Nice, Running Man the game

Nice catch, definitely looks fun. :)

Not unofficially. :)

Actually the game has been officially listed in the GOG store since last summer when it was announced with the rather awkward title Homicidal All-Stars. Today we only officially changed the title to Showgunners which is why there's (apparently) no "coming soon" thread for Showgunners. :)

Clever wordplay there, but I think you should have stuck to Homicidal All-Stars, as it's better conveying this ultra-cynical "The Running Man"esque tone you're apparently going for too.

Age of Wonders 4 is in "discussion" for a GOG release. So a maybe GOG almost confirmed?
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/regularly-updated-f-a-q-upd-17-02-23.1566405/#post-28742644

Anywho please wishlist here!
https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/age_of_wonders_4

It's funny that you'd say that because the game seeming too cynical was one of the reasons why the title was changed. Some were expecting the game to be as cynical as, say, Postal, Carmageddon or Hatred while the thing is this: the gameshow inside the game is obviously cynical but the game itself is not. There's a lot of world building going on that puts all the violence into context, some characters are aware of how messed up all of this is. That's why the gameshow inside the game is actually still called Homicidal All-Stars but the game itself has the more neutral and fun title Showgunners.

Another similarly important reason for the title change was that Homicidal All-Stars was just a mouthful that's awkward to write and difficult remember, especially for players who aren't that fluent in English, while Showgunners is as smooth and simple as a baby's buttocks. :)

Fair enough.
Was going to pick it up as soon as possible in any case, really had a grand old time with Phantom Doctrine and am curious to see in which ways you have improved (and hopefully not streamlined/simplified/dumbed down) upon that.

You should ask GOG to mark your account as developer so that your posts get highlighted like this.

F4LL0UT is a regular at the community and knows full well what developer accounts are like.

This was discussed when Phantom Doctrine was released. Bottom line, even tho he works at these games he is not an official mouthpiece for his employer and IIRC doesn't even want to be seen as their representative.

Oh yeah... "Trails to Azure" is available now on GoG day one, with a goodie... in this case not a surprise but there is surely equal conditions. Would be interesting to see the sells statistics... to me "look no further"... i know which version i enjoy. No brainer... but no one knows why other people may enjoy less for more: I usually am unable to understand the majority... so i will not even try.

Surely, for me a very high rated franchise... this is the kind of games i enjoy.

I only hope it will not take to long for a GoG release of "Kuro no Kiseki"... i dont know if a non EN version is even realistic, GoG is not exactly "a chinese base", unless GoG is making a special offer because majority may still prefer the locked Steam version, because it is Steam... i dunno the reason. It could still be different for this game, who knows, because it is the correct place here. If we have to wait for a official EN release... it surely may take a good while.

I already apologize for derailing this thread. The Showgunners subforum is available and sadly very empty and I'd love to see you guys ask questions and discuss the game there. :)

We have streamlined and simplified a whole bunch of things compared to our past games but I'd reject the notion that it's "dumbing down" and I'd actually argue that Hard West and Phantom Doctrine were pretty dumb games compared to Showgunners. :)

Let me say it this way: Hard West and Phantom Doctrine were these impressive lists of features that didn't amount to all that much in my opinion and the games had pretty obvious and substantial shortcomings in their basic gameplay. With Showgunners we've set ourselves the goal of creating a super satisfying, dynamic and actually rather deep combat experience and didn't want that one to be held back by stuff that sounds fancy but doesn't contribute much. So yeah, we did simplify things like the stats and character development, we use regular RNG instead of something like the awareness system (but we use it very sparingly and have limited its impact), fog of war is very simplified so you actually have complete information about all enemies participating in combat and so on.

But: the encounters are very carefully designed, they have a particular intense and dynamic flow that we've wanted to achieve and most importantly we've put a ton of care into our characters, their many different abilities, the large roster of enemy types that you encounter and the levels so you actually face interesting challenges and - most importantly - have access to a wide set of interesting strategies to overcome them which steadily grows as you move through the campaign and develop your characters. For all the systemic complexity of Phantom Doctrine: its tactical gameplay was very shallow and repetitive by comparison.

But the game also isn't barebones. We have stuff like the fame system where you get rewarded for skilful and aggressive play, there's a little RPG aspect where you build your persona which unlocks some perks in the form of sponsorships, there's a whole bunch of unique guns with meaningful differences, some of them being more effective against certain enemy types than others, you can equip implants that change your stats a bit or give you some resistance and so on. Oh yeah, and there's the whole exploration layer where you run around that city, evade traps, solve puzzles, talk to NPCs and your team mates etc.. But you know, it's all stuff that actually does something in itself or contributes meaningfully to the combat.

I can't promise that it's the tactical game of your dreams but I believe the odds are that you will find the gameplay far more engaging and satisfying than in our previous games. :)

Well, to be fair, that was a long time ago and a lot has changed since then (and I'm a little disturbed that you remember such details :D). For starters, I've been the studio's lead designer for over four years at this point. Artificer is not my studio but it's definitely a lot more than just my employer and I am one of the people representing the team and our game, whether I want to or not. Also, I'll officially be responsible for everything wrong with the gameplay in Showgunners. :)

But yeah, I actually still don't want the developer tag here because I still want to be able to participate casually on the GOG forums once in a while and the developer tag would at the very least be very confusing in threads unrelated to our games (I'm assuming that there's still no way to only make the tag appear in specific threads and subforums).

I have an impressive capacity to store and recollect random trivia that is much better than my ability to remember "useful" stuff :D

Despite that, my memory sometimes fails me. After I wrote my comment I thought some more and remembered that, even tho I saw a brief discussion by the release of Phantom Doctrine, the occasion that burned that memory in my brain was when you released Hard West. So it was actually 7 years ago...

Anyway, congrats on your career ascent and on the release of your newest game. It looks pretty interesting.
Turn-based strategy are not my shtick but I gotta admit it looks so good and fun that I feel like grabbing it after it releases.

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Edit: Well, that was fast:
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/coming_soon_silver_box_classics_929cb

More D&D games are on their way:
DragonStrike
Spelljammer: Pirates of Realmspace
Fantasy Empires
DeathKeep
Heroes of the Lance
Dragons of Flame
War of the Lance
Shadow Sorcerer
https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/spelljammer-fantasy-empires-and-more-classic-dd-rpgs-return-to-pc-this-month

Any further word on the SSI Star Command? What about the Buck Rogers games?