Some early thoughts on Fort Triumph, the tactical RPG with interactive environments

Tactical RPG Fort Triumph recently released into Early Access, I took a look and here's some thoughts on how it is right now.

Disclosure: Key provided for me.

Originally funded on Kickstarter, where CookieByte Entertainment managed to get $78K in funding back in May of last year. The developers were putting out early builds with Linux support a while before release, so they were off to a good start in my books.

While the basic mechanics of the game are very XCOM-like, Fort Triumph is a lot more colourful and also tries to separate itself from all the other turn-based strategy games with the use of humour, while not all of it gave me a laugh, it does feel like a nice change of pace from all the doom and gloom.

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Considering I'm a big fan of turn-based strategy, Fort Triumph sounded quite interesting with you being able to use the environment in your battles. It's not just the environment, but the characters in the game too that you can use against another.

It has some pretty interesting mechanics, like melee units having a zone-control feature so ranged attacks can't be done right up close to them. There's also the attacks of opportunity ability, so if you manage to move an enemy past a melee unit they will give them a swipe as they pass by too.

The environment interactions are actually a lot more fun than I thought they would be. Think you're safe? Think again. Same goes for the enemy. Kick a box into a lamp, the lamp then falls on the goblin and stuns it—amusing and it works really well. A lot of the environment is destructible due to this as well, like fire spreading. I launched a fireball to take out an enemy, which later came back to bite me as the fence next to them caught fire and so on, that's a lot of cover destroyed thanks to my antics.

Saving the village? What village? All that's left is ash—woops.

You also stun enemies by knocking them into objects or other characters too, which can truly save your bacon when you're in a tough spot. There's been quite a few funny moments thanks to this in my playthrough, a lot of them completely accidental too. Like the time I pulled an enemy closer, which ended up pulling them through some sort of spider egg which stunned them. There's also the time I kicked a boulder into a goblin, which is amusing by itself but even more hilarious was the boulder then sent them flying to their demise face-first into the fence behind them.

Performance isn't too great right now, it will often drop down to 30FPS during battles especially when zoomed-out a little bit. I've seen it drop right down to 15FPS when I set things on fire, which is a pretty big issue. Hopefully they will manage to get that sorted soon, as it's enjoyable but would be even more so if it felt a bit snappier. To be fair to it, it's not a finished game so top performance isn't expected right now.

They're currently estimating 10-12 months for the Early Access period, so they've got a while to add more content and fix any issues. At release, they're hoping to have two finished single-player campaigns.

Find it on Steam for £14.99/$19.99.