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Previously, we discussed how Summoners Fate uses unique mechanics to make turn-based tactics more fast, fun and accessible without sacrificing deep strategy. Today, we're going to talk about how our advanced mechanics take turn-based tactics to the next level of awesome.


The top down perspective of Summoners Fate was purposively chosen to ensure that the characters' directional facing has tactical significance. A quick glance at the battlefield provides instant information on which characters pose a counter attack threat and which could potentially be backstabbed. This dimension of directional facing powers advanced tactics that clever players can leverage to outwit even the most steadfast of opponents.

[h2]Counter Attack[/h2]
Each character gets one counter attack per round unless they are:

1. Backstabbed
   
2. Overkilled
   
3. Not able to attack (ex: frozen or out of range)
   

The Marauder will counter attack if targeted from the front, knocking the insectoid into the spikes. By backstabbing, the insectoid denies the enemy a counter attack.

Characters who have used their counter attack for the round can be recognized by their idle stance. Notice that the Marauder's sword is no longer raised. Additionally, the icon of the sword crossed out over the character indicates that there is no danger of being counter attacked.

If the damage dealt by an attack is greater than the target's remaining life (bringing them to a negative life total) they are “overkilled” and get no counter attack.

I think we can all agree the squirrel is "overkilled"

A seasoned tactician in Summoners Fate recognizes that winning the war of attrition means maximizing your attacks each round while denying your opponent their counter attacks. You must carefully consider the order of your attacks against the enemy to achieve the best outcomes. For example, if you can sneak a unit behind an enemy to backstab, this might whittle him down enough to enable another one of your units to attack them from the front. Where they might have previously been injured by a counter attack, they can now overkill the enemy and survive to fight another day.

[h2]Combos[/h2]
It's always satisfying to push an enemy into a trap using a knockback attack. But what happens when there isn't terrain available to take advantage of? In Summoners Fate, gravity forces like knockback and pull always have value thanks to our unique combo system.

Combos work like this:

1. Combos trigger during your turn whenever an enemy is knocked next to one of your units.
   
2. The combo attack cannot be countered attacked by the enemy.
   
3. The combo attack uses up your unit's action for the round.
   
4. Units that have already attacked this round cannot combo.
   

Combos can be used in numerous ways to gain advantage. For example, you can team up with a unit that has knockback attack (like a Barbarian) to knock a more powerful enemy towards your awaiting allies and have each unit make an attack without the repercussion of a counter attack from the enemy.

Enemies cannot counter attack gravity combos, enabling these heroes to take down the Mountain Troll without getting sledged.

Combo attacks can also be used to close the gap on units out of attack range. Use a grapple spell to pull enemies into your waiting attack swing. You can also use combos to gain bonus actions during a round. For example, you can heal an ally with a cleric, then, use a knockback to trigger her combo attack.

Combos are especially fun for inspiring “game the system” moments where you try and rack up the highest combo chain possible to gain the strategic advantage.

Treant, Dreadnought Titan, and Barbarian engage in a game of Occuloid catch thanks to gravity combos. Occuloid is not amused.

[h2]Shield Block[/h2]
Equipment also plays a role in advanced tactics, and shields are a prime example of that. Characters wielding shields can block all physical attack damage (swords, arrows, etc.) that hit them from the front or sides. The act of blocking with the shield staggers its user, causing their shield arm to drop and leaving them vulnerable to subsequent attacks. The shield can be rearmed for another use by moving to a new position.

After blocking, the shield arm is staggered and lowers to the side, leaving its wielder vulnerable to subsequent attacks.

To use the shield again, the character must move to reposition their stance and regain their bearings.

Shields only protect the front, adding additional strategic value to unit positioning and backstab.

[h2]And More[/h2]
Counter attacks, combos and blocking are just a handful of the tactics available to you in Summoners Fate. Stay tuned for future articles where we'll cover additional mechanics to expand your strategic arsenal.


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We're excited to announce that Summoners Fate was selected by PAX to be included in the PAX10!

The PAX10 are a collection of the 10 highest quality indie games critiqued and picked by the PAX staff from nearly 100 entries to exhibit at PAX West in a specially curated section of the expo hall. We are honored to have been selected for 2021 and stand alongside such outstanding game developers.

We'll be showcasing Summoners Fate at PAX West 2021 this week at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, Washington on Friday September 3rd - Monday September 6th. It's going to be a blast! Be sure to stop by so we can meet you in person :)


During the PAX West event, we're also providing our free online demo of Summoners Fate on Steam. You can pick this up on our store page here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1681840/Summoners_Fate/


PAX will also be hosting a Steam Event during PAX featuring the games exhibited. During this event, we'll be providing developer streaming of the gameplay so you can check out the other awesome features that will be available in Summoners Fate.

During early development of Summoners Fate, we reached out to players to discuss what makes turn-based tactics gameplay so compelling. In contrast to card battlers, a tactical grid provides the dimensions of terrain and position. Obstacles must overcome, hazards avoided, cover from enemy fire taken. There is an innate satisfaction in the realism and creative solutions that the battlefield environment can bring to gameplay. A compelling turn-based tactics game has meaningful environment.

Terrain in Summoners Fate is destructible and persistent. In this example, a fireball destroys a patch of the earth, flings goblins across the map, and detonates spore pods, poisoning the Orc chief.


To make a meaningful environment, three key pieces are needed:

1. Tactical Significance
   
2. Interactivity
   
3. Persistence
   

[h2]Tactical Significance[/h2]
Terrain in Summoners Fate has tactical significance. Large rocks, trees and other structures block movement and line of sight. Hazardous terrain such as lava and spikes cause damage. Furniture such as weapon racks, armor stands and spell tombs can be looted for cards.

Trees block Goblin's line of sight to Barbarian

While the Skeleton Captain's shield protects it from frontal damage, the Barbarian's knockback attack pushes it into the spike traps to a poof-filled demise.

Tactical significance is what drives compelling decision making: Do I take cover in these trees to avoid enemy fire? Do I go for the weapons rack or spell tomb to acquire an advantage?

[h2]Interactivity[/h2]
With spells, you can interact with the environment to turn the tide of battle in your favor. Create walls of fire to stop the enemy advance. Open chasms and watch enemies plummet to their doom. Transform the environment into living creatures such as Treants and elementals.

Environment can be destroyed or transformed into powerful allies.

[h2]Persistence[/h2]
Decisions are more meaningful when they have permanent consequences. The battlefield in Summoners Fate changes, for better or for worse, in response to player decisions. Fire spells can burn down the forest, exposing covered enemies - but likewise, potential cover you may taken advantage of later is now gone. Scorch marks from your incursions will also linger in the world, providing a lasting marker of the destruction left in your wake.

Pyromancer casts Conflagration to burn down the forest. The burnt trees still block movement, but no longer block line of sight, leaving the insectoids exposed to enemy fire.

By creating meaningful environment, each battlefield in Summoners Fate offers unique challenges and possibilities for players to win in creative and satisfying ways.


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Hey everyone,

Welcome to Part 5 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we’ll be discussing our fourth and final core gameplay mechanic: Team and Deck Building.

The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:

1. Exploration
2. Strategic Resource Management
3. Tactical Turn Based Combat
4. Team and Deck Building

Summoners Fate is a game about mastering creative strategies to achieve the most satisfying victories. To make introducing new mechanics easy and fun, all characters, spells and equipment are represented as cards. With your cards, you can build a team consisting of a Summoner, two heroic companions called Guardians, and a deck of 20 cards. With over 400 distinct cards including 200 diverse characters, players have near limitless freedom to unleash their imagination.

[h2]Card Collecting[/h2]
Throughout your adventures, you collect cards. Cards expand your available strategies so you can tackle challenges with new and exciting solutions. While your collection resets with each new adventure, you’ll have some agency to choose from cards previously discovered to populate your starting deck. Successfully completing an adventure also permanently unlocks cards for Battle mode where you can construct custom decks and play head-to-head against the AI or other players in real-time and asynchronous multiplayer modes.

From the mightiest dragon to the lowliest squirrel, every card in Summoners Fate provides a distinct tactical value. Curious when you might choose a squirrel over a dragon? Continue reading to learn how squirrels can synergize with other cards.

We describe the cards in Summoners Fate as being “strategically diverse” rather than “common”, “uncommon” or “rare” as this best represents the spirit of our card collection mechanic. Other games may require the player to “dust” hundreds of powerless common cards to evolve them into a desired rare card. But in Summoners Fate, there is no grinding, no dusting, no card fusion: each card is distinct, balanced, and tactically useful in the right deck build. Instead of grinding to attain the highest power value, our card-driven system fosters a desire to experiment with new and creative ways to win.

[h2]Balance[/h2]
One of the questions we are asked most often is “How do you balance a game with so many distinct cards and characters?” Imagine a game of rock-paper-scissors and take that to a grand scale. The key is to provide a natural counter for each card. There should never be a silver bullet set of cards or strategies that reigns as most powerful. Rather, choosing the right card, the right strategy at the right timing to counter your opponent’s tactics leads to a victory filled with surprise and excitement.

To satisfy our high quality standard for balance and engaging gameplay, every card and character in Summoners Fate must adhere to three core design principles:

1. Provide a distinct tactical value
   
2. Feel awesome and fun to play (either on its own or in synergy with other cards)
   
3. Have another card that counters it
   

How do we know whether or not a card meets these standards? We bring it to our player community. If a card isn’t balanced or fun, it becomes obvious through player feedback and how often a card gets used or not used. We discuss the design in collaboration with our players and adapt the design as needed.

[h2]Managing Your Team[/h2]
During adventure mode, you can customize your team while resting at camp. Interact with characters to manage your party. Interact with the Cosmic Tortoise to manage your deck.

Hint: If a character is sitting by the campfire and holding a marshmallow stick, they’re in your party. If a character is off to the side without a marshmallow, they’re in your reserve. Interact with characters to manage your team.

The Cosmic Tortoise carries the burden of your card collection. Interact with the tortoise to view your cards. Customize your deck by dragging cards from your collection (bottom) to your deck (top). In Battle Mode, switch tabs to choose your Summoner and Guardians.

[h2]Synergy[/h2]
Characters are carefully designed to not only look unique and distinctive, but to play strategically different. Characters have natural strengths and weaknesses that complement each other to create strategies where the sum is greater than the whole. For example, the presence of a Skeleton Captain on the board enhances the power of all ally skeletons. Build a team of all animals, and you can guarantee that all of your characters are going to benefit from spells like Animal Growth and Breed.

You hurl a squirrel at an Orc. With a satisfying thud, it donks the orc and jumps to the ground. What do you do next? A) Mutate it into the Super Human Hulk Squirrel B) Turn it into a furry suicide bomber C) Breed it into an army of ankle biter rodents

[h2]Factions[/h2]
There are multitudes of factions: Orcs, Skeletons, Dreadnoughts, Ironclads, Animals, Insects, Dragons, Demons, etc. Additionally, you’ve got schools of magic and card types to consider. Build a deck of all Arcane spells and enjoy cost discounts and continuous draw combos with everything in your deck using an Arch Mage as your Summoner. Build a deck of Chaos spells and receive a damage bonus to your cards with the Pyromancer. (Note: We'll dive more into the different kinds of magic in the coming weeks).

[h2]No Right or Wrong Way To Build a Deck[/h2]
The moment you boot up, you’ll be having fun blasting away enemies with all kinds of spells. As you advance to harder levels, the game will present challenges that require you to build strategically focused teams. There’s no right or wrong strategy. Some players like the raw power of destruction spells and blowing things up. Some like to swarm the board with hordes of squirrels. Others still like the cunning approach of holding back and manipulating your opponent to the brink of madness. If we haven’t added enough choices to build your dream strategy, we will listen to you and make it happen.


With over 400 cards including 200 diverse playable characters, Summoners Fate allows you to unleash your creativity, build your dream team and achieve the most satisfying victories. With our four core gameplay mechanics now covered, we’re ready to deep-dive further into the gameplay itself. Coming up next, we’ll discuss how we’ve made the environment meaningful in Summoners Fate.


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Hey everyone,

Thanks for following Summoners Fate and welcome to Part 4 of our Guide to Summoners Fate. Today, we talk about our Turn-Based Tactical Combat system and some of the ways we've made the turn-based genre more fast, fun and accessible without sacrificing deep strategy.

The core gameplay mechanics of Summoners Fate Adventures:

1. Exploration
2. Strategic Resource Management
3. Tactical Turn Based Tactics
4. Team and Deck Building

On your turn, you are able to issue one command to each of your characters on the board and play as many cards as you have available. Each of these actions can be performed in any order that you wish.

Cora the Ice Queen freezes an enemy.


We believe the appeal of turn-based tactics games are deep mechanics that enable a wide array of creative strategies and solutions to achieve victory. But, what good is depth if the game is too complex and overwhelming to learn? To solve this, we took the tried-and-tested combat system of our first game, Hero Mages, and worked collaboratively with our players to evolve it. Through player driven development, we designed intuitive mechanics that make combat easy to pick-up and play without sacrificing the desired deep strategy.

[h2]Single Gesture Commands[/h2]
To accelerate the pace of combat and make commanding characters intuitive and fun, each character’s movement and action are combined into a single gesture. At the start of your turn, each of your characters looks up at you (literally!) indicating they are ready for your orders.

To issue a command, drag a path from your character to your target. As soon as the dragging starts, all possible targets for the character are highlighted on screen. When you release, your command is executed and your character moves and attacks.

Command your units to move and attack with a single gesture.

The single gesture mechanic replaces the traditional “two action point” system used in most turn based games. It also seamlessly merges a third action step of choosing your character's facing, as the directional aspect of the gesture automatically assigns the facing of your character to align with its movement path.

Now, this may sound like we’ve lost some depth by condensing choices into a single command. However, in practice, and verified over the past few years of playtesting with turn-based fans, we’ve discovered that this actually enhances gameplay by empowering a natural flow of command and eliminating cognitive overload. For many players, the vastly higher number of permutations presented in the two-step action system creates an “analysis paralysis” effect where you’re often second guessing yourself over insubstational gains in the consideration of move move attack, or attack move attack type assessments. The end result of this? The game pace is dramatical slower. We’ve observed play patterns where players would stare for 45+ seconds before even attempting a move. This behavior fatigues the brain and denies time that could otherwise be spent enjoying the outcome of your creative strategies.

By contrast, the one-gesture mechanic system, working in tandem with our other accessible mechanics, results in a state of “flow” where your strategy is driven intuitively. Your time spent in the game is laser-focused to satisfying moments of your carefully planned positioning and combos paying off in a glorious spectacle of sequential animations.

[h2]Fluid Response (No Waiting for Animations)[/h2]
Further contributing to the flow-state of our one gesture commands is our fluid response mechanic. In some games, you’re forced to wait for the character’s animation to resolve before you can issue a new command. This delay builds friction that slows the pace of gameplay and prevents you from playing as fast as your mind is thinking.

In Summoners Fate, we’ve taught our animation system to prioritize player response over animations. Not only can you rapidly command a series of units in parallel (and observe their simultaneous moves and attacks) you can intuitively skip ahead by issuing the next order. For example, you can chain together multiple unit orders or drag and drop cards in succession without having to wait for the first card to resolve. As needed, the game will detect dependent animations and skip ahead to catch up. Likewise, the AI will do the same - detecting dependencies where needed to show you important event chains (like a surprise effect being triggered) and running non-dependent animations (like a series of moves and attacks) in parallel. You also have the freedom to skip enemy turn animations all together.

Summoners Fate is responsive to your commands. Unleash your ankle-biter squirrels on the skeletal legion!

[h2]Undo and Tactile Learning[/h2]
For those who’ve played games with intricate stack chains (like Magic the Gathering) where a series of effects can trigger a complex series of additional effects, you can recognize when your opponent has got something sneaky planned when they start asking to look at all of your cards on the table and read their abilities aloud. Indeed, a lot of the fun of deep strategy games comes from cascade effects creating a surprising outcome. But, it’s not very fun to brain-crunch your way through all the variables when all you really want to know is “Will playing this card give the result I intended?”

Summoners Fate provides the “Undo” button as a way to learn through tactile response. Not sure exactly how a gravity blast is going to affect all the units on the board? Drop the card down and find out. Don’t like the results? Want to try a different target? Undo and try again. All that mental energy spent calculating is handled by the game, and what’s left is the pure joy of your action yielding your intended response.

[h2]No Submenus - Actions are Context Based[/h2]
There are no submenus or ability buttons in Summoners Fate. Instead, characters automatically perform the appropriate action for the target you select. For example, Paladins have a melee attack and a healing ability. If you want to attack, drag to an enemy unit. If you want to heal, drag to an injured ally.

Cleric can attack the Skeleton Breaker or heal the injured Fighter Mage. She heals her injured ally.

[h2]Intuitive Casting: Drag and Drop[/h2]
Casting spells, equipping items, and summoning characters are also intuitive: just take the card you want to play and drag it from your hand onto the battlefield.

Want to blast enemies with a fireball? Just drag and drop your card onto the battlefield.

Cards follow a few rules:

1. You need mana to play a card equal to the number shown on the card.
   
2. Cards range in cost from 0-5 mana.
   
3. You generate 3 mana each turn and can store up to 5 mana.
   
4. If you are awarded first turn, you generate 2 mana on your first turn instead of 3.
   
5. You hold three cards in your hand and draw new cards at the end of your turn until you have three cards.
   

Today, we covered the basics of how turn-based combat works in Summoners Fate and outlined how we bring accessibility to the genre without sacrificing deep strategy. We have much more tactics to share: combos, backstabbing, blocking and more! We'll cover these in the future, but for next time, we'll conclude our discussion of the core gameplay mechanics with Team and Deckbuilding.


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