Eric Moser has become my new favorite author.
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I’m a huge sucker for animal stories, so I mashed the buy button as soon as I read “you’re an owl.” But WOW I did not expect some of the twists and turns of this story. Emotionally devastated and upset.
Great game! Played through it all in one sitting instead of doing the writing I was supposed to be doing tonight.
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@asteroidwhirlpool don’t disparage me, but…I’ve never watched BCS even though I am a lawyer and my friends have nagged me for yeeeeeears to watch it. It’s on my list!
@Eiwynn thank you!
@Lucha_Markre Wow! I don’t know what to say! I’m not even my wife’s favorite author 
I’m glad you enjoyed it (I assume!).
@draconomicon I’m really happy that you enjoyed it. I structured it like a thriller, with lots of shorter chapters, hoping to keep people playing/reading instead of putting it down. It’s rewarding to hear that you felt emotional impact; that was really one of my central goals, to deliver on an emotional character arc.
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You could call them “Sowl Goodman”. 
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By Grabthar’s Hammer, what a savings pun!
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I think they’d almost have to.
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Hey, all. I just finished my review for Talon City: Death from Above. Thanks for reading!
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So is it just me or is the whole storyline setting us up for a second book? I’m not entirely sure what all the endings are but what I believe is the main one sets us up for a second novel.
Other than that I enjoyed the story and look forward to another book if there is one!
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It’s not just you - there are clearly a few sequel hooks at the end, but we’ll only get one if the game performs well.
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@Squished_Cake I’d glad you enjoyed it! And well…I wanted to wrap up the main plot and hopefully deliver a satisfying ending, even if your owl’s journey has to end here. I didn’t want people to feel robbed of a proper climax and resolution. But…I also want to leave the door open for more adventures. There is more than enough material in my head and my notes for a trilogy (@JBento shared some awesome feedback that could easily support more releases in a series). Really, the entire Book 1 could serve as your MC’s inciting incident, the experience that launches them into an awesome career and helps them become more powerful, more influential, and then…when tensions in the city finally boil over, your owl has a decision to make.
@JBento Yep! I have written down the number of units it would have to sell. I have plenty to do, between CCH3 and Final Monologue, to give it some time and see what happens saleswise. But I don’t think an animal-based MC story has ever done more than a ‘one and done,’ I’m sure it’s tough to pull off.
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A dark, noir thriller sounds right up my alley! I just started Pon Para, but once I finish that, Talon City has jumped to the top spot on my “to read/play” list.
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I just finished playing this game twice. All in all an excellently written interactive thriller.
I do have a complaint, though. The d6 dice-rolling mechanism makes playing this game rather frustrating. I don’t know if I’m just extremely unlucky, or if this is the game’s design, but when it comes to making choices that involves the owl MC’s skills, I always got dice numbers 4, 5, or 6 for my owl’s average and below average skills (at 3 points or below), and mostly 6, and sometimes 5, for choices that involves my owl’s best skill (at 4 points), and it all led to things blowing up in my owl’s face. This mechanism pretty much renders all of my owl’s skills useless. My owl could barely earn enough experience points to survive the boss fights, and that’s with me playing easy mode in both playthroughs. My only saving grace was the use of “strokes of genius” and the two items our owl could carry in their ankle pouch to earn just enough experience points for all boss fights.
Ranting aside, the characters are well written and memorable, especially Ayvex, the MC’s falcon best friend as well as potential romantic partner. While I already foresaw them being the serial killer, I still didn’t expect how things ended with them. Needless to say, I’m left devastated by Ayvex’s betrayal and eventual demise.
All in all, this is a great story with potentials. Definitely worthy of a sequel or two. And even if there won’t be any sequels, it is still a great story with a meaningful ending.
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@Kuwa definitely share your thoughts if you end up playing it!
@Barroth_the_Mage First of all, thank you for sharing your experience and I’m happy to hear you enjoyed the adventure. I pretty much tapped out my creative energy on this project, it’s been my baby for many, many years.
I really need to suggest that people play on Easy mode first to mitigate frustration. And I really hoped players would embrace using Strokes of Genius. I think some of those choices are among the most entertaining in the game, and your owl is undeniably smart, so I hoped folks would lean into it and spam those Strokes whenever they felt the die odds were against them. I didn’t want folks to view them as ‘cheats’ or anything.
If I write a sequel, I may adopt a “backstop” mechanic, where if your stat is at a certain level, a failed roll results in only partial failure, not total failure. There’d still be an element of chance, but let’s say a MC with Wings of 5 wouldn’t totally fail a Wings roll just because they roll a 6. It’s an idea to let percolate in my brain for a bit.
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First, the good things: I really like the story here. I was initially a bit put off by the silly names of some things(Bundles, Twigs, etc), but the story goes places I really wasn’t expecting it to go and it was really good. Definitely was worth the purchase price, despite the things I dislike about it.
Also, I will kill anybody who threatens my hummingbird friend. No mercy, no second chances. That is a hummingbird promise, and those are special.
However, I do have one major problem with this game, which is that I do not like the RNG system at all. I think it actually harms replayability, because when I lost a high difficulty game I sat back and tried to think of anything I could have done differently, and the only real answer I came up with was “roll better”. I picked a build path with two skills that have no overlapping choices(Wings/Beak). This covers 12 of the 15 possible choices with at least a 50/50 chance, and I have items to cover two of the three choices that my skills don’t cover. Now the only thing I can do is throw attempt after attempt at it, hoping that the numbers fall my way. There’s no skill involved in that and there’s no more optimization that I can do.
I quit trying after about my third try because I realized I wasn’t even reading things anymore. I was just picking choices by rote and hoping the dice ended up in my favor, because there’s no more optimization that I can do and no way to mitigate the RNG. Roll 13 dice. Hope that I make 10 or more checks.
I want to stress here, though, the game is still very good and worth playing! I do not regret buying the game, and I would get the sequel. It’s just the system falls completely apart on the higher difficulty levels.
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Personally I loved the little names for things (Bundles, Twigs, Clumps) it took me back to a book series that I greatly loved as a teen “Guardians of Gahoole”.
I’m still wishy-washy with RNG systems, because for some systems it is fine for others it sometimes feels stacked. As frustrating as it is I think I prefer it over stat heavy choices, because I start to pay attention to just stat choices rather than story based choices.
I also did the wings and beak method since I saw those two choices come up the most.
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Every stat comes up six times, in all the playthroughs I have done.
Stat Nonsense
The thing that makes the Beak+Wings pairing good is that those two stats never overlap in a test. Assuming you do a 4/3 stat split, this means that you get 12 tests that have one of your strong stats as an option. Heart and Ears work the same way.
All the other pairings, as far as I know, have 1-2 tests where they overlap and you have to choose between your two strong stats, meaning you only have 10-11 tests where your strong stats are an option.
Since there’s 15 total stat tests, a Beak+Wings or Heart+Ears pairing means you only have three tests where all the choices are your weak stats. Fortunately, two of those three tests can be covered by your items(Clump+Venom for B+W, Venom+Feather for H+E), so you only have one test against your weak skills. Both of those weak tests, thankfully, are before the first boss, so that if they scrub your run it happens early and you don’t waste much time.
Technically, the E+H path can use any combo of Clump/Venom/Feather as their items, since all three of their non-mainstat tests can be covered by items, but the Clump test is in Act I while the others are much closer to the end. It’s better, imo, to take the riskiest chance as early as you can, so if it scrubs your run it does it before you sink much more time into it.
Also, I want to say that RNG isn’t my problem here. There’s some games that do the RNG thing, like Breach, where it doesn’t bother me at all. The main difference here is that this game has no real ways to mitigate the RNG through skillful play. There’s no safer options, there’s no way to spend extra resources to patch up a weak spot. It’s straightforward “Your first three dice rolls were 4 3 2 3, you die”
EDIT: Also as a note, I’m talking about mostly Preposterous here, because that’s where the flaws are really visible. Easy mode, as long as you use all five strokes of genius and your items, gives you enough guaranteed successes to live through the end on those alone. Normal mode is pretty survivable. You need 9 successes and you get 5 freebies, so you only have to succeed 4 times in 10 rolls. Should handle it pretty easily as long as you bank the points from stroke of genius in time to fight the bosses. Preposterous needs 12 successes with just the two items for guaranteed successes, which means you need effectively 10 successes out of 13 rolls.
And, yeah, preposterous mode should be difficult. My problem with it is that the way it is now is an uninteresting type of difficulty. There’s no element of player skill involved. You pick your route, then you just attempt it until the dice are favorable.
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I have no ability whatsoever when it comes to drawing/painting, but I entered “owl lawyer” into Craiyon (an AI image generator) and conjured up some Talon City fan art. Here are some of my favorites.
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That first one feels like the Talon City/Terminator crossover I never knew I always needed.
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@AletheiaKnights it would be sorta freaky if the AI generated something that looked like the owl prints my grandma had on her wall in the 80s. It was something like this.
And for you folks talking about the mechanics, yeah really all you can go to maximize your chances is to use your Strokes of Genius and Inventory items at the most optimal opportunities, meaning those choices where your die rolls are least likely to prevail. And all stats are tested the exact same number of times, so none is better than any other. I wanted players to be able to play heart-based owls or speed-based owls that could have the same chances of success as any other type.
An aside…
I’m using a similar system in Final Monologue (supervillain game) but that game is much more robust and more stat-based, and you will have opportunities to raise your stats, and thus increase your die roll odds, and there’s also basically a superpower meter that you can manage, much like Strokes of Genius, but you can take actions to recharge it during the story, so yeah there are more mechanics to mitigate the luck of the roll.
But I’m liking using these sorts of systems because I’m very bored with just the arbitrary “you must have strength of > 65 to prevail” checks. How is the player supposed to know that? I like giving them clear options, like you have a 40% chance if you take Option 1, or you have a 100% if you take Option 2, but your superpower battery is drained as a result, etc., so folks can prioritize victory in situations where they care the most.
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