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Vapourware Unforetold: Witchstone (formerly Project Witchstone) - "living world" sandbox RPG with turn-based combat - CANCELLED

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Arcane
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Messages
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Codex 2014
https://www.witchstone.ca





From Spearhead Games, a Montreal-based studio behind Stories: The Path of Destinies and Omensight. Coming to Kickstarter in mid-2019.

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Montreal, Canada - March 19, 2019 - After less than a year since the release of the acclaimed Omensight, Spearhead Games returns to PAX East with the first-ever demo of Project Witchstone, a living world sandbox RPG. PAX attendees can play the pre-production version of the game at booth 15108.

In Project Witchstone, you arrive on an isolated island where seven rival factions have settled into an uneasy alliance but vie for control over powerful magical relics known as witchstones. But what you decide to do on this island is entirely up to you. Will you be a villain, a hero or a selfish schemer? Will you ensure everlasting peace or push for mutually assured destruction?

With Witchstone, Spearhead Games intends to push the interactive storytelling further with adventures uniquely tailored to each player’s gameplay and dialogue decisions. In a living and reactive world, players will be offered unprecedented options to role play their character and influence their environment, capturing the fun and freedom of a pen & paper RPG campaign.

Press and content creators can book an appointment for an exclusive hands-on presentation of the game with the developers by inquiring at press@spearheadgames.ca.

About Spearhead Games
Spearhead Games is a Montreal-based independent developer founded in 2012. In 2016, Spearhead released Stories: The Path of Destinies, which saw ex-pirate fox Reynardo come up with last-minute schemes to stop an emperor gone mad. This was followed by Omensight in 2018, an action murder mystery game in which the Harbinger must uncover a conspiracy that leads to the destruction of the world.

For more information, please visit: http://www.spearheadgames.ca
Follow Spearhead Games on Twitter, Facebook and Discord.

Game Info
Title: Project Witchstone
Genre: Sandbox RPG
Developer: Spearhead Games
Platform: PC
Release date: TBD

  • A living world sandbox RPG
  • Fun and freedom of pen & paper RPG campaigns
  • Impact the state of the world with your gameplay actions
  • An interactive adventure story that is uniquely your own
  • Turn-based tactical combat
Living world:

The world you explore is alive, meaning that characters that inhabit this world go on with their daily lives and move around following a routine (from their workplace to their home, for example). They also own properties, have personalities, friends and enemies, likes and dislikes, appreciation towards you, allegiance to factions, perception of their surroundings, etc.

Sandbox:

Using actions common in RPGs (dialogue, combat, spells, abilities, stat checks, stealing, etc.) and less common ones (stealth, influence interface, etc.), you can interact, manipulate, and shape this world as you see fit. Our goal is to give you the freedom to live the adventure you want. No overarching pre-defined main story thread, you get to decide how you want to proceed.

Want to frame an NPC for theft or murder? Want to join a faction, become their leader, and destroy the other factions? Want to destroy the factions but scheme in a way that they never know you're responsible? Want to become a treasure hunter instead? Maybe the best solution is to blow everything up?

All of this is possible in our sandbox.

How?

With our systemic approach to narrative, tailored events will occur based on your previous actions. All crimes will result in law enforcement running an investigation and attempting to arrest the suspect. Any violent act committed against a faction will result in retaliation. Taking over someone's house will work fine until the previous owner's relatives or friends come to visit.

These are some examples of the ripple effect you can cause in this world. And how you deal with the ripple effect will determine what happens after.

A preview of "super early" version only developed for two months:



I guess the success of Divinity Original Sin inspires many of these indie studios to do their "dream" RPGs.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

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Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
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Codex 2014
Unreal Engine 4.

FAQ stole from Resetera thread posted in January:

PAX attendees were super enthusiastic about Project Witchstone and had many questions for us. I've compiled them here with answers.

Is the game going to be single-player? Multi-player?

Single-player. The focus is on customizing and living out your adventure in this world. You will be able to recruit characters in your party though and we are keeping multi-player in mind as a potential feature in the future when we build the game.

So you've all been working on this for 4 months now, what are your plans for the future?

We want to have a playable version to showcase at PAX East (which is happening at the end of March) to build momentum for a Kickstarter campaign starting mid-2019.

Why a Kickstarter campaign?

As you can imagine, Project Witchstone is an ambitious endeavor which will require a few years to complete and require a lot of testing and fine-tuning of our systemic elements. So we need your support to make this dream possible and help us along the process. Backers will have access to builds of the game, which we'll use to gather feedback and learn more about what narratives players are building with the game systems.

Have you ever done a Kickstarter before?

We haven't but we do know many fellow developers in Montreal who have successfully completed Kickstarter campaigns before. We will be enlisting their help and support.

On what platform(s) will the game be available?

The main focus is to get the game on Steam Early Access (so PC). It makes it easier for quick and regular updates and get the feedback loop with the players going. We'll talk about ports to consoles and other stores once we are done with the Early Access process and have a full, solid game.

How big will the world be?

For the PAX East demo and Kickstarter version, we'll be focusing on a town with 2 competing factions and a dungeon. The goal is to start small and figure out the permutations of the system and gameplay time possible then scope up the game based on that. From that point on, we will regularly add content (more towns, more dungeons) to fill up this island. The focus is more on density rather than scale.

Is Witchstone going to be the name of the game?

Maybe. We've been using the name internally. Witch stones (also known as adder stones) are believed to possess magical powers and this fits well with the setting of the game. The name might stick or we might find something better in the future - we'll see.

This game seems very different from your previous games. What made you want to build a sandbox RPG this time?

It is different but at the same time it isn't. We've actually been building towards Witchstone since Stories: The Path of Destinies, which started out more like a traditional RPG. Ever since we've been exploring the significance of decisions in video game narratives, how can choices impact characters and the world. In Omensight, we've even programmed AI that behaved differently based on player's decisions.

So for us, Witchstone is the next step in our exploration. What if basic gameplay actions were a decision? What if how the player deals with situations dictate how their story continues?

Can I play as another race than human in the game?

Yes. We've been focusing on gameplay and the whole living world aspect so we've only been showing the base character model in the game. In the key art shown at PAX South, you can see an elf and a dwarf. But we'll also be adding anthropomorphic beings in the future as well.

What game engine are you using?

We've been using the Unreal Engine 4 since Stories: The Path of Destinies and we're going to keep working with this engine. It makes it easier to transfer over tech and assets that we've built for our previous games.

So it's been 6 months in development, but they've been building up the foundation with the previous games.
 

Drowed

Arcane
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Core City
The description of the game is really good and push some right buttons. But the screenshots / UI / video look like a generic mobile game from any appstore.

I dunno. I'll wait for more information, but I'm "cautiously interested".
 

OldNorseSaga

Learned
Joined
Nov 25, 2017
Messages
160
The description of the game is really good and push some right buttons. But the screenshots / UI / video look like a generic mobile game from any appstore.

I dunno. I'll wait for more information, but I'm "cautiously interested".

Cartoon graphics > pixel ART (not pixel scramble) > everything else
where cartoon graphics trumps pixel ART & realistic try-hard graphic.
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
13,459
It really does remind one of Original Sin, albeit cartoonified way too much.

Curious how interactive it will be.
 

Dodo1610

Arcane
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Germany
Really liked Stories and Omensight. So I am definitely interested. Both had very light RPG systems, but this time around they seem to be going for a Divinity Original Sin 1 clone.
 

OldNorseSaga

Learned
Joined
Nov 25, 2017
Messages
160
Really liked Stories and Omensight. So I am definitely interested. Both had very light RPG systems, but this time around they seem to be going for a Divinity Original Sin 1 clone.

Good, I like DOS1, but hope they wish to improve the game on DOS2 level & not repeat their mistakes.
 

Heretic

Cipher
Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
844
Stories: The Path of Destinies had a really interesting twist on storytelling, and this looks like it will be a mix of Stories, the freeplay systems of Soldak and the combat system of Divinity.

I'm down for it.
 

Drowed

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Core City
Cartoon graphics > pixel ART (not pixel scramble) > everything else
where cartoon graphics trumps pixel ART & realistic try-hard graphic.

I have nothing against cartoony graphics, but rather with cheap-looking/bad graphics and UI. Especially the UI of the game that is really terrible, but I imagine it is a matter of it being WIP, I hope.
 

Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Divinity Original Sin clone, but not relying on co-op? Sure, alright.

They seem to focus more on sandbox stuff too so it definitely sounds fun. Can't wait to hear about it in oh, I guess 2 years? 3 maybe?
 

Hobo Elf

Arcane
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Platypus Planet
The color palette is pretty obnoxious and the UI needs a lot of work but maybe the gameplay will be good. It sounds very ambitious with its simulations though and that makes me very cautious that this will ever see the light of day, at least in the way that they are describing it.
 

Contagium

Savant
Patron
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New Hampshire, USA
I could do without seeing yet another "made for mobile" looking RPG-lite game with those same glowing crystals coming out of nowhere.
 

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