Joe Madureira goes back to his comic book roots with a new RPG
In 1998, Joe Madureira released the first issue of a rollicking arcanepunk fantasy comic entitled Battle Chasers. The larger-than-life characters, explosive action, and colorful world captured the imaginations of readers. But after nine issues troubled by scheduling problems and publisher transitions, the fan-favorite series was left tragically incomplete. Nearly two decades later, after a successful crowdfunding drive, Battle Chasers is coming back, charging into the world of video games with the help of the same creative minds that brought us the Darksiders games, and they’re aiming to shatter genre expectations in the process.
Starting Fresh
While patient fans may have been looking forward to reading more chapters of the Battle Chasers story for years, new converts shouldn’t be scared away. Nightwar tells an independent story that marks a new beginning in the sword-and-sorcery epic. In fact, creator Joe Madureira has committed to finally returning to the comic medium to finish out the story left unfinished at the close of the graphic novel’s ninth issue. The next three issues will wrap up loose threads and pave the way for the storyline of Nightwar. “This is a big deal for us,” Madureira says. “It’s going to be presented as a standalone adventure, and you’ll get to know the characters as you go, as if you had no previous knowledge of them.”
Like the original comic, Nightwar draws heavily on the familiar tropes of classic fantasy storytelling, defined by big action, archetypal heroes, and world-threatening villainy that must be stopped. “Battle Chasers was itself inspired by JRPGs and anime, and that culture in general, so this project sort of brings things full circle,” says lead designer Ryan Stefanelli. The arcanepunk aesthetic draws heavily on spells, legendary magic items, and towering monsters, but injects a technological edge through the presence of robot-like metal golems, projectile weaponry, and airships.
The new story finds the party of heroes united in pursuit of their missing companion, the powerful wizard named Knolan. Gully, Calibretto, and Garrison recruit the infamous Red Monika to commandeer an airship to track down their friend, only to have rival sky pirates shoot them out of the sky. The crew crash-land on Crescent Isle, where they discover inhabitants besieged by a growing army of the undead. The force is led by the return of a wicked vampire lord, and the party must confront the resurgent Dark Prince. “One of the reasons I did the comic series was my love for Dungeons & Dragons and all that stuff I grew up on,” Madureira says. “I never really got to do a lot of monsters in the comic series – I was getting to it. So this game is the opportunity to finally add all that. One of our favorite settings is the Castlevania-like fantasy horror-type world. So we created this island where they could encounter that.”
Delving Deep
Battle Chasers: Nightwar draws on a number of inspirations to fuel its gameplay, but at its core it’s a callback to classic dungeon delving. Players repeatedly guide a team of adventurers into one of several dungeons, gathering power and loot before returning to a central hub to rest up before venturing forth once again. Layer on RPG storytelling, beautiful comic book-style cutscenes, item crafting, and JRPG-esque turnbased combat, and there’s a lot to explore.
The hub is the beleaguered town of Harm’s Way, a tiny bastion of civilization under assault on Crescent Isle. Developer Airship Syndicate describes the town as a bustling center where much of the story is established, with unusual characters to meet and places to gear up for subsequent adventures. Players can visit the inn to manage their party or relax at the tavern for an amusing arcade minigame, among other distractions.
“Crafting is the primary way to improve your items,” Stefanelli says. Crafting resources are found in dungeon rooms and among monster loot, and artisans in town slowly level up as you have them complete recipes and gift them upgrade tools. Any given crafting opportunity has a chance to result in a higher quality version with better stats, and you can add “sweeteners” to increase your odds. In a unique twist, some of the crafting stations are hidden in the depths of the various dungeons.
Those crafting expeditions are just one of many reasons you might venture into a dungeon. These explorations are the chief loop of the game. Beyond choosing the mission and dungeon tileset, players also select between five difficulty settings. Harder dungeons equal rarer creature fights and bigger rewards in the form of items and crafting resources. In addition, players can set dungeon modifiers before venturing forth. These consumable items change the structure of the upcoming dungeon before it is finalized, like spawning every monster as an elite, but with dramatically increased loot. Higher difficulty dungeons allow for more modifiers to be placed, ensuring you can build some unusual challenges for yourself.
Constraint breeds creative thought, so you’re also forced to make tough choices about who and what you bring along for your adventure. “We want to enforce decision making,” Stefanelli says. “When you leave town, preparation is an important part of setting out.” Only three companions can join you, and each has specific combat and dungeon abilities that could make all the difference. A very limited inventory size also means you have to choose what helpful items to stuff in your backpack. Care is warranted; perish on your adventure, and the loot you’ve found on that outing as well as anything else in your inventory is lost.
Inside the dungeon, adventures play out in third-person. Each dungeon is randomly generated from a pool of hand-constructed dungeon rooms, so you’re unlikely to ever see the same configuration more than once. The rooms themselves have defined borders, but their internal layout, creature placement, and trap dispersal change. “The core experience here is still combat, but we want the dungeons to have their own moment in the spotlight,” Stefanelli says. “We wanted them to have an action feel, even if the pacing is deliberate.”
“Monsters are visible,” Madureira adds. “One of the JRPG tropes we decided to avoid was running on an empty map and suddenly getting attacked. Enemies have different ways of aggroing on you. Some are more passive. Some are patrolling. Some can ambush you.” Archers might target you from a distance, and reduce your health before you can engage in battle. A lich might spawn additional skeletons if you don’t hurry to defeat him. In turn, your heroes each have special dungeon skills that can help to avoid unwanted conflict, overcome traps, or find hidden secrets. By instantly switching between which of your three selected heroes appears on screen, you can take full advantage of your party’s skills.
Battle Chasers has always had a deep and imaginative fiction behind the action, and Airship Syndicate wants to tap into that depth of setting. At the same time, the developer recognizes that not everyone cares about digging into the lore. With that in mind, the team has implemented a clever system called lore points. Carefully explore dungeons, and you find books, gravestones, plaques, and more, with content you can read to learn about the history and setting. But even if you don’t dig into the background narrative, finding those hidden caches of narrative provides lore points – the chief way to upgrade character abilities. Fully investigating the world is the best path to high-powered heroes.
Combat With A Twist
Many gamers have a soft spot in their hearts for classic turn-based combat, but the tedium of trash fights against repetitive enemies isn’t always part of the nostalgia. Airship Syndicate is aiming to hold on to the best parts of the familiar combat paradigm, but simultaneously tweak the formula to keep every fight fresh and engaging.
“We didn’t want to have a standard attack,” Stefanelli says. “We wanted to force players to use mana in virtually every fight. We also have fewer fights than a traditional JRPG that has random battles. We push the player into a corner and force them to make tough decisions about their resources – it’s a key part of our design.” Even the first encounter during a sortie demands you manage your inventory, conserve your mana, and choose your attacks and defenses carefully.
One of Nightwar’s most intriguing features is its clever approach to ability and spell use. Two distinct mana pools fuel those actions, but each resource is attained in different ways. Blue mana is a finite resource that carries over from battle to battle. Like a standard magic-point system, it depletes after spells and abilities are used, and the primary way to regain it is by the rare rest point that might be hidden somewhere in the dungeon.
Meanwhile, red mana is accrued in each battle, starting at zero as the fight begins, and increasing through the use of specifi c actions. Red mana is always consumed before blue, so a wise player may often spend the early turns of a fight accruing red mana before unleashing high-powered mana-dependent abilities.
“What makes the combat stand out is that in addition to juggling your mana resources, all your abilities are going to affect your initiative order – something you’re constantly competing for with the creatures,” Madureira says. Both hero and enemy units sit somewhere on the initiative bar, as determined by their speed. Complication arises because of random effects that target particular slots in the initiative order. Enter a room with lava, and one initiative slot may gain fire-based effects. Enter combat while in a poison cloud, and one of your Chasers may be stuck inside a poisoned slot. Hero abilities may move you around the initiative bar, so not only are you thinking about the direct effect of a power, but also where that effect places you in the subsequent turn sequence.
As each character grows in power, players are faced with the dilemma of specialization. With more abilities than slots into which those abilities can fit, do you make a character a focused damage dealer or a support healer? Like much of Nightwar’s feature set, player choice is central.
A Helping Hand
Despite meeting its funding goals on Kickstarter, several of Nightwar’s stretch goals remained out of reach. Enter Nordic Games, the company that not so long ago purchased Darksiders from THQ – the same project helmed by many veteran developers at Airship Syndicate. “I had gotten to know the guys at Nordic shortly after they acquired the Darksiders license,” Stefanelli says. “We started talking, and they would occasionally hit us up and ask us questions about the IP. After the Kickstarter campaign closed, we started to talk with them about acting as a co-funder and publisher, and help us reach some of the stretch goals we’d narrowly missed out on.”
For gamers, the newly announced relationship means that many of the bonus goals that were once out of reach are now moving forward, including voice acting, a new set of dungeons called mana rifts, and additional cinematic sequences.
Battle Chasers: Nightwar has the potential to introduce a whole new group of fans to a longdormant universe. If Airship Syndicate can tap into what once made fans so hungry for more comic issues, the role-playing game world may have a new franchise to embrace.
A Band Of Heroes
Each party member in Battle Chasers: Nightwar is a hero in his or her own right, just like in the original comics. The stars of that original story reunite in combat, along with at least one new face confronting the forces of darkness. “The books are so driven by the party of characters, so it’s hard to imagine a game that wouldn’t take advantage of the whole team,” says lead designer Ryan Stefanelli.
Even in character development, the idea is always to provide compelling decisions to the player. “Each hero has more than one role, but you can only equip a certain number of abilities when you take them into combat,” says animation director Steve Madureira. “You can focus them. Each character has multiple specs. You can make a wide variety of party types.”
Let’s meet the cast.
Alumon
Fans know the Battle Chaser characters from the comics, but Nightwar introduces a new hero into the mix, inspired by the game’s gothic-horror setting. The devil hunter named Alumon comes to Crescent Isle to halt the return of the Dark Prince and his undead minions. Part of an order of devoted battle priests, Alumon can heal the troops as well as smash a corrupt and blighted creature with his unyielding shield in hand. The details regarding his backstory and abilities remain in development, but it’s exciting to know that at least one new hero is joining the ranks.
Gully
The heart of the Battle Chasers fiction is a young girl named Gully, the daughter of a great warrior named Aramus, whose mysterious disappearance looms over the entire comic series. She inherited his legendary gloves, which provide near invincibility and super strength. As such, she’s an unlikely tank that can hold the line against enemy attackers, as well as dish out some punishment of her own. When taking the lead in dungeon exploration, her gauntlets have a ground-pound ability that can stun enemies, allowing for a hasty escape or an advantage in combat.
Knolan
One of the last great mages, Knolan’s backstory remains unknown. Suspected to be truly ancient, Knolan’s mysterious past haunts him, even as he is recognized as one of the world’s most accomplished practitioners of the arcane arts. As the story begins, Knolan has vanished, and his disappearance triggers the other Chasers’ journey. At some point, we know that he must be reunited with the crew, as he is one of the playable heroes in Nightwar. In battle, Knolan unleashes devastating spells against entire enemy forces, but his magic also enables him to be a potent healer. Put him in the lead while exploring, and he can brighten dark spaces, revealing secrets and hidden enemies.
Calibretto
A sentient war golem, Calibrett o is a remnant of a concluded war for which he is no longer needed. He has found purpose through communion with nature, companionship with the mighty wizard Knolan, and an unshakeable protective instinct toward Gully. His massive arm cannon can damage foes, but he also acts as a healer. When wandering the dungeon, Calibretto can blast foes, diminishing their health pools before the combat screen even triggers. A second ability lets him rejuvenate party health between fights.
Garrison
Friend to Aramus, Garrison is a legendary swordsman. Troubled by the untimely death of his wife, Garrison fell into a drunken despair. He emerged from despondency to fight and protect his friend’s daughter, and once again prove himself a hero. With his magical blade by his side, Garrison’s chief party role is one of high damage output, but he supplements that with magical abilities that can buff his friends and debuff his enemies. When leading the dungeon group, he has a quick dash that can be used to slip past undesired encounters.
Red Monika
Monika took to thieving at an early age, and is now one of the most notorious pirate outlaws. She has a tangled past with the fallen paladin Garrison, which has been further complicated considering they stand at opposite sides of the legal spectrum. When Knolan goes missing, Red Monika commandeers an airship to lead the rest of the Battle Chasers in pursuit. In combat, Red Monika can debuff her enemies as easily as she strikes them with her lightning-fast daggers and pistols. She wields classic rogue skills within the dungeon, picking locks or even enemy pockets outside of battle.