There are two ways developers can go with a tabletop-game-to-video-game adaptation. They can go the Gloomhaven route, and directly recreate the tabletop game in digital form, or they can go in Baldur's Gate 3's direction by taking the world, lore, and general vibe as inspiration for a whole new experience. Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent follows that second option.
Announced today by The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos developer Artefacts Studio and Waven publisher New Tales, Terrinoth is a tactical RPG based on Fantasy Flight Games' Descent tabletop universe, more specifically Descent: Legends of the Dark. Ahead of its announcement, GameSpot had the chance to play two early missions in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent and speak to its developers, and we learned why Artefacts Studio took the road traveled by Baldur's Gate 3 and not Gloomhaven.
The party screen seen between missions in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is technically a prequel to Descent: Legends of the Dark, following a ragtag group of tabletop RPG character-archetype clichés as they fight off thieves, undead, vampires, and other evil forces ravaging the titular world. While the original tabletop game has players placing tiles to build dungeons and frequently interfacing with a mobile companion app, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is a tactical RPG with an original story and neither of those features.
For Game Design Manager Nicolas Dejeans, this was a sensible next game for Artefacts Studio considering the company's history with licensed games. "The first ten years of Artefacts were a bit difficult, but it taught us a lot of things because we worked on IP and we managed to gain a lot of knowledge on how to work with IP owners," he said. "That's something we do very well. It's easy to work with [Fantasy Flight Games parent company] Asmodee ."
Terrinoth is not a massive choice-driven experience like Baldur's Gate 3, but it will feel familiar to fans of tactics-focused RPGs. Your party of four can explore those in real-time, solving puzzles to find chests with gold, experience, or character abilities as loot. Frequently, you'll stumble upon a group of enemies, which kicks off turn-based tactical battles where turn-order is per-character, not per-team of characters.
While exploring dungeons was mostly humdrum, the fights I got into were more engaging. The main objective of most of them was just to kill all opposing enemies, although one particularly memorable encounter had me scrambling around a battlefield to light braziers so ghost-like enemies stopped spawning.
Each character's special abilities made every turn of the encounter feel like a fresh challenge, encouraging me to puzzle through the best possible strategy to maximize follow-up actions. I could maximize damage with Myria by killing enemies with one of her abilities to gain an extra action point, for example, while Kharaz was a tank that could taunt enemies and boost nearby allies' stats. I can see the appeal of replaying levels with a different party of characters, or with the same characters but utilizing a new set of abilities, to get distinct experiences.
Tactics gameplay in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Considering Terrinoth will only have 21 bespoke levels, which can be played in a story-driven order or as one-shot missions, I hope its combat encounters can consistently stay compelling. If it succeeds at that, Terrinoth feels poised to capitalize on the recent influx of tactical RPG players searching for TTRPG-inspired games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Citizen Sleeper 2, even if it's a less ambitious game in its overall design than those titles. Ideally for Asmodee, Terrinoth would also be a gateway that points players toward Descent: Legends of the Dark and all of the other tabletop games set in that world.
When asked why Artefacts Studio didn't make a more direct adaptation of the tabletop game's mechanics, Producer Eric Wilain told us that the studio's previous experience with strategy games meant it "could bring more than just an adaptation," while Dejeans thought implementing some of the tabletop mechanics one-for-one would be awkward.
"We thought that it was a bit strange on our side [to] make a straight adaptation, to have this phase when you build everything and where we had to adapt the companion app as maybe a weird thing above the game," Dejeans explained. "That's why we took what we liked from the universe and created a new game system, a new story, new characters, etc."
The tabletop game's dungeon-crawling roots are still on display in the demo--each level I played ended up in a labyrinthine underground dungeon not all that different to what you would play through in the tabletop game. Other aspects of the tabletop game shine through in combat, like characters having three action points each turn and positioning playing a critical role. The inclusion of co-op also can't be ignored, letting you play Terrinoth with friends just as you would play Descent: Legends of the Dark.
While I couldn't test this in my demo, players will be able to invite their friends to play with them, assign specific party members to other players, and explore and fight together. Wilain hopes this will "reproduce the game nights that you would be able to do with your friends at home, but on the video game." Wilain confirmed there will be no online matchmaking with random players.
Dungeon exploration in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Although it's not replicating the gameplay of Descent: Legends of the Dark directly, the developers hope that Terrinoth will be a worthy fill-in for digital game night, much like Sunderfolk or Baldur's Gate 3 are.
"The main thing is really trying to reproduce the idea that you bring friends to you, you play your session, and you are happy to share some quality time with friends," Wilain responded when I asked what elements from the tabletop game Artefacts wanted to preserve in its adaptation. "And, of course, the live IP. Making sure that we can develop the IP and show new things and have an interesting story."
From what I've played and seen of Terrinoth so far, I believe it will be yet another entertaining tactics RPG that will satiate fans of games like Baldur's Gate 3 as we await titles with bigger pockets, like Divinity.
If you want to try Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent for yourself, the same 100-minute demo I played is now available on Steam. The full game is set to release in Q2 of this year on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Source
Announced today by The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos developer Artefacts Studio and Waven publisher New Tales, Terrinoth is a tactical RPG based on Fantasy Flight Games' Descent tabletop universe, more specifically Descent: Legends of the Dark. Ahead of its announcement, GameSpot had the chance to play two early missions in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent and speak to its developers, and we learned why Artefacts Studio took the road traveled by Baldur's Gate 3 and not Gloomhaven.
The party screen seen between missions in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is technically a prequel to Descent: Legends of the Dark, following a ragtag group of tabletop RPG character-archetype clichés as they fight off thieves, undead, vampires, and other evil forces ravaging the titular world. While the original tabletop game has players placing tiles to build dungeons and frequently interfacing with a mobile companion app, Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent is a tactical RPG with an original story and neither of those features.
For Game Design Manager Nicolas Dejeans, this was a sensible next game for Artefacts Studio considering the company's history with licensed games. "The first ten years of Artefacts were a bit difficult, but it taught us a lot of things because we worked on IP and we managed to gain a lot of knowledge on how to work with IP owners," he said. "That's something we do very well. It's easy to work with [Fantasy Flight Games parent company] Asmodee ."
Terrinoth is not a massive choice-driven experience like Baldur's Gate 3, but it will feel familiar to fans of tactics-focused RPGs. Your party of four can explore those in real-time, solving puzzles to find chests with gold, experience, or character abilities as loot. Frequently, you'll stumble upon a group of enemies, which kicks off turn-based tactical battles where turn-order is per-character, not per-team of characters.
While exploring dungeons was mostly humdrum, the fights I got into were more engaging. The main objective of most of them was just to kill all opposing enemies, although one particularly memorable encounter had me scrambling around a battlefield to light braziers so ghost-like enemies stopped spawning.
Each character's special abilities made every turn of the encounter feel like a fresh challenge, encouraging me to puzzle through the best possible strategy to maximize follow-up actions. I could maximize damage with Myria by killing enemies with one of her abilities to gain an extra action point, for example, while Kharaz was a tank that could taunt enemies and boost nearby allies' stats. I can see the appeal of replaying levels with a different party of characters, or with the same characters but utilizing a new set of abilities, to get distinct experiences.
Tactics gameplay in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Considering Terrinoth will only have 21 bespoke levels, which can be played in a story-driven order or as one-shot missions, I hope its combat encounters can consistently stay compelling. If it succeeds at that, Terrinoth feels poised to capitalize on the recent influx of tactical RPG players searching for TTRPG-inspired games like Baldur's Gate 3 or Citizen Sleeper 2, even if it's a less ambitious game in its overall design than those titles. Ideally for Asmodee, Terrinoth would also be a gateway that points players toward Descent: Legends of the Dark and all of the other tabletop games set in that world.
When asked why Artefacts Studio didn't make a more direct adaptation of the tabletop game's mechanics, Producer Eric Wilain told us that the studio's previous experience with strategy games meant it "could bring more than just an adaptation," while Dejeans thought implementing some of the tabletop mechanics one-for-one would be awkward.
"We thought that it was a bit strange on our side [to] make a straight adaptation, to have this phase when you build everything and where we had to adapt the companion app as maybe a weird thing above the game," Dejeans explained. "That's why we took what we liked from the universe and created a new game system, a new story, new characters, etc."
The tabletop game's dungeon-crawling roots are still on display in the demo--each level I played ended up in a labyrinthine underground dungeon not all that different to what you would play through in the tabletop game. Other aspects of the tabletop game shine through in combat, like characters having three action points each turn and positioning playing a critical role. The inclusion of co-op also can't be ignored, letting you play Terrinoth with friends just as you would play Descent: Legends of the Dark.
While I couldn't test this in my demo, players will be able to invite their friends to play with them, assign specific party members to other players, and explore and fight together. Wilain hopes this will "reproduce the game nights that you would be able to do with your friends at home, but on the video game." Wilain confirmed there will be no online matchmaking with random players.
Dungeon exploration in Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent
Although it's not replicating the gameplay of Descent: Legends of the Dark directly, the developers hope that Terrinoth will be a worthy fill-in for digital game night, much like Sunderfolk or Baldur's Gate 3 are.
"The main thing is really trying to reproduce the idea that you bring friends to you, you play your session, and you are happy to share some quality time with friends," Wilain responded when I asked what elements from the tabletop game Artefacts wanted to preserve in its adaptation. "And, of course, the live IP. Making sure that we can develop the IP and show new things and have an interesting story."
From what I've played and seen of Terrinoth so far, I believe it will be yet another entertaining tactics RPG that will satiate fans of games like Baldur's Gate 3 as we await titles with bigger pockets, like Divinity.
If you want to try Terrinoth: Heroes of Descent for yourself, the same 100-minute demo I played is now available on Steam. The full game is set to release in Q2 of this year on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Source