Conquest of Elysium 3

[Edi]

Hi everyone,

In case you were wondering where I disappeared off to and why, the reason is in the thread title. I felt I needed to take a slight break from UFO:AI about the last time I posted here, played a couple of other games for a while and was just considering coming back here when Illwinter Game Design announced they were developing Conquest of Elysium 3. I asked them if they'd like my help in beta testing. That was sometime in early August 2011 and right now the game is just a few days from release on Desura. Release date is 19th or 20th, depending on your time zone.

All in all, if you're a fan of turn based strategy and have fond memories of games like Master of Magic or Age of Wonders, or if you liked Illwinter's Dominions series, this game is definitely worth checking out.

There's a dev log discussion thread here, but in order to get an idea of what the game looks like, there are several YouTube videos available. The beta version accidentally leaked out to about a dozen people due to a permissions snafu at Desura, but it didn't turn out to be a bad thing at all, since the videos have generated quite a bit of interest.

Here are the video links:
52 minute overview
Demonologist game
Burgmeister (essentially a hobbit class)
Necromancer


In case anyone likes a text and screencaps AAR/LP, I wrote one playing the Necromancer class and the AAR can be found here:

A Chronicle of the Interregnum

Sadly, savegame compatibility got axed between versions 2.96 and 3.00, so the end of the story is left to the reader's imagination.

[Crystan]

I like these types of games and id like to support indie games - but the price must be a bad joke.

[Edi]

$25 is too much?

If I wasn't in the beta test myself, I'd still shell out double that for this game sight unseen based on Illwinter's previous track record, because their games have never yet managed to disappoint me. This one will provide virtually endless replayability with various combinations and configurations. And that's just with the random maps the game generates, but if one tires of them, the map editor allows you to do a whole lot of stuff like scripting stories, quests, events etc.

There is no demo out yet, because Illwinter has generally finished developing a game, then cut features from it until they get a demo and then made that available. I expect that this will be the case here too. You'll be able to try it at that point and you can then form an opinion on the price vs. quality.

If you want to try the predecessor, Conquest of Elysium 2, that one is available for free from Shrapnel Games: Link to free games from Shrapnel. Be warned, though: That game was made in 1997 and the user interface and graphics are primitive even by the standards of those days. The sequel is significantly improved over CoE2 in every single aspect.