“For the King” replayable with minimal story

“For the King” is the first title from Vancouver-based indie studio IronOak Games, but it was clearly made by industry veterans. It’s light on story, but this procedural, turnbased game has a lot of moving parts and surprising gameplay depth.

The gist of the story (and really, that’s about all there is) is that the king of Fahrul has been slain and the queen has asked adventurers (that’s you) to solve the mystery of his murder and protect the realm from an impending wave of evil called The Scourge.

However, “For the King” makes up for its lack of narrative with a complex weave of roguelike, board game and role-playing-game mechanics. The map, realms and locations you encounter are different for every play-through, and the difficulty can be unforgiving.

Movement takes place on a hex-grid map, and players will travel by land, sea and air. At the start of the game, players create a three-person party, choosing from various classes, each of which has its own special abilities and statistical allocations.

Characters have seven major attributes:

■ Strength, Intelligence, Awareness and Talent govern weapon skills.

■ Vitality, Speed and Luck help in other areas.

Each stat point roughly corresponds to a 1% chance of success, and all the stats are capped at 95 points. A character attacking using a Strength of 80 will have an 80% chance to hit.

Four characters are available from the start: the Blacksmith, the Scholar, the Minstrel and the Hunter, with seven more characters able to be unlocked.

As characters fight, they’ll gain experience and level up to have more health points and do more damage in combat. Characters are generally most suited to one or two weapon types. For example, the Hunter’s highest stat is Awareness, which starts at 78 points. The chance to hit with a bow or spear uses a character’s Awareness, and the Hunter also has a

Title: “For the King” Platform: Windows, Xbox One, OS X, Linux, PS4, Nintendo Switch

Cost: $24.99

Rating: Teen for fantasy blood and violence

Score: 8 out of 10

special skill that adds a chance to score critical hits while using bows. The Hunter also has two skills, Elite Sneak and Elite Trap Evasion, which use the class’s other highest stat, Speed, to avoid enemies and other dangers.

Other classes can also sneak past enemies and avoid traps, but success will be more difficult.

Success comes by forming a well-rounded party, one that can use a variety of weapons and skills. But there’s also a lot of customization available, as various weapons and armor found in the game can also grant characters access to skills from other classes. However, with each play-through being a unique, procedurally generated experience, there’s no guarantee those special items will be discovered.

One of the main concepts of the game is the timeline, which is used in and out of combat. The timeline determines the order of actions and events. Out of combat, the timeline shows the progression of the day/night cycle and any impending chaos or Scourge events. In combat, the timeline shows the order in which the party and enemies will fight, as determined by each character’s Speed and other effects.

A chaos meter with three emblem slots is displayed throughout the adventure, representing the amount of chaos in Fahrul. Chaos increases after a set number of turns unless otherwise mitigated. If the chaos meter is full, the party takes damage every turn and can be attacked by an enormously powerful Chaos Beast, meaning it’s likely they’re about to lose the game.

Combat is turn-based, with lots of traditional RPG features, such as elemental status effects, stuns and taunts, and classic enemies such as slime cubes, skeletons, wizards and more.

Combat is performed using a behind-the-scenes dice roll, based on stats, but each weapon has its own various strengths and weaknesses. For example, some weapons may require a single “stat roll” for success, while others may require up to five. Take a Blacksmith with Strength 80. If that sword requires a single Strength roll to attack, then there’s an 80% chance of success, and 20% of the time, that attack will fail completely. A different sword may require five Strength rolls. If four of the five rolls are successful, then the weapon will do about 80% of its maximum damage — so it’s harder to achieve max damage, but also harder to fail completely.

Weapons can also have special abilities that activate if all rolls succeed, such as bypassing any armor or magic resistance, or other special effects.

And that brings us to one of the game’s most important mechanics: Focus. Focus points are a limited resource, an ability to automatically succeed on a roll. Focus points can guarantee success in critical moments.

Players also accumulate Lore, a currency that can be used to unlock new characters, locations, items, skins and encounters.

“For the King” also has local and online co-op play. I played online using the game’s official Discord server for voice chat and to find party members. There are six campaigns to play, each with its own challenges and goals. One is an endless dungeon mode. Another, Gold Rush, is a multiplayeronly “Uncooperative” mode.

Overall, there’s a lot to love about “For the King.” I beat the game on its easiest setting on my first try, but just moving up to the “normal” difficulty level was a major challenge increase, giving the game a lot of depth and replayability.