So I found myself between interview appointments at E3 and I was cooling my heels - quite literally - in the media lounge. The lounge is a large room partitioned to create a smaller press conference room in the back. As I was resting I heard someone poke their head out the door to the conference room and announce that a press conference was about to begin. "What the heck," I thought. "There are chairs in there, too." Sometimes being in the right place at the right time and making what seems like a trivial decision can have wonderful and completely unexpected results. This, my friends, is Fate.
For most people, the term "casual gaming" conjures images of screens full of colorful blocks or virtual pets or brain teasers or word games. Light-weight, simple games that folks can pick up and play for a bit without having to invest large amounts of time. Role-playing games, on the other hand, are rarely light-weight. There's a complex character creation process, a heavy storyline to follow and keep up with, a myriad of character skills to advance and optimize. Playing even the simplest quests in RPGs usually takes a significant time commitment.
Until now, no one has ever tried to bring chocolate and peanut butter together to create a "casual role-playing game". I honestly didn't think it could be done, at least not without sacrificing production quality, gameplay depth and entertainment value. Wild Tangent has just proven me wrong with their release of Fate, the first ever RPG designed for casual gamers.
Fate begins in the town of Grove, where the hero sets out on a quest to explore the ancient and endless dungeon nearby. This town is home base for the hero's adventures. There are several NPC's to provide quests and buy and sell equipment. One NPC lets the hero 'gamble' by paying large amounts of gold for equipment without knowing what its special properties are. It might be good, it might be bad. There's even a handy storage box where the hero can leave things for safe-keeping.
Gameplay is streamlined from the get go. Character creation is a fairly simple process of choosing the hero's gender, general appearance and name. The hero also has a dog or cat as a companion and ally throughout their adventures. Specialization in magic or archery or swords or any other particular combat skill takes place as the character levels up. There are attribute points to adjust the hero's stats, such as strength and magic. There are also skill points to increase the character's ability to use various weapon types and magic schools.
Fate would be a fairly run-of-the-mill RPG if not for those wonderful pets. Your pet has its own experience level and grows more powerful automatically and at its own pace. It will participate in combat, but it cannot die. Instead, if the pet loses all its health, it will flee and run madly about until its health returns automatically or the hero heals it with a spell or potion.
In its natural cat or dog form, the pet is fairly weak. Fortunately, though, there's a clever way to transform the pet into a more powerful critter for a short time. This is done by feeding the pet various fish that can be found as loot or caught at any of the frequent fishing holes the hero encounters. Depending on the fish, pets can turn into tigers, wolves, wyverns or unicorns just to name a few!
Fishing is a fairly simple gameplay mechanic. Click on some fireflies buzzing around over the water and the hero will cast into the water. Wait for an exclamation point to flash up, indicating a fish is on the hook and quickly click the "Set Hook" button to snag it. Voila! You have a fish! Maybe... Occasionally if you're too slow, the fish gets away. I wish the transformations lasted a little longer as stopping in a dungeon or returning to town to fish is something of an interruption in gameplay. It's fun, it's just not quite as fun to me as dungeon crawling. However, if you feed your pet Flawless fish, the transformation is permanent. You can feed them Dogfish to restore them to their natural form thereafter.
Not only does the pet aid the hero in combat, but it can even act as a pack mule. I don't know how a little orange tabby can carry four swords, a suit of armor, two long bows and a great axe and I don't wan to know. It's just fun. Once the pet's inventory is as full as the hero's, the pet can be sent to town to sell off everything it's carrying. This greatly reduces the need to make time consuming trips to town just to sell stuff and free up space. A handy on-screen timer lets the player know how long before the pet will make it back and the deeper the hero is in the dungeon, the longer the pet will be gone. It's another way the RPG concept is streamlined for the sake of the casual gamer.
The dungeon itself is dynamically created as the player progresses and practically infinite in depth. A typical game of Fate starts off by giving the hero a randomly-generated quest. "There is a powerful Creature Type X down on the Random Number level of the dungeon. The monster must be destroyed!" Yeah, it's pretty generic, but it gives the players something to work toward without wrapping them up in a complex storyline. This is one of those rare times that I don't mind the lack of a strong story. The gameplay makes up for it.
In addition to the one big quest, several smaller quests are generated as the hero progresses through the dungeon. These quests are also random and they always take place on or just below the dungeon level where the hero is currently adventuring. The quests involve seeking out and slaying a stronger version of the enemies the hero encounters and they're usually easy to spot due to a nice glow effect. When a quest is completed, the hero is rewarded with experience, fame and treasure.
There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of different kinds of treasure to be found ranging from weapons and armor to jewelry and spells. The equipment found while adventuring might have special magical properties of varying degree, boosting the hero's skills and attributes or dealing special damage to enemies.
Most equipment found along the way will be inferior to what the hero is already using, but still quite valuable if sold to the merchants back in Grove. Thanks to "Town Portal" magic, skipping back to town from even the deepest levels of the dungeon is as easy as a click. The hero can return at any time to sell loot, buy equipment, complete finished quests and receive new ones.
Additionally, players have many opportunities to upgrade the equipment they already have. There's an NPC in town that can attempt to enchant equipment, adding magical properties or even better: adding sockets. Equipment with sockets can be fitted with various gems found throughout the dungeon. Each type of gem has different effects and there are several different qualities of gems to be found.
One other way to upgrade equipment is by finding various shrines throughout the dungeon. When the hero finds a shrine, he or she can tempt fate by placing a piece of equipment upon the shrine and...well...hoping for the best. The shrine will randomly grant either bonuses or penalties to the equipment. The best result again being the addition of sockets, which allow the player to upgrade the item to their own choosing.
Difficulty is selectable when the game is begun. Players choose from "Page", "Adventurer", "Hero", and "Legend". The "Page" setting is the easiest and is quite suitable for smaller children who might not grasp the character advancement system. Most enemies are generated to be close to the player's level, regardless of what level of the dungeon they are found on, so a child who never advances their hero can pretty much run around the entire game in relative safety. The pet's automatic level advancement helps here, too, because the pet will become more powerful even if the hero does not. This allows the pet to be of great assistance in defeating the few enemies who might be too challenging for young players to handle alone.
If the hero does fall, he or she is greeted by Fate. This character gives the player three choices for continuing. Regardless which option is chosen, the hero is returned to full health and full mana and retains all of his or her equipment.
The first choice is to continue right where the hero fell, but it costs the hero both experience and fame. This won't matter much to a youngster playing on the "Page" setting, but other players might want to carefully consider the cost. The hero can't lose a level, but the experience loss can still be significant.
The second option is to pay a fee in gold and to be transported to a nearby level - up to three levels away, either up or down. This option might put players in a more dangerous situation if they suddenly appear three levels below where they fell, where the monsters are more powerful.
The third option is to be transported three levels up, but without any gold. The gold will remain where the hero fell for a short time, so if the player hurries they can recover it before the monsters make off with it.
Once the hero reaches the level proscribed by the "big quest" and slays the monster, he or she can return to Grove and talk to an NPC to complete that quest. The hero can then either return to the dungeon and keep exploring indefinitely or retire. If the hero retires, he or she can choose one item to be passed down as a family heirloom. This item will receive a significant boost in power and will be given to the next character the player creates. The same item can be passed down repeatedly, becoming more and more powerful each time. This is a unique and innovative approach to 'ending' an open-ended game, while at the same time adding a new kind of replay value.
Wild Tangent is targeting this game at a broad audience. It's accessible for even very young children, it's lightweight enough that people with limited free time can enjoy it, and at the same time it's robust and deep enough to keep a more serious gamer like myself interested for the long haul.
Wild Tangent doesn't skimp on production value either. Music and sound effects are top notch and the voice-over narration is very well done. The game uses very modern 3D technologies resulting in a visually appealing game, yet it defies conventional wisdom with fairly reasonable system requirements. Games this good looking just don't run on a 650Mhz Pentium 3...yet that is the minimum spec for the game.
The future is bright for the game, as well. An SDK is under development that will allow the mod community to create their own content. Other possible future additions might include co-operative multiplayer, the one feature I wish the game had already. RPG dungeon crawls are great. RPG dungeon crawls with a friend are awesome! Here's to hoping the game's two-man development team gets enough feedback asking for co-op!
The game is distributed only on the web. You can't walk into EBGames or Best Buy and pick up a copy. You can find the game at Yahoo Games or AOL Games or just go to www.WildTangent.com. With just a $20 price tag, the game is a steal.
Alex St. John is the president and founder of Wild Tangent. Before that, he created Direct X for Microsoft. No small accomplishment! In the press conference at which the game was introduced, he said this game is something of an experiment. It's the first RPG game designed for casual gamers and let me tell you - it takes guts to be the first. In my opinion Wild Tangent's bet has paid off and what we think of as casual gaming will never be the same.
I'm a thirty-something computer programmer. I live in Delaware, but I grew up in Arkansas in a tiny town of 2500. We didn't have video arcades. Heck, it was nearly an hour's drive to anything as sophisticated as a Wal*Mart. Needless to say, my exposure to video games as a child was somewhat limited.
In the mid 80's, I cut my teeth on a used Atari 2600 bought at a flea market and a handful of games like Space Invaders and Pac Man. I was hooked in a blink. In the decades since, I've become a big fan of many genres of games. From first-person shooters to role-playing to strategy and everything in between. The only games that categorically don't interest me are sports games.
The easiest way for a game to win me over is to have a gripping story. I'll forgive a lot in a game that grabs me and keeps me interested. The inverse is true, too. If a game does not have a killer story, its gameplay had better be pretty darn compelling to make up for it. That doesn't happen very often
OK does anyone know a way to make enchanting weapons easier. The reason I ask is because I am trying to enchant my weapon at ricco the enchanter and all it says is nothing happens. PLZ HELP.:)
I enjoy fate because of being able to gamble, buy or sell equipment, and destroy monsters,and have a pet to be your companion and battle at your side and being able to transform them.The only thing I dont apprieciate the big restrain on the demo version. You can only go to the 3rd level of the dungon and still towns folk hand out quests to venture to the 4th 5th 6th or or even further into the dungon.You go to complete them only yo be diappointed butI still recommend this game to all.
i like FATE very much...........