Barony (video game)

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This article is about the 2015 video game. For the 1990 tabletop RPG, see Barony (role-playing game).

Barony
Developer(s)	Turning Wheel LLC
Publisher(s)	Turning Wheel LLC
Director(s)	Sheridan Kane Rathbun
Producer(s)
Designer(s)	Sheridan Kane Rathbun Ben Potter
Programmer(s)	Sheridan Kane Rathbun Ciprian Ilies Ben Potter
Artist(s)	Josiah Colborn Julian Seeger Mathias Golinelli
Writer(s)	Frasier Panton
Composer(s)	Chris Kukla
Series
Engine
Platform(s)	Windows MacOS Linux Nintendo Switch
Release	April 4th, 2015
Genre(s)	Roguelike, RPG
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multiplayer
Cabinet
Arcade system
CPU
Sound
Display

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Barony is a 2015 indie first-person roguelike RPG developed and self-published by Turning Wheel and released for Windows, MacOS and Linux. A Nintendo Switch version is planned, following a successful Kickstarter campaign.

Plot

The town of Hamlet was prosperous for generations until Baron Herx came to power; the Baron forced Hamlet's citizens to dig for gold in the surrounding hills, despite there being none to mine. Through luring him into the mines and sealing him in, Hamlet's citizens deposed the Baron. After the Baron's death, monsters attacked Hamlet, and the once prosperous region has been considered cursed. The player takes the role of an adventurer who ventures into the mine seeking to defeat the undead Baron Herx, a powerful lich, and free Hamlet from his influence. After defeating Baron Herx, the player returns to Hamlet to celebrate their success, but then must defeat the game's true final bosses: the arch-wizards of the magician's guild, Erudyce and Orpheus.

Gameplay

Barony's gameplay is similar to other roguelike RPGs; the player must traverse through a series of procedurally generated maze-like dungeon levels, fighting enemies, obtaining items, and levelling up their character and their skills throughout. Barony is played from a first-person perspective. The player ultimately seeks to defeat the game's first boss, Baron Herx, and the game's subsequent final bosses, Erudyce and Orpheus. Every four levels have an individual visual theme, and every fifth level is a transitional level between two themes. Levels are interspersed with traps, and may have secret areas, some of which are accessed by destroying walls, and others are found through going through (typically guarded) portals. Barony has permadeath: when a player's health drops to zero, they will die and the save file will be deleted. However, if a player dies in multiplayer, they drop all their items and die, but can be resurrected without their items by other players if they reach the next level. Food functions as a form of time limit in that players need to eat regularly or they will starve to death, and thus are incentivized to continue to later levels to get more food. The minotaur, a strong monster that can break through walls, can randomly show up on any level. The player then has a limited amount of time before the minotaur appears on the map and begins to attack them.

Items may be found throughout the dungeon, are unidentified when first obtained, and may be blessed, cursed, or otherwise enchanted. Blessed items offer positive stat effects, while cursed ones have negative ones, and cannot be unequipped until they are uncursed. Shops may be found randomly in levels, and the player may buy and sell items. Players may equip weapons & armor to improve their combat and defensive abilities respectively; different weapons such as axes, spears, and swords have their own respective skills which are improved with use. Equipment becomes damaged as it is used, becoming less effective and eventually unusable unless it is repaired. Potions and scrolls are consumable magic items that may offer positive or negative effects, and magic staves allow non-magically inclined players to cast spells. The player has various skills that can increase in level the more the player performs an action, such as using magic, certain weapon types, or scrapping items. The tinkering skill, for example, allows the player to create robots as they become more proficient in the skill.

When creating a character, players may choose sex, race, and class. Sex is a cosmetic choice, and has minimal impact on gameplay. Barony has nine playable races, eight of which are only available through the purchase of DLC: human, which is the only race included in the base game, skeleton, vampire, succubus, goatman, automaton, incubus, goblin, and insectoid. Each race, except for humans, has an individualized playstyle with differing strengths and weaknesses: e.g. skeletons do not need to eat and are immune to fire, but regenerate health and mana at a quarter of the normal rate. The DLC races may also be used as a cosmetic reskin of a human character. The player's race determines whether human NPCs or monsters are friendly towards them; characters that are friendly may be recruited by the player, following them and assisting in combat.

There are twenty one different classes in Barony. Thirteen are included in the base game, including common fantasy classes such as rogues, warriors, and healers, and less common ones such as sextons, ninjas, and merchants. There are also eight additional classes, included with the races in Barony's DLC. Each of these classes corresponds to one of the DLC's playable races, and to play as a DLC class with any DLC race, the game must be beaten with that class.

Barony has up to four player cross-platform co-operative play. Multiplayer may be played over LAN, or using online lobbies. In multiplayer and single player, various mechanics can be enabled or disabled, such as friendly fire, the minotaur, hunger, and the ability to keep one's inventory on death.

Development

Barony's development first began on June 20th, 2013, and was originally created by Sheridan Kane Rathbun. Barony was first concepted when Rathbun began attending university at Indiana University Southeast, and he began work on the game as a way to cope with his studies; in an interview with The Horizon, Indiana University Southeast's unofficial student-run newspaper, Rathbun stated that “My first year here was kind of depressing to me, because I spent most of my free time making games and programming ... Coming here changed that, and I spent all of my time studying stuff I had minimal interest in.” Due to Barony becoming a large-scale project, Rathbun recruited development team members from a gaming forum, and dropped out of university in mid-October of 2014 to work on the project. Barony was inspired by RPGs such as Ultima Underworld, System Shock, NetHack, and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. In 2014, the original development team of Barony consisted of Chris Kukla, musician and sound designer, Ciprian Ilies, programmer and additional designer, Julian Seeger, character artist, Frasier Panton, writer, and Mathias Golinelli, graphic artist. Kukla stated in The Horizon that Barony's sound design was largely 'trial and error' in determining what music would suit the mood of the game, stating that “There few a few concept pieces that I wrote that were good, and worked well in the game, but I always thought there was a style that could better represent the aesthetics and mechanics of Barony”. On October 24th, 2014, Barony was publicly playtested on the Indiana University campus.

Barony's procedurally generated levels use pre-made level pieces, which are then put together randomly by the game's level generation. Barony was first released on the Humble store on April 4th, 2015, and on Steam on June 23rd, 2015 through the Steam Greenlight program. Barony was released on the Epic Games Store on July 30th, 2020, and was free for its first week on the storefront. Major updates to Barony are titled; the Cursed Edition update released in 2016, and the Blessed Addition update in 2018. In 2015, Barony was also sold on the distribution platforms IndieGameStand and Desura, but has since become unavailable through these platforms due to both becoming defunct. Sheridan Rathbun hosted a panel about Barony at the 2015 International Roguelike Developers Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.

A Kickstarter campaign to port the game to the Nintendo Switch reached its funding goal on September 3rd, 2020.

Modding

On July 27th, 2016 Barony's source code was officially released under the GPL 3.0 license to encourage the creation of player-made mods. While the source code is publicly available, Barony's assets such as art, models, & sound effects are not, requiring ownership of the game. Barony includes a level editor, which may be used to make custom levels using assets in the game.

Reception

In 2016, Destructoid included Barony on its list of "The best games of 2015 you didn't play", calling it "incredibly entertaining" and noting its difficulty.

External links

• Barony at MobyGames

This article "Barony (video game)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Barony (video game). Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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