Support Our IndieDev Friends! Black Geyser Launches Today!
Here at Darts Games & Hamsters Gaming we think it's incredibly important to support other small studios, especially those like us who're making isometric RPG's! While we're hard at work on Revolution: The Spark, we thought we'd run our very first cross promotion to help our friends!
If you’ve ever played Baldur’s Gate or Icewind Dale, you’ll feel right at home in the old school Black Geyser. Developed by a small indie studio in Budapest, Hungary, it’s a love letter to those titans of the genre, with plenty of its own twists. Developed since 2015, backed on KickStarter and having entered into Early Access in August 2021, its launch is today.
Black Geyser is set in Yerengal, a world where dark gods have brought nothing but venality and greed. For centuries, the Devil-god Rothgor has spread fear and terror, waging war upon the mortal races. Eventually banished, the nation of Isilmerald has enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity. Yet discontent has begun to fester once more, and a bloody civil war is brewing between the capital Isilbright and the wealthy mining town of Deron-Guld.
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Like any classic isometric CRPG, life starts out at the character creator. There’s 5 playable races (Human, Dwarf, Elf, Feldegug and Rillow) and 13 unique classes, from 4 unique class groups (Priest, Outlaw, Warrior, and Wizard). Each plays completely different from the other and there’s enough here to suit all styles. After tinkering on the attribute screen (time to panic over those points!), you’re dropped into a world that’s plagued by pestilence and mysterious abductions. Without wishing to spoil the story, it’s your job to uncover the hidden legacy of your birth, across a world you’re free to explore.
Since its Early Access and over the last seven months, Black Geyser has taken the time to improve almost all areas of its game. The entire purpose of getting the game into the hands of players as soon as possible was clearly to refine its vision, identify problem areas and put them right. Having delivered over 20 huge updates, including Mac and Linux support, Black Geyser has made sweeping changes. From vastly improved loading times, to clearer player tutorials, improved crafting, new zones, enemies and questlines, the small development team have ensured they've focused on addressing and reacting to key player feedback.
As a CRPG with a large open world with dozens of unique locations, exploring, interacting with NPC’s and managing Black Geyser’s tactical-combat-with pause is key. Just like most party-based titles of old, you’ll need to recruit key allies, discover their motivations, choose your formations and deck them out in any weapons and armor you can lay your hands on, whether that’s from taking on epic bosses, or stealing from a nearby inn (just don’t get caught by the guards).
Black Geyser is undoubtedly a challenging experience, but first and foremost it puts its story and unique greed mechanic at the center. The choices you make will either advance the cause of the Goddess of Greed, or maintain the flame of hope to impact directly on the game world. Yerengal is brimming with content to discover, with varied grim biomes that have plenty of atmosphere that are filled with dangers. If you camp for the night, there’s every chance you’ll be ambushed. If you stray too far from the beaten track, don’t be surprised if you encounter enemies waiting to smash you to a pulp.
With a branching narrative spanning more than 300,000 lines of text and multiple endings, there’s more than 60 hours of content available here, not including all the side quests and secrets to uncover. Scratching that old school itch is the name of Black Geyser’s game, and with future launch plans set to bring pets, strongholds and additional content, its launch this week is only the beginning.
Black Geyser's 1.0 is set to go live on Steam in a couple of hours for $29.99. We hope you support them!
Are you ready to be corrupted by Black Geyser’s greed?
Some of you have already seen this news in the Steam Community Forum, but I've decided to make it more official and share the news that we are back working on Revolution: The Spark! And this time we intend to finish and release the game by 2022. We're excited to announce that we have started working on the Spark once again!
We put our best effort into making Spark a reality, but our inexperience quickly lead to scope creep, and as if that wasn't enough COVID-19 soon hit the whole world. The quarantine and remote work caused all sorts of delays, and when some of our relatives, and ourselves started to get sick that lead to the team kind of collapsing. Investments were partially withdrawn during this period. I’m not saying all of this as an excuse, I just wanted to inform you on the reason for all of the delays.
Despite all of that, we have managed to keep the core of our team, and we still believe in our project and we are sure that we will finish it, We spent all of 2021 trying to sustain the team by working on a smaller game projects. We changed the team name to Darts Games, and we plan to publish a few games within the next months. These smaller games have refined our team's skills, and with newly found experience we can create even more gorgeous, entertaining, and meaningful games.
Our main priority has always been Spark, and we have dreamt of returning back to it for a long time. We are happy that we can finally do so! As of now, the Spark is ready for Early Access release, but we deem the quality too low, and we don’t want to deliver unfinished product for our followers. We plan on working hard for the next year, and finish the game so that you guys can enjoy it.
We also plan to stay more in touch with you, sharing development news at least once a month, and keeping all of you informed about the progress that we have been making. We hope to rebuild your trust, and to share the passion that we have for Revolution: The Spark!
Sorry for making you wait, and thanks for still being interested in our project! Keep in touch, and join our Discord to chat with the team members if you want!
The Steam Game Festival: Autumn Edition
We are happy to announce the demo release of our first game: “Revolution: The Spark”.
Here at MOR/ANN games been working hard for slightly more than a year. Our team has been through thick and thin together. On top of the Covid-19 that everyone experienced, our country has also been through a war, and we have been through the stress that comes with it too. However, we did everything that is in our power to provide you with the game where you can explore parts of the beautiful city we have created. In rushing to do so, we didn't manage to meet all our goals.
I'd consider this version, early beta at best, it's very raw. So please, adjust your expectations. That said, we at our team still believe that the game has a huge potential, and we are passionate to reach the best end product that we can share with you guys. Overall the game is in desperate need of polish, and finishing touches to get it to the level it deserves to be at. Please support us if you can, and don't judge our game by its current state.
Our game is intended for PCs, is being developed in Unity, and is planned to release mainly on Steam. The game is called Spark, and it’s an isometric, story-driven, "open-world" RPG, where you can explore the city rather than walking on a pre-determined path. The story is about the revolution of the masses in the Victorian era in a turn-based tactical battle genre. Now we know we can't expect ourselves to get anywhere close to the level of big companies given how most of us in the team lack experience, but we all try our best.
Here is a little bit more about the story. I think the heart of our game is the journey of the protagonist (Alex) caught in a world of extremely high income inequality where he has to decide whether to continue to live minding his own business, or to try create a better future for his family, and specifically daughter. Along Alex's journey, the player will have to make game changing (at least the narrative, but sometimes the strategy too) decisions that will impact the world. We plan for around five very different endings.
The story is set in an alternate steampunk world in the late 19th century in the Capital of the strongest Empire in the world that is on the brink of revolution. The game tells a story of a military veteran, Alex who becomes increasingly frustrated with the growing corruption of the monarchy, and the exploitation of the common folk. When Alex's direct family gets involved, and his brother gets arrested for an attempted coup, Alex will have no choice but to take on a more hands-on approach. It appears that a concentration of power lies in the hands of a powerful few. A spark of revolution will change it all.
Additional Info More detailed information about the plot can be found in our webtoon: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/the-spark/list?title_no=354072 The Facebook page of our game: https://www.facebook.com/thesparkgame/
