Churbles - 3D RPG Adventure Thread

My friends and I are making an RPG. It's called Churbles. It's about these magical creatures that are sort of like hamsters. The game is turn-based and has a lot of customization both for the appearance of your characters and their various abilities and play styles. The game is heavily influenced by the SNES and early PS era Final Fantasy games, the Mana Series, and of course, Pokemon. In fact in addition to collecting and raising different Churbles, the Churbles themselves can collect and raise their own pets!


Overview

Their world in danger you must take up the mantle of Namuh, a spiritual being the Churbles turn to for guidance, and select a single Churble to lead its people to victory. As play continues more and more Churbles will want to join your founder and the Guild Hall to help protect Churble World. With 3 different Heroic Paths to choose from, each with 3 distinct styles of fighting and 7 different weapons styles you will be able to develop any sort of team you desire. Want 3 different Warriors? What about a Mystic who charges into battle with a two-handed ax? Or a rogue who has a fondness for casting spells? With over 63 different combinations it is all possible!


This is a trailer we made for the game:

Gameplay

Using their Guild Hall as a base of operations the player selects a location based adventure for their Churbles to embark on. Each location or dungeon is free roaming and can be expanded through story progression and diligent exploration. Enemies can be found freely roaming the world, spoiling for a fight. Some battles must be fought, while others can be avoided through story-based decisions or clever sneaking.

Battles are turn-based, meaning characters and moves must recharge or refresh before they are ready to act again. For younger or more casual players enemies will politely wait their turn before attacking, but for a more challenging experience players can use ATB or "Active Turn-Based" settings. In this mode enemies and heroes can attack as soon as they are able resulting in a much faster and more deadly combat experience. Players need not fight alone. Up to 3 players, each controlling their own Churble, can participate in fights using team work to turn the ATB system to their advantage.

Skills can be learned through leveling up your weapon skills, heroic paths, through story events, and the acquisition of legendary tutors and items. In fact, over the course of its career a Churble will learn a great many skills and it is up to the player to create combinations of moves that will perform best with the other Churbles making up the party.

Boss battles are a huge focus of Churbles game design. Each one is intended to be challenging, innovative, and unique; this isn’t a matter of tank, heal, dps, success. Drawing inspiration from the best and most memorable boss battles throughout gaming history, we are creating encounters that have the player (and their Churbles) thinking and acting outside the box.

There are also bad, villainous Churbles in the game that you must defeat, as well as monsters and big, crazy boss battles.

Here is an example of a Churble Rogue taking care of his pet Moon God:

And for Halloween we decided to dress up the Churbles in different costumes:


If you want more info about it I would be happy to answer any questions, and post more art from the game on this thread. If you'd like to learn more about the game you can check out our:
website www.churbleworld.com
Steam Greenlight page: www.steamchurbles.com
Kickstarter: www.feedchurbles.com

So! What do you guys think?

First of all I like someone taking the hamtaro-like approach, to me it's kind of a hate/love relation to this art style and I will definitely remember the game so with that being said - I think you made a good choice with the art style.

Secondly, I'm guessing you are still pretty early in development and therefore gameplay is rough and the trailer didn't contain much combat. I think it is very important that you get a trailer up with some more eyecandy in terms of combat, maybe some special moves. I'm not sure what audience this project is targeting but from the FF-games I have played I can tell I wanna see the combat before I make a call whether I would like to play this game or not.

Best of luck!

@Sjonsson - We have received a lot of similar feedback. If we could do one particular thing over again before kickstarting it would have been a playable demo or video of how the combat system is set up.

But, we did hit our initial funding goal! So this thing is definitely happening! We even reached our first stretch goal and are now able to add druids to the game!

Churbles have always been in tune with the natural elements that make up the world. The Druid is the undisputed master of such elements, but even more than that, she is able to reshape the world around her, and even her own form to suit her needs. Druids often live apart from the colonies, roaming the wilds, living in harmony with the beasts and elementals, and protecting the borders from encroaching threats.

Alright! Congratz to the funding! Well, you might have missed out on a playable demo and that but in the end you made it anyway.

I'll be waiting for that combat gameplay-vid!

Concept art looks great! Nice work you guys.

Reminds me of final fantasy with hamsters.

Dig the Cloud character remake.

Just Checking in to let you guys know that our kickstarter ends in 10 hours and that we have managed to unlock access to PS4, Wii U, and Xbox One! If you are interested in backing the project please head on over to the page. I will also be updating this thread as we move forward with development of the game.

Wow, congrats to all those stretch goals! Good luck with the development, I'll be watching!