I'm excited to share the first public version of Pico-Saga, my new turn-based tactical RPG. My goal was to create a game with deep strategic gameplay, like Fire Emblem, but in a highly replayable, bite-sized format that you can enjoy daily.
Every map is procedurally generated, offering a unique tactical puzzle each time you play. This is an early release, and the unit stats and overall balance could definitely use some fine-tuning. I would be incredibly grateful for playtesters to share their opinions and help shape the game's future. Please give it a try and let me know what you think!
Controls:
Overworld:
- Arrow Keys: Move cursor
CKey: Select unit/castleXKey: Open pause menu
Castle:
- Arrow Keys: Move cursor / Deploy selected unit
CKey: Select unitXKey: Exit castle view
Movement:
- Arrow Keys: Move unit
CKey: Confirm destinationXKey: Cancel movement
Menus:
- Arrow Keys: Navigate options
CKey: Select optionXKey: Back/Exit menu
Mechanics
Unit Movement
- Movement Cost: Each terrain type has a movement cost (e.g., roads cost 0.5, thickets cost 4).
- Movement (Mov): Units move a set number of tiles per turn, modified by terrain costs (e.g., forests slow movement).
Combat Resolution
- Weapon Triangle: Grants advantaged unit with +20% accuracy.
Sword → Strong against: Axe
Axe → Strong against: Lance
Lance → Strong against: Sword
Monk → Strong against: Archer / Mage / Thief - Break Mechanic: Attacking with a advantaged weapon (e.g., axe vs. lance) breaks the enemy, blocking their counterattack.
- Terrain: The terrain a unit occupies affects evasion (e.g., forests grant +10% evasion).
Road — Movement: 0.5 / Avoid: 0
Bridge — Movement: 0.5 / Avoid: -10
Plains — Movement: 1 / Avoid: 0
Forest — Movement: 2 / Avoid: +20
Shoal — Movement: 4 / Avoid: +10
Thicket — Movement: 4 / Avoid: +30
Sea — Movement: N/A / Avoid: +20
Mountain — Movement: N/A / Avoid: +20
Sieging Castles
- Reinforcements: Red pixels = remaining enemy units.
- Siege for 1 turn → destroy 1 reinforcement.
- Liberate when reinforcements reach 0.
- Deployment: Liberated castles let you deploy new units at the start of your phase.
Never really played anything in the style of Fire Emblem so perhaps my feedback won't be the best but regardless I had a good time. Some nitpicks being that it would've been nice to have a rundown of the controls, took a while of fiddling to figure out what I could or couldn't do especially with how you move units out of the castle. It makes sense in practice and possibly quite intuitive but not exactly in terms of figuring out. Having the health and damage of each unit in the castle would be nice too, not sure why that's omitted. One last nitpick being that unit selection from the castle could start from the top instead of the bottom seeing that unites tend to be on top and it's just kind of unnecessary downtime? Not meaning to be mean, but otherwise was a good time slowly figuring out the rules of the game like hiding under trees or how archers will strike back against other archers. I suppose this'll be developed as the game progresses but the difficulty was pretty low, you can get a lot of units especially when you liberate a castle while enemies don't really get much backup, perhaps an increase of that, maybe after you liberate a castle, could up the difficulty, but again probably going to be developed later. Overall fun time, best of luck to your game!
@Fish_Eggs, thank you so much for playing and sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate it! I apologize for not including controls earlier. I’ve updated my original post with them now.
You made a great point about showing more unit stats when selected. I’ll definitely add that in.
Currently, the cursor position doesn’t change when entering/exiting castles. I initially worried that moving it might feel jarring, but now I see the unnecessary downtime it adds isn’t worth it. I’ll adjust it to focus on the topmost unit, as you suggested.
Your last point touches on a challenge I’ve thought a lot about. I introduced the reinforcement system to prevent what Fire Emblem players call "turtling"; where the player camps in an advantageous position (like favorable terrain or a choke point) and slowly draws enemies out. The incentive for rushing a castle is that it reduces reinforcements, but as you noted, this can lead to the player snowballing and trivializing the game.
I really like your adaptive difficulty idea. Once a castle is liberated, the remaining reinforcements could become stronger. Additionally, since there’s a type system (with strengths/weaknesses like Pokémon), I could analyze the player’s units and introduce enemies with favorable matchups to keep things balanced.
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