Roll two D8's to read this preview
09 May 2013 | By Joe Robinson
Knights of Pen and Paper takes you into a tongue in cheek RPG fantasy world, in the true dungeon & dragon’s fashion. What’s great about this game is more of the narrative presentation than anything else - essentially you as the player play a bunch of players playing an RPG. The table where you guys are set up acts as your ‘avatar’, and moves around the world as you do, and there’s even a dungeon master narrating as you go along, whilst your other ‘player’ fires out random comments, both in and out of character. It’s all very meta and amusing, and it leads to an unusually rewarding game.
You get to control both the players and the Dungeon Master – the players choose where they go, and what quests the want to go on, but using the Dungeon Master you also get to customise the quests you go on, and the number of monsters you fight in each encounter. The more monsters you choose, the more bonuses you get but the harder it is. All of your players have abilities depending on their class, and who you have actually doing the role-playing. At the beginning of a new game, you can only afford two characters, but as you earn in-game currency you can buy up to three more (for a total of five) any time you want, and you can customise each slot to try out different party configurations.
What the +1 edition specifically brings to the table is more low-key. On a basic level, they want to just pack the game world with more content, and harder content as well. New classes, new character archetypes, and obviously new gear and equipment is going to be a must, in addition to new dungeons, locations and quest types. The team are also working on adding in a ‘New Game Plus’ version of the game, in keeping with recent RPG trends, so you’ll get to experience the game all over again (only much much harder). They’re also implementing a ‘Tavern’ location, whereby you can leave members of your party behind and recruit news ones. In the original version, you’d simple have to start a new save if you wanted to try out different character classes, or types and combinations, but now you can do that ‘in-game’ through the Tavern. There’s also a proper quick travel system in place now, to avoid those push-heavy treks to and from places.
The only other thing that could really make Knights of Pen and Paper better at this point would be some kind of multiplayer mechanic, in keeping with the Dungeons and Dragons theme. Would be a bit of a challenge mind you – it’s not like you can all control an individual character and do your own thing with it, the lovably simplistic design means that options for what you can do are actually pretty limited. One thing we will say though, and this is more of a comment on the changing face of the industry than Knights specifically – with the rise of mobile and tablet gaming, I can’t help but feel games like Knights of Pen & Paper are starting to feel... out of place, on the PC. At the end of the day, Knights of Pen & Paper started out in the mobile space and is porting over – which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally can’t help but feel that I wouldn’t really play games like this on the PC anymore. FTL is another game that I feel the same about, which is PC-only at the moment. Great game, with compelling design, but it’s not something I’d want to sit at my PC and play. Again it’s nothing major, but this is a trend that’s starting to shift who plays games on what.
Knights of Pen & Paper is a simple, fun yet smart game, and there’s no reason that its success on the mobile platforms can’t translate to the PC. The only real question is how they handle the inflated pricing that PC games usually get, even ports of mobile games, and whether there’s enough content to justify it... but now that they do have a PC version, they can easily add in more stuff that current mobile platforms just can’t handle, so either way good times should be ahead. Not that it’s within our remit, but it is worth mentioning that for those of you who already own the mobile version, they’re working on a way to get you to be able to upgrade to the +1 version for free, so hang tight. Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition will be rolling a D6 onto PC, Mac and Linux in Q2 2013.
Most Anticipated Feature: This is one of those package games, so the whole thing is to be anticipated.
You get to control both the players and the Dungeon Master – the players choose where they go, and what quests the want to go on, but using the Dungeon Master you also get to customise the quests you go on, and the number of monsters you fight in each encounter. The more monsters you choose, the more bonuses you get but the harder it is. All of your players have abilities depending on their class, and who you have actually doing the role-playing. At the beginning of a new game, you can only afford two characters, but as you earn in-game currency you can buy up to three more (for a total of five) any time you want, and you can customise each slot to try out different party configurations.
 |
| Every character has a passive ability, which then combines with whatever class you assign them too – there are obvious combinations for you to try out |
What the +1 edition specifically brings to the table is more low-key. On a basic level, they want to just pack the game world with more content, and harder content as well. New classes, new character archetypes, and obviously new gear and equipment is going to be a must, in addition to new dungeons, locations and quest types. The team are also working on adding in a ‘New Game Plus’ version of the game, in keeping with recent RPG trends, so you’ll get to experience the game all over again (only much much harder). They’re also implementing a ‘Tavern’ location, whereby you can leave members of your party behind and recruit news ones. In the original version, you’d simple have to start a new save if you wanted to try out different character classes, or types and combinations, but now you can do that ‘in-game’ through the Tavern. There’s also a proper quick travel system in place now, to avoid those push-heavy treks to and from places.
 |
| It can be quite easy to bite off more than you can chew in this game, so be careful |
The only other thing that could really make Knights of Pen and Paper better at this point would be some kind of multiplayer mechanic, in keeping with the Dungeons and Dragons theme. Would be a bit of a challenge mind you – it’s not like you can all control an individual character and do your own thing with it, the lovably simplistic design means that options for what you can do are actually pretty limited. One thing we will say though, and this is more of a comment on the changing face of the industry than Knights specifically – with the rise of mobile and tablet gaming, I can’t help but feel games like Knights of Pen & Paper are starting to feel... out of place, on the PC. At the end of the day, Knights of Pen & Paper started out in the mobile space and is porting over – which is fine, there’s nothing wrong with that, but I personally can’t help but feel that I wouldn’t really play games like this on the PC anymore. FTL is another game that I feel the same about, which is PC-only at the moment. Great game, with compelling design, but it’s not something I’d want to sit at my PC and play. Again it’s nothing major, but this is a trend that’s starting to shift who plays games on what.
Knights of Pen & Paper is a simple, fun yet smart game, and there’s no reason that its success on the mobile platforms can’t translate to the PC. The only real question is how they handle the inflated pricing that PC games usually get, even ports of mobile games, and whether there’s enough content to justify it... but now that they do have a PC version, they can easily add in more stuff that current mobile platforms just can’t handle, so either way good times should be ahead. Not that it’s within our remit, but it is worth mentioning that for those of you who already own the mobile version, they’re working on a way to get you to be able to upgrade to the +1 version for free, so hang tight. Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition will be rolling a D6 onto PC, Mac and Linux in Q2 2013.
Most Anticipated Feature: This is one of those package games, so the whole thing is to be anticipated.
