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Game News The Hand of Merlin is a turn-based roguelite where Arthurian heroes battle against cosmic horrors

Infinitron

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Tags: Croteam; Room-C Games; The Hand of Merlin

The Hand of Merlin is an upcoming turn-based roguelite RPG from a Croteam spinoff studio named Room-C Games. In The Hand of Merlin, you lead a party of heroes from Arthurian legend against what appears to be an alien invasion, travelling across a procedurally generated Dark Ages Europe and fighting isometric tactical battles. Originally known as Guardians of Erda - Merlin's Tale, the game has been in development since 2017 and first came to our attention when it was renamed in 2018. I didn't post about it back then for some reason, possibly because it didn't have an up-to-date trailer. It got one today when Croteam released a demo of the game on Steam for the ongoing Steam Game Festival, so I guess now's my chance. Here's the trailer along with their announcement:



“I would never have guessed it!” This is the sort of reaction we usually get when people learn that the same studio made both Serious Sam and The Talos Principle, one we heard many times before.

Yes, there’s a stark difference between a frantic first-person shooter and a philosophical puzzler, but guess what? Some of us love turn-based games even better!

So much so, that a group of Croteam’s lead engineers and turn-based lovers decided to form Room-C Games a few years back, a spin-off studio with the sole purpose of creating a turn-based game of their own. The team was soon joined by Jonas & Verena Kyratzes, a legendary writing duo that needs no special introduction to our fans, and soon The Hand of Merlin was born.

A fantasy turn-based rogue-lite RPG, where medieval arms clash with sci-fi horror, had an interesting time in development full of fun design choices (check out MarkoP’s amazing dev blog diaries here!), including the switch to the latest version of Serious Engine, but today is an exciting day as we’re happy to announce that The Hand of Merlin has joined the Steam Game Festival: Summer Edition!

This means that you can play the exclusive demo right away, and take those first steps in Albion on your epic journey from Camelot to Jerusalem. Time is of the essence here, as the demo will vanish – pooof! – as soon as the Festival ends on Sunday.

The newly released teaser trailer will stay on the Steam game page a bit longer, as will your comments, follows, likes and wishlist actions – we’ll forever cherish those!

For all The Hand of Merlin chatter, visit the dedicated Discord server and the official game page on Facebook. Follow Croteam on Twitter and Instagram, like us on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Oh, and don’t forget to join our ever-growing Croteam family on Discord and Reddit.​


Like the rest of the games participating in the Steam Game Festival, The Hand of Merlin's free demo will be available until June 22nd. According to its Steam page, the game is due out in Q4 2020.
 

Morpheus Kitami

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King Arthur...and aliens. Two good ideas, on their own. Put them together? Yeah, I'm sure this isn't going to be like making a meat milkshake or anything.
 

JDR13

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Sounds cool, but "rogue-lite" makes me think the levels are probably procedurally generated.

*Edit* They are.
 
Last edited:
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Thac0

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I'm very into cock and ball torture
Cool pitch and decent graphics, but they are ripping the Banner Saga UI. If they rip the game systems aswell I am out, Banner Saga and its various rip offs had the most bland and boring turn based combat I ever played.
 

jac8awol

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I'd gladly throw money at aspects of this project but procedural generation is an absolute deal-breaker.
 

CRD

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Divinity: Original Sin 2
medieval + aliens
written by kyratzes (talos principle + the sea will claim everything)

ok, i'm in.
 

JDR13

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Tried the demo and thought it was underwhelming. Hard to believe this is from the same guys that developed Serious Sam.

The gameplay felt very generic, and the production values are mediocre at best. Maybe it'll improve significantly since it's still in Alpha, but it's a hard pass for me so far.
 

elverkongen

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King Arthur...and aliens. Two good ideas, on their own. Put them together? Yeah, I'm sure this isn't going to be like making a meat milkshake or anything.

It's a game reflecting the hivemind's transition between popular works of public domain literature. A stepping stone between Lovecraftian horror which is waning and Arthurian romance which is waxing.
 

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