Indie team Enlightened Studios has kicked off a crowd-funding campaign for their medieval fantasy MMORPG Dark Centuries. The game will feature three factions, based on historical Viking, Celt and Saracen civilisations, battering each other across a savage frontier landscape.
The developers promise in-game housing, an in-depth crafting system and a ”Community driven quest system”, which means missions given by NPCs will reflect the current state of the community in which they are located; a town short of precious resources might send you off to locate more, for example.
As you’d expect from a Kickstarter campaign, there’s a wide range of different pledge levels, each with their own rewards. If you’ve got really serious hangups over a recently-ended relationship, the $5,000 pledge level will interest you:
“Ever wish you could do battle with your ex on your very own game? Well now is your chance! We will turn your ex-love into an epic monster and name it after them, giving you the chance to battle it out and show the world you have moved on.”
Spending $5,000 on a virtual representation of an ex-partner would suggest the exact opposite of ‘moving on’ to me, but there you go. Here’s the list of key features as described by Enlightened Studios:
- Community driven quest system: Rather than by characters with an exclamation mark on their head, quests will be given by NPCs who monitor the supply level of communities in the various settlements. The quests will be generated by the actual needs of a community. For example the lack of materials will generate the need to gather additional resources and automatically make available a specific quest to players who want to take it. Other kind of quests will require players to defeat monsters threatening the settlement, or to recover special objects belonging to the community, and so on and so forth.
- In game housing system: players will be able to build a house in an existing settlement (not an instanced area) and therefore to actively forge their community;
Bravery acknowledgments: players will have the chance to distinguish themselves by killing tons of enemies in battle and having their names carved into marble tags proudly shown into the main capitals. Furthermore, players will be able to become even more influential by acquiring the rank of quest-givers and affect the social aspect of the game; -
Realm invasion: The conquest of an enemy realm begins at the farthest point of the frontiers, as the players advance and consolidate control over territory, and ends laying siege to the castle of the enemy Great Lord, at the very core of the enemy realm.
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Challenging game experience: As former RPG players, we know that achieving the result too easily results in getting bored soon. For this reason, the level of difficulty of the game, without being too excessive, will still be calibrated to make the gameplay a challenging experience, that will never get too easy.
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Dedicated mobile application: it will enable players to perform specific tasks regardless their physical presence in front of their pc; crafting a weapon or armor, managing the family treasury or ordering the goods for sale will be possible every time everywhere.
Enlightened Studios, made up of freelance programmers Diego Puoti and Roberto Scarciello along with graphic designer Robin Keijzer, hope to raise $100,000 for the Dark Centuries project. Check out the Kickstarter campaign page here for more information.
