducing D20Studios to Steam
Hey everyone!
Hi, I'm Ross Przybylski, game developer and founder of D20Studios. I started in 2006 with the creation of Hero Mages. Summoners Fate will be our first title on Steam. It's my pleasure to join the community here!
I'm passionate about making games because I really enjoy bringing people together in a common space where they can creatively interact. I particularly love the strategy genre because winning is not a matter of reflexes, but a matter of wits.
My goal for Summoners Fate is to bring the best elements of turn-based tactics, strategy and card play together in a fast and fun experience that players will enjoy for years to come.
Position and facing matter in Summoners Fate. Use cards to manipulate the environment and gain tactical advantage.
I'm a community driven developer, and I look forward to getting to know you and learning what I can do to deliver the best game experiences.
