Having just passed £10’000 of it’s £40’000 goal, developer Revelation Games has decided to release a demo build of their project, Ealdorlight, which focuses on the game’s take on tactical combat.
Turn-based movements meet a combat system which features an organ and injury based damage system rather than a conventional hit-point healthbar one. This means that nimble characters succeeding in inflicting lots of little bruises and cuts can -as in reallife- out dual a vastly different opponent by simply out-manoeuvring and inflicting many small wounds. Give it a go in the demo, it’s certainly an interesting take on turn-based combat.
Ealdorlight is the second game from Revelation Games, the first being the fantastic Sol Trader. Both games share a lot of things in common, but the most interesting thing is the reliance on procedural generation for the entirety of the game’s story and world. I met the developer, Chris Parsons, back at the PC Gamer Weekender in 2016 where he radiated enthusiasm and joy at his own history systems in play. Even on his first title the game generated family trees from a vastly earlier point, rather than populating backwards, which ensured that there was an overwhelming amount of variety in each restart. That history feature is also present in his latest title, and also drills itself down into the storytelling and questing.
The planned features list, from the Kickstarter page, is:
“Travel between towns and villages, managing food and supplies.
Take on a myriad of procedural quests from the townsfolk.
Meet characters with generated backstories and family trees.
Avoid permanent wounds to your character in combat.
Gain the trust of others, or blackmail them to advance.
Discover who you are and unlock your own skills and abilities.
Craft items and farm crops.
Earn access to the court of the King.
Win the throne through moral argument, intrigue, or force.”
You can find the Kickstarter trailer for the game below, but there’s also a lot more information -and pledges with early access starting at £25- over on the Kickstarter.
Should Ealdorlight pass it’s Kickstarter fund then it is expected to launch in January of 2019; you can find the Kickstarter page here.
