So what do you do in the game?

Here are some things you’ll do in the first chapter of Guildlings:

• Embark on a grand Quest to Save the World

• Reunite with long-lost friends

• Duel with a grumpy kitchen appliance

• Navigate a maze of trashbag-crabs

• Annoy your big sister by insulting her love life

• Collect tons of gold then spend it all on snacks

• Snap selfies at the mysterious Makeout Temple

• Narrowly avoid being crushed by a giant apocalyptic bird

No, tell me about the actual GAMEPLAY!

Ok, calm down! We'll do our best.

Gameplay is a mix of exploration, conversation and non-traditional combat, all connected by a mood-based character system.  Each of your Guildlings has magic powers that can support you in the challenges ahead, but in the realm of Worldaria, magic is driven by emotions.

The easiest way to explain our mood-driven challenges is through an example. Imagine your Guild is trying to make its way through a forest, but a huge log has fallen across the path.  One of your Guildlings, Syb, has a spell that can animate objects; she can bring the log to life and ask it to move over, but she can only manage this magical feat if she is feeling Confident. Right now, she’s not Confident, she’s Afraid (because of that recent run-in with a ghost, of course). As the player character, the Guildmaster, you have to figure out how to get Syb from freaked out to Confident before she can clear the path.

• Along the way, Syb asks you a question about your quest.  Can you answer in a way that inspires Confidence?

• Syb and another Guildling, Prisma, get into an encounter with a giant slug.  Can Prisma take a moment during the fight to cast some Confidence-building magic on Syb?

• Using gold you acquired from treasure chests throughout the game, you bought a Confidence-building self-help scroll (single-use, dissolves after reading).  Is this the right time to use that item?

Ultimately, there are multiple ways to achieve your goal.  It’s up to you… and your Guildling teammates, who will remember and react to your choices.

So how does combat work in Guildlings?

Guildlings has its own take on the classic combat of RPGs.  It shares a lot of the DNA of other turn-based battle systems, but we decided to do some things differently because we wanted to challenge the “kill everything” incentive structure of classic fantasy games.  Those systems work well, of course… but we wanted our challenges to feel more appropriate for a group of magical kids getting in and out of dangerous (or absurd) situations. Like Undertale before us, we wanted to build a system where you didn’t have to resort to violence just to get by.  

Instead of a fight to the death, each of our encounters take place over a set number of rounds.  On each round, the Guild and their opponent each take an action. Your team’s actions can be used to defend your characters against harm, shorten the encounter, or even change the final outcome of the conflict.  This system freed us up to make physical dangers, but also to pit our guildlings against different sorts of challenges… insult duels, terrible smells, screamo music, boring anecdotes, you name it.

When can I play Guildlings?

Another great question!  We are going to update this answer soon ;)