Unsung Story

Whilst a combination of Firaxis’ excellent reboot of XCOM and the well received Fire Emblem: Awakening, may have opened the floodgates for a massive revival of the tactical, turn-based genre, the torch has been well and truly picked up by smaller developers. The beautiful looking The Banner Saga and Shadowrun Returns, not to mention the forthcoming Massive Chalice from crowd-funding pin-ups Double Fine Productions, all found an enthusiastic fan base on Kickstarter. Now another title can be added to the mix: Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians. So what makes this newcomer special? Two things. Firstly it is being created by cult Japanese designer Yasumi Matsuno and secondly it marks a fascinating collision with the booming board game world.

Matsuno’s reputation for historically deep, morally complex and politically detailed stories are well known, Tactics Ogre in particular was modelled partly on the turbulent history of the Balkans

Matsuno, of course, is no stranger to the tactics genre, having developed arguably its greatest work Final Fantasy Tactics in 1997, along with the excellent Tactics Ogre in 1995, both lovingly updated on the PSP. Since then he’s worked on Vagrant Story (arguably the spiritual progenitor of Dark Souls), Final Fantasy XII (still the deepest Final Fantasy battle system), and most recently Crimson Shroud (a short and sweet love song to the tabletop RPG). That last project, which incorporated dice into the battle system in fascinating ways, demonstrates Matsuno’s affection for and knowledge of table top gaming.

Which is just as well because the other part of Unsung Story is a card game that will be developed by French board game designer Christophe Boelinger, who recently designed the rather excellent Archipelago, a semi-cooperative game about surviving as the taskmasters of an island colony in the South Pacific, with each player balancing the need to work together and survive the potential revolt of the oppressed native population, with the need to amass more wealth than the other players. Boelinger’s work also includes a tactical entry called Dungeon Twister; not an S&M version of the popular party game, but a clever mash up of a dungeon crawl and a game of chess, in which two players must navigate their heroes through a treacherous grid of rooms to their opponent’s end zone, the clever ‘twist’ being that each one can be rotated to seal off or open up pathways.

The game is being developed by Playdek, a company that has made a huge impact porting board games to iOS, including one of the first officially licensed card games, Ascension. A flurry of titles followed including Summoner Wars, Agricola and most recently an adaptation of the award winning Dungeons and Dragons board game Lords of Waterdeep, each one seeing their talent for creating dynamic presentations of the source material becoming more and more refined. It was only a matter of time before they would want to test their skills on something more ‘videogamey’, and Unsung Story is undoubtedly that opportunity.

As well as designing the tactics part of the game, Matsuno will be bringing his flair for world building to the project, which will be set in the fantasy world of Rasfalia during a period of upheaval and promises to put the player in the sabatons of multiple personalities on both sides of the battle. Matsuno’s reputation for historically deep, morally complex and politically detailed stories are well known, Tactics Ogre in particular was modelled partly on the turbulent history of the Balkans, so this could end up being a world to rival Ivalice (the setting for his Final Fantasy games and Vagrant Story) for depth.

So, we have a master of the tactical RPG with a penchant for table top games, an acclaimed board game designer who’s dabbled in tactics and a company at the height of their power, well versed in bringing board games to digital devices and eager to tackle a grand new challenge. Add into the mix talented translator Alexander O. Smith (who comes on board on the $750,000 stretch goal) and the brilliant composer Hitoshi Sakimoto (who will come on board at $1,000,000), both erstwhile Matsuno collaborators, and by now you should be very, very excited indeed.

You can Kickstart this fascinating project here.