In The Necromancer's Tale, a major focus for the player is building up their army of the dead, to protect them when exploring, and eventually to march against their enemies. This involves researching and practicing black magic rituals as well as a variety of spells that can be cast during combat.
Combat itself is turn-based, and involves a potent mix of undead minions and 18th-century "conventional" weapons.
Interactive fiction prologue sets your backstory and skills
The game uses a (skippable) Interactive Fiction style prologue to set your backstory and skills, and to let you explore the game's lore and history before beginning the main game-play. It's a 10,000-word, fully-voice acted narration.
Watch some footage here, or try it in the demo!
Investigate your father's demise in a city full of suspicion
The game has over 150 unique NPCs, each with their own portrait art and side quests. Partial voice acting is included. In this clip, meet the shifty and suspicious Haelan the herbalist.
Marns (1733) City Map - in progress!
The Marns city map (1733), in development from its concept in late 2019 - now nearing completion. Most of the work in the past 18 months has been on wilderness encounter/narrative areas as well as underground tunnels, caves and crypts (and a couple of more supernatural places you'll have to wait to see).
Combat Improvements in The Necromancer’s Tale
The Necromancer’s Tale demo has had over 1500 playtesters over the past 12 months, providing lots of analytics and around 150 in-depth responses via questionnaire. We have learned what players most love about the game (the detailed world, well developed characters, and overall interactivity)- which directly led to several features being added during 2023 (e.g. wearable clothes, voice acting, and further responsiveness in the world such as a playable piano and an interactable cat).
That’s right. It’s a gif of a cat. It’s about to hiss at you and run off.
We have also learned that players hope that the final game will offer a range of summonable creatures and various other necromantic battle-magic spells (in addition to the ritual magic will has always formed the core of the game). The one area that players felt a bit bland was combat.
Some powerful creatures you can enslave, and then summon to help you in battle.
The latest demo shows off our improved combat system, adding Mana, Battle Magic Spells, and Activity points carry-over. We have also made a more friendly in-game tips system during combat and generally improved the combat UX.
Mana: this is the game’s 10th skill, adding arcane ability to the physical, social, and mental emphasis of the existing skills. Mana will be built up in various ways as you progress through the game, either directly or through the wielding of magical artefacts. Mana has become a core skill which is now needed in order to activate undead minions in battle, as well as to cast other spells.
Battle-magic spells: we have 10 battle spells planned in total, but for now the demo offers 3. Each spell costs Mana, Action Points, and (sometimes) drains your Energy.
“Activate Minion” is required in order to move a minion during the current combat round. Adding this requirement makes undead minions fundamentally different to your human allies in combat, adding a tactical dimension to their positioning and activation.
“Death Focus” allows you to commune with the Realm of the Dead and gain a temporary Mana boost. This is a useful spell when you’re in a tight spot, perhaps during a combat round in which the randomised winds of magic are blowing only weakly.
“Chilling Mist” is the first of two planned area-effect spells. This one invokes a magical mist which drains the action points of all mortal creatures in the affected area. It adds more tactical nuance to your control of the battle-field’s space.
From next Thursday (Dec 7th) the game is going into its second round of playtesting on the excellent [G.Round platform]. If you’re interested in being involved, for The Necromancer’s Tale or other games, please check them out!
Play the demo in the Steam ScreamFest
The Necromancer's Tale has been invited to be part of Steam's ScreamFest this Halloween! You can play our detailed demo (1.5 hrs+ content).
The demo contains four distinct parts:
Chapter 1 (From the Beginning) - Your character's backstory, early career and skills are chosen through an interactive fiction. This demo offers an abbreviated version of the interactive fiction (chapter 1), followed by a portion of 'Homecoming' (chapter 2) which deals with the events and intrigue after you arrive home for your father's funeral.
Chapter 2 (Homecoming) - This demo covers the second half of chapter 2: your initial exploration of the city, meeting old friends, and finding a job. You have gathered enough information to realise that your father's death and hurried cremation were suspicious, and that the family finances are in trouble. You will need to find a short-term job in the city and investigate recent events. We begin with you about to venture past your home gates for the first time...
Chapter 6 (Hospital) - This demo covers the first half of chapter 6. Using a ritual from an ancient spellbook you attempt to raise a dead body but collapse into a coma. You awaken in hospital beside Diedrik, your childhood friend who has been in hospital since he got caught up in a necromantic trap spell you had set to protect your house.
Combat Demo - A demo of the turn-based hexgrid combat system. Here you have some reanimated skeletons under your control in addition to your own character. Characters move in sequence based on their Agility skill.
Steam Deck Compatibility
The Demo version 0.89 update adds a bunch of things:
Steam Deck compatibility. The game works great on the Deck! Combat controls still need some work.
Added some additional minor NPCs to the demo.
Added additional graphics settings, hint options and other info.
Some people seem to be struggling in the first section after arriving home (the investigation bit), so now your old friend Sofia turns up to tag along and give a few hints if you seem to be stuck.
I made a breakthrough in terms of save-file backwards compatibility, so hopefully save files from this version forward (0.89) will stay compatible. I know this is important as the Steam analytics show that some people are playing the demo for several hours (which is great to see, by the way!)
Other development is going well. We have loads of exciting content going into the game at the moment :-)
Tiny Teams Festival
The Necromancer's Tale has been selected to participate in Yogscast's "Tiny Teams" Festival! The official stream will include the game next week (Wednesday 9th August, 9pm UTC/8pm BST), but meanwhile watch out for affiliated streamers picking us up!
We have added partial voice audio to the demo, covering the entire prologue and the early lines for the game's NPCs. The process of working with voice actors has been a lot of fun, and a lot of work too! We'd love to hear your thoughts on whether this is a good addition.
Other small changes include:
footsteps audio
functioning mirrors
a "speed up" slider for combat
a camera rotation speed option
Clothing and Animation Improvements
As you might know, we ran a substantial testing campaign on our demo over the last several months. Nearly 1000 people have tried the demo now, and we have received a lot of really useful feedback. Not just bugs, but also strong evidence of what people like about the game and what they want to see more of.
One of the most requested features was wearable clothes - so, when you find a leather coat and wear it, it should appear on the in-game character. This makes sense as something players would want, when you consider that the depth of the game world is one of the main features they love. This is roleplaying, after all...
We have just updated the Demo to include a bunch of improvement on the main character art. - Wearable clothes (with cloth physics) - Improved animations, including procedural movement so everything feels more fluid - Inverse kinematics on torches held in front of you.
Here's some quick footage showing this in-game. Naturally, there are wearable tricorn hats -- the 18th Century's most iconic fashion item. And yes, there is a royal ball in the game: it's at a major pivot point in the plot as the player's insanity is really starting to burn bright.
