Clever Plays Reveals Happy Bastards During Summer Game Fest

Clever Plays Studio announces its newest video game!

Irreverent Deeply Tactical RPG Subverts Tropes by Asking “Who Needs XP When You’re Famous?”

We set out to make a game that embodies what tactical RPGs fans love – challenging gameplay, squad management, and calculated combat”
— Mattieu Bégin, co-founder and creative director for Clever Plays

LOS ANGELES, CA, USA, June 10, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Clever Plays, a Montreal-based independent game studio, announced its next game over the weekend as part of the Summer Game Fest. The reveal trailer for Happy Bastards, an irreverent open-world tactical RPG, made its world premiere on Saturday during the Future Game Showcase.

With the tagline “Who needs XP when you’re famous?,” fame is the name of the game in Happy Bastards. Stepping into the “hero’s” role of Kev, players are encouraged to assemble a squad of expendable and unruly mercenaries to explore, fight, and loot – basically do all the dirty work, while Kev gives orders, reaps all the rewards, and seeks ways to gain celebrity status.

As a shameless opportunist, players must toss their moral compass aside, all in the pursuit of fame and fortune. They’ll rely on good looks and charm as they try selling corpses to the necromancer, bed an elf-maiden, take credit for another’s good deeds, or even sacrifice their men if the price is right.

“With Happy Bastards, we set out to make a game that embodies what tactical RPGs fans love – the challenging gameplay, squad management, and calculated combat,” said Mattieu Bégin, co-founder and creative director for Clever Plays. “But we wanted to reimagine things in a way people haven’t seen before both in terms of tone and gameplay, parodying the medieval fantasy genre with a big dose of humor for an experience that’s deep in gameplay but doesn’t take itself too seriously.”

Happy Bastards delivers all the gameplay and features that fans of the turn-based tactical RPG genre expect -- enlisting, evolving, and equipping a group of combatants to take part in a campaign of turn- and grid-based battles with plenty of strategic options; resource management and an abundance of classes, stats, and abilities and upgrades; and an open-world filled with choices, and a large variety of enemies, NPCs, locations and treasures to encounter. All of this is set against a bawdy and boisterous backdrop and the quest for fame at any cost.

Key Features:

Fame is the name of the game.
With big dreams of notoriety and wealth, players chase Fame over XP, engaging in deeds and antics with the biggest shot at VIP stardom.

Lead an unruly squad of disposable mercenaries.
Recruit, upgrade, and customize procedurally generated mercenaries, each with their attributes, skills, perks, appearance, and personality. Boss them around to build a badass brigade but be prepared to babysit because they’re not the brightest.

Unorthodox tactics for the win.
Shout orders from a safe distance and employ a host of unique tactics, like hot-swapping mercenaries to trigger tag-team abilities, managing personalities to avoid mid-battle tantrums, and making liberal use of meat shields when dismemberment is unavoidable.

Be the anti-hero with none of the guilt.
Lead a morally ambiguous campaign across a parody-filled fantasy world. Every town, hero, and monster faction can be turned ally or foe, so choose wisely because you'll have to live--and your bastards likely die--with the consequences.

About Clever Plays
Founded in 2013 as a husband-and-wife team, Clever Plays is a 10-person indie development studio based in Montreal. The team is driven by a mission to create innovative games that combine solid gameplay and unique worlds while striving to conquer new challenges with each game. Clever Plays most recent title was Operation: Tango, a stylistic co-op espionage game that won numerous Best Multiplayer Awards and accolades for Art Direction, Game Design, and more; The studio’s previous game, the 2016 Leap of Fate, a fast-paced rogue-lite in a magical cyberpunk setting, earned a Metacritic score of 80.

Elizabeth Olson
Indie Angels Marketing Services
media@indie-angels.com
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Happy Bastards reveal trailer

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