Guile & Glory: Firstborn – Overview

An interesting mix between Into the Breach and Golden Axe for this promising indie turn-based tactical game by Elston Studios. Let’s talk about Guile & Glory: Firstborn

Background story

In Guile & Glory: Firstborn we do not yet have many details about the main story, but we know there will be interweaving between humans, Firstborn and the Unborn. The Firstborn are the first living beings created by the gods, and they dominated the world before the advent of humans. Humans today are constantly fighting the Firstborns to survive and defend the population centers.
The unborns are immaterial entities that invade the world by taking over human bodies. In the lore of Firstborn, they speak about a certain sorcerer Sahatus who has something in common with our heroes. We await new details to learn more about the main story.

Gameplay

As I said in the introduction, the mechanics of Firstborn remember so much Into the breach for their tactical mechanics as we will have to guide our characters on grid maps and defeat our enemies by exploiting the abilities of each of our hero and above all by master deadly traps and savage hazards. Each unit will have certain action points available that will allow them to use their skills. Then there are the movement points that indicate how many steps a character can make and before ending our turn we will have to decide where our character have to face.

We will see in advance the attacks of the enemies and where they will hit and on our turn we will have to adapt and even use the situation to our advantage.

In the Firstborn Federation Square Demo 2018 tested, I could use 3 heroes. The first is the Outlander that can hit enemies and objects and knockback them tiles away, so by using his ability we can kill enemies by lunching them against various hazards. Another hero who joins the group is the Slaver, who uses a whip to pull enemies and objects towards him, giving the party the chance to attack enemies that can not be reached by the Outlander. The last hero in the demo is the Guardian. The Guardian has a shield that comes in handy to defend the party from various attacks and then has the ability to hit enemies and stun them for a turn.

The abilities of the various characters must be used together to complete the various missions. Our Outlander, for example, can use his SHOVE skill to push the GUARDIAN and his shield against an enemy and so on. For each character, there will be different skills and upgrades that we will acquire during the course of the adventure that will allow us to face increasingly complex challenges.

Another original aspect, are the battles with huge final bosses where the positioning of our units will be fundamental and it will be crucial to understand and exploit their weaknesses.

About the developers

Elston Studios is an Australian indie dev team based in Melbourne, lead by Daniel Elston, Pixel art and retro game enthusiast and Gabriella Lowgren, writer and community manager. They are very active on Twitter, where they continuously publish updates.

Guile & Glory: Firstborn release date

Firstborn is actually in developing and its release date will be for early 2019 on steam. In the meanwhile, you can download a demo on indiedb to get an idea of how genuine the Eldon Studios game is. Let me know what you think of Guile & Glory: Firstborn in the comments below or on twitter and take a look at my overviews for some other amazing turn-based games.