Hellenica Party Intros: Diona, the Arktos Part 2

Hellenica's coming out in 2.5 weeks! Head over to the steam page and wishlist it for us, we'd appreciate it!

Last time, I dug into Diona's bear form and some of the fun you can have with Beardozer. Check it out if the thought of running amok as a giant bear in ancient Greece sounds compelling.

Even in her human form Diona's no pushover. She has reduced HP and movement range compared to Beariona, but if you're willing to take some risks with her human skills, she still has great utility and can deal a lot of damage.

First up, her basic dagger attack deals piercing damage to help cut through heavy enemy units, and she gets an extra backstab bonus when she attacks from behind enemies.

With the Roll skill, Diona is able to ignore obstacles and blink four additional spaces. At the end of her roll, she'll perform a dagger attack against any adjacent enemies. That's potentially four backstabs in a single turn!

Diona's not only about damage in human form though. If you'd rather help support your allies more directly, you can unlock Artemis' Blessing, one of the few healing skills in Hellenica.

After two turns, Diona will transform into a thrashing bear again, so you'll have to consider your actions carefully in human form!

On Friday, I'll start introducing Nephele, our theomechanic priestess from the temple of Apollo. Until then, spread the word about Hellenica's launch and get your tactics-loving friends to wishlist it!

Hellenica Party Intros: Diona, the Arktos

It's finally January, and that means Hellenica is launching very soon. If you haven't already hopped over to our steam page, do so and wishlist it! We'd really appreciate your support.

In celebration of the upcoming launch, I'm going to be posting introductions to the party members you'll meet in Hellenica. I'll have a new one up every MWF leading up to our launch on January 23rd, so check back often!

First up is our main protagonist, Diona. She's been with us from the very beginning, but she's gone through some serious changes as the game's developed.

Diona is a disciple of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, and as such has been granted the ability to transform into a bear for short durations.

I'll give you a moment to let that sink in.

So how does that work mechanically?

At the start of combat, Diona will transform into a bear. She'll remain in this form for three turns (player and enemy), granting a large boost to her health and movement range. She'll also gain access to a new set of skills that allow her to focus on disrupting and manipulating enemies (or allies!).

One skill you can unlock is called Beardozer. Once unlocked, Diona can charge in a straight line up to five spaces, tossing anything in her way behind her. Enemies, allies, barrels, anything.

Not only is this a good way to cover a lot of distance, it also lets you set up a cluster of enemies for an AoE attack or a line of enemies for a long bounce chain. Beardozing as your first action in a turn means the rest of your party can take advantage of the new positions of up to six characters.

Here's a two-step sequence I set up with Diona and Nephele that exploits a chokepoint to deal a ton of bounce damage:

After three turns Diona will revert to her human form, which enables a completely different set of skills.

Check back on Wednesday for part two where I'll go into the different ways you can outfit Diona's human form to play a support role or a damage role. (Part 2 is here!)

And don't forget to add Hellenica to your wishlist to support us! Thanks!

Battle Manipulation Skills Part 2: Falls and Bounces

(Psst! Check out Part 1 before diving into this post!)

So, you're up to speed on Part 1, and now you're thinking to yourself:

"Hmm, so pushing enemies to expose their flanks or tossing an ally out of danger seems helpful, but I want to do some damage..."

Here's the simple approach: send them tumbling for fall damage!

Characters will take damage if they fall from a height greater than three blocks. So with a cleverly-executed push or toss, you can make the environment do damage for you.

Things get even more interesting when you push a barrel or toss an ally onto an enemy. We call this a bounce. Friend and foe alike will take bounce damage if they're on the receiving end, though the character doing the bouncing won't.

In general, characters with heavier defenses are heavier, and that means more bounce damage when they land on someone's head.

Once a character starts bouncing, they will keep bouncing until they land on an empty space. As you might imagine, this can lead to some pretty impactful turns...

Next week, I'll post the final bit of fun: hazards and traps. Check back then! (Part 3 is now available!)

Battle Manipulation Skills Part 1!

Hellenica has all of the expected trappings of a SRPG/Tactics experience when it comes to combat mechanics: facing modifiers, height bonuses, buffs and debuffs, heal spells, and more. On top of that, we've also included a number of ways to manipulate the battlefield.

Here's a gif showing some push examples using Diona's Maul skill. Maul deals a decent amount of damage and pushes the target up to 3 spaces:

You can see that Diona will push targets up or down as long as the incline's not too steep.

If the target hits a part of the environment that's 2+ blocks tall or runs into another target, they will cause a collision! This will deal some damage to the target in the case of the wall collision, or split that damage equally between the pushed target and the collision target.

In general, you can use all of Hellenica's manipulation skills on any target: enemies, allies, or obstacles like barrels and pots. Your allies won't be damaged by the damage portion of the skill, but they may still take collision or fall damage, so be careful!

Another type of manipulation skill is a toss. Here's Makarios making good use of his toss to eject a pirate:

Tosses differ from pushes in that they can pass over other targets and environment obstacles, assuming they aren't too tall. Although they don't typically do damage directly, they can be used to clear paths, set up clusters of enemies for AoE attacks, or send an enemy onto an environmental hazard as seen above.

Next time I'll go into some of the fun ways these skills can be used to damage and defeat your opponents. Stay tuned!

(Part 2 is now available!)

Hellenica release date and steam page!

It's been a long road folks, but we're finally close. Today I'm happy to announce that Hellenica has a release date! We'll be pushing the big red button on January 23rd, 2017!

Please check out our Steam page and wishlist/follow the game so you're reminded when it is released.

If you're not a Steam person, we're also going to be releasing on itch.io down the line.

Anyhoo, here's a fancy new launch trailer. Please share it around!

Hellenica is Greenlit!

Great news, everyone! Hellenica was Greenlit early this morning!

Thanks to everyone that voted and helped us raise the call for support. We really appreciate it!

We also had some help from smaller games journalists across the web. Check out some of their write-ups:

• http://bigbossbattle.com/greenlight-highlight-hellenica/
• http://indierpgs.com/2016/09/hellenica-announced/
• http://www.siliconera.com/2016/09/23/hellenica-offers-tactical-steampunk-vision-ancient-greece/
• http://www.oneangrygamer.net/2016/09/hellenica-greek-style-strategy-rpg-awaits-greenlight-approval/12690/

We even got picked up by some international enthusiasts:

• http://niveloculto.com/hellenica-helade-steampunk/
• http://games.tiscali.cz/oznameni/hellenica-kombinuje-takticke-rpg-s-antickym-reckem-a-steampunkem-286685

IndieGames.com included us in their trailer round-up, too! Somehow we weren't the only game that featured ancient Greece or involved a mechanized, axe-wielding robot.

With that out of the way, it's just the game launch to think about at this point. Back to work!

Hellenica is on Steam Greenlight!

Good news! We pushed the big green button, and now the future of Hellenica is in your hands, dear readers.

Head over here (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=763801312) and vote yes to help us gain access to the biggest digital video game marketplace!

Also, please tweet/email/shout from the highest perch in your town or city about this as well, as we can use all the help we can get.

I'll get a more content-oriented post up next time, stay tuned!