The Exile Princes

[Jubal]

Development Logs/Sign Up For Beta Testing
Wishlist on Steam
Follow on Itch

ABOUT THE GAME

The 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.

GAMEPLAY
The 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.

Quests
The 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 & Battles
Battles 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.

Characters
The 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 game
Once 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.

FACTIONS


The House of the Phoenix
The 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 Generals
The 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 Wyrm
The House of the Wyrm 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 wyrms, 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 a dragon is the roar of returning life.

Nobody knows gold better than a dragon! Players with the House of the Wyrm get a percentage bonus to their gold each week, and can sometimes expend adventuring points to earn bonus gold as well. The Wyrms 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 Scholars
The 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.

SCREENSHOTS
A map shot, as the House of the Phoenix:

Spoiler

A city menu:

Spoiler

A battle in some caves:

Spoiler

Older screenshots:

Spoiler

A general map shot, playing as the House of Scholars:

Spoiler

The city menu:

Spoiler

Another map shot:

Spoiler

I'm hoping to get an early release of the game out soon, and will devlog in this thread

[comrade_general]

Auesum! Why not let G judge the thing so you can win?

[Jubal]

I own most of the prizes anyway, so I'm fine not winning

But yeah, it's going fairly well so far - it's already at a stage where you can wander round the map, meet people, fight, and conquer cities - conquest is the only working victory condition so far (plus that you don't have to conquer cities assigned to your faction at game start ofc). The maps are randomly generated every time so hopefully it'll have some replayability when it's done as well

The inspirations for the houses are obvious - other Exilian folk will have other references ingame too though. The boar-like creatures you can see in the first screenshot are the "tusked kinklades", and you can meet Caradilis as a search result in the forest areas of the map (she sells you potions). And there are wibulnibs to fight everywhere. The NPC cities can also be House of Princes and House of the Wolf, but I haven't got any decent ideas for making those playable and don't want to overstretch my plans toooooo much until I've got a release out.

[Tusky]

Looks really cool! I love the style you've used. It looks like interactive medieval art


Honoured to get a mention too. I'll feel a bit weird playing it, mind you, if I have to roam the land slaughtering herds of myself!

[Jubal]

It very much IS interactive medieval art, all the pictures are taken or adapted from scans of actual medieval manuscripts

And yes, sorry, I just looked at that boar-like creature and was like "I can call that a kinklade" and the name stuck in my head rather rapidly, the sound just seemed to fit somehow...

[Pentagathus]

What is this blasphemy? How are the wibulnubnibs not recognised bas the true and rightful rulers of this strange land? To arms my fearless wibblers! For death and nibbles!

[comrade_general]

I believe Marcus had something to do with it.

[Pentagathus]

Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

[Jubal]

I'm hoping that in later versions the wibulnib stuff will be expanded, including more variants of wibulnib and possibly some related catastrophic invasions/quest lines/etc

[Jubal]

Just had a live playtest session with CG, who I regret to inform everyone has been killed by a manticore.

[Tusky]

Well that is exciting and tragic news, in that order.

Hopefully you got some valuable feedback before he snuffed it?

Great monster to to get killed by though...

[Jubal]

I did The main bit being that I need a minigame for battles of some sort.

I'm thinking of having a four-part screen so both you and your opponent can have 1 unit in each of attack and defence (which can be the same unit), which you can swap round, with stamina losses to stop you keeping your best ones out all the time, and then some options like "flee", "fight next round", maybe occasional special abilities, etc. Does that sound decent?

[Tusky]

Yeah that sounds like a good idea to me.

So would it be turn based with you chosen units squaring off in a sort of ff RPG stylee except with army troops?

[Jubal]

Yeah, exactly. I feel like the next step up from that would be a full tactics engine which seems excessive for the style of game.

[Jubal]

I've been back on board the dev train pretty seriously this weekend

The main news is that we now have a battle system set up! You can choose your attack and defence units (which can be the same unit or separate) - attack position gives units the chance to gain XP, defence is what takes the pain. So you can just put your best attacker in attack and your best defender in defence? Well, not permanently: being either in attack or defence drain's a unit's resilience, a new stat added to the game. Units that go below 0 resilience start taking stat penalties, hampering their ability to fight. Even veteran warriors or huge monsters, if exhausted from too many rounds of fighting, can be taken down by a unit of fresher but less well trained troops. You'll also be able to expend extra resilience with some troop types to activate powerful special abilities, though that's not implemented yet.

There have been other additions too - I've added more to the cities, so you can now use the "listen for rumours" button more usefully to discover info on the city's different districts, and you'll also get a free "first impression" line every time you walk into a city, which will give you a basic idea about how diverse and how wealthy the city is - cities that value a more pluralist society, or have deep poverty that needs tackling, will want rather different leadership to those that are exorbitantly wealthy, or those that have very traditionalist cultures.

I'm not sure what to work on next - more quests, more city detail, further combat improvements, more unit/enemy types, more diverse terrains etc on the map, more search functions... the possibilities are dauntingly endless!