The King's Shroud

The King's Shroud is a story based Tactical Action Role-Playing Game designed to give more freedom without sacrificing the elements of strategy and control which players have come to expect from the TRPG genre. Featuring a limb-based damage system and our unique Targeting Arc, players engage in combat with complete control over the weapon's swing arcs, carefully evaluating situations and positioning strikes for the most damage. King's Shroud brings a new level of strategy to the already fantastic TRPG genre.

Gameplay

For King's Shroud much of my inspiration is coming from my favorite classic RPGs like Vagrant Story, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Tactics Ogre. I intend to bring back what made games like these so amazing all while applying more modernized mechanics and presentation. The game will stand as an action/adventure role-playing game focusing on strategy based combat, weapon customization, alchemy combination and puzzles. The game features NO stats or levels and asks players to focus more on weapon creation and strategic choices to succeed in combat.

World

The game world will be centralized around a location pertaining to the main story and all events will take place in and around this location. Locked doors, hidden passages, secret bosses and ancient forges all await those careful enough to look for them. There will be a nice blend of open exploration-based areas and classic room-by-room dungeons featuring traps and dangerous enemies.

Combat

The game features a strategic combat system through which players stop time before attacking. During this period they are given a targeting system known as the Targeting Arc: a visual representation of the weapons swing path and area of damage.  Players control and set the position the arc for the most effective strike, targeting limbs and weak points. Using this in combination with being able to disable limbs adds another level of strategy to the combat.

Alchemy grants players powerful offensive and beneficial aids. Players first craft a choice selection of potions to take with them on their next journey, being smart about what potions aid your play style is important. Players then have two types of potions, consumables, which aid the player, and offensive, which can be thrown at enemies for different effects, even area based splash damage.

Visuals

We will be hand-painting the entire world to capture a more classic and stylized look. Using point-based texture filtering will add a more gritty feel to the visual quality and a clear call back to when games didn't need filtering or normal maps to be considered good, visually or in terms of gameplay.

Platform

Our target system is the Ouya, so we'll be working within the limitations of the system's hardware and controller. However, we don't quite see these as limitations, but rather like guidelines. This game is very much designed for a controller and TV experience. There is a possibility of releasing a PC-based version or even Web version, but that is far beyond the initial scope of this project.

Features

• A Tactical Action RPG with no stats or levels
• Skill and strategy-based combat and gameplay
• Targeting Arc combat system: You decide how and where to strike
• Disable limbs and chain Impact Effects with strategic affects
• Weapon Customization: Meld and forge metals to upgrade weapons
• Alchemy Laboratory: Collect regents and craft potions to aid you in combat
• Experience a richly detailed, hand painted 3D world and characters
• Hardcore return to classic dungeon crawlers
• Rich story and cutscenes

It's a tall order, but many of the systems once implemented properly are easily expanded and developed upon.

Next Week

See you next Sunday for our first Pre-Alpha reveal.