|OT| Return 2 Games series (Thing Trunk) - Book of Demons | Book of Aliens (2021) & Book of Demons: HELLCARD (Q4 2020)

prudis

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What is R2G?

Return 2 Games is a series of unique mid-core games inspired by the golden days of PC gaming. There will be 7 games in total, each unique in terms of genre and theme, but all sharing the same grand vision. Each R2G title is a tribute to a single hit game from the 90’s: a reimagining of a single universal story for a brand-new audience, using modern means and innovative gameplay mechanics.
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Our goal is to bring back the experiences and universal stories of those hit games and make them accessible to everyone – both casual and hardcore players. We are also simplifying and/or straight-out changing the mechanics and compressing the experience of the original games into extremely short gameplay sessions. This way the games can be enjoyed by people who don’t have much time (like grown-up fans of the classic games, or casual players accustomed to playing Angry Birds).








first one of those Book of Demons: (went through early access since 2016 culmintaing in v1.0 in December 2020)



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Book of Demons is a Hack & Slash Deck-building hybrid in which YOU decide the length of quests. Wield magic cards instead of weapons and slay the armies of darkness in the dungeons below the Old Cathedral. Save the terror-stricken Paperverse from the clutches of the Archdemon himself!

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Procedurally Generated Dungeons
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Roguelike Mode for fans of extreme challenge
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70+ different types of monsters, with different traits and custom mechanics
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Xbox and Steam controller support
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Dungeons & Streamers - Twitch and Mixer integration
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Monthly and all-time Leaderboards, 200+ Achievements

Book of Demons is the first installment of Return 2 Games - a series of original mid-core titles, inspired by the early golden days of PC gaming.

Cards and Deckbuilding
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It’s not a card game, but items, spells, and skills are all expressed as cards. The strategy lies in adapting your hand to each situation. Cards can be upgraded with runes and you can find many variants with diverse bonuses. Legendaries are the most epic but hard to acquire.

Tailored sessions with Flexiscope
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Book of Demons respects your time. It features the Flexiscope engine which allows you to divide the game into sessions of any size. It even learns your pace of gaming and predicts the time to complete the next session.

Unique Mechanics
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Simplified movement and fight mechanics is where Book of Demons differs the most from other hack & slash games. There is often not enough time to click-remove all of the obstacles such as monster shields, enemy spells, poison, or knocked cards, so timing, card selection and order of execution are critical.

Hack & Slash in the world of Paperverse
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Book of Demons takes place in Paperverse, a world that exists entirely inside a pop-up book.
It’s a tale of good and evil about saving the world from the ultimate devilry. Sounds familiar? Inspired by the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the first Diablo game, Book of Demons is part tribute part parody of hack & slash classics.

Comfort of Gameplay
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Many Book of Demons features were designed with gameplay comfort in mind. Points of interest are marked at the top of the screen and get revealed once you get closer. Your character leaves footprints, which can be used to track your way back or notice paths already visited without opening the map.

Challenging Endgame
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On average it takes about 10 hours to complete the campaign with a single class, but maxing out a character and mastering all of the higher Freeplay difficulty levels and Quests takes much longer. The Roguelike mode offers another level of challenge with permadeath, restricted healing and even more obstacles to overcome.

 
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2020 Roadmap: Hellcard and Book of Aliens Announced
019 was a particularly chaotic time for all of us here at Thing Trunk! A whole year has passed since Book of Demons went out of Early Access, so it’s high time we share with you what we’ve been up to for the last 12 months.


In the spirit of the annual roadmap update, I’ll try to briefly sum up what we managed to do, what’s coming up in the near and not so near future, and – as usual – why everything is always going slower than we’d like to. But most important of all, today we’re announcing not one, but two new games that we are working on in the Return 2 Games series!

Book of Demons: HELLCARD
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Hellcard is a cooperative roguelike deckbuilder that can be played in both Singleplayer and Multiplayer modes. The game takes place in the paper dungeons known from Book of Demons, but its main mechanics revolve around deckbuilding and fast-paced tactical turn-based card battles.

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What makes HELLCARD unique and different from games such as Slay the Spire is that monster placement actually matters and can be used to your advantage.

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In HELLCARD we’re planning to support co-op battles with up to three heroes facing Archdemon’s hordes. You’ll be able to descend into the dungeons solo, recruit computer-controlled companions or join your friends or strangers in their battles against the hordes of hell.

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HELLCARD internally started as an idea for a new game mode inside Book of Demons (the first game in the R2G series), but we soon realized that it’s a much bigger design and that it should be executed as a separate stand-alone spin-off game. If you want to learn more about Return 2 Games or support us in the development of the series, visit the Supporter Pack store page. On release, HELLCARD will be a part of it.



Book of Aliens
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Book of Aliens’ action takes place during a global crisis. Earth is threatened by an alien invasion originating from below the planet’s surface. Your mission is to lead a supranational agency of scientists and military agents in a desperate but valiant fight to understand the alien agenda and thwart it.

The game is currently in early development. The screenshots shown are from one of our in-house prototypes and they might not reflect the actual look of the final game. While we can’t reveal a lot of details just yet, you can expect:

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unique gameplay mechanics that make the game simple to play yet strategically challenging and difficult to master
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a game that respects your time and can be enjoyed in both short and long gameplay sessions
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high replayability thanks to randomized levels and card-based mechanics
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beautiful paper pop-up book stylized graphics

Book of Aliens is developed as a tribute to MicroProse’ UFO: Enemy Unknown.
 
I really enjoyed Book of Demons (so much that it was the first game I finished in Early Access, and then as a "full" game), so I look forward to Book of Aliens.

I previously bought their "Return 2 Games Supporter Pack", so I'm already covered for it and future titles. ;)
 
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