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Abalon is a top-down adventure that combines exploration, card collecting and tactical combat. You control the fate of your Summoner and command an ever-changing band of companions. Defeat monstrous hordes and reap the rewards of treasures, allies, and powerful spells as you advance deeper into ever changing lands. Are these chance encounters or do they connect to a greater meaning?

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The battlefield of Summoners Fate is a tabletop board game brought to life


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Abalon will be released on iOS, Android, PC and Mac. The game will be available free-to-download on the App Store, Google Play and Steam.

Our target release date is Q3 2018 and we have a closed beta planned for Q1 2018 or sooner. We plan to localize the game in 13 languages for world-wide enjoyment. Additionally, we have taken accessibility considerations for color blindness, left-handed players and one-handed play.

Spells destroy enemies and environment


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  • Tactical Turn Based Combat: Enjoy battles that are immediately fun and accessible. Intuitive controls let you keep your focus on the battlefield and master gameplay through tactile response and trial and error.
  • Combat Physics: Manipulate gravity, time and space and execute gratifying combos with unique mechanics that alter the battlefield in ways never before seen in a tactical RPG. Destroy and transform environments to have a meaningful impact on your tactical decisions.
  • Unique Top-Down Perspective: Take absolute control of the battle from a unique bird's-eye view where characters literally look up at you to command them. Enjoy colorful animations reminiscent of a board game brought to life that are easy to read on mobile and beautifully detailed on PC.
  • Rich Single Player Campaign: Explore dungeons, travel through diverse terrain, and encounter monstrous creatures in a world that's constantly evolving through procedural generation, hand crafted levels, and regular content updates. Lightweight atmospheric storytelling invites your imagination to derive your own narrative - or unravel ours.
  • Strategic Resource Management: Each area you explore seamlessly connects to another. Your choices, surviving heroes, and remaining cards carry over to the next battle. Plan carefully before raiding dungeons - will you escape with the treasure or succumb to the dangers within?
  • Crossplatform Multiplayer: Play anywhere with asynchronous, real-time and on-demand, "desynchronous" cross-platform multiplayer. Play how you want with support for both landscape and portrait modes.
  • Deck Building: Build teams of heroes ripe with diversity and suited to your playstyle from a set of over 400 cards planned for launch including over 200 playable characters.
  • Community Driven Development: Join our amazing community and enjoy regular updates with new cards, characters and features inspired by you!

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Abalon is inspired by our favorite tabletop, role playing, and collectible card games we played growing up. There's a satisfaction playing these games that goes beyond winning: the creative expression of building a team, devising a play style that's unique to you, and seeing your carefully planned strategy culminate in an epic experience shared with friends. Our goal is to capture this amazing feeling of creativity and strategic mastery in a modernized game that's fast and fun for those of us living in a world that often goes by too fast without it.

That's one way to take down a Cyclops!

Use cards to transform terrifying monsters into tiny squirrels


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Are you wondering about the unique top-down perspective of Abalon? One of our goals is to capture the feeling of playing a classic, miniature-based tabletop board game. We want the game to feel both familiar to fans of this genre and approachable to new players. Additionally, there’s an important connection between the world perspective and the game story:

The world of Abalon exists in a dimension parallel to ours. The screen of your device (whether your desktop monitor or your phone) represents your “looking glass” into this world. With simple gestures across your looking glass, you command your chosen characters, unveiling their destiny with each of your decisions.

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Experience a unique perspective where characters look up at you


To the inhabitants of this world, you - the player - represent the concept of “Fate” personified as a deity-like entity. Characters seek your lead and literally “look up” at you to guide them. Special characters called Summoners are particularly attuned to your presence. They are your direct link, your conduit to their world. Through your Summoner, you can play the “hand of fate”, a literal hand of cards representing magical spells, equipment and characters you can bring into the world. But take care - should your Summoner perish in battle, your link to the world will sever and your heroes will be defeated.

The lands of Abalon are boundless and continually grow and expand in ways that defy the natural laws of our own physical universe. To bridge this metaphysical barrier, your gaming device of choice interprets the world as a series of saga-style maps that you can use to traverse and explore with your characters. It’s this unique mechanism that also enables us, the developers, to continuously deliver unique adventures for you. It is our hope, our dream, that Summoners Fate is more than a game - it’s a continuing medium - a source that brings you enjoyment for decades to come.

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The gameplay of Abalon revolves around exploration, strategic management, tactical combat and planning. Each run through the cycle escalates your experience as you build your strategy and take on greater challenges.

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On a macro level, your goal is to explore the word and experience its story. Exploration of the world takes place by interacting with simple, pirate-treasure-like maps called Prophecies.

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Explore the world by interacting with simple yet inviting maps like this one.


Each prophecy map contains a series of colorful iconic landmarks representing dungeons to explore and a cryptic message that unfolds into a self contained, lightweight story. Dungeons are a series of seamlessly connected levels that can be tombs, outdoor wilderness or both.

Completion of a prophecy comes with rewards in the form of new cards and the reveal of additional prophecies to explore. It’s this system of one-small-map-at-a-time that allows the game to be both quickly accessible and possible for us to expand with continuous new content.

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Your survival in Abalon depends heavily on your ability to carefully manage the resources of your expeditions. These resources include your Summoner, your hero companions, and your deck of cards.

Summoners are your primary character and conduit to the game world. If your Summoner dies, you immediately lose the battle. Your deck of cards represents magical spells, enchantments, weapons, equipment and characters that you can call into battle. Cards are played with your Summoner, so any rules or constraints, such as line of sight or adjacent targets, use your Summoner as the point of reference on the board. Your hero companions are additional controllable characters that accompany you on the journey. New companions can be summoned by playing cards.

Dungeons are a series of seamlessly connected rooms and wilderness areas that you explore one screen at a time. Each room presents a variety of possible challenges including combat, puzzles, trap evasion and treasure rooms.

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When you clear a room, you move on to explore the next. The challenge is that the resources you bring with you - your Summoner, your hero companions, and your deck of cards - are limited and carry over with you room to room. If you start as a lone Summoner, but summon a Barbarian to the fight and equip him with gear, he will follow you through to each room going forward (assuming he survives).

The strategic layer of Abalon adds additional considerations to how you approach surviving the dungeon. Do you blast the mob of goblins with a fireball in the first room or save it for the boss fight and attack them directly with your warriors? But what if you lose your Cleric in the fight? You may be in trouble if you encounter poisonous snakes in the next room.

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On a micro-level, the smallest segment of gameplay is clearing a single room. Rooms are designed to take an average of 3 minutes to complete and chain together seamlessly. This means you can choose to play in bite-sized chunks (ideal for mobile) or play longer, sit-down sessions (ideal for PC). The most common room encounter is tactical combat.

Combat is turn-based, alternating from your turn to the enemy turn. On your turn, you are able to issue one command to each of your characters on the board and play as many cards as you have available. Each of these actions can be performed in any order that you wish.

The Ice Queen freezes a Yeti


To accelerate the pace of combat and make commanding characters intuitive and fun, each character's movement and action are combined into a single gesture.

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To issue an attack, drag your character to the target.


There are no submenus or ability buttons in Summoners Fate. Instead, characters automatically perform the appropriate action for the target you select. For example, Paladins have a melee attack and a healing ability. When you select your Paladin, all possible targets will light up with reticles (red for enemies, green for allies). Drag to an enemy to attack, or drag to an injured ally to heal them. Casting spells, equipping items, and summoning characters are also intuitive: just take the card you want to play and drag it from your hand onto the battlefield.

Card mechanics follow a few rules: You need mana to play a card equal to the number shown on the card. Cards range in cost from 0-5. You generate 3 mana each turn and can store up to 5 mana. You hold three cards in your hand and draw new cards at the end of your turn until you have three cards.

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Terrain in Summoners Fate has tactical significance. Large rocks, trees and other structures block movement and line of sight. Hazardous terrain such as lava and spikes cause damage, while swamps slow you down. Furniture can be looted for cards.

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On a meta-level, you’re on a quest to collect more characters and more cards so you can expand your strategic diversity and take on bigger challenges. We say “strategic diversity” rather than “power” as it best represents the spirit of our card collection mechanic. While some card games are are about obtaining the most powerful cards to win, our goal for collecting cards is driven by a desire to experiment with new and creative ways to win. The balance we are aiming for should create a feeling of rock-paper-scissors, meaning there isn’t a silver bullet set of cards or strategies that are most powerful. Rather, choosing the right card, the right strategy at the right timing to counter your opponent’s tactics leads to a victory filled with surprise and excitement.

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Everything in Abalon is represented as a card including the characters, spells, items, environment - even the Prophecy maps! With your cards, you can build a team consisting of a Summoner, heroic companions, and deck of 20 cards representing spells, items, and summonable characters.

Every card in the game can be collected overtime through gameplay, making Abalon a true free-to-play title and not a premium, pay-to-win title. We will offer card packs for sale, which is our how game will generate revenue and enable us to continue funding development and service of the game.

Our content target for launch will have over 400 cards including over 200 unique playable characters. Here’s a just small sample of our playable characters so far:

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And that list is just a piece of what we have made so far! Post launch, our goal is regular content updates for Summoners Fate, including new maps, characters and spells.

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Breadth of content is part of the equation, the other is quality. Characters are carefully designed to not only look unique and distinctive, but to play strategically different. Characters have natural strengths and weaknesses that complement each other to create strategies where the sum is greater than the whole. For example, the presence of a Skeleton Captain on the board enhances the power of all ally skeletons. Build a team of all animals, and you can guarantee that all of your characters are going to benefit from spells like Animal Overrun or the Breed card:

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There are multitudes of factions: Orcs, Skeletons, Dreadnoughts, Ironclads, Animals, Insects, Dragons… Additionally, you’ve got card color to consider. Build a deck of all Arcane spells and enjoy a cost discount to everything in your deck when using a Wizard as a your Summoner.

The moment you boot up, you’ll be having fun blasting away enemies with all kinds of spells. As you advance to harder levels, the game will present challenges that require you to build strategically focused teams. There’s no right or wrong strategy. Some players like the raw power of destruction spells and blowing things up. Some like to swarm the board with hordes of squirrels. Others still like the cunning approach of holding back and manipulating your opponent to the brink of madness. If we haven’t added enough choices to build your dream strategy, we will listen to you and make it happen.

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Beyond single player adventures and card collecting, Summoners Fate opens up to multiplayer matches where you get the chance to put your strategies to the test against other players from around the world. For the worldwide launch, we’ll support 1v1 head-to-head matches in Real-time, Asynchronous, and what we’re calling on-demand, “Desynchronous”.

In on-demand, “Desynchronous” mode, you’ll play against the constructed team and deck of other players controlled by the game’s AI. We’re also planning an option where you can “download” a queue of opponents and play them in sequence offline.

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D20Studios today launches Abalon from Early Access to 1.0 on Steam. The full game is available for $29.99 with a 20% launch week discount. A new major content update also releases alongside the 1.0 launch, adding 4 new playable Summoners and many new cards, including the Magiscales, a race of cyber psychic lizard wizards with the power to control gravity and shapeshift into other units.

Abalon is available on Steam: Store.steampowered.com

Abalon is a turn-based tactics game with card strategy wrapped in a roguelike adventure focused on exploration, survival and defeating powerful bosses. Players describe it as a successful combination of Magic: The Gathering, D&D and Final Fantasy Tactics - a winning proposition that manages to deliver its own unique experience which is both familiar and unlike anything they’ve ever played!


Abalon key features:

  • Grid-Based Movement and Spell Cards elegantly combine in an experience that’s like playing chess with magic. Summon creatures onto the battlefield and command them to move and attack. Devastate foes and terrain alike with fireballs and meteor showers. Manipulate gravity, time and space to gain positional advantage and unleash gratifying combos.

  • 20 Characters to Choose From include squirrel hurling druids, time traveling steampunk rats, and skeleton summoning liche kings. Each Summoner commands two of five schools of magic, allowing numerous possibilities to customize your strategy with creative and never-before-seen interactions (like overrunning your foes with mutant squirrel armies, guardian angels falling from the skies to protect you, and a perfect engine of endless miracle casting). Plus over 200 additional characters you can recruit, summon and command.

  • Ever-Changing Open World Exploration invites you to discover enticing encounters where a roll of the D20 can help you recruit new party members, brew potions, and even celebrate a goblin birthday party! Players have the freedom to retreat, undo actions, replay battles and more to experience the wonders of Abalon at your own and take on the most difficult challenges when you are ready.

  • Deep Strategic Deck Building allows you to fully customize your deck any time you rest at a campsite. Choose two guardians to support your hero and up to 20 cards consisting of spells, additional units, and equipment from over 400 cards. Plus, find additional artifacts to further upgrade and synergize your heroic team.

  • Highly Accessible and Playful Art Style where characters literally look up at you to be commanded. Gracefully issue orders with simple point and click controls and full gamepad support.

abalonCharacter Chronomancer


More information on: Summonersfate.com

Follow D20Studios on Twitter and Discord.

Abalon is available on Steam at: Store.steampowered.com

abalonCharacter Timekeepers


D20Studios is an indie game development studio founded in 2009 with a mission to build intrinsically satisfying, accessible games with depth. Their work has received numerous industry accolades including featuring by Apple, Amazon, Sony, and PAX. Abalon recently won the global 2021 Nordic Discovery Contest Game of the Year Award. Founder, Ross Przybylski, is also an avid game development community supporter and regularly volunteers as a speaker and author to help others become successful.

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RT @linuxgamecons: Abalon roguelike #adventuregame gets an official Linux build with Mac and Windows PC #linuxgaming #gamingnewsT.co

Jul 11 2023

RT @D20studio: @Ulfsire So kind of you to host #TurnBasedThursday @Ulfsire I bring you an offering of squirrels to hurl upon you… T.co

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RT @Ulfsire: Today I have the immense privilege of hosting #TurnBasedThursday #gamedev / #indiedev share your noble work like… T.co

Jul 6 2023

RT @D20studio: @drattzy We've also opened up Closed Beta Test to Abalon players for our upcoming, multiplayer focused (Coop and Pv… T.co

Jun 29 2023

RT @D20studio: @drattzy Our squirrel hurling turn-based tactics game, Abalon, is on sale now for 30% off during Steam Summer Sale… T.co

Jun 29 2023

RT @drattzy: Calling all #gamedev / #IndieGameDev! 🎉We are honored to be hosting this week's ⚔️#TurnBasedThursday⚔️ Make sure… T.co

Jun 29 2023