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Game News Darkest Dungeon meets Dungeon Keeper in Iratus: Lord of the Dead, now on Kickstarter

Infinitron

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Tags: Iratus: Lord of the Dead; Unfrozen

Iratus: Lord of the Dead is an upcoming Darkest Dungeon-inspired tactical RPG, where you play as (you guessed it) Iratus, a sardonic necromancer seeking revenge against the living after a millennium of imprisonment. The developers are a Russian indie studio by the name of Unfrozen, who count the Codex's own Pope Amole II (known elsewhere as the Nerd Commando) among their ranks. Iratus was first revealed back in January, and two weeks ago Unfrozen launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise additional funds for it. Unfortunately it's not doing very well, which is kind of puzzling because the game looks pretty damn cool. Check out the pitch video, where Iratus himself gives a hammy but thorough introduction to its mechanics:



Iratus: Lord of the Dead is a turn-based RPG taking gameplay inspiration from the Darkest Dungeon and the sardonic tone of Dungeon Keeper. Playing as the fearsome Necromancer, Iratus players will use their undead minions to ignite a reign of terror that has been years in the making. Iratus is slated for release in late 2018 on Steam for PC, Mac, and Linux.

Features

Advanced strategy system: Study your enemies' strengths and weaknesses to achieve victory.

Raise your army of undead minions by collecting body parts from your defeated foes.

Use your knowledge of alchemy to give unique abilities to your minions.

Turn-based combat system with over 50 different talents for your minions.

Stylized 2D graphics with a dark fantasy flair.

Choose wisely: with irreversible consequences and classic roguelike features, including character permadeath.

Unfrozen are looking to raise $20,000 on Kickstarter to make Iratus better. You can get yourself a copy for just $15, with beta access at $20 and alpha at $45. There's also a free demo you can try. I'm not sure the campaign has a chance at this point, but it sounds like the game will be finished no matter what, so that's good.
 

Agame

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Looks good but very derivative of DD in style, not sure why people do this, are they afraid they are going to lose the DD audience if they dont have the exact same "cartoony but dark/gothic" graphics? I would love to see a game like this with a Disciples style of art/factions.

Anyway I will probably throw some shekels at this as I played a ton of DD.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

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Looks interesting. Cautiously excited.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

Guest
Tried out the demo for a few hours, definitely has some good potential here. If you're a fan of DD you'll really like what you see.

For one thing, you can cause stress attacks to enemies which seems to be the primary way you put negative status ailments on them. They may take more damage, lose accuracy, or run away from the battle altogether. If you get them low enough they'll suffer a heart attack and die outright. You don't seem to be able to 'choose' which status ailments you give them, don't know if it's planned to have more control over that or if they intend to keep it randomized.

The units you get in the demo are the Zombie, Skeleton, Bride of Iratus and Death Knight. Like in DD, your positioning on these units matters when it comes to what they can/can't use. The Zombie is a midrange type who can do weak AOE attacks, self-buff, or do some stress damage/damage over time. The Skeleton is fairly flexible since one of his back rank abilities lets him charge forward and knock an enemy back two positions, as well as assume a defensive stance which when attacked has him damage the enemy's stress levels and an attack which ignores armor and block buffs that is quite handy. The Bride is strictly long range and is meant to be your crit machine since her attacks do 4x more damage off critical strikes, she also has a very potent damage over time debuff that can get around more armored enemies. The Death Knight is a frontline fighter, very similar to the Leper from DD and has extremely chunky damage (though it doesn't penetrate defensives like the Skeleton) as well as means to debuff an enemy's damage, deal heavy stress by removing his helmet, and self-heal.

There's a "souls" system in the combat portions which promotes more strategic use of your abilities. You'll notice some of your units have abilities that use a soul up, in the demo you only get souls from either getting three critical strikes in a single fight or defeating all enemies. Souls govern the most powerful actions your unit can use. For example, the Death Knight can dispel and regain his health but it'll use up a soul and the Bride can unleash a nasty AOE attack on everyone but it also uses up a soul. I take it this mechanic is in the game to prevent any cheese tactics. You also have control over the Necromancer himself in a way (he doesn't actually appear on the battlefield), you have a mana bar and can use some spells to help out your minions such as removing debuffs, granting them haste, guaranteeing they critical their next hit, or cursing an enemy's blood so that if they do run away they become a vampire for you to use. I don't think the vampire can be obtained yet in the demo, though.

You gain access to a Magic & Alchemy globe (there's also a "Tactics" side of the globe but it's not yet implemented) that you spend any experience points on. Magic fuels your necromantic abilities such as assisting your minions in combat, Alchemy is general utility like scavenging better body parts and making stronger monsters, I'm guessing Tactics will influence your undead directly in battle.

The UI is a bit cluttered and missing some tooltips in the main hub, the battle screen is fairly decent though could use a bit bigger icons. The map screen tells you what's ahead so there's no scouting chances like in DD. I doubt it's going to stick since you could easily avoid all battles otherwise.

Graphics are pretty nice. They're grim but still cartoonish, all the units, both your undead and the enemies, have actual animations to their attacks which was a pleasant surprise. Another cool thing was the more you wound an enemy the bloodier and more haggard they become visually.

No spiders though. What the fuck Unfrozen.

Overall, I like it.
 
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Darth Roxor

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a millennia of imprisonment.

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Ismaul

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Sounds p. good.

I try not to back shit anymore, but I'll make an exception.
 

Pope Amole II

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MicoSelva

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Pope Amole II good luck with the Kickstarter. The game looks cool, but maybe is visually too similar to Darkest Dungeon?

Are Early Bird pledge options already gone? I am not seeing them on the project page, just the regular $15 and $45 tiers.
 

Pope Amole II

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Pope Amole II good luck with the Kickstarter. The game looks cool, but maybe is visually too similar to Darkest Dungeon?

Are Early Bird pledge options already gone? I am not seeing them on the project page, just the regular $15 and $45 tiers.

Well, I'm freelancing there - I was hired because I've made some good DD guides and they wanted a man who can do DD but better. The end result isn't that much DD, though, but that's mostly because of the mandatory necromancer setting which made the strict cloning to be impossible

And yeah, it's been more than two weeks since the start of KS - they're gone already.
 

DeepOcean

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Pope Amole II good luck with the Kickstarter. The game looks cool, but maybe is visually too similar to Darkest Dungeon?

Are Early Bird pledge options already gone? I am not seeing them on the project page, just the regular $15 and $45 tiers.

Well, I'm freelancing there - I was hired because I've made some good DD guides and they wanted a man who can do DD but better. The end result isn't that much DD, though, but that's mostly because of the mandatory necromancer setting which made the strict cloning to be impossible

And yeah, it's been more than two weeks since the start of KS - they're gone already.
Do they plan into releasing the game anyway if the kickstarter fails? It is a really cool concept but I'm sick of kickstarter shenanigans, if they release it, I will buy it.
 

Pope Amole II

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Do they plan into releasing the game anyway if the kickstarter fails? It is a really cool concept but I'm sick of kickstarter shenanigans, if they release it, I will buy it.

Yeah, kickstarter was more about adding extra polish than anything else. There's already an alpha version with a 4-hour long campaign that can be meaningfullly replayed, say, 4-5 times.
 

Generic-Giant-Spider

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Hah, putting the Bride on overwatch and then using the Skeleton to charge and force the enemy to be knocked back causes a combo which has the Bride auto-shoot the enemy as well. That's pretty cool synergy.

The sound effects are really nice too, the narration is phenomenal and adds to the game's personality much how Wayne June did for DD. I like how the stances have your units actually go into position instead of being an icon beneath them. It's really good presentation.

Hype levels rising.
 

Pentagon

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I'm very trepidatious about backing Kickstarter games these days but since this one is already on the path to completion and looks cool, I'll fork some dough over.
 

Rinslin Merwind

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Well mechanics look good, but I never was able force myself to play a evil character, especially necromancer. Their "muhaha I evul cuz I am dead" seems pointless, as dead world after undead legions kill last living being. If I would be raised with my full mind and cognitive abilities, I would be reading books, travel and gathering knowledge, sometimes I even would be helping to living against mindless monsters and abominations. Maybe I would even check what up with my family. I just don't see the point of conquering world if any "bonuses" of owning the world don't mean much for your lifeless body. But this just how I feel, good luck with game. I hope everything would be ok.
 

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