Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:
Hmm, really starting to think someone in upper GW management is trolling us.

Modhail wrote:
No PC, no Android, no tabletop = No sale.... :(

Such a shame, seeing the logo again really got me excited.

nkelsch wrote:
If this works out, I would love to see a Bloodbowl (which is great for play by email much like drawsomething and words with friends) on an I device. I would like to see where this goes.

Magnamaniac wrote:
Don't hold your breath waiting for quest. There are no plans to resurrect it and all the moulds are been destroyed.

 Hercule Pyro wrote:

nkelsch wrote:
If this works out, I would love to see a Bloodbowl (which is great for play by email much like drawsomething and words with friends) on an I device. I would like to see where this goes.

Blood Bowl has been out on the PC for a few years now. It's... not that great. I'd rather run a proper game of it over MapTools.

For me, it's a non-starter as I don't own an iPad and I have no intention of buying one in the near future. Much like their eBook range.

Like many ultra-cool youngsters of my generation, I grew up playing Games Workshop tabletop games. One of my favourites was Warhammer Quest.

So, when I stumbled upon the news that Rodeo Games was making a version of Warhammer Quest for iOS, I simply had to go organise an interview with the studio's creative director and co-founder, Ben Murch.

During the following interview, Murch reveals all about his studio's upcoming strategical dungeon-crawler, including starting character classes and enemies (while hinting at those to come); and the challenges of modernising an officially unsupported boardgame.

Murch also reveals just how faithful Rodeo Games has kept to the vision of the original physical boardgame in this forthcoming digital Warhammer Quest adaptation.



Pocket Gamer: For the uninitiated, what is Warhammer Quest?

Ben Murch: Games Workshops's Warhammer Quest was originally a tabletop game that allowed characters from all over the Warhammer world to team up and explore dungeons for treasure and glory. Although, let's face it: mostly for the treasure. Our version sticks very closely to that formula.

You travel around the Warhammer world with your group of adventurers, collecting loot, levelling-up, and hitting increasingly large monsters with a variety of increasingly cool implements.

Clear comparisons can be made between the rule-set in your previous game - Hunters - and the Warhammer Quest rule-set.

To what extent did the creative process for Hunters inform the development of this upcoming iOS version of Warhammer Quest?

Yes, they really are quite similar, aren't they. One of the great learning experiences for us on Hunters was creating our rule-set from scratch. A lot of work then went into balancing that whole system.

Having that knowledge was invaluable in tackling something like Quest, which comes with two rather large books full of rules and systems.

The other big lesson we learnt from Hunters was the importance of nailing the interface we used. Moving and interacting with several characters in an environment can be a fiddly process if it's done wrong. We've now iterated on our interface controls for three games.

Hopefully, players will find the Quest controls really intuitive and simple to pick up, while not taking the complexity out of the game.

Have you handcrafted the dungeons, or will you have the game randomly generate them for the player (just like in the boardgame)?

Both. Some are bespoke story instances which are of the handcrafted variety. Others are randomly generated.

That's not to say the random ones are mindless hack-fests. Each one has objectives, specific loot, events, all sorts to make it feel as immersive as possible and not just some grind.



Warhammer Quest is primarily designed for multiple players - can we expect to see multiplayer in your version?

Multiplayer won't be available in the day-one release. However, we intend to support Warhammer Quest for quite a while. Multiplayer is one of the top features we want to implement post-launch.

One of my favourite elements of the Warhammer Quest game was the ability to customise characters. You really felt invested in your hero.

Will there be a levelling system in the game in which players can dictate their evolution from a mechanical viewpoint. Also, will there be options to change your avatar's appearance?

Levelling is a rather huge part of the meta-game in the boardgame version of Warhammer Quest, so, yes, it's definitely in our game. It works in pretty much the same way as the revised Quest rules, too.

You earn XP in dungeons, then have to pay gold to a trainer in a settlement to level-up. Levelling-up not only increases your stats and makes you even more of an orc-slaying beast, but it also adds skills to your killing repertoire.

Skills come in many flavours: from Mighty Blow, which combines your total number of attacks into one massive damage-dealing strike, right through to the dwarven GoldMaster skill, which 'gifts' your party extra treasure from kills.

Your on-screen hero's appearance will change throughout the game depending on the equipment you give it. Weapons, helmets, armour sets, shields, bows all have unique models, which show up on your characters in game.

So, your level 1 Elf Waywatcher with starting gear is going to look very different in-game to your level 5 Waywatcher equipped with Eltharion's Bow and the Armour of the Wildwood.

The physical game - thanks to extremely dedicated fans - managed to embrace almost every single major race in its rule-set. Is this the case with your version?

One of the major stumbling blocks we encountered in the early stages was that the Warhammer world has come on so far since that first game was released. Barbarians don't really exist any more, so we've had to bring all those characters more in line with how things are now.

Luckily, the licensing team over at Games Workshop is a font of information when it comes to this kind of stuff, so we've been working very closely with those guys to make sure everything fits within canon and makes sense.

The four starting heroes are now the Norse Marauder, Dwarf Ironbreaker, Elf Waywatcher, and Grey Wizard. The same archetypes as in the original game, just more in tune with the Warhammer experience of today.

To tell you all the enemies in the game would be to spoilt it for you. I can tell you, though, that we have loads of different types of orcs and goblins in the starting game. Bosses, big bosses, war bosses, shamans: you name it. Also in there are all the dungeon critters from the original game, along with some larger creatures like, oh, I don't know, maybe... a river troll or two.

As I mentioned before, we plan to support Quest for a long time after launch, so new enemies and areas are certainly part of that plan. Right now, the sound of some rather large and hairy rat feet are being heard round the studio.



There were also some additional warriors added to the rule-set through official expansions. Are the Bretonnian Knight, Witch Hunter, and Halfling Thief, for instance, set to make a return?

Yes, they will. At launch, there will be three additional heroes to get your gaming mitts on. However, we're not announcing who they are just yet.

Once again, as long as everything goes to plan, we'll be releasing more of them as DLC farther down the road.

One intriguing addition to the universe was the Roleplay Book, which allowed players to live out the lives of their characters when they weren't raiding dungeons. Has this been incorporated into the iOS version?

Absolutely. That was one of the most compelling elements of the game for us. Back when we were researching the game we wanted to do next, we played weekly Warhammer Quest dungeons. Of course, the payoff for surviving a dungeon was going to a settlement afterwards and gearing up... or, more often, getting drunk in the tavern.

In our version of the game, players can traverse an area of the Empire, visiting towns to sell their hard-earned loot, buying supplies, drinking, brewing potions, and more.

We've also incorporated the "events" system from the original game into our version. Tramping round the Warhammer world is a really dangerous undertaking.

Travel time is measured in weeks. Every week the party is travelling, an event will happen to them. We have literally hundreds of these events in the game, ranging from encountering a convoy of prisoners (the player can attempt a high-risk rescue attempt, or leave them to their fate), to finding an enchanted pool which can tell the heroes their futures.

Warhammer Quest for iOS is scheduled for release in early April.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I don't speak for anyone else, but I know I would much prefer spending 80-100 dollars on a physical boardgame rather than several hundred on an IPhone to play an app.

 Rotgut wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I don't speak for anyone else, but I know I would much prefer spending 80-100 dollars on a physical boardgame rather than several hundred on an IPhone to play an app.

I would rather spend 10 dollars on a video game then 100 on a board game if its the same game.

On the other side of that I will not spend extra money on things for a game that should already be in the game, so if they have a ton of micro transactions or the whole "you can only move twice today unless you buy more turns" Ill avoid it like the plague.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Rotgut wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
I don't speak for anyone else, but I know I would much prefer spending 80-100 dollars on a physical boardgame rather than several hundred on an IPhone to play an app.

I would rather spend 10 dollars on a video game then 100 on a board game if its the same game.

On the other side of that I will not spend extra money on things for a game that should already be in the game, so if they have a ton of micro transactions or the whole "you can only move twice today unless you buy more turns" Ill avoid it like the plague.

Would they actually do that? I'm doing none of that gak. When I buy a game I expect to get the whole game. Come on, I got GTA Vice City for £3 as soon as it was released. I'd like WH:Q but not if they pull any stunts that require those sorts of purchases to play the game. Optional expansion packs later on are ok, limiting my daily play unless I cough up? No.

 Azazelx wrote:
Could this be a precursor to WHQ being this Christmas' "special edition" game like DF and SH before it?

Leggy wrote:
Pretty much the same experience for everyone, going mby this forum and the Facebook page. They see then title, prematurely Geekjaculate, then read to strike and have their hopes crushed.
Hopefully, if GW see the responses, they'll realise a Quest remake would gather them far more £££ than any silly iPhone app.

The DLC will be available as in-app purchases, but Maguire is adamant that players will feel like the add-ons are value for money. “We’ve explored IAPs — Hunters had credits. If people want to spend more money, okay we let them. IAPs probably accounted for 20 or 25% of our revenue. But we won’t make a game where you have to pay to progress, and you hit a wall that stops you. If we can do it in a way that doesn’t prevent people from enjoying the game, then that’s where we draw the line.”

Twenty-six, twenty-seven..
I ask Maguire if Rodeo had been tempted by the current market forces on the App Store to make Warhammer Quest into a freemium game. He shakes his head. “It seems like a lot of gamers don’t have those values that we have, that good games are worth money. I bought maybe three games a year for my NES back in the old days. Games had value. Games are a hobby that I’m happy to spend money on. That’s who our games are for, I think. People that share those values.”

f you're a fan of Games Workshop, the Warhammer franchise, or promising turn-based strategy games in general, you'll probably be pretty pleased to read that Rodeo Games has submitted Warhammer Quest to Apple for approval.

"Yes, it's in review with Apple," Rodeo Games co-founder Ben Murch responded to a fan who questioned the game's whereabouts on Twitter.

Unfortunately, Murch stopped short of announcing a release date for Warhammer Quest. According to Murch, in fact, his company hasn't decided on an official launch date yet.

"Our final submission build of Warhammer Quest is being processed in the vaults of Apple right now. We need to figure a few things out with the guys over there, then we'll be able to confirm the release date," Murch told Pocket Gamer.

"Looking at within the next couple of weeks, though."

Last week, Rodeo Games announced on its Facebook page that Warhammer Quest's very first downloadable expansion pack, Skaven, will be available at the game's launch.

If you decide to splash some cash on Skaven, you'll get new dungeon tilesets and a brand-new map to explore, as well as plenty of new missions and - naturally - fresh enemy types to battle.

We'll let you know as soon as we have more info on Warhammer Quest's official release date, so stay tuned to Pocket Gamer.

While you're waiting for that confirmation, by the way, why not check out our hands-on with Warhammer Quest. Thank me tomorrow.

 Kiwi461 wrote:


http://pockettactics.com/2013/03/15/random-encounter-a-hands-on-preview-of-warhammer-quest/

So there will be in-app purchases for DLC but not to progress or to get the "good stuff"

 reds8n wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRqF_LeioDs