Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 28, 2013

I haven’t mentioned Guido Henkel’s new thing yet. I figured I should remedy this little problem.

First of all: Who is Guido Henkel? He’s the producer of some pretty legendary titles in the computer RPG history – the original Realms of Arkania series, and Planescape: Torment.  He was also involved in the production of Fallout 2 and Neverwinter Nights.

Pretty cool pedigree, right? He’s also a writer, programmer, and composer. Nice combo.

And as a final claim to fame, he was the face of the Nameless One on the box art for Planescape: Torment. Yeah. That guy. I have it on good authority that he doesn’t look quite like that when he walks down the street.

So after a little bit of hiatus from game development to pursue writing, he’s back to game dev. He attempted to launch a larger-scale RPG entitled “Thorvalia” via Kickstarter at the end of last year, but it didn’t generate enough interest. So he’s gone with something a little smaller scale. Now, he’s working on a party-based, real-time, first-person perspective RPG. It’s official title is Deathfire: Ruins of Nethermore.

The game is “step based” – which, when combined with real-time gameplay, gives you a gameplay style somewhere along the lines of Dungeon Master / Eye of the Beholder / Legend of Grimrock fame.  From his developer diaries, it looks like they are emphasizing story and character customization content a bit more in this game than Grimrock, which will be welcome for legions of RPG fans who got a little bored with the puzzle / tactics based gameplay of Grimrock. At least that’s my interpretation, and it certainly sounds like it is Guido’s intention:

It will be as gripping as Dungeon Master – or Grimrock if you’re not old enough to have played the original Dungeon Master upon which it was based – but it will have the depth of a real role-playing game, putting it more in line with the Wizardy games, perhaps. It will be a completely amped up affair. It will be more intense and deeper than either of these games. We have completed the character system design at this point and I can tell you that there are enough character attributes and stats to rival the Realms of Arkania games. Well, not exactly, but we’re not too far away from its depth. Our intentions are to push the envelope on what has been done with stepped role-playing games in the past. I feel that there is a huge untapped potential how that gaming experience can be enhanced.

He’s certainly saying the right things to my ears.

Oh, and like many of the cool RPG developers these days, he’s using Unity. 🙂

Deathfire is still in early stages of development, and is expected to release sometime next year.

 

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