The Banner Saga 3 Updates: Survival Mode and Q&A

With 21 days left to go and over $280,000 pledged, the Kickstarter campaign for The Banner Saga 3 has a couple of new updates.

One describes the Survival Mode that’s coming to the game when the stretch goal of $300,000 is reached, and lists the new achievements Stoic will be adding to the game:

Survival Mode is a battle-focused gameplay mode, where you face a series of increasingly difficult battles. You start with 6 units available, and can unlock more with renown as you progress. Each battle features one item-equipped enemy, giving you the chance to obtain items through victory. Characters that fall in battle are permanently dead, and you have a limited number of reloads available to make it through to the final, 40th, battle.

[…]

The battles are fast-pased and challenging, and use the ‘pillage’ turn order, which unlike the single player game, does not strictly alternate by teams, but rather is fixed at the beginning of battle and only changes as units are killed, or when turn-order-affecting abilities are used.

The other reminds us that a total of 5000 backers has been surpassed(close to 6000 at the time this post goes up), which is an impressive milestone. It also cherry-picks a few of the questions asked and answered during the recent AMA the team participated in. An excerpt:

From AskStoic:

“First of, I gotta give you big shoutouts to the Bolverk-Folka dynamic. It’s really cool how their roles in combat match their personalities story wise. Is this something you have in mind when creating the characters for TBS3?”

Drew:

“Really glad you like Bolverk and Folka (be sure to thank (at) Nika Harper for penning an awesome backstory of how these two unlikely comrades met)! We’re always looking for ways to sync the story and the gameplay, so you calling out their combat and personalities as a match makes us very happy! We are certainly giving the same amount of care to new (and old) characters for the third game – finding the best ways to integrate their stubbornness or altruism into specific battles or game-changing decisions.”

AguilarX:

“Imo, the only thing missing from Banner Saga is great voice overs. It is more expensive but do you guys have something planned either for BS3 or for all 3?”

Arnie:

“We hope to have exciting news about this goal. It is an expensive thing to get in the game for a small studio like ours, but it’s something we’d love to offer the community. Can’t say much more about it, but if you want to see this someday, please support the Kickstarter that we’re currently running! “