Third-person 3D Action RPG with Dungeon Crawling and City Building. Revive your enemies once again and make them fight alongside you!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
June Project Update: Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection on Future Game Show and Steam Next Fest
8 months ago
– Sat, Jun 08, 2024 at 12:52:53 PM
Hi everyone
We start this month of June by participating in two big events with Resurrection! We just appeared in Future Game Show as part of the game reel with other awesome games, and starting on Monday, we will be part of the Steam Next Fest.
We have made available the demo for Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection on Steam already, ahead of the Steam Next Fest, so you can play it during the weekend. If you play it and come across any issues (you probably will, sorry for the inconvenience in advance), please report them in our Discord server, that would help us a lot!
This demo is very similar to the one we released back then for the original Sword of the Necromancer, including up to the first boss, but there are a lot of changes in the game's progression.
We explained it a bit in this update: Dungeon Mechanics and Revenant Special Attacks. One of the biggest changes is that the game now features different levels that you can replay, instead of having to beat it from start to finish (with the occassional rest moment). We added at least one level of each type so you can get a good sample of how it will work.
We are still working on improving the game, so excuse us if it feels a bit rough sometimes. Specially on the optimization side (you may find small slowdowns specially the first time you or monsters do a specific attack).
This is also the month where we were supposed to deliver the project you backed, Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant. As we explained in this update (Important news about project roadmap), we had to change our plans due to several setbacks, the most important being that the publisher we were in talks with finally didn't close the deal.
Honestly, this is being a very hard year, and we are still trying to find a publisher or investor that can help us, but the current situation in the industry doesn't help at all. We will probably have to self-publish Resurrection, and hope that we can make enough money to fund Revenant and speed up its development. As we've been saying in our previous updates, we are still working on Revenant, and we're doing pretty well within our current limitations, but it's taking way longer than we originally planned when we had this Kickstarter campaign for the aforementioned reasons.
We hope that you have fun playing this demo of Resurrection, and see all the changes we made from the original game. Revenant will share the same battle system and level progression, so you can also use this demo to get a taste of what the sequel will offer.
Also, we will contact all the Beta Tester tier backers soon so they can help us with testing Resurrection. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Kind regards!
May Project Update: some progress, Backer-designed Revenants and Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection trailer
9 months ago
– Thu, May 16, 2024 at 05:26:58 AM
Hi everyone!
This month we've been working more on Resurrection rather than Revenant because we're in the final stretch for the remake's development. Even so, we've made a lot of progress in areas that are not programming and game design.
Thanks to the new writer, we have the dialogues for 6 of the 8 "chapters" (that's how we internally divide them though) that Revenant will have.
We have been working on some bosses, like the one we unlocked via the "social stretch goals" of this campaign: the Whispike Queen.
This boss will be part of one of the recruitable NPCs' sidequests, Mona, who is a "monsterologist" that will help you with monster-related things, like registering and managing them.
We also finished the models of the backer-designed Revenants (that we showed in this update). We shared the model for Ophelia, now it's the time for Lucefine.
Lucefine and Ophelia will each have a sidequest where you will be able to get them as summons. As they have a related boss each, they'll be a bit more special than the other Revenants.
Lastly, as we are in the latter stages of Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection's development, we have published an announcement trailer and the game's release window: end of summer 2024. We hope you enjoy the trailer below!
We will contact the backers of the "beta tester" pledge tier (and above) in a month or so to know if they want to help us with the game's testing. Remember that all backers of this Kickstarter will receive a free Steam key for Resurrection once its released (actually a bit before that)
That's all for today's update. Thank you very much for your support!
Kind regards!
April Project Update: Monster Time!
10 months ago
– Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 03:29:14 AM
Hi everyone!
Not many exciting things lately, as always we keep working on the game at a steady pace (but slower that we had originally planned due to the lack of publisher funding, see the January update for more details).
This one will be mostly text until the end, where we show a bit of what we're currently working on. So please take your time to read.
We keep receiving messages asking if Revenant will be out by June (as it was the stated milestone during the campaign). As we clearly explained in the January update, that will not be the case. Remember that we had to delay Revenant's development and we are now working in parallel on the original game's remake, Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection, to help funding the sequel (again, we're very sorry for this change in the plan, but there wasn't much we could do).
This "parallel work" is going well, and as we anticipated it's not making a big dent in Revenant's progress, because the projects share pretty much everything. Resurrection is coming along nicely, and we will share a trailer and more details soon.
New game writer
We recently hired a writer to help us with Revenant's dialogues and some "narrative design" for the sidequests. Up until now, the same person in charge of game design, half of the programming and writing these updates (hi!) was the only one who had the "writer hat" too. Hopefully, this will hasten development a bit. The new writer is working closely with the team to keep the tone of the game, while adding their knowlegde about narrative.
Console versions
In our previous update, we told you about how we managed to make the game run at super stable 30FPS on handheld Switch, barring a few scenes with lots of NPCs. We have also been working on that, and we optimized the entity management, by performing some common tricks. Now the game runs at the desired FPS, at the cost of sometimes seeing a monster or an NPC popping off at a long distance (anyway, we try to mask it as well as we can).
And like every month, we want to use this update to talk about one aspect of the game: this time being...
Monsters
The original Sword of the Necromancer release had 20 monster species (which was later expanded to 30 with the free update, the 10 new ones consisting of backer-designed and new designs from the team). For a monster-catching game, that would seem a low number, but you had to take into account that this was a real-time game, and every monster had their elemental variants.
For the sequel, we made a decision of not using any of the backer-designed monsters from the first game (we didn't want to pick favourites, it wouldn't have been fair), and make a selection of 20 monsters from the remaining ones. There were some we couldn't use due to being from collaborations with other games, and others simply didn't work with a free camera in 3D or because how the new dungeons would be (for example, the door mimic in the first game wouldn't make sense in a cave or a forest), so picking them was fast.
Then we decided to have at least as many new monsters as returning ones, which means we had to make 20 new more designs!
This time, we feel a bit more free about what we can design, as we have different environments that we can take advantage of, and we don't have to worry about "making it make sense" in a 2D environment. We can now have certain monsters be exclusive to certain locations, which is reflected in their design. Also, making them in 3D makes it very easy to animate (when we worked on the 2D SOTN we had to make EVERY ANIMATION at least in 5 different directions, frame by frame)
On the other hand, monsters have now more states and can perform up to 4 different attacks each, so that's a lot of animations. But again, the 3D makes it really fun to come up with movements to give each monster a personality.
Here you have a sneak peek at some of the new monsters in their tri-dimensional glory!
For now, we leave what each one of these do up to interpretation, but there are some clues (the giant butcher knife, for example).
Also, remember that monsters can now have attributes with out-of-battle effects. For example, is there some Burning Mist that is causing you trouble in a dungeon? Use a monster with the Dispersion attribute to get rid of it!
That's all for today's update. See you next time!
Kind regards!
March Project Update: Weapon rebalance + a small new mechanic
11 months ago
– Tue, Mar 12, 2024 at 11:46:19 AM
Hi everyone!
Pretty quick update today as there is not much to say. We keep working on the game at a good pace (remember to wishlist Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant on Steam if you didn't! Resurrection too!).
First of all, good news! We managed to get the game working on Switch at super stable 30FPS (in handheld mode!) bar some slowdowns when performing certain attacks for the first time and in maps with LOTS of NPCs, but that's something that we can fix quite easily. That was our initial goal, although we will try to squeeze the machine as much as we can. Anyway, we prefer steady 30 FPS rather than 60 with constant slowdowns.
We also tried the game on PS5, and it obviously can run better on that platform.
This was a test to see if what we currently have in the game runs good enough in the weakest console. As we could see that was the case, we can increase the details a bit, for example, having more dynamic grass in the fields instead of the billboards we were using (and it still runs at the target framerate!).
Besides this, we've been having some playtests, and worked on rebalancing things after noticing a couple of issues. That leads us to today's main topic.
Weapon rebalance
In Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant you will be able to use more than 20 types of weapons. These fall under 6 main categories (sword, spear, axe, bow, grimoire and staff), and each have a different number of max combo hits and different charge attack among other attributes (reach, base damage, etc.)
After having some internal playtests, we decided to make some changes to several weapons so they feel less "same-y" and have their own use cases. For example, we changed the charged attack of the Hand Axe and Halberd to shoot a small projectile:
We also had fun testing new weapon types, like this hammer!
Of course, this one is not balanced!
New mechanic: ledge grab
Something we noticed back when we showcased the game at Gamescom and Indie Dev Day last year was that some players had a lot of difficulties with the platforming, mostly because they didn't jump from the borders of platforms to reach the next one, but way before that.
We've been thinking on how to help those players since back then (from increasing the jump distance to make the jump a bit more "automatic"), but in the end we ended up doing the simplest and most elegant solution: a ledge grab.
Now, when the character is not able to get on a platform, it will grab to the ledge (as long as it's horizontal enough) and climb up! We were a bit reluctant because we were afraid it would "break" what we already had designed environment-wise, but it wasn't as bad as it seemed, and any level design issues that stemmed from this new mechanic were easily fixable.
This adds a whole new dimension to the game's traversal options, and as a result, moving across the levels feel a lot more fluid than before!
And one last thing...
Check out this Kickstarter campaign: Godshard Chronicles by J-Cat Games!
Finally, the time has come! Our friends at J-Cat Games are having a Kickstarter campaign for their 2D ARPG Godshard Chronicles!
Godshard Chronicles is a 2D top-down action RPG inspired by titles such as The Legend of Zelda, Grandia (having music from its composer, Noriyuki Iwadare!), and the Mana series. Travel through a high fantasy world rendered in beautiful pixel art. You can play alone or with a friend!
If you remember well, we announced during our campaign that one of their characters, Ruby, would appear in Revenant as a special summon! In addition to that, players will be able to obtain Ruby's sword, a powerful fire element weapon.
This is an old gif though, many things have changed ;)
They have already meet their initial goal and a couple stretch goals, but any help is always welcome!
Also, as part of our collaboration, the Sword of the Necromancer will be available as a weapon in their game! Maybe it will have any use besides hitting the baddies with it? Who knows?
Take a look at their trailer!
That's all for today's update. Thank you for your support!
Kind regards!
February Project Update: More details about Resurrection, Monster Progression and a new Revenant details + Special Attack
12 months ago
– Mon, Feb 12, 2024 at 02:40:04 AM
Hello everyone!
As we said in our last update, we have temporarily shifted the main focus to develop Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection, the remake of the original game. Remember that this doesn't mean that we have stopped working on Revenant, in fact seeing the positive reception of last month's news has motivated the team a lot, and we have made significant advances in both projects during this month!
We would like to thank you for your understanding and support, and all your encouraging words. It means a lot for us as developers.
Having said that, let's go to the meat of the update!
First of all, we have made a Steam Store page for Resurrection, which you can see if you follow this link. As always, wishlisting the game helps us a lot, so if you have a Steam account, that'd be much appreciated!
As you can see, we are using the same engine and monster models as in Revenant, that's one of the reasons we can work on both projects in parallel.
Like in the original game, all of Resurrection will happen inside the Necromancer's Crypt, which is only one dungeon (remember that dungeons will work different than in the original, using the same mechanics as in the sequel, which we explained here in this update). To compensate for that, it will be larger than the regular dungeons in Revenant, and it will be divided in several "zones" with a boss at the end to match the "floors" in the original Sword of the Necromancer. Each of these "zones" will have their own style and challenges, but as it's inside the same "brick and mortar" dungeon, don't expect radically varied environments (as would be in the case of Revenant's dungeons; featuring forests, caves, volcanoes...).
We are working hard on remaking these dungeons to feel familiar but at the same time taking advantage of the additional dimension to make them more interesting. Same with the bosses: they were designed for a 2D game, so making them work in 3D requires changing the battles a bit.
Monster Progression
One of the new features in Revenant that will also be available in Resurrection is the new Monster Progression mechanics. In the original game, monsters had only one ability (normally attacks, but some monsters like the Restorebbit could do other things), but in Revenant (and Resurrection) they will have up to 4 abilities!
Otherwise, having the option to customize their behaviour (with the "Tactics" feature, explained in the Campaign section of this Kickstarter) wouldn't make much sense, right?
This means that there should be a way for monsters to get more attacks, and that way is, you guessed right, levelling up. By fighting alongside your summons, they will gain experience points and level up. Besides new Attributes, like in the original, monsters can gain new Abilities, and even elemental variants of Abilities they've learnt!
To not interrupt the game, when a monster levels up, it will automatically gain the stat boosts, but to "learn" the new Attributes and Abilities you will need to do some management in the Status screen.
If a monster can learn a new Attribute/Ability, you will see a notification in their Status screen. Select if you want it to substitute a previous Attribute/Ability or discard the new thing. A monster can have up to 4 Attributes/Abilities, so if you want it to have more attack options you will need to give up on additional Stat boosts or Passive Abilities.
The things a monster can learn will depend on their level and what attributes they already had when you resurrected it, so no monsters will be the same! Also, monsters raised from low levels have a wider range of options than one got at a higher level that could seem powerful from the get-go.
We hope this new feature, in addition to Tactics, helps players to get the most of their summons, and to have them work the closest to what they want.
Today it's Ozuzo's turn. Ozuzo will be a powerful Light-element Bow user that will take advantage of her speed to get rid of enemies. Once her summon time runs up, you will be able to command her to perform a last attack, in her case, Rain of Light.
As with all the other Revenants, you will have to find Ozuzo and defeat her in order to be able to summon and use her powers.
Speaking of Revenants, we have been working on the models of the Backer designed Revenants, and finished one of them: Ophelia (designed by Storm). She will be a Wind-element Revenant that uses one of the weapon types we unlocked in this campaign's Social Stretch Goals: the knives.
We will probably start working on her Special Attack animation next. By the way, we are thinking of looking for a more epic name for these kind of attacks instead of "Special Attack", do you have any idea? You can tell us in the comments here or in our Discord server!
... and one last thing!
Check out this awesome Kickstarter campaign: Bestiario by Wiggin Industries!
Our friends from Wiggin Industries are having a Kickstarter campaign for their Persona-inspired monster catcher RPG Bestiario. They are doing very good (reaching their goal in only two hours!), but if you're interested in what they are making, do not hesitate to support them!
Bestiario is set in our country, Spain, and features monsters from the Iberian Peninsula lore, like the Gamusinos, the Cocollona and others, with an artstyle reminiscent of games like Megaman Legends.
That's all for today's update. Thank you very much for your support!
