The Banner Saga is an epic role-playing Viking saga with turn-based tactical combat where the player's choice in travel, conversation and combat determines the outcome of their own personal story as well as the survival of an entire civilization. "This comes just as we are about to launch the game on tablet, and we are excited about the prospect of offering The Banner Saga to a new medium of gamers". "We are honored by the outpouring of love from fans for The Banner Saga and know that this award is due to their support", said John Watson, Technical Director at Stoic. Currently available on PC and Mac, The Banner Saga will be coming to iPad, Windows and Android based tablets and is scheduled to launch in September 2014. The award ceremony took place on Sunday evening, August 17th in Hollywood, California and was broadcast live via Twitch livestream. The Banner Saga Takes Geekie Award® in Indie Game CategoryĪustin-based independent developer, Stoic, took home another award on Sunday night with its smash hit PC video game The Banner Saga winning the Geekie Award ® for the Indie Video Games category. Other winners included for Talkin' Comics Weekly in the Podcasts & Vlogs category, Belfort for Tabletop Games, and Oh Hell for Comics & Graphic Novels. That's because The Geekie Awards - now in its second year - is a celebration of independent creators, and not just in video games but across geek culture. If you noticed the common theme across those nominees, apart from their quality, it's that all the games were made by independent studios. Joystiq's Jess Conditt gave The Banner Saga four stars in her review, describing it as "a human story told with inhuman flair, and that somehow makes it all the more relatable." The new tablet version is due next month, and hopefully it'll match the quality of the Windows PC and Mac version released earlier this year. "This comes just as we are about to launch the game on tablet, and we are excited about the prospect of offering The Banner Saga to a new medium of gamers." "We are honored by the outpouring of love from fans for The Banner Saga and know that this award is due to their support", said Stoic Technical Director John Watson. Yes, one Richard Mitchell of Joystiq Reviews Content Director fame - and other judges, we gather - deemed The Banner Saga this year's worthy winner. But a winner had to be chosen and there was only one man for the task. Stoic's turn-based strategy RPG was up against tough competition from the likes of Outlast, Don't Starve, Axle and Octodad: The Dadliest Catch. Even if it is a dying and depressing one.The Banner Saga added another trophy to its haul this month by collecting the The Geekie Award for Best Indie Video Game. It is a joy and a treat to spend time with a world so different, so unique and intriguing. Of poor fantasy pastiches stitched together with wizards sporting wispy gray beards, dwarves slurring cheap Scottish accents, and knights brandishing impractical shoulder pads. Too often RPGs and turn-based tactical battle games are the domain of knock off Middle-earths. An item description of a small braid made from the mane of the last horse that ever lived – a piece of jewelry that still holds some of their fabled majesty and grace. The terse power dynamics of one clan sewing their banner into another, forever dissolving themselves as an independent people in exchange for whatever safety can still be found in numbers. The tragic nobility of the Varls, a dying race of giants without the ability to procreate. Unless you are comfortable with spending a lot of time in the training tent and sparring mode, you’ll probably be liable to lapse into complacency even with all the options available.ĭespite the improved combat, to me, the star of the game is still the rich, weird, beautifully desperate world Stoic has created. Unfortunately, the pace is almost too fast to keep up with, and with the degree of difficulty in each battle, I was more prone to stick with characters I knew and understood than risk taking in a new type of skirmisher or a Mender ( Banner Saga’s mage class) with entirely different mechanics than the ones I’d used before. I was still adding unique units with entirely different abilities to my armies well into the last third of the game, which would be great if I felt like I had a solid grasp on them. There are plenty of unique units with interesting rules and abilities to fight as and against, and while the standard tactic of whittling away armor before moving in the big guns hasn’t changed that much, there are enough sneaky tricks worth trying to keep things from getting stale. While still a turn-based, grid-layout affair, there is a greater emphasis on enemy variety and tactical choice, areas the original game struggled with past the halfway point. Combat as a whole is much improved in Banner Saga 2, and much more difficult to boot.
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