An old-school turn-based party-based RPG set in a huge open fantasy world.
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An old-school turn-based party-based RPG set in a huge open fantasy world.
About this project
Antharion can best be described as a fusion of various elements from classic series like The Elder Scrolls, Baldur’s Gate, and Ultima into a single player old-school RPG experience. We wanted to combine an immense open-ended living-breathing world where the player is free to go anywhere and do anything, with a deep tactical turn-based combat system, a rich skill set and character creation system, and the distinctive feel of old-school classic RPGs.
- Open World: Go anywhere and do anything in Antharion’s vast open-ended living-breathing hand crafted world.
- Turn-Based: Antharion features a deeply satisfying tactical turn-based combat system beneath a sleek and intuitive interface.
- Party-Based: Create and customize a party of up to 4 (race, sex, class and appearance)
- Dynamic Lighting & Shadows: take old-school dungeon drawling into a new era
- Epic Story: Antharion features a dark and mysterious world of magical mystery and political intrigue.
- Meaningful Decisions: Save the kingdom and become revered or destroy it and become reviled. In Antharion your actions matter and are reflected tangibly in the world around you.
- Freedom: The world of Antharion is fully interactive: go inside of every room of every building, open every drawer and steal any item. Explore over 100 dungeons ...all at your leisure.
- Magic: 3 schools featuring 45 unique spells.
- No Level Scaling: Antharion does NOT scale loot or monsters.
- Full Day/Night and Weather Cycle: Rain, snow, fog, thunder and lighting.
- Smart AI: NPCs react intelligently to your behavior. Monsters have their own unique temperaments and combat strategies.
Antharion's world isn't just huge ...it's massive! Over 100 dungeons, 20+ cities, 50+ unique monster types, this thing is enormous! It's important to us that everything in the game feels unique - you should never say to yourself, "Where have I seen that monster before?" or, "Wow, those NPCs looks really familiar." As you can see from the video, Antharion is crammed with tons of unique environments and we'll keep adding even more until it's finished. It's important to us that Antharion feels alive. NPCs don't just mindlessly sit there all day waiting like cardboard cutouts for you to enter their shops, they have lives of their own: going to their jobs during the day and then home at night. Steal in front of someone and you may be in for a fight, or they may just flee to find the nearest guard depending on their individual temperament. Get reported for committing a crime and you'll have a bounty on your head - if a guard spots you he'll throw you in the nearest prison (probably taking a bit of your coin for himself).
Antharion is stats heavy and gives you complete control over character customization. You choose each character's race, class (or create your own custom class), and appearance. You can either select from a set of existing classes (where your skill and attribute points are assigned automaticall) or you may choose to create your own class (and assign skill and attribute points however you like). Currently there are 9 skills including: Black Magic, White Magic, Ranged Weapons, Defense, Lock Picking, Stealth, Mercantile, Gray Magic, and Melee Weapons; 5 attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Constitution; and 5 races: Human, Orc, Necrophil, Lynx, and Elf.
Combat is the heart and soul of Antharion. We set out to create the sharpest, crispest and most responsive combat system possible and we're very happy with the results. Combat begins when either a player or an enemy initiates it. At the beginning of a new round all players and enemies are assigned a certain amount of action points (AP) as determined by their individual stats. Movements cost 1 AP while attacks and spell casts cost all of it (unless you're hasted). If the player initiates combat then all of the player's characters move one by one until none have any AP left. Then the enemies would move one by one until they're all out of AP. Then a new round starts and everything repeats until one side is dead. What sets Antharion's combat apart from other games is the snappiness and transparency of it's combat system. What you see is what you get.
There are three schools of magic (Black, White, and Gray). Each school has a corresponding skill which determines the spells you can learn plus how powerful those spells are. Below is just a small sampling from the 45 spells we already have implemented:
- Cone of Cold - Freezes all targets within its cone
- Teleport - Instantly transports the caster to a nearby location
- Web - Immobilizes the target in a spider's web
- Inferno - Create a huge walls of fire extending out in every direction
- Last Stand - Create a massive explosion killing the caster in the process
- Polymorph - Turns the target into a pig
- Mark/Recall - Set a location anywhere and teleport back to it later
- Fear - Causes the target to flee in fear
- Invisibility - What it says ...cannot cast magic or attack when invisible
- Knock Back - Pushes your enemies away from you outwards
- Frost Armor - Chance to freeze attacker upon taking physical damage
- Charm - Recruit an enemy to fight for you
- Resurrect - Bring one of your party members back to life
- Sacrifice - Give up your life to heal your party
- Summon Beast - Conjure a rat to fight for you
Ever since the murder of the beloved King Mallory (uniter of the Kingdom) at the hands of his own debauched son (and now King) Zeverith, the Kingdom of Antharion has been ravaged by political turmoil. Zeverith’s first act as King was to dissolve the Senate; his second was to sell off large chunks of the Kingdom to rich noblemen who promptly enslaved many of their inhabitants. The Order was a collective of adept magical enthusiasts who for centuries collaborated in secret to tame and refine their arcane magical knowledge. Zeverith quickly became aware of the Order's existence through his network of spies and immediately swore to neutralize them. Many of its members were killed by Zeverith’s forces but others fled deep into the depths of long forgotten caverns - some of the more masterful wizards even managed to magically construct artificial planes of existence to escape off into. In response, Zeverith began what would come to be known as The Great Purge, sending his men from city to city and town to town to hunt down every last wizard. As part of a poor group of peasants from a small quiet town on the outskirts of the Kingdom, you suddenly found yourself swept up in The Purge when a group of Zeverith’s men stormed your town, murdered the townsfolk, and burned every last house to the ground. Taken deep into an underground dungeon for a torturing and execution, you somehow manage to overpower your captors. What happens next will be up to you...
So far Antharion has been entirely self-funded. Our small two-person full-time operation has been working slavishly for over a year trying to make Antharion a reality while living off of a modest savings. We recently hired a fantastic artist to work full-time on hand-made pixel art and while the project is shaping up into something very special, our savings accounts are dwindling fast. Soon we're going to need to hire a composer to score an original soundtrack for the game. We'd also like to port Antharion over to the iPad which will cost even more money. By reaching our goal, we can ensure not only that Antharion will get completed, but that its development time will be cut down dramatically. Exceeding our goal will allow us to create even more and better quality pixel art, animations, and music in addition to enabling us to craft an even larger world stuffed with more unique dungeons, monsters, items, NPCs, and quests.
We Support Indie Games
We love indie games so we're going to support the Kicking It Forward movement by pledging a portion of our profits to go towards supporting future Kickstarter projects. http://kickingitforward.org
Risks and challenges
A little over a year ago Antharion was just a dream. Today the game's engine and development tools are complete and the challenges from here on out will consist mainly of: (1) polishing core gameplay mechanics (such as combat and magic); (2) producing content (such as more pixel art, animations, and an original soundtrack) to fill up Antharion's massive open-ended world; and (3) porting Antharion over to the iPad without compromising core gameplay. We're confident that reaching our goal will allow us to overcome these as well as any future challenges.
Learn about accountability on KickstarterFAQ
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Yes.
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Absolutely!
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Currently we don't have any plans for a Linux version. However, if we exceed our goal there's a good likelihood that we'll be able to do a Linux version.
Rewards
Funding period
- (29 days)