ABOUT THE GAMEThe Exile Princes is a turn based strategy/RPG where you traverse the Exile realms with your warband/army and search for lost treasures, fight enemies and monsters, and ultimately attempt to ensure the supremacy of your house. The end goal of the game is to have all the cities on the map recognising your superiority, which can be done in a number of ways - getting yourself named as the city's protector by proving yourself in its service, or winning control of the city through elections and political intrigue, or simply capturing the city by force. The four different factions in the game each have a distinctive theme, ideas, and playstyle which will lend themselves to different approaches to this ultimate goal.
The monsters, tileset, and world of the game are a mixture of medieval art and obscure Exilian or pop culture references, creating a unique madcap world in which the exile realms are roamed by herds of whooping quarquares, packs of clawed wibulnibs and families of boar-like tusked kinklades. The graphics tileset itself is created mostly from medieval bestiaries and manuscript art.
GAMEPLAYThe Exile Princes offers in-depth, procedurally generated worlds with every new playthrough. You can select the map size at the start of each game; the map is divided into different regions, some of which will have cities surrounded by farms, some wilderness, some lakes and seas. There's a lot to explore, and both in cities and on the map the "search area" option can provide unit recruitments, upgrades, quest starts, unexpected challenges, and many other mysteries of this strange manuscript-based world.
QuestsThe game offers a wide range of different quest types: the rulers of cities frequently have jobs for to do, including deliveries, finding people of interest, bounty hunting, and many more. They're far from the only people who might want the help of you and your band of followers, though. Whether it's pilgrims who need assistance reaching their destinations, merchants with goods to carry, or your own quests sparked by mysterious discoveries around the map, there are many things to do. As you keep doing quests, you will become better known in the various cities around the map which may in turn unlock both more quests and a range of other opportunities!
Quests are often just one-off tasks, but not necessarily: many of them can thread together into narrative sections. This is not pre-scripted, and the links between quests are created on the fly, so the game can generate a wide range of hooked together narratives some of which may well never exist outside your specific iteration of the game.
Units & BattlesBattles in the Exile princes are done in a simple turn-based format, with both player and AI able to nominate one unit for attack and one for defence in each combat round. As you progress, you can find stronger attack and defence units, many of which have powerful special abilities, from cloying gaseous breath to spear-packed schiltrons to raging fireballs! You can hire ordinary citizens in the cities, and different cities have different troop trees, which offer a range of different tactical challenges - pike and crossbow enemies will play out their battles rather differently to a city that specialises in fast-hitting mounted warriors. Units will gain XP as they fight, and can also be trained by NPCs in various ways.
In addition to the many human units, from archers and hired swords to knights and levy guardsmen, there are many specialist and magical units and enemies from right out of the margins of medieval manuscripts. Mighty gryphons and cockatrices can tear through an army of peasants with ease, whilst the ferocious demonic wibulnibs may seem weak but can swamp you with sheer numbers. Familiar creatures of myth like centaurs and dragons rub shoulders with the stranger products of the medieval mind, many of them just nameless doodles in their original manuscripts, like the frumious lanfyches and whooping quarequares.
CharactersThe Exile Princes offers a detailed character system that includes training up companion characters and detailed generated NPCs who will react to you in different ways based on a number of traits. The combinations of different traits and classes can make a range of unique NPCs for each new game. NPCs found in one situation may at times pop up in another - the noble you had to escort a couple of times earlier in the game may well end up back in her home city and running for election against its ruler a few months down the line - and you can contribute to that, for example by eventually choosing to promote some of your loyal companion characters to city leaders in their own right. Some quests and situations especially rely on companion characters, too, for example the mysterious tunnel networks that lie beneath some cities where only you and your companions can enter without the full might of your army (creating another new tactical challenge...)
Companion characters in particular unlock new possibilities and interactions: a conniving character may provide you with chances to cheat your way to victory, or a welcoming character may be found buying your followers a round and improving morale. They can also make friends or become enemies of you and one another, leading to challenges in managing your party as the game progresses. Companions having a bad time may drain morale or leave the party, whereas companions who approve of you can offer unique quests to win their perpetual loyalty at your side. Regular minor interactions, from helping strangers to sparring matches, can appear depending on the character's traits and help deepen your relationship with your companions.
The later gameOnce you have built up a certain amount of renown in a city, you may start to get opportunities arising either through politicking or battle to capture it for yourself. The political route will provide you with an election and sets of options and opportunities as petitioners come to you to ask you to back their particular viewpoints: a successful politician must know the districts of the city well enough and make the right pledges to bring a majority of them to their side. Warfare is another way of taking over a city, and the great siege battles that result require a sizeable army and an effective commander.
Once you are in control of cities, the politics of the game become more apparent, as you navigate through shifting alliances, wars and sieges and choose whether to retain control of cities yourself or give them to subordinates. To retain control of cities you should regularly hold court there and deal with local problems as they arise - the revenue from cities can be vital, but spreading yourself too thin between them risks unrest and revolt. Courts also offer new opportuinities and quest types.
FACTIONSThe House of the PhoenixThe House of the Phoenix are reputed to be courageous, pure, honest - riding their mighty war cockerels, they are great heroes of the Exile Realms, the gryphon-tamers and manticore-slayers whose banner brings. The Phoenix think of themselves as a bold house, with ambition to reform and unite the Exile realms - the young and the brave look to them for leadership, for wherever the phoenix banner flies, there lies hope.The House of the Phoenix focuses on the player's hero character. Bonus possibilities for multi-upgrades and to adventuring points gained from quests means that Phoenix heroes will gain stat points faster than any other hero type, including a unique "heroism" stat upgrade that adds to both attack and defence. The Phoenixes also have a special unit tree of bird units, with two branches - one of tougher ground-attack birds, and one of lighter, faster flying birds, including the mighty phoenix itself!
The House of GeneralsThe House of Generals prize strength, decisiveness, and victory. Prepared to defend their cities at all costs, they claim to have the military prowess to forge and build a world of peace beyond the horrors that plague the Exile realms. Many folk place their hope in the House of Generals, for they above all others will hold the line against those who would shatter their fragile world. They are the cold steel that guards, the stone wall that shields, and it is their soldiers who may be marching towards the future.The House of Generals can get the best military power in the game. Their key special ability is to give all unit types an attack boost based on their general's leadership, meaning that later in the game their units can dish out exceptionally high-powered attacks. They also have one of the most powerful ranged units in the game - the arquebusier - as a unique unit, upgrading one of a range of other unit types using their hero's adventuring points.
The House of the DragonThe House of the Dragon plays the game of life slowly, carefully, and to win. Their treasuries overflow with gold, and whether they choose to go to war, to adventure, or to politics, they are ready to spend their vast wealth in the pursuit of their goals. Peace-lovers and those who want a quiet world often favour the dragons, preferring smooth gold-brokered diplomacy to the clash of battle or the call of adventure. They are the keepers of flames, the gold-lords, who bring fire against the cold - for when the night is coldest, and the world is poorest, the roar of the dragon is the roar of returning life.Nobody knows gold better than a dragon! Players with the House of Dragons get a percentage bonus to their gold each week, and can sometimes expend adventuring points to earn bonus gold as well. The Dragons can thus field larger armies (or buy bigger bribes) than any of the other factions. In the late game they can also use their hoards to summon mighty dragons, some of the most powerful units available to players in the game.
The House of ScholarsThe House of Scholars are the oldest of the Exile houses; seeing themselves as reluctant leaders but fierce believers in the power of words and lore, they see their twofold role as leaders and teachers as a path of duty. Misfits, the forgotten, and the dispossessed tend to flock to the pangolin banner of the Scholars. They are the seekers after truth, the friends of forgotten things. While there is free air to breathe and a wide world to discover they stand ready to walk in the darkness - and so find the light.The Scholars' bonuses are primarily to searching - they find it much easier to get results from searching an area for treasures or hireable units - and to information gathering, giving them advantages when digging into the political intrigues of a city. They can also do well at unit training thanks to their unique unit, the pangolin, a medium infantry unit that can add XP to other units based on how much they have earned.
SCREENSHOTSA map shot, as the House of the Phoenix:
A city menu:
A battle in some caves:
Older screenshots:
A general map shot, playing as the House of Scholars:
The city menu:
Another map shot:
I'm hoping to get an early release of the game out soon, and will devlog in this thread