14 DAY TRIAL // Snowcastle Games is a small independent game development company based in Oslo, Norway, and it is currently undergoing a Kickstarter campaign for its turn-based role-playing game Earthlock: Festival of Magic.
Earthlock: Festival of Magic is a colorful turn-based role-playing game, based in a world where technology meets magic, named Umbra. The planet mysteriously stopped spinning thousands of years ago, and now war is brewing.
This is where players come in, taking the reins of a lowly desert scavenger and unlocking the mysteries of Umbra, ultimately preventing an ancient magic cult from seizing power over the world.
The game will feature a rich and immersive story, revolving around a cataclysmic event that struck the magical world ages ago and stopped it from spinning. In its wake, volcanoes awoke and oceans shifted, and countless kingdoms and civilizations fell, either buried or drowned.
In time, the scorching sun took over one side of the planet while a dark and merciless winter took hold of the other. All the glory of the old world is lost, as today there remains a sole inhabitable region in-between the two sides of the planet.
The battle system plans to go back to the roots of the role-playing game genre with proper turn-based combat and no random encounters out of the blue, all the monsters being visible on the map at all times, and there will be several variations available as far as team composition goes.
Players will control parties, which are made out of pairs of characters, a warrior and a protector. The warrior will use various consumable such as ammo and items, while the protector will cast healing and shielding spells, which instead of mana points use Support Points, accumulated when the pair receives damage.
Choosing the right combination of warrior and protector will be the key to winning, as different pair actions and stats change according to how characters are grouped.
Earthlock: Festival of Magic will also be the first ever video game where players will be able to grow their own ammunition through organic crafting. Good luck trying to convince anyone that you're just a peaceful farmer.
In addition, players will also be able to build and then improve upon their home base, and will have to solve numerous environmental puzzles set in a gorgeous world with a strong retro vibe.
Snowcastle Games plans to release Earthlock: Festival of Magic for PC, Mac, Linux, Wii U, Xbox One and PlayStation 4, with a scheduled release window of Q1 2015 and Q2 2015 for consoles.
The indie dev even has a functional early demo of the game for PC, Mac and Linux, available for all to try for free and showing an early development stage of Earthlock.