Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is a
story-driven tactical RPG, set in a fantasy world with a touch of steampunk. It features a
deep class system,
intricate character customization and
classic strategic gameplay.
An enemy archer taking their turn
Fell Seal is often dubbed the spiritual successor to classics like
Final Fantasy Tactics and
Tactics Ogre. It takes a lot of inspiration from these great titles but brings its own improvements and additions to the genre.
Fell Seal boasts a slew of features,
including 20+ classes, 200+ abilities, 240+ pieces of gear and 40+ different gorgeous environments with full elevation and topology. We're aiming at a 25-35 hours normal playthrough, with 10+ hours of optional end-game content.
Beautiful and dangerous environments
We are primarily a team of two passionate industry veterans, with multiple decades of experience working on AAA and Indie titles, who decided to go all out and fulfill their dream!
We have a
demo available for
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. It features the first 2 story battles of the game and should give a good idea of the gameplay and how the story unfolds.
You can get the demo for Windows, Linux or Mac at any one of these fine sites:
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark features classic tactical gameplay. The core of the game takes place on our
lush battle maps, either in story cutscenes or fighting for your life in dangerous combat. You will also have access to the world map, where you can plot your next move and equip and prepare your troops.
Basic worldmap layout
Combat is a big part of the adventure in any tactical RPG, and
Fell Seal delivers
complex battles with varied objectives and multiple strategic possibilities.
Using the environment to your advantage (and showcasing teleportation boots)
In
Fell Seal, battles are
turn-based, with each character having their own turn. You will be facing down scores of enemies in
thoughtfully-designed maps, filled with details, elevation and treasures. How you use the map to your advantage, which characters you bring along, what strategy you adopt: all these will be instrumental in securing your victory.
Fell Seal has some fairly challenging encounters, so
expect that some of your units will fall in combat. When that happens,
your characters are not permanently lost, instead they will suffer an
injury, which lowers all their stats until they have recovered by resting (not participating) for some amount of battles. This avoids reload fests that might arise from making small mistakes in combat, while still maintaining a penalty for making said mistakes. It also encourages you to create more "core units" than the basic 6 that can participate in combat at any one time, which means even more units for you to take a special interest in.
Thunder II spell in action!
As you advance the story and grow your characters, both in numbers and in strength, you will want to access the troops management menu and
select their class, sub-class, abilities and equip them with all the gear you've been looting, crafting or purchasing!
Equipping some gear
With over 20 classes and sub-classes for your characters to select, you will be able to
create the unique combination of troops that you envision!
Selecting equipped abilities
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark has
over 20 regular classes available to the player and
many secret classes with special requirements to unlock.
Each character can select their current class from any of those they have access to. New classes will become available as you learn enough abilities in previous classes.
Unlocking Scoundrel and Knight classes
On top of selecting your current class, you are also able to select a sub-class. In combat, a character will have access to
all the skills they currently know on their selected class and sub-class, thus creating great flexibility in what actions your troops can take. Should you create a versatile fighter with a touch of magic? Or perhaps a specialized healer with access to all the restorative arts? These are just a glimpse of the possibilities that you will have to weigh when preparing your team.
On top of all these class options, your
units can increase their character level as they earn EXP points in battle, which will raise their stats, HP, MP and make them more formidable combatants. Every class offers different stats increase, which gives you another area where you'll have the freedom to carefully cultivate how they evolve.
When we play tactical RPGs, we really love it when we
can personalize our characters! With all the character customization options at your disposal, you have the power to
create unique characters that are truly yours on a functional level. But what about their looks? If you happen to like the Fellblade class a lot, is your lineup destined to all look the same?
In
Fell Seal,
you can customize any non-story character to look exactly how you want them to. You can recruit male or female characters and select their portrait, outfit, hat, hair, face, eyes, accessories, colors... well, you get the idea!
Customizing a recruit's appearance
The lands of
Fell Seal are rife with potential conflict, and you'll be facing a multitude of enemies during your adventures. You will of course be facing other human troops, with their own classes, sub-classes and abilities. But not every adversary hails from the lands of man and you will also face
many a monstrous enemy. While they may not boast a fancy class and sub-class, they have their own set of deadly and unique abilities, which you will need to adapt to if you are to survive the encounter unscathed!
And there will of course be
special enemies: mythical creatures of unknown origin, possessing incredible destructive power and a desire to use said power... usually on you.
The story of
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark takes place in a fantasy world where all the lands are unified under the rule of the
Immortal Council, a group of eternal rulers with the purpose of keeping stability and order throughout the world. Their stated goal is to avoid a repeat of the great catastrophe that saw them rise to power a millennia ago, when they took down a savage mythical beast on a rampage.
The Council relies upon their mortal agents,
the Arbiters, to guard the land's people and enforce the peace. Arbiters range over the land, rooting out bandits, unruly monsters, and crooked officials; their word is law.
You will be taking control of Kyrie, one such Arbiter, as she uncovers the deepening corruption pervading her order. It'll fall to you to halt the spread of a threat as great as the catastrophe that gave rise to the Immortal Council so long ago.
These are but a few of the storied characters that will be accompanying you during your tribulations.
The story is told with detailed in-game cutscenes
, in the style of classics like
Final Fantasy 6 and
Tactics Ogre.
Fell Seal brings
bright and vivid environments with high-detail, high-resolution pixel art. The whole game is exclusively in 2D, as that's what we love the most!
The style is a mix of semi-realistic, semi-anime art, evoking a slightly dark fantasy world with a touch of steampunk.
A cave level in Fell Seal
Rakkerjak concept art
Reiner early sketches
The soundtrack for our game is being written by Jan Morgenstern, an award-winning film and games composer from Germany. This is not our first collaboration with Jan; more than a decade ago, when our head developer worked at Studio Archcraft, Jan provided the music for the studio's Nintendo DS title,
Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled. Back then the team was very happy with Jan's contributions, so we're excited that he was eager to join us and add his musical voice to
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark.
For the music, Jan is coming up with a lush orchestral fantasy score full of memorable melodies and sprightly charm. In his own words, he aims to bring you the unapologetically catchy writing of the best RPG soundtracks from past gaming generations, in a 21st century sonic livery. Is he succeeding? You be the judge - you can check out the game's main title theme and an in-game battle cue here:
While your pledge on Kickstarter means everything to us, there are other ways you can support our campaign! Help us spread the word on your favorite social media platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, or tell your family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, pizza delivery boys... you get the idea!
Social Goals links:
Every goal reached helps tremendously with spreading the word about our campaign! As a thank you, as we meet new goals, we'll be adding new features to the game, such as expressions for dialogue portraits and new options to customize characters!
Keep an eye out for these objectives unlocking, as they'll add new features to the game!
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark will be released on
Windows, Mac, Linux and Xbox One. We have plans for
PS4 as well, but we can't confirm anything yet on that front, other than it looks promising. We're also considering the
Switch, but it would most likely be released at a later date.
We're currently looking at
March 2018 for the Steam Early Access and
Q3 2018 for Release, with the
Beta access happening as soon as possible (probably December 2017).
Obviously, $40,000 isn't anywhere near the cost of creating a video game of the scope and magnitude of
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, so what's the deal?
We're a primarily
a versatile team of 2: a programmer and an artist, who can cover most of the work by themselves. Since we're not paying ourselves any salaries, the bulk of our expenses comes from the music and contracted artists, which is more manageable.
For the sake of transparency: while
Fell Seal has been in the works for just a little over 2 years, we've actually been
planning it for over 6 years, so even though we're both working full-time on it, we've put aside enough savings these past 6 years to complete the game regardless of the outcome of the Kickstarter. But, without the added funds from the Kickstarter, we won't be able to retain the services of all our contracted artists. And without their added help, it'll take our lone artist a long time to get everything done, and the quality won't be as impressive as it could be.
That's where the Kickstarter and your support comes in! With these extra funds, we can keep hiring very talented artists to both
speed up the development time and include more features and polish and truly make
Fell Seal the beautiful and ambitious game we envision!
As such, music, marketing, and a lot of the art costs are already covered by our personal funding. This is what our Kickstarter and overall budgets look like:
Also, to us, Kickstarter is a great place to
build a community for
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and to
leverage the feedback, comments and suggestions we'll be getting from the fans here to improve the game and ensure we
make the best design decisions possible. A big thanks to everyone in advance, as we know
your input is going to make a big difference!
Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark is being created by a duo of developers, with the help of many contracted artists. The duo is composed of Pierre and Christina Leclerc a married couple with a lifelong passion for video games and, especially, RPGs. Pierre and Christina started dating 7 years ago during a session of Dungeons and Dragons ^^
) and I'll end up showcasing the spells on our twitter feed eventually, so let's start with the concept art.
