Serpent in the Staglands, a Darklands inspired RPG with cool pixel art, now on Kickstarter
Serpent in the Staglands, a Darklands inspired RPG with cool pixel art, now on Kickstarter
Game News - posted by Infinitron on Fri 28 March 2014, 13:40:04
Tags: Kickstarter; Serpent in the Staglands; Whalenought StudiosI spotted this game on Kickstarter today. It's called Serpent in the Staglands and it claims to be inspired by games like Baldur's Gate and Darklands. The developers are a husband-and-wife team by the name of Whalenought Studios. Here's their pitch video and an overview:
The vision for Serpent in the Staglands is a mix of the addictive build customization of ARPGs and party control and role-playing elements of games like Baldur's Gate and Darklands. A throwback to cRPGs of the past with fresh new role playing designs and combat mechanics.
During your search as a god's mortal avatar, you'll plunge into the Stagland's deep combat and open world exploration. Skills, spells, and aptitudes can be individually customized for up to five different party members of your choosing. With an expansive variety of build options and branching paths to choose from, the game will offer significant personalization and replayability.
The real time combat is frenetic and can often turn into an onslaught of magical assaults and frenzied attacks as soon as it starts, so the ability to pause the game at any time to issue out orders (or get a grip on your party's situation) can be welcome relief. Though you become more powerful and earn more skills as you progress, the range of dice roll outcomes grows larger and more unpredictable. This creates variety and cultivates the need to strategize in order to survive. Our combat system is meant to be a challenge; death can always be around the corner.
The art process allows for us to keep our characters unique with lots of details, armor sets, and enough fabulous cloaks to keep warm and stylish in the coldest of blizzards. We love seeing small details, so every one of our animations, like our backgrounds, are hand-drawn frame by frame. We plan on having 8 main armor sets with color/cloak color variations, and plenty of unique weapons and equipment. We meticulously designed all the menus and art to be as interesting and thematic as possible for your viewing pleasure while playing.
We're in an alpha stage of the game right now, and have no intention of releasing it without it being a finished, polished product. To reduce any feature creep, the main system components, dice roll combat, and gameplay mechanics are already completed (more info in a graph below on where we are in development), and are now at the stage of creating levels, dialogue, enemies and more art.
If you’re interested in this project, that probably means you have a solid experience of classic rpgs or tabletop rpgs - and that makes you an invaluable partner in its development. One of the fundamental parts of roleplaying is the discussion and ideas that are created with those who are playing. We're thrilled with how development has been going, the game so far, and the direction we are taking it we're excited to see what aspects can be improved with your help. With Kickstarter we have an easy opportunity to hear and implement ideas from an invested community. We gathered a lot of feedback during the release of our previous titles, Isle of Bxnes and Bridge to the Moon, both during the beta releases and after the initial post release and the games benefited greatly as a result.
The game is currently in development for PC and Mac, and with the help of Kickstarter donations, we plan to release it Winter 2014. Our hopeful Kickstarter funds will help us create the game without having to freelance or pursue other projects during development, as well as garner valued community feedback and beta testers.
The full pitch has lots more information on combat mechanics, skills, magic, lore, etc. Not to mention lots of lovely animated pixel art! The funding goal is a mere 10,000 dollars, but like the pitch says, the game is already half-done. These two have made games before, so I assume they know what they're doing. What do you think, Codex?
The vision for Serpent in the Staglands is a mix of the addictive build customization of ARPGs and party control and role-playing elements of games like Baldur's Gate and Darklands. A throwback to cRPGs of the past with fresh new role playing designs and combat mechanics.
During your search as a god's mortal avatar, you'll plunge into the Stagland's deep combat and open world exploration. Skills, spells, and aptitudes can be individually customized for up to five different party members of your choosing. With an expansive variety of build options and branching paths to choose from, the game will offer significant personalization and replayability.
The real time combat is frenetic and can often turn into an onslaught of magical assaults and frenzied attacks as soon as it starts, so the ability to pause the game at any time to issue out orders (or get a grip on your party's situation) can be welcome relief. Though you become more powerful and earn more skills as you progress, the range of dice roll outcomes grows larger and more unpredictable. This creates variety and cultivates the need to strategize in order to survive. Our combat system is meant to be a challenge; death can always be around the corner.
The art process allows for us to keep our characters unique with lots of details, armor sets, and enough fabulous cloaks to keep warm and stylish in the coldest of blizzards. We love seeing small details, so every one of our animations, like our backgrounds, are hand-drawn frame by frame. We plan on having 8 main armor sets with color/cloak color variations, and plenty of unique weapons and equipment. We meticulously designed all the menus and art to be as interesting and thematic as possible for your viewing pleasure while playing.
We're in an alpha stage of the game right now, and have no intention of releasing it without it being a finished, polished product. To reduce any feature creep, the main system components, dice roll combat, and gameplay mechanics are already completed (more info in a graph below on where we are in development), and are now at the stage of creating levels, dialogue, enemies and more art.
If you’re interested in this project, that probably means you have a solid experience of classic rpgs or tabletop rpgs - and that makes you an invaluable partner in its development. One of the fundamental parts of roleplaying is the discussion and ideas that are created with those who are playing. We're thrilled with how development has been going, the game so far, and the direction we are taking it we're excited to see what aspects can be improved with your help. With Kickstarter we have an easy opportunity to hear and implement ideas from an invested community. We gathered a lot of feedback during the release of our previous titles, Isle of Bxnes and Bridge to the Moon, both during the beta releases and after the initial post release and the games benefited greatly as a result.
The game is currently in development for PC and Mac, and with the help of Kickstarter donations, we plan to release it Winter 2014. Our hopeful Kickstarter funds will help us create the game without having to freelance or pursue other projects during development, as well as garner valued community feedback and beta testers.
The full pitch has lots more information on combat mechanics, skills, magic, lore, etc. Not to mention lots of lovely animated pixel art! The funding goal is a mere 10,000 dollars, but like the pitch says, the game is already half-done. These two have made games before, so I assume they know what they're doing. What do you think, Codex?
