Dawnsbury Days is a 2D turn-based tactics game with CRPG elements that's based on the rules of PF2E, the second edition of a powerful tabletop OGL ruleset.

You play as the Dawnsbury Four, a group of four young heroes from a small town. You choose their class, feats, spells and other abilities as you lead them through 4 character levels and 20 combat encounters on a quest to save their home town from a multitude of dangers. You will fight monsters and face dangers, but you will also make friends, acquire loot and level up, and eventually — hopefully — you will defeat whatever sinister force is behind all the dangers that have beset Dawnsbury for the last seven years.

The main adventure path can take about 4 hours for a single playthrough, but you can then replay it with different party compositions and besides the main adventure path, you can also try and defeat some of the powerful foes in additional scenarios in free encounter mode.

Features

A complex OGL-based rule system which makes for strong strategic gameplay
12 classes, from the Fighter to the Wizard to the Kineticist, each with different play patterns
110+ feats and 70+ spells to further customize your characters
20+ encounters in the main story-driven adventure path, and 10+ additional scenarios in free encounter mode
Character level cap is 4.
A story of childhood friends braving their first serious challenges in adventuring
Support for custom maps, encounters and portraits
Support for custom mods to add new ancestries, feats, rules and more

Tactical combat

Each turn, you get three actions to spend on moving, attacking, casting spells, taking combat maneuvers, drinking potions and defensive or other actions.

You can preview the effects and success probability of all actions before you commit and weigh your options. All combat encounters are balanced, but many are difficult: To win the game reliably and consistently on hard difficulty, you will need to make use of almost all of your options.

Every +1 matters: Buffing your allies, and demoralizing or flanking your enemies are often better options than making a third attack in a turn which would be affected by a very punishing multiple attack penalty anyway.

A cinematic experience

This game is a cinematic experience, where you fight one combat encounter after another, and these fights are interspersed only with (voiced!) cinematic cutscenes. The game doesn't waste your time: animations are lightning fast, cutscenes skippable, and you can really focus on the engaging combat experience.

Or you can choose an easy difficulty, and enjoy the story of the Dawnsbury Four, young adventurers grappling with their first real challenges.

Story of the Dawnsbury Four

Ever since the Night of the Shooting Stars seven years ago, the small town of Dawnsbury has been beset by dangers. The nearby volcano hasn't ceased erupting, support for neighbouring towns has lessened and kobold brigands terrorize the countryside. What's more, the Golden Candelabra, an artifact that protected Dawnsbury for generation, has been lost that same night.

But now new heroes may rise up: you play as the Dawnsbury Four, a group of childhood friends who have trained for years under the tutelage of the town mentor Roderick, and are now finally ready to embark on their first quest: to find and retrieve the Golden Candelabra and bring it back to Dawnsbury where it belongs.

But even that may only usher in further dangers and provoke whatever sinister force is behind all these woes...

Accurate to tabletop

Dawnsbury Days uses the rules of PF2E, the second edition of a powerful tabletop OGL ruleset, and strives to remain as faithful to them as possible, so that the gameplay of Dawnsbury Days mirrors your experiences when playing with friends around the table.

You play exclusively in turn-based mode on grid-based battlefields, and you can preview and review all dice rolls required to make attacks, saving throws or to deal damage.

The game also tries to replicate the elusive 'feel' of a tabletop roleplaying game, with story, characters and encounter design all in service to that goal.

Deep character customization

You choose your characters' ancestry, heritage, background, class, subclass, ability scores, skills, feats, spells and items — and that's just at level one.

On each level up (up to level 4, which is the level cap), you select from additional feats (and for spellcasters, spells) to further customize your character.

There is a wide variety of weapons, armor and consumable items to complement your character.

But you can also choose to skip all of that and use one of the eight pregen characters which are pre-built for each level, complete with items.

Additional scenarios and modding support

Besides the main adventure path, you can also fight additional scenarios with minimum story but with the same engaging gameplay.

You can also download custom encounters created by modders for an additional challenge and variety. Some of these can be really difficult and unique!

Dawnsbury Days is fully moddable. With code mods, you can add custom ancestries, feats, spells and even variant rules. Documentation on how to create custom mods, including example mods, is included with the game.

Dawnsbury Days reviewMeh by aldiablo

Dawnsbury Days review
Meh
by aldiablo