Highborn

Overview

Highborn is a casual-orientated, turn-based strategy game that follows the misadventures of a group of adventures lead by Archie the Paladin. Together with Enzo the Mage and Trillion the Mage they set off to battle and trade witty banter with the forces of Decay lead by the Arch-Lich Floyd. There are plenty of out of place culture references and outrageous jokes. The fourth wall is broken often and to great effect.

Gameplay

Turn-based strategy means you and your opponent takes turns moving your units across the map. When you select each of your units, the squares on the map light up showing you where you can move and then what other units or structures you can interact with (attack, capture, heal, board boat, etc.) Once you are done with your turn your opponent does the same. There are various structures on the map that give who ever control them a specific unit. For example taking control of a tower gives you control of a Mad Wizard unit who has a very powerful attack, but paper-thin defenses. A monastery structure gives you control of a Monk who can heal other units. If you loose control of the structure you loose the unit... and you opponent gets control of it!

Magic

There are monoliths scattered about the map that give their owner access to a spell that can be cast in the game's 3D rendered combat sequences. These monoliths function like other structures, meaning that who ever is in control of the monolith has the spell. If your opponent takes a monolith from you, he also takes the spell.

Combat

When you attack another unit, you enter a 3D rendered scene with the two forces lined up against each other. The attacker gets the option of casting a spell or using one of his Hero unit's special abilities. Some support structures that are nearby may also shoot fireballs or a rain of arrows into the battle. Then the two units take turns exchanging one round of blows with the attacker going first. The key you should be taking from this is to make sure you are the attacker and be careful how close you are to your enemy's support structures.

Hero Units

The Hero Units, which are the main Highborn characters are the key to the game. If you lose a Hero Unit in battle, you lose the mission. The whole mission is essentially based on your hero unit and what they are trying to accomplish against whatever Decay Heroes that are trying to stop them.

Missions vary with you having 1 to 3 Highborn Hero units at your disposal. Each Hero unit has Map Mode Ability and their own special Hero Spell units has the option to cast in combat just like monolith spells. Maps abilities are things like a small heal for all of your units, stealthing your hero, or slowing down the movement of all enemies for one turn. Enemy heroes also have special abilities so be careful.

Interface

The interface is very simple, there is a context-sensitive button in the upper right that lets you know what you option is based on what unit you have selected and what you may have targeted.

There is a little display on the bottom that gives you the basic information on the units and lets you open a journal that contains more information and usually some humorous back-story.

Multiplayer

Highborn has a multi-player mode that features asynchronous game-play, meaning the players take their turns one at a time at their own convenience. Currently Highborn multi-player only functions through Open Feint's friends list. This means that games can only be played and hosted between friends. The matches themselves are simple one-on-one battles on various multi-player specific maps that are named after original Star Trek season one episodes.

System Requirements

PC

Minimum

• OS: Windows XP SP2
• Processor: 2.6 GHz single core
• Memory: 1 GB RAM
• Graphics: DirectX 9.0c compatible graphics card
• DirectX®: 9.0c
• Hard Drive: 3 GB HD space
• Sound: Integrated audio interface

Recommended

• OS: Windows 7
• Processor: 3.0 GHz dual core
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce 8 Series, ATI Radeon HD2xxx
• Hard Drive: 3 GB HD space

Mac

Minimum

• OS: OS X Lion 10.7 or later
• Processor: Intel Mac
• Memory: 1 GB RAM
• Graphics: OpenGL 2.0 compatible video card with 256 MB shared or dedicated RAM (ATI or NVIDIA)
• Hard Drive: 3 GB HD space
• Additional: Required: Keyboard and Mouse with Secondary click enabled.

Recommended

• OS: OSX Mountain Lion 10.8 or later
• Processor: Intel 2.5GHz dual core or better
• Memory: 2 GB RAM
• Graphics: OpenGL 2.0 compatible video card with 512 MB shared or dedicated RAM (ATI or NVIDIA)
• Hard Drive: 3 GB HD space
• Additional: Required: Keyboard and Mouse with Secondary click enabled.