Fangs & Forges is a tactical turn-based RPG. Lead your squad through a medieval high-fantasy world. Recruit characters, accept missions and battle monsters, bandits and more for renown and loot. Explore the world, level up your characters and stop ancient corruption devouring the world... again.
No microtransactions – just a one-time box price. Releasing first on Steam, with planned support for Steam Deck, consoles, and Nintendo Switch.
Core Inspirations:
Picture a fantasy world inspired by the Elder Scrolls, with the collection and leveling of Pokémon, mixed with the movement and range layers of Heroes of Might & Magic, plus the loot, skill trees, and abilities of a classic ARPG like Diablo 2.
Enjoy tight skirmishes lasting 5-10 minutes. Instead of long, large-scale, and complicated battles, your goal is to clear battlegrounds as efficiently as possible and earn your reward in the form of loot, renown, and pay.
- Fast-Paced Tactical Combat: Battle, Level, Loot - Repeat!
- Distinct art style with beautiful handcrafted art!
- Explore a NEW huge High-Fantasy World Inspired by The Elder Scrolls.
- Collect over 100+ unique characters.
There are 2 CORE aspects of gameplay:
Battlegrounds (Raids)
Exploration & Management
Clear monster-infested regions, dismantle bandit camps, hunt wildlife, defeat bosses, and confront an ancient threat. Battlegrounds vary in size, shape, day/night effects, and objectives requiring tailored strategies.
Day or night battles bring unique challenges: different enemies may emerge, your characters’ and foes’ abilities could shift, and even battlefield conditions might change.
Some battlefields are wide, open, and symmetrical, free of terrain effects. Others feature unremovable or removable obstacles, terrain hazards, or asymmetrical, narrow, and dangerous conditions, shaping new challenges.
Additionally, objectives vary: drive out or cleanse regions of bandits or monsters, or protect someone or something, requiring a tailored squad and mission approach.
Enemies differ in strength, resistance, agility, and behavior, demanding the right squad composition. Some compositions excel in open areas with ranged fighters, while others dominate tight spaces with melee bruisers. Experiment to find your ideal setup!
Collect loot, level up characters, and earn renown and coins. However, it's not just the challenge that varies by region and enemy type - rewards differ too! Of course Loot and experience varies by enemy type and region.
BUT also level-ups! As characters level, base stats grow, PLUS a bonus stat tied to enemies fought. Each enemy has a main and secondary trait (fire/cold resistance, blocking, life-steal, etc.).
Currently battles in the demo offer:
- A one-time battle.
- A horde mode with waves of enemies, increasing loot and rewards per wave.
- A mini-boss encounter.
Explore Lyboria’s handcrafted map, visiting points of interest like cities and shrines across unique biomes, from fungal woods to snowy peaks. Dynamic campaign events tied to an ancient corruption reshape the map and introduce unique challenges, alongside rich side content.
Unlock new battlegrounds, locations, hire characters, and accept commissions.
Manage your roster: equip legendary loot, unlock skill tree nodes, and spend coins to heal or repair armor.
Expanding your collection and progressing the map requires resources. There’s no fixed difficulty - skillful strategy ensures smoother, faster progression. Plan commissions wisely and battle efficiently to maintain a healthy roster while exploring new places, battlegrounds, and loot.
Carefully plan your squad and leverage each character’s unique, resource-costing abilities for maximum impact. Discover the 3 active abilities of Blancara, the Ice Dragon, below.
- Ice Impale: Damage all enemies in a line by erupting spikes from the ground.
- Ice Nova: Unleash an AoE ability to damage all adjacent units.
- Frost Breath: Freeze an enemy, removing them from the fight for several turns.
Each character features a unique skill tree with 3 branches, each containing 4 nodes for a total of 12 nodes. Each branch emphasizes a slightly different archetype while preserving the character’s core identity. Small nodes enhance various base stats or special attributes, such as attack skill, base damage, or even life-steal.
Major nodes introduce new passives or upgrade one of the 3 primary active abilities - sometimes simply boosting power, range, duration, or area effect, and in some cases adding a new layer, like enabling a hook ability to pull allied units to safety, transforming it into a supportive tool.
Unlock deeper insights into enemies through the "Bestiary", a Pokédex-like system that progresses from Unfamiliar (no information) to Mastered (full details on resistances) as you battle, revealing stats, abilities, and more to refine your tactics.
Use this knowledge to adjust your squad composition, tailoring it to the enemies you might encounter across diverse regions. Exploit their resistances and damage types to gain the upper hand, or steer clear of close combat if their strength lies in blocking melee attacks.
Rank up as a Squad Leader! Completing commissions and raids boosts your renown, raising your Commander Rank. A higher rank is required to recruit powerful champions and access tougher challenges and commissions.
Core Gameplay Loop & Key Features:
- Go on Raids & Complete Challenges – Take on commissions, defeat bosses, and survive enemy waves, using consumables like life potions and ability recharges to endure. Each battleground presents its own challenges, whether in layout or the enemies it harbors.
- Fast-Paced Tactical Combat – Experience snappy, thrilling turn-based battles that capture the excitement of ARPGs. Enjoy tight skirmishes lasting 5-10 minutes. Instead of long, large-scale, and complicated battles, your goal is to clear battlegrounds as efficiently as possible and earn your reward in the form of loot, renown, and pay.
- Hunt for Powerful Loot – Find and equip legendary weapons, armor, and unique items to boost damage, defense, and special stats like block chance, life steal and more.
Level & Character Progression – Increase power by unlocking skill tree nodes to customize abilities and level up many others stats.
- Character Collection: Along your journey, recruit over 120 unique characters, each with their own strengths and abilities. Toughness, agility, attack types—whatever the need. Adapt your squad to the challenge and combine the abilities of individual characters for powerful interactions.
- Explore a Vast Fantasy World – Visit dozens of unique locations like cities and shrines, discover new battlegrounds and challenges, and dive deep into the lore of Lyboria's races, their mythologies, homeland and more.
- Complete a Dynamic Campaign – Face unique challenges and events that shape Lyboria’s future, as you stop an ancient evil force, hidden for eons, from devouring the world.
Lyboria is a handcrafted medieval high-fantasy world, unlike games with procedurally generated content. This vibrant realm spans diverse biomes - from fungal savannahs to icy mountains - and is rich with mythologies, chronicles, and histories.
The world is bursting with color and life, yet grounded in mature themes woven through its art and character stories. Here, you won’t find world-famous legendary warriors. Instead, you’ll recruit characters with modest reputations. Everyone from humble alchemists to guards, hunters, and the occasional prominent figure. Each brings their own unique charm, motives, and depth. The subtle art of Hermeticism, Lyboria’s form of “magic,” is rare and restrained, shaping the world in delicate but powerful ways - discover more about it below.
The Eastern part of Lyboria features 4 distinct main races, respectively factions, which split the land into four regions. Each race has their own distinct style—both artistically and gameplay-wise—highlighting their cultural differences and unique physical attributes.
The Nordur are tenacious humans of the north, inspired by Viking, Slavic, and Old German culture, living in their homeland called Lifarsland. They are a kingdom of several tribes led by one king. According to their mythology, the land was given to them by Hrulf the Ice Giant, and the elk Elgur acts as their guide and emblem.
The Tagari are a furfolk named after their creator, Tagarus. They are a union of 4 tribes led by a Khan each, connected to different species: wolves, jackals, foxes, and coyotes. They are inspired by Native American culture and are very close to nature. Their faith believes in reincarnation, and their most notable trait is their tails, as each additional tail stands for more knowledge and power in their society - with 9-tailed being seen as godlike.
The Naphas are lizardfolk, birthed by their deity, the Watersnake Naphas. They consist of 5 genera, all hatched from the first five eggs: Crocodiles, Snakes, Chameleons, Turtles, and Dragons. They are led by their Lord who controls the empire known as Sizahlas. Their society follows a strict scheme where each genus takes core tasks and professions. However, there are exceptions, where their protectors of knowledge, the turtles known as Shelx, take positions in the military.
The Arachnids are an aristocratic society, inspired by elves in their humanoid appearance and Greek mythology. They were birthed by the Shadow Tree, a gigantic tree in the center of the Dark Woods, their homeland. From the Shadow Tree’s cocoons emerged a Scorpion King and a Spider Queen, leading to an aristocratic society where, for the spider species, women rule and men are the workforce, while it’s vice versa for scorpions. Their folk is split into 3 echelons: the Aristocrats, very humanoid arachnids; the Brood, very animalistic creatures; and the Brutes, something in between.
In Fangs and Forges, the world of Lyboria works much like our own, following the same basic laws of nature. Only a few people in Lyboria know about a special philosophy called Hermeticism, which lets them use "Magic". This magic isn’t created out of thin air - it comes from understanding and working with the natural world.
Every being with consciousness can tap into its power, but it demands a unique set of skills: strong willpower, keen intuition, mental and physical stamina, and, above all, a free mind fueled by the power of imagination.
Some are born with a natural gift for Hermeticism, their thoughts effortlessly shaping the world. Others master it through relentless training, while some barely have time to grasp its secrets. Many fear its potential, but most in Lyboria remain unaware of the vibrant forces flowing around them.
Hermeticism doesn’t create power out of nowhere - it transforms what exists, drawing from nature in countless ways. Everything consists of the same tiny particles, differing only in form, shape, state, composition, and frequency. Everything vibrates and is in motion. Vibrations differ in frequency. A Hermeticist who masters their mind and thoughts can use their own vibrations to influence the environment or harness its power. Not only thoughts generate vibrations, but every tiny part of the body. Unconscious states of mind or posture generate vibrations in all forms that can, intentionally or unintentionally, affect anything and everything.
One sacred law is the Principle of Polarity: everything is dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree. For example, water can boil or freeze, yet it remains water. Hermeticists wield this principle to transform liquid into ice or steam, shifting its vibrations without creating something from nothing.
Story Teaser
The Eye of God, Skyboulder, or Broken Sphere - a celestial marvel has watched over Lyboria since life’s dawn, believed to have banished a primal darkness. Yet, beneath its gaze, an ancient corruption festers, twisting the land and its creatures. As a Squad Leader, recruit heroes, uncover hidden truths, and halt this malevolent force before it consumes Lyboria… again.
Learn More
Dive into chronicles, mythologies, the world of Lyboria itself, the homelands of the races, their religions, economies, traditions, and more on our official website for a deeper look into this fantasy world.
https://www.fangs-forges.com
Characters are displayed as cards in your collection and as hex cards on the battlefield. They are divided into tiers, attack styles (melee, hybrid, marksmen), and roles (e.g., assassin, tank, skirmisher), each with unique abilities tailored to their identity.
Each character has three ability charges, which their unique abilities consume. These abilities range from single-target damage to battlefield-altering effects like gravity bombs, offering diverse strategic options.
Certain abilities feature real-time events for enhanced impact, though they’re exclusive to select characters. This gives you the flexibility to opt for an interactive, action-style battle or stick with traditional turn-based tactics.
Over 100 characters are already complete, each with rich lore backgrounds, many interconnected through relationships like kin, rivals, or apprentices within Lyboria’s world. These characters are brought to life with full artwork, reflecting their unique identities.
Every character comes with a story, not just a description, revealing their character, motivations, past, and role in Lyboria.
All items in Fangs & Forges are currently placeholders, but in the full game, each will feature handcrafted art tailored to the unique style of Lyboria’s races and regions, matching the quality of character designs. Below, explore a few examples. During the closed beta, I’ll work with the community to refine the item system, making it a top priority before the Early Access launch next year. The plan remains to have items with varying rarities, split into attack styles (melee, hybrid, marksmen) for weapons, providing base or special stats like attack skill, damage, or grievous wounds. I’m also considering introducing unique items in the future to boost character ability powers or add new passive abilities. Stay tuned!
