Apocryph - an old-school inspired dark fantasy shooter

[LESS T_T]

Another one of old-school inspired shooters...

...but levels are procedurally generated.

Apocryph is a FPS set in a brutal dark fantasy world. It takes it's roots in old-school fantasy shooters, adding rogue-lite elements, such as procedural levels, items and character perks, as well as permanent death.

The world of Apocryph is a grim, violent place, harboring magic, dark rituals and dangers around every corner. Wherever you go you'll be facing unrelenting monsters, traps and locked passages, and can only depend on yourself and your equipment to survive the trials.

- Every level in Apocryph is procedurally generated and populated with dangers, pickups, locks, keys and mechanisms to ensure you never encounter the same set of difficulties twice.

- Your character can wield up to 9 different weapons with alternative fire modes, including melee armaments, spells, staffs and artifacts.

- Items can help you in tough situations, health potions will aid your health, mana vials can restore your mana, combat items can do some damage to an opponent.

- There are also more rare and powerful relics to be found, such as the dreaded Obliterator Mask, which encases you in a suit of nigh-impenetrable armor, allows you to bash enemies with your plain fists and send powerful shockwaves across the walls and floor, or the Essence of the Reaper, which turns you into an avatar of Death itself, boosting your speed, granting you wings to perform double jumps and a wicked scythe which cleaves and destroys any opponent.

- Some weapons and items can be used to stun enemies, freeze them solid, deal area of effect damage or even provide defensive measures.

- The game uses a sophisticated gore system. A powerful finishing blow can rip a part of the enemy right out of him, while critically over damaging an opponent literally blows them to pieces, with limbs flying across the room and sticking to the walls.

You control the Arbiter, once a person of a high rank in Xilai religious hierarchy. The Xilai were known for many things, such as their artistry, magical arts and unity. But all the worlds feared them for a different reason - the Xilai worshiped Death itself. For centuries they raided countless worlds, reaping souls in the name of their dreaded Mistress.

Events preceding the game have led to your exile, and now, after many years you return back, only to find fortresses and lands overrun with demonic spawns and vile beasts. Why were you exiled? What could cause this desolation? It's time to find some answers... and reap some demon spawn in the name of Pale Mistress.

Apocryph is currently in early development. There's still a lot of items, biomes and rooms to add to the game, as well as game modes, plot advances and perks. Follow us on social media.

 

[Mynon]

Hexen is back.

 

[Siveon]

Hexen is back.

adding rogue-lite elements, such as procedural levels, items and character perks, as well as permanent death.

It's not, sadly.

 

[Ash]

WTF why are all these "old school" shooters featuring procedural level design? Don't these retards know it was those classic hand-crafted levels that served as a big chunk of the incline? Don't they know procedural level design is awful in games that should have a decent level of exploration, scripting and general tightness?

 

[lightbane]

Hey, at this one at least looks partially good, without Minecraft graphics and even actual gore! They're (re)discovering technology from... The early 90s. At this rate we might geet an actually good indie FPS in 3-5 years.

 

[Mynon]

Intentionally or not, graphics evoke idtech4 engine. There was a Hexen mod for Doom 3 that had similar visuals.

 

[Lyric Suite]

What's your point? The game still isn't like Hexen.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hey, at this one at least looks partially good

The environments and weapons look decent enough, but the enemies are pretty shit looking.

 

[Mynon]

What's your point? The game still isn't like Hexen.

Then this is nothing like Hexen either...

 

[Haba]

Is there a lore reason why he/she/it is fighting giant butt plugs?

 

[JarlFrank]

"Procedually generated levels" - how to instantly kill my interest in an FPS with three words.

 

[Lyric Suite]

What's your point? The game still isn't like Hexen.

Then this is nothing like Hexen either...

Are the levels randomly generated in that too?

Have you actually played Hexen?

 

[skacky]

Mynon seems to think that if one thing resembles another thing, even superficially, then they're exactly the same.
Pixels, brown, relatively fast-paced and is an FPS? Yep, it's Quake. Medieval, melee and magic, big HUD and is an FPS? Yep, it's Hexen. Totally is the same thing. I never liked Hexen's levels but at least they weren't procedurally generated.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I never liked Hexen's levels

Why?

Taken individually they weren't all that remarkable but in the context of the whole hub they somehow felt more memorable than what they really were. It also helped that they went out of their way to make each area feel pretty unique stylistically. Some of them felt a bit cramped but i think that had more to do with the fact they had to design them with melee gameplay in mind. Every area felt like it was designed to just shove monsters in your face, which didn't leave a lot of room for circle strafing or any of that stuff. Made sense if you played warrior. Sucked for the other classes.

 

[skacky]

This is exactly why. I always found them much too cramped and not that interesting. I love the art style and the textures but I'll take any Heretic level over any Hexen level any day. I also found the puzzle solving to be very tedious; not a level design fault (mostly poor communication), but I found the occasional backtracking pretty damn annoying after a while. Even if Hexen 2's levels follow more or less the same philosophy which was also shared with Quake 2, they're bigger than in the previous game so I tend to like Hexen 2 more.

 

[Zenith]

Can we stop calling these things "old school", at least on the codex? This is another one in line with Ziggurat, Tower of Guns etc, it's much closer to Warframe than to any classic FPS.

Why?

Probably all the "what the hell did this button just do" backtracking.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Can we stop calling these things "old school", at least on the codex? This is another one in line with Ziggurat, Tower of Guns etc, it's much closer to Warframe than to any classic FPS.

Well, the makers themselves are the ones who want to call this shit old school, at least on a lot of those games. I would probably be better disposed to them if they didn't do that.

Probably all the "what the hell did this button just do" backtracking.

Never had an issue with that. Probably why i enjoyed the game so much. That, and the fact i was really young when i played it. Everything was magical back then.

 

[Lyric Suite]

I love the art style and the textures but I'll take any Heretic level over any Hexen level any day.

Heretic had great level design but the gunplay was kinda shit. Very good compared to modern standards but it really didn't compete with Doom in that department. Might be why Raven felt the need to go to a different direction with Hexen. Or maybe they weren't happy to just clone id soft.

 

[LESS T_T]

Heh, they dropped procedural levels in favor of "static" (handcrafted, I assume) levels: http://steamcommunity.com/games/596240/announcements/detail/1498994661288487932

Hello everyone! We're making this post for a couple of important reasons:
First - The development is still actively going, and we're slowly moving towards having a more or less clear release date (should be around 2018 Q1)
Second - There are tons of new stuff we'd like to show off!
Third - We'll be soon launching an Alpha version, stay tuned for more info!

Overall:

The game won't feature permadeath (at least not in the campaign mode, or perhaps only on the last difficulty). There'll likely not be an experience or character level-based progression system - but exploring, solving some puzzles, finding secret locks or keys and collecting/using items are definitely in.

Levels are now fully static ,with difficulty governing amount and types of monsters available, as well as their speed and inflicted damage - we're still considering adding random-generated levels as a special game mode, but the full-static campaign is a priority. Some of the levels will act like "Hubs", and connect a series of sublevels into a single super-level. The alpha will include 3 levels to complete, each with a few secrets and almost half of the game's arsenal available.

Here's one of the first levels as seen from outside the bounds.

Spoiler

Monsters:

Many new monsters were added, with varying abilities and attributes - flying, shooting ricocheting projectiles, homing projectiles, firing a wide spray of projectiles, creating shockwaves, summoning minions, teleporting and some more.

Weapons:

Every weapon will have an alternative firing mode, which is only unlocked by collecting an upgraded version of it - for example, Cobalt Staff is the 2nd weapon; without it, collecting either Cobalt Staff or Azure Rage (upgraded 2nd weapon) will yield the basic 2nd weapon. But if you already possess the basic 2nd weapon, collecting Cobalt Staff will yield just blue mana, while collecting Azure Rage will unlock the alternative firing mode for the 2nd weapon.

Special effects from weapons include freezing enemies, which stuns them, setting them on fire, piercing through enemies, pushing them away or chain-jumping between several different enemies.

Also - kick the living crap out of them!

Gibbing:

The gibbing system was upgraded a bit further.

Items:

Destroy enemies with special power-modes activated by consumable items!

Oldschool modes:

The game will feature special game/graphics modes - Gameplay pixelization, Full pixelization and Fractured Animations. First two are designed to imitate low-resolution and/or low color depth of gameplay and gameplay+UI, respectively. The third one imitates old, low-framerate "sprite" animations for enemies and weapons. When combined, they can have a serious impact on game's overall feeling, although they might be raising the overall gameplay difficulty a bit.

Subscribe to our steam page to stay tuned for updates!

PS:
Hell yeah, desrtuctible stained glass!

And pre-alpha demo is available for free: http://www.bigzur.com

Eh, have to sign up a mailing list, too much hassle.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

What's your point? The game still isn't like Hexen.

Then this is nothing like Hexen either...

Is this thing ever going to get finished?

 

[Siveon]

Well I beat the alpha, and boy is it rough.

The movement is godawful, there's some kind of input delay where your character doesn't completely stop when you let go of the movement keys. Of course when I plugged in my controller, to no surprise, the movement feels fine (okay not fine but better) but none of the other controls were programmed in. The game doesn't look or run very nice, but taking some of the settings off like bloom and motion blur make it arguably better. Runs a lot better too. Jumping felt fine though, probably best to just bunnyhop everywhere.

The guns feel very weak, the only two I tried in the demo was this mix of the heretic wand & crossbow acting as some kind of shotgun. There's no starter pistol, it's just this wonky melee combat thing (which includes this hilarious Might Foot-like uppercut which clips through everything, weapons, your own fists, etc). The second was this machine gun hand gauntlet that ate ammo, but worked better than the staff. There's three different ammo pools instead of different ammo for each weapon. The enemies didn't really react when they got hit, but when they die they just fall to pieces/explode into gore. Which of course activates the slo-mo, which is obnoxious.

The level design is very cramped. You try to find yourself maneuvering around each encounter but the walls are just a bit too short, and on more than one occasion I just bump into enemies or the decals trying to move. The hit detection is probably worse than the original heretic, since even enemies from seemingly a safe distance can melee you.

The music is pretty bad. Especially this weird dubstep/electronic thing when you're fighting and some silly cheesy medieval music when you're not. Doesn't really fit the tone/graphics. I hope it's just placeholder. The guitar riffs are fine, but they're nothing special.

I'm glad they chose a more "static" level approach, but they need to polish this game up big time.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Haba]

This "dynamic" music is probably the most retarded thing I've seen all year.

 

[Beowulf]

This "dynamic" music is probably the most retarded thing I've seen heard all year.

?

 

[Ash]

It's trying to make EPIC what isn't epic, looks to be highly repetitive and grating, and it doesn't even sound particularly good. Imagine if in Doom every time you came across Zombie Gunners the same electronic Guitar riffs blared (presumably based on current map). Games like Deus Ex and Ultima Underworld get away with it (just about) because combat is a little less frequent between all the exploration and story in those games, and because it sounds good (most of the time).
There is a bit of a contrast between the ambient music and the guitars too, though I don't place too much importance in that, I don't think it matters at all really since the styles are overall fitting enough. Was just an observation.

Anyhow, I would definitely tone down the frequency of dynamism there. Save it for rare truly epic battles, not every other grunt. But maybe it's just me.