On their way, the siblings will run into groups of refugees and will have to decide whether to take them under their wing or leave them behind to the mercy of fate. You will not be able to save everyone no matter how hard you try, and overestimating and stretching your resources too thin might mean the end for the entirety of your caravan. But more on that later.
Wartorn releases into Steam Early Access on June 17. The developers intend to listen to player feedback to iterate on existing ideas while fully fleshing out the game’s systems and narrative. While there is no precise window of full release, the team assures that they don’t intend for the Early Access to last overly long.
While the game already features a wide selection of units of different races with their unique abilities, as well as upgrades, biomes, events, quests, and more, the final version of the game will add higher-tier units, bosses, squad & hero upgrades, and more. Players will also be able to experience the true ending to this story.
This adventure starts slow and small, but it doesn’t stay that way for long. Our two protagonist sisters are celebrating Yara’s Recognition Day at their family home. The otherwise bright and pleasant day is spoiled by the fact that the girls’ parents have been missing for months, and there is no indication if they are even alive at this point.
Still, the two young Adara warriors put on brave faces for each other’s sake, and go through the motions. Yara received just one gift: an exquisitely-made hourglass that arrived without any way to track down the sender. However, soon the girls will have more pressing matters.
Despite the bright, colorful day that is worthy of celebration, a dark tide sweeps across their doorstep: Imperial horde sets fire to the villa, forcing them to flee alongside the encountered Adara rainmakers. This is where the hourglass shows itself: gameplay-wise, it allows you to slow the time for a more precise use of your abilities and movements.
Narratively, it serves another purpose. When your run will inevitably reach its end, either via defeat in battle, or your caravan running out of hope, or the wagon getting destroyed, or in a variety of other ways, it will send you to face the Avatar, an embodiment of a certain concept, that is interested in the young siblings. Receiving a new lore crumb, you will be sent back to the Recognition Day and burning villa, starting the journey anew.
However, each run will make you stronger. Not only will you be more aware of what to expect from certain enemies and events, there’s also a way to make the characters themselves more powerful. There are certain resources – Strands, Spellbook Pages and Chord Crystals – that will be preserved between runs and can be used to upgrade stats, spells and unlock family members in the future runs. This is also how you can unlock the healing ability, which will be a small game changer.
When you get the chance, run around the villa to see what it offers: upgrades, different types of weapons, a portrait gallery that is meant for the girls’ family members to start to journey with them, and more. I have personally enjoyed playing Yara and Elani with the starter sword & board combo (the stats of which you can upgrade as you progress through the game), but you might find more comfort in the bow or the daggers, other available options.
Still, most of the game will be spent in one of the two modes: traversing the map with your wagon, doing quests and events, managing supplies and squads; and actually taking your characters and squads to battle.
The sisters’ caravan will be rolling along the roads, with players choosing where to go at crossroads, based on the chips outlining what awaits after any particular turn. Some areas will restore your wagon’s Hope, others allow you to recruit extra squads or pick up additional artifacts, and so on.
As you make this journey, you will come across a variety of events and little side quests. While some leave you no other choice but to fight, usually such pop-up events have 2 or more ways of resolution, some even featuring 4 or 5 options to proceed.
With the world of Wartorn being swept away in a tide of malice, it is quite hard to predict which choice will have a positive outcome. Sometimes, threateningly brandishing your weapon works out better than diplomacy, sometimes being patient pays off, and sometimes, yet, you’ll be punished for trying to do the right thing.
There is a great variety when it comes to these map events, but the drawback is the overall pacing. The speed of the wagon moving across the map is quite slow, with the events popping up with surprising regularity. It leaves this confusing feeling of barely making any progress across the map, yet participating in an event after event non-stop. If it so happened that 2, 3 or more of these events led to a battle, it is as if no progress had been made at all.
With your wagon, you will mostly have to pay attention to Food, Coin, Refugees, Hope and the Wagon’s HP points. Food is the resource that is spent passively as you move along – after all, your squads and refugees alike need something to eat. It is also arguably the easiest resource to collect… or lose. After all, many of the encountered map events, including the little Extended Hunt quests, revolve around it. Running out of food destroys your Hope and leads to the end of the journey.
Coin is your general currency: you can purchase supplies, use it as a means in events, recruit mercenaries, and more. Unlike the food, you don’t need coins to continue your journey, though having some would be a bonus.
Hope is the most interesting resource in the game. In short, it’s your party’s will to move forward. Once Hope falls to 0, that’s a run over. And there are surprisingly many ways to lose Hope while not nearly as much to gain it. Lost your troops in battle? Lost some Hope along with them. Didn’t get the best resolution in an event? Get another decrease, and so on. So far I had only seen a few random events that let me receive some Hope back – and no, winning a battle with no losses didn’t provide any Hope. If you’ve encountered a heavy battle, but managed to win despite the toll it had taken on your squads, it might still be a game over simply due to the amount of lost Hope you got from it.
Refugees is another interesting mechanic. Through the events and other means, from time to time you will pick refugees to travel along with you. These non-combatants have no direct effect on battle or events. However, if your Squad had some losses but wasn’t wiped out completely, you can train refugees to take the place of the fallen warriors and casters. It will take some time, but your squad can be back to its full capability.
When it comes to battle, Wartorn plays like a real-time with pause RPG – although, technically, you don’t pause the gameplay, thanks to the aforementioned hourglass and its abilities, the time slows to crawl anyhow. This allows you some precise control over your positioning and abilities. The game features a system that allows elements to interact in impressive combinations, which means that you’ll need it for sure! Water extinguishes fire, tar amplifies fire, electricity crackles across the ranks in wet conditions, and water can heal plant-based units – and that’s just some basic stuff.
You can have 4 squads with you in any given battle, with the option to call for reinforcements if any of the squads are fully destroyed. Note that you would first need to have those reinforcements to call for in order to take advantage of this option.
There is a great variety of units that you will encounter, both as enemies and as recruitable squads. From the other Adara, just like Yara and Elani, to goblins, to undead and demons and treants and more. What’s even more impressive is that all creatures have unique abilities and just how useful they are depends on a variety of factors.
Having Raincallers is a great thing if you have an option to cast lightning, have plant-based allies or are fighting against fire-slinging enemies of some kind. However, outside of such situations, they are reduced to simply auto-attack from a distance. So choosing the right squads to take with you is a big step towards victory – that is, if you have enough squads to choose from. Lose all squads at once, and you lose the battle. The only exception are the sisters themselves – even if they’re killed in a battle, Yara and Elani will be back on their feet in the fights to come.
Surprisingly, as of now, there is no bonus or a penalty for bringing the creatures of the same or warring races. On the one hand, that’s a great thing as it means you can build powerful combos of squads that would not work well together in any other game, on the other – it’s a bit strange to see elf-like creatures willingly fight alongside demons or ghouls.
As any roguelite, Wartorn goes through the same gameplay cycle repeated again and again: you escape the fiery villa, get your caravan going, go through events and battles until the inevitable loss. Talking with the Avatar in a limbo before you are being sent back to the beginning gives you a bit more worldbuilding and lore, and you start it from step one, stronger and more knowledgeable than before.
If you don’t mind this process of treading the same steps and repeating the same motions, you will have a grand time traveling across the world of Talaur in the company of Yara and Elani. However, if you are someone who wants to have new events, new lore drops, new adventures every single time, Wartorn might not be for you.
The game features an interesting mix of real-time squad-based battles with a steady supply of events that reminded me of playing 4X strategies with endless pop-ups. Not only will you have to keep an eye on Hope, Food and the wagon’s health, but also pay attention to your squads, their abilities and how well they can be used together.
At the moment, the game’s main problem is pacing when it comes to the general map exploration. The wagon moves through the map at a slow pace, and sometimes it feels as if you are barely making progress towards some distant goal. Another drawback worth paying attention to is the pathing/AI and the general performance, which is typical for a game in Early Access.
Discover more from Game Bounty Online
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
