The Traveller Tale

An excellent game and a call back to the old games like Daggerfall, the original Might and Magic games, and a true nostalgia experience. As one of the people who got to play through earlier pre-release versions, I can say its come a long ways and was well worth the wait for release. Create your own party, advance in levels and explore a well thought out world. For 25 dollars, its a bit cheaper then Wizardry, while having a comparable experience. I rate this game at 9 of 10. Its much better now that most of the bugs have been worked out.

Game has a lot of promise. Loving it so far.

Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away, do you remember playing and enjoying games like the early Might and Magics, The original Bard’s Tale trilogy, perhaps Eye of the Beholder just to mention a few of what we call Old Skule Games? If you did, then you’re in for a treat with The Traveller Tale, and old time homage to those classic games which shaped the genre we love. First a little background. This is a first time game by a solo developer and despite a rough start due to his inexperience with Steam, the games few minor bugs have been quickly squashed by a developer who has been remarkably responsive to any and all suggestions for improvement. The game is not only solid, but fun. I played for 116 hours according to Steam which in my opinion is incredible value considering the relatively low cost of the game and few games manage to keep my attention anymore for that length of time. The game is what many call a turn based blobber with some overland travel, several towns and villages and a great many dungeons, several of which have a multitude of levels. It’s a kleptomaniac’s delight as you can take anything you find without worry; no one will arrest you or attack you, and with a plenitude of merchants for buying and selling money was never a problem; I had far more than I could possible spend. You begin in a Tavern where you create your initial party. In fact, the game allows you to create new players and swap them in or out at any of the Taverns you visit, so if you don’t like one, you can easily create another. One tip; each time you create a new character, you are given a random number of extra points to spend on abilities and skills up to a maximum of 20. If you don’t like the number you get, you can simply exit the creation and begin again until you get numbers you like. Once completed you save the character and proceed to create your next. The game gives you a choice of several classes such as Wizard, Cleric, Thief, Fighter, Barbarian, Druid, so you can create the party of your choice. You may play five characters of your creation, and hire one of several NPC’s to round out your party of six. There is no disadvantage to doing this. For my playthrough I created a fairly standard mix of Wizard, Cleric, Barb, Thief and Druid. It worked well, though the Cleric while great for healing up after a fight wasn’t often of much help during a fight. She had some good buffs, but most of the time her turn came near the end of a round which was a little too late for the buffs. Having finally settled on the composition of your party it’s time to explore the Tavern where you’ll find some starting gear, money and a few initial quests. You can also check out the barmaid who functions as a shopkeeper and who also lets you sleep in a room for free to restore all your Hit Points. Once you leave the Tavern your game is autosaved. While you can save anywhere and at any time, the game always autosaves whenever you transition to a new area. The first area, while geographically fairly small has several openings to some adjacent maps and a simple dungeon. The maps are grid based and movement is simple with 45 degree turns the norm, but this can be changed in the settings, as can the level of difficulty. I would strongly suggest you avoid entering the world map until at least level 5 as you will find plenty to do without venturing out into the world. The initial maps will eventually lead you to the first major village and even more quests without entering the world map which will allow you to slowly build up the strength of your party as you achieve new levels, new talents and new spells. Spell are granted automatically, though there are also a few vendors who will sell you additional spells for a price. New skills are also granted automatically depending on your class while you gain 2 talent points each level to upgrade your talents to a maximum of 10. Talents such as Medicine allow you to re-generate some HP’s after a fight, while lock picking and trap disarming need no explanation. Just be sure to upgrade them for your thief every level. There is a great deal of armor and weapons to be either found, or bought, but certain classes are restricted as to what they can use. Click on a character and it will show which equipment that person can use, or wear that you have in your joint inventory. Choose wisely and sell the rest. Each character can only wear 2 rings for example, so pick those which will enhance their skills and sell the surplus. After all, how many rings of speed do you need? As would be expected in a game which endeavours to emulate the classic RPG’s which led the way for our current crop of so called AAA games, your party moves as one in a first person perspective on each map until you enter combat, where all you see are the enemies you face animated in all their snarling glory. Combat is fairly simple, there is no positioning, or movement once a fight begins just as you might expect from an Old Skule game. One helpful tip; clicking on each enemy will give you vital information as to their number of HP’s, their strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly what spell types they have resistance to. A fireball will not hurt a fire elemental for example. Knowing what will and will not work can be essential to survival. Combat is by turns. At the beginning of each round, each member of the party selects its action for that round. Then the fight begins, with seemingly to me, the order of turns being determined by random. This can be frustrating when a high level mob puts half your people to sleep, or stuns them, before you even get a turn, but usually you can manage to survive unless you get a large number of poor rolls. The game is based on a D20 system for every aspect of the combat from defence to offence and every round you need to select your next action. Once in combat, each character has basically four choices they can make: a simple attack; (not recommended) they can use a skill if they have any; cast a spell; or use an item (such as a potion). Only certain classes have skills they can use and some of them have a cooldown of 2 or 3 rounds before being able to be used again. Other skills can be used every round. Spells work in a similar way. There is no mana. Each spell has a cooldown of 2 or 3 rounds after being used so you can usually only cast a particular spell once during a fight, so having a large variety of spells is very helpful. Some spells, such as Light, and healing can be cast outside of combat, but the majority are combat only. There are a great many quests in the game; some are straightforward and simple, while other last for the majority of the game. Most are optional, as are most of the dungeons, though several are essential if you want to complete the main questline. You will do a lot of exploring in the dungeons and a lot of fighting. Learn the enemy’s weaknesses and remember them; it really helps. Both the quests and killing enemies provides both loot and XP so the more you do, the higher your level will become. There is no level cap. The game does have a few weak spots which the developer readily agrees need improving and he has already done so for the next game he is currently working on while adding extra features to this one which people have requested. He really has been incredibly supportive of his players and as a solo developer with a full time ‘real’ job I encourage everyone to support his work. We need more games like this.

Great CRPG gem which came out of nowhere for me. So far I have been enjoying it. Happy to support Devs like these immediately with a purchase - they deserve it. Controls are a bit confusing at the beginning but you get used to it quickly. For future updates it would be cool to have more races and classes to choose from - especially for a second run. Keep up the good work!

Steuerung aus der Hölle, habe ich bei einem Dungeon Crawler noch nie erlebt oder so gesehen. Man hat nicht das Gefühl sich von Kachel zu Kachel, sondern vorbei zu bewegen. Linksklick ist vorwärts laufen und weil ich es als Angriff/Aktion kenne, geht da einiges schief. Rechtsklick ist Menü, keine Ahnung warum. Man läuft an Leuten vorbei, statt mit ihnen zu reden. Es ist völlig unklar, welche Gegenstände interaktiv sind. Die Alles Looten und die Schließen Taste funktioniert nicht bei Behältern. Kämpfe sind überhaupt nicht mein Stil, das wusste ich aber vorher, es ist aber auch noch schlecht umgesetzt. Wer dran ist, sieht man nur an einer kleinen Umrandung oben in der Reihenfolge statt links bei den riesigen Porträts? Übrigens stört der riesige Rahmen mit den Charakteren dermaßen, wenn ich jemanden anspreche, verschwindet er, also warum kann ich nicht einfach ohne Rahmen die Welt erkunden? Ich gehe in die erste Höhle und es gibt einfach einen Ladefehler der Kachel, ich muss das Spiel per Taskmanager beenden... Würde es vielleicht in ein paar Monaten nochmal testen, wenn es gefixt ist.

Give the game a few hours - and then you will be addicted if you like games like Bards Tale, Might & Magic, Wizardry. There are a LOT of nice touches - with voice acting, tons of monsters, secrets/puzzles. I am really liking this game A LOT. It is also quite big all things considered for the price point. Easily 50+ hours at least.

Game is very fun and has so much potential as well. The dev(s) are working hard to fix things and add QoL as players find / suggest stuff. That said I have to warn you that the game is still in development. Call it EA at best. Lots of issue with QoL, quests bugs, and just data that doesn't match up on items. Again the dev is very responsive and will get to issues, but some of the missing QoL features will take more time. So if you're looking for a polished product you might want to wait about 6-12 months before buying.

Great atmosphere, art, writing, and voice work for an indie game. The developers are turning around improvements and bug fixes daily.

I'm giving "The Traveller Tale" a thumb's up not just for what it is, but what it is going to lead to. This is Mystic Dream Studio's first game, and it shows in a lot of ways. Extremely ambitious but not fleshed out in parts, some bugs here and there, and maybe not enough promotion before release. What the game offers in spades is what I enjoy the most in RPG's. Turn based combat, a screen setup reminiscent of Wizardry 8 or Grimoire, and free-form exploration with no hand holding. If you enjoy those things, I recommend giving "The Traveller Tale" a go. If you need your games to be absolutely perfect, then look somewhere else. For full disclosure, I was given early access to Mystic Dream Studio's next game, "Grove of the Seven Stones", which is to be released in December of 2026. I can already see huge leaps and bounds in the presentation, questing, graphics, and overall feel of the game. The developer is extremely receptive to feedback, both good and bad, and has already implemented multiple requested features and fixes into his games. If you are a seasoned RPG player, I recommend playing the game on the hard setting, as the combat does feel quite easy on normal. Spell casting is a bit different here than your typical RPG. You don't have spell points or mana, but cooldowns for spells and abilities that reset after each battle. This makes back to back tough battles much more manageable. There is an overworld map which you traverse that has random encounters, and in dungeons you can see the enemies before you encounter them. You create a party of five characters from Fighters and Barbarians to Clerics and Wizards. You can also recruit optional NPC's along the way which you level up and handle like the rest of your team. While there is nothing super original here, there are very few large scale, open world RPG's that let you figure things out for yourself on the market right now. If you miss the days of Wizardry 6-8, The Bard's Tale, Grimoire, or any other large classic RPG, give The Traveller Tale a shot, but really keep your eyes on the upcoming game, "Grove of the Seven Stones" which has the potential to be a true classic.

For 24 bucks I refunded. The controls are really Janky. At this state is not worth the money. This seems like a 10 dollar game.