How to Spend a Saturday in Illyria

It’s the weekend! Hopefully you’re not working behind a desk or shoveling horse dung in a stable.

If you’re in Illyria you’re surely trudging along those dreadful trails, managing your supplies and trying to avoid dangerous parties. In the interest of week’s end, we thought we’d explore some of the best ways to spend your Saturday in the land of Illyria.

Illyria Summer

First Things First

Before you do anything in Illyria, you’ll need a trusty steed. Not only will they help you travel the wide expanse of the country much faster, but they’ll also afford you more storage space for supplies. You don’t want to be caught out on the open trail without food and water.

Make sure you have those blades sharpened, staves sanded down smooth and arrows nocked. There are all sorts of baddies roaming the land, and the last thing you need is a limb torn off because you ran out of arrows.

The Illyrian countryside is beautiful, but make no mistake about it, it’s a very unforgiving place.

Spend Some Time in the Wild

TOI Screenshot 11

One of the best things to do in the country is to camp out in the open wilderness. It’s likely that while out in the wild you’ll encounter all manner of creatures. Don’t be frightened, though many are extremely volatile they are certainly interesting to watch. Of course, you’ll need to bolster your stealth skills if you want to monitor them from a distance unnoticed. You’ll also have to live on uncooked meats and without the comfort of warmth, as a campfire will surely give you away.

Tortha Should be a Kingdom You Visit

Though Gareth the King of Hysperia might disagree, Tortha is a very interesting place to visit. Since it was the first kingdom to fall and the first to lose its almighty lord Tortha is now in a state of disarray. Don’t take that to mean that it is hostile territory however. Because Hysperia has no tangible rule over this vassal, the people are divided in many ways. The varying cultures, beliefs and practices that make up this single kingdom are certainly worth checking out!

Visit the Lovely Streets of Narcena

The city of Nycenia

Okay so maybe Narcena is pretty much a steaming pile of filth. The streets are disgusting, the people are virulent and despite the nearby coastline the city is, well… it’s not that attractive. Then again, you don’t visit Narcena for the visual aesthetics.

Rumors mention that Nycenia is home to the infamous Sparrow, leader of the thieves guild. The group is hiding somewhere in the vast realm and they’re always on the lookout for potential members. If you can build yourself a decent reputation in Illyria, perhaps you’ll be called upon by the guild during your travels?

The Great Dividing Wall

To the north lies Vasena, a land of mystery and magick. No one has seen or heard from the country since the great wall was constructed ages ago. The wall itself is a sight to behold, it’s a great spot to visit for the adventurous. Many even claim they can even hear alien voices and noises drifting over from the opposite side in the early hours of morning, just before the sun has moved past the horizon.

An old wives tale speaks of a certain merchant known as the candy man. Though no evidence suggests that such a man is real, many believe there is credence to this old tale. If you do encounter this mysterious spectre, make sure you’re stocked up on gold for he apparently has a very rare and desirable selection of goods.

To be Continued…

Vasenian City

There are many more things to do in the land of Illyria, this is but a taste. Stay tuned for lots of other great ways to spend your weekend.

The Sequel is in Development

We have some interesting news to share with you today. Beside the fact that our team is going to be producing regular content for this site, we’d also like to officially announce that the sequel is in development.

Tales of Illyria on tablet

Due to that news, many of you will question whether or not we are going to continue to support the original game in the series- Tales of Illyria. The answer to that is a resounding yes. We will regularly offer updates to the game engine, mechanics and address any bugs or issues that may crop up. In addition, we will also be porting the original game to many different platforms. You can see the evidence of that in our recent announcement of the new MOGA controller support. Ouya compatibility is coming very soon!

We will also continue to add new events to the game over time, and any general changes to the game engine for the second title will be implemented in Tales of Illyria too. That is, if we make changes to the combat mechanics or gameplay it will happen across all of our titles. The engine was designed to be universal in that respect. Please don’t take this to mean we are leaving the original game in the dust, far from it! We are still enthusiastically adding to Tales of Illyria as necessary.

That being said, our very talented team of writers is currently focused on generating content for the sequel. Look out for another post in the coming days that describes the sequel in more detail.

For now, we’d like to thank you very much for your supporting our game and the team. Tales of Illyria has definitely been a success and it is because of fans like you that was possible.

The Online Codex is Live

Illyrian Codex Banner
Our web specialist worked tirelessly to adapt the Tales of Illyria Codex for the web. Without further ado, it’s now live! Whoo hoo!

If you would like to view it online, you can visit the page here. You can also visit the appropriate link in the main menu above (hint: it’s listed under “Game”). The page includes links to download the codex directly (PDF) for viewing on tablets, smartphones or your desktop.

By the way, when we say “massive” we’re not kidding. The Codex features over 40,000 words, crafted by our very own Mikal Hanson. It explores Illyrian lore and provides an in-depth backstory to the game. If you’d like to know a little more about the land of Illyria, then be sure to check it out!

Tales of Illyria Now Supports MOGA Game Controllers!

You can now play Tales of Illyria with your Moga Game controller! You can even play on on your big screen TV using HDMI out and the controller!

Tales of Illyria Featured MOGA game

Our game was featured by the MOGA team along with Downhill Xtreme, Forsaken Planet, Into the Dead, Bus Simulator 3D, Blue Skies Helicopter Shooter, Heroes of Loot and WhiteWater 3D.

Congrats are also in order to PikPokForsaken Planet,GameSpotOrangePixel, and Laughing Gull Productions!

Tales of Illyria Officially Released

TOI Screenshot 10

Previously, the game was available in a trial version that was still under heavy development. The game has since been released in full. We are continuously updating the game with bug fixes, features and events!

Tales of Illyria is a party based RPG hybrid mixing Oregon Trail and “Choose your own adventure” game mechanics. Each party member has a distinct personality and reacts differently to being sick, running out of supplies or if you make a decision that goes against their alignment. Combat is tactical but extremely fast, using both real-time and turn based elements you can issue every order to your party or let the AI do the work.

Features:

  • 20+ hours of gameplay
  • 1.5GB of art at full 1080P
  • 75 original music compositions
  • 700 unique encounters
  • 6 unique kingdoms with 42 villages, castles and cities to visit
  • 6 Geographic environments
  • Tons of monsters, shops, equipment, spells & melee fighting style
  • Equipment changes appearance of sprites and portraits
  • Different story outcomes based on your decisions and karma
  • 275K words – that’s four novels’ worth
  • Google Translation Service for all languages (NOT FREE this is a PAID service)

After the game installs, additional files will be downloaded. Please keep in mind that higher resolutions will require more storage space.

Get it on Google Play

Q&A With the Developers of Tales of Illyria!

How did Tales of Illyria (TOI) come about? Incredibly enough, the game is a labour of love made possible by a team of nine people, over two-and-a-half years of development.

This week, Austin-based Jon Smith (Lead Designer and Artist) and Chad Maniccia (Programmer and Project Lead) talk a bit about the genesis for Tales of Illyria and the unique challenges they faced.

How did the two of you meet?

Chad: I posted an ad in Craigslist for an artist.  It was for a zombie game we never made.

What were your previous projects?

Chad: I’ve developed several unpublished board and video games in high school. When the app store lottery began, I thought I might try to roll the dice. Tales of Illyria is my fourth commercial release.

intro_tortha1

Jon: Chad made a paddle boat game before we met (River Blast). It was a miserable failure. We got together to make ‘The Ultimate badass Game of All-Time’. It was a failure. Then we took the engine we started with Ultimate Bad-Ass Game, and made Legends Arcana. It made us some money, but (we) still made too many mistakes, and it was too much work to keep our momentum and expand our fan base.

How did Tales of Illyria come about?

Chad: I have a massive board game collection. Tales of Illyria was conceived after playing a session of Talisman. Jon was very impressed with the game and wanted to make something with a board game feel. He liked the way board games used static art.

Burning City

Jon: We were looking for a new project to start on. I thought a digital version (of Talisman) would be easy to make. Talisman has you moving a character though different environments with randomly drawn cards determining if you will fight a monster or find a bag of gold.

From there, we started expanding on the core concept. We quickly added complexity – this was a digital game after all and it was not necessary to keep the math simple.

Very early on I saw parallels between our game and Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail is a very focused experience. Many RPGs have you running around, distracted with all the side quests, but with our game we wanted to keep you focused on an epic quest. Also, not many games have you planning your journey, and focused on survival like Oregon Trail. The game is simple, yet unpredictable and difficult. I admire that.

A night encounterWhile Oregon Trail is about attrition, most RPGs are about building a progressively stronger character. Our game became a merger of the two. You want to build a stronger party, but ignoring your party’s needs can weaken them and lead to failure.

When we brought on writers, they gave the game new life. Matt (Schneck, Lead Writer) decided our simple board game approach to the writing was not good enough. He told a bigger story, we brought in more writers, and now we have a novel inside of our game. So, to summarize, what started as a simple concept turned into a major venture, a huge risk on our part, and a one-of-a-kind game.

Describe your team and where you are from.

Chad: I’m the programmer and as such, everything in the game goes through me. I developed the game engine and development tools the designers use to craft encounters. The team’s core is in Austin, Texas but we have many members throughout the (United) States. We even have a very talented writer from Malaysia on the team.

Why did you want to work on this project?

Jon: It was going to be our last game if it failed. It was different than anything we’ve worked on before, and I don’t think any one has done anything quite like it. It is too hard for a handful of indie developers to compete with multi-million dollar projects, so we carved out our own niche. Board games and a good novel last the test of time. TOI is part choose-your-own-story novel, part board game, part video game.

What were your inspirations?

Jon: I was inspired by a lot of different sources from Choose Your Own Adventure stories, D&D and Talisman, to Oregon Trail, Zork, Betrayal at Krondor and PSX-era JRPGs. Each of these games has mechanics that work great but are largely ignored by game developers today.

What features are you particularly excited about in Tales of Illyria?

Chad: What I like most is that it closely mimics playing pen and paper D&D with its Choose Your Own Adventure game mechanics. Combat is turn-based real-time, so it’s fun and and exciting. A latter development which I really appreciate is the emphasis on character. Each of the party members has a distinct personality and they react differently to being sick, running out of food and wine or if you are doing things against their alignment.

feylanor_warrior

Jon: One that I’m really proud about is the taverns. Too many RPGs penalize you with negative status effect for going to a tavern. Our taverns are a major gameplay mechanic. Having a drink boosts morale and presents opportunities that you would not have otherwise had.

Also, healing can take time – your party may have to rest for weeks to heal their injuries or fight off a disease. Suddenly, investing in that hunting skill will seem like a good idea, when you run out of supplies from resting.

What challenges did you face with Tales of Illyria?

Chad: We started developing the game when Android 2.0 was the rage and so we targeted development at that. However, the memory a 2.0 app is given is not very much so it was a constant challenge to not run out of memory. Even though the game can run fine on many 2.0 devices, we made a late decision to upgrade to 4.0, basically to avoid memory issues all together.

Yeti battle

The game engine was obviously very challenging to create but the nature of the game required that I develop four tools for the designers to use: a world editor, a character editor, a party editor and an event editor. Each time I put off developing an editor, it became obvious that coding it by hand wasn’t feasible.

Jon: The game is huge for such a small team. We kept lying to ourselves that it would be done sooner than it really could be.

Chad: Tales of Illyria was supposed to be quick and easy, but scope creep set in. Now it’s massive and epic – it’s got about four novels crammed into it.

On what platforms will the game be released?

Jon: The game will hit Android first, and with some modifications, Ouya. Then, we will port to Windows, Mac, and Linux. Depending on the success of the game an IOS port is likely down the road.

How will it be distributed?

Jon: Android Market and Amazon. We will push for a Steam release when the time comes.

What are your hopes for the project?

Jon: I like to think of our engine as a new storytelling medium. I hope we can expand on what we have now, and keep producing new stories.

One of many encounters

All our work is for a series. We built a huge world to explore, and tools to make endless adventures.

I want to expand on the toolset. Right now the game works best as a party, which is perfect for a D&D type of adventure. It could also be fun, in the future, to control a single thief, a pirate with a crew, or even a warlord controlling armies.

What are the team’s future plans?

intro_vasena1Chad: We want to get started on the sequel right away. A sequel was always intended as the cost to make (them) will be a fraction of the cost, so it would be a massive waste for us not to create sequels.

(The story) will start in Vasena, the desert kingdom which has yet to be fully developed. It will likely have a female lead. We also want to create a Gama World/Fallout version of the game using the exact same game engine and tools. We would swap out the graphics and story for one set in post apocalyptic earth.

Jon: We would love to do a cyberpunk/post-apocalyptic version.

Tales of Illyria is Now Available in a Limited Pre-Release Version!

TOI Faded

The day is finally here! Tales of Illyria is now available! Currently, the game is an early pre-release version and here’s why:

What you get:

  • 1/2 off the final price
  • A 99% complete game with a balanced economy and combat system
  • Every update and extra content
  • You can get a full refund if you have issues

What you risk:

  • Possible: Downloading might not go smoothly.
  • Rare: You might find a bug.
  • Rare: An encounter may be unbeatable.
  • Very Rare: A later update may require redownloading files.
  • Very Rare: A later update may break your saved games.

Tales of Illyria is a party based RPG hybrid mixing Oregon Trail and “Choose your own adventure” game mechanics. Each party member has a distinct personality and reacts differently to being sick, running out of supplies or a decision you make that goes against their alignment. Combat is tactical but extremely fast, its real-time & turn based, issue every order to your party or let the AI do the work.

Features:

  • 20+ hours of gameplay
  • 1.5GB of art at full 1080P
  • 75 original music compositions
  • 675 unique encounters
  • 6 unique kingdoms with 42 villages, castles and cities to visit
  • 6 Geographic environments
  • Tons of monsters, shops, equipment, spells & melee fighting style
  • Equipment changes appearance of sprites and portraits
  • 250K words that’s over 4 novels

After the game installs, additional files will be downloaded. Depending on the resolution you pick, this will range from 750mb to 185mb. Keep in mind, you will need double that amount in free space to install the game.

Get it on Google Play