FTK: For The King

[Sullla]

For The King (FTK) is a roguelike adventure game created by developer Iron Oak Games and released in April 2018 after a long period in early access. This was another Kickstarter game in the mold of FTL: Faster Than Light, and it shares a number of features in common with its sci-fi themed predecessor. As in other roguelike games, each playthrough is a one-time adventure done with only a single savegame file. If your party is defeated, that's it, game over. Start over from the beginning once again and try to do better the next time. For The King retains the common roguelike trait of possessing a punishing difficulty level, and due to the different starting party combinations and randomly-generated maps, the game has a high amount of replayability. I've also found myself loving the polygon art style used in this game, reminiscent of the early 3D games of the 1990s. I've been playing the game on Livestream for the last two weeks and wanted to put something together for me website to share with the forums here.



One of the biggest faults of FTK is a lack of good documentation online. There's an official Wiki page that's somewhat helpful, but I couldn't find anything that went into much depth about serious strategy for this brutally difficult game. The forums for the game were mostly people complaining about how hard it was to play and the fact that there's level-based scaling involved, while the Livestreams that I watched were invariably other newcomers who had no idea what they were doing. It became clear that if I wanted to have a real strategy resource for FTK, I was going to have to create it myself, and that's exactly what I did at this website page. I walk through a full Tutorial game on the medium difficulty level, which will hopefully serve as a searchable resource for anyone else who might be interested in getting into this game. I think the Realms Beyond crew will like this game a lot, and since it's a coop game, maybe I'll even get some playing partners for myself down the road out of this.



This seemed like a game that the RB crowd might enjoy. If you haven't heard about it before, it might be worth a look.

[Mardoc]

Sullla, thank you for posting this! It looks like something I'll definitely put on my list. Maybe I'll have time over the holiday weekend to try it out.

How do you see the co-op mode working? Your description makes it sound largely like a puzzle, where interactions between the characters are important enough that planning needs to take all three into account at all times.

Little nitpick: on your website there were a couple times you abbreviated For the King as FTL. .

[haphazard1]

I will second Mardoc: thanks for posting this. It does look interesting, and the tutorial description made for entertaining reading.

And I noticed the FTL typos also. Muscle memory!

[Lewwyn]

Looks like something I will play. Thanks for the heads up.

[DaveV]

After reading everything, I'm unclear on whether this is a pure turn based game, or real time like FTL. I avoided FTL because I'm an old guy, and my reflexes and coordination are not what they once were.

[Brian Shanahan]

I have one question, did Sir Robin bravely run away?

[Sullla]

I did fix the FTL typo. Thanks (I think) for pointing it out.

Mardoc, the online coop version of this game plays exactly the same way as the Single Player mode, except that each player controls one character by themselves. It's definitely a lot harder due to the difficulty of coordinating together. Good communication would be essential for online coop. I do hope to try it at some point with RBers or Livestream viewers.

DaveV, this is entirely a turn-based game. It is not like FTL in that respect, there's no pausing or anything like that. On the map screen, the game functions like a board game with each character rolling to move on their turn, and then the battles are similar to a pen and paper RPG like D&D where each character takes their turn individually. I'll add a note into the beginning of the tutorial that the game is turn-based.

[Sullla]

New For The King report on the website today; this one is a playthrough of the Frost Adventure game mode on the highest difficulty level. Enjoy.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Are you kidding me, I just finished reading the first one, now I have to start all over with a new one? D:

[Modo]

Don't enable him, CMF, he's capable of producing copious amounts of reporting if triggered