IGM September Issue Sneak Peek – Did You Say Something?

Happy Anniversary!

Happy Anniversary! We toiled away making this special issue of Indie Game Magazine just for you. Wait, you didn’t get us anything? Don’t tell me you forgot…

It’s the 6-Month Anniversary of IGM since our magazine relaunch, and we’re celebrating with a packed issue full of amazing content. Our Cover Story this month is There Came an Echo , a wild squad-based strategy RPG by the folks at Iridium Studios. What sets this game apart? Well, aside from the amazing voice cast featuring such champions of geekdom as  Wil Wheaton and Ashly Burch, TCAE is being built from the ground up so that players can go through the whole game using only their voice. You want to know the most incredible part? It actually works! Below you’ll find this month’s 10-page teaser, as well as a snippet from our in-depth feature story.

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One of the coolest features of TCE is that not only does the gameplay center around voice commands, players also have the option to input their own commands using a system known as aliasing. How it works is that players can pull up a cheat sheet at any time displaying two columns. The left column depicts a list of defined actions. For example “Focus fire” is an action that will see the entire squad concentrate their attack efforts on a single enemy. The right column is completely customizable, allowing players to create the actual command that the system will then interpret as the “Focus fire” action. So if you want, you can change the right column to something like “Have a nice day.” When the action starts back up and you want your team to focus their attacks on Enemy A, you get to shout “Have a nice day, Enemy A!”

As for the RPG aspect of TCE, the game won’t rely on stat-based progression; but there will be some room for customization in terms of equipment. “Characters gain access to more equipment as the game goes on, but the characters themselves don’t necessarily go through some kind of stat-based skill progression,” Jason confirmed. “The reason for this is that the game is very tightly focused along its narrative, so there’s no real opportunity to just freely go out and train your soldiers between story-missions. In addition, we wanted the player to be able to freely re-spec, and not feel like their choices locked them into something they didn’t want.”

Also Featured this Month : Ninja Pizza Girl , an action-packed platformer that wants to address the important issue of bullying. Of course, the fan-favorite Screenshot Monthly is also jam-packed with a ton of awesome previews this month. You’re not going to want to miss it!

Reviewed this Month : Nippy Cats

Introducing… Extended Previews! Included this Month : Meridian: New World , Skara: The Blade Remains , Warmachine Tactics

Previewed this Month : Hand of Fate , Space Engineers , The Neural Network , Robots Need Love Too , along with all our Screenshot Monthly previews!