Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant is another installment in the series. With a very successful Kickstarter, Grimorio of Games has been off to a great start. Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant is a third-person 3D Action RPG with dungeon crawling and city-building elements. As the name “necromancer” sounds you can even raise your enemies to fight for you. This is another Kickstarter that I am excited about and will be providing periodic updates as I get them just like with Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. So let’s get into it.
About The Game
As I mentioned above, Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant is a third-person 3D Action RPG with dungeon crawler sections. It will have a completely renewed battle and companion system from the first game. You will be able to travel the continent while restoring the sacred city of Euda to its former glory. All the while defeating the ominous threat that looms over the world. You will traverse the world to gather the powers of the Revenants. Revenants are forgotten heroes of old times The goal is to create a little army of dead and defeat the “Necromancer” once and for all.
The original Sword of the Necromancer was inspired by such games as Enter the Gungeon, Azure Dreams, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. So Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant will have a dungeon-crawling feel. And might feel a little Roguelike/Roguelite like the first 2 games it was inspired by. With this mix as their basis, the team wanted to leave the plain old dungeon. So we could explore the world around, for a more Adventure/Action feel, like that of Dark Cloud/Dark Chronicle. The game will still have dungeon crawling (with procedural dungeon levels, albeit mixing them with pre-designed challenges) but will include large free-roaming areas and cities you can explore, with NPCs to meet and missions and sidequests to do.
Game Features
Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant has a plethora of different features. The literal “Sword of the Necromancer” can resurrect defeated monsters and make them fight alongside you. There is a new and improved battle system from the first game that allows for improved combos and a new companion AI system. The system also allows you the ability to swap characters at any moment adding diversity to battle. Everyone gets to travel the world and help people from all over. Explore cities, towns, and fields on your journey. Then delve deep into procedural dungeons filled with enemies, loot, and different challenges.
You and your allies want to restore Euda to its former glory. This will require you to reconstruct a ravaged town and recruit people. Not only that, but you have to set up new functions and services like a forge, shops, and a cooking place. In Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant you will need to use the power of the Revenants. Gather the power of forgotten heroes of old times, discover their past, and unleash powerful summons. The game also allows you to play the whole game in local co-op! Or if you prefer playing solo, the companion character is controlled by AI.
Localization And Length
At the moment, the developers aim to support the same languages as they did in the first game. This means English, Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Basque, French, German, Italian, and Japanese. Voice acting for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant will be available in English and Japanese. Nine languages are a decent amount to start with, but who knows what can be added later? The game is around 25 hours for an average player just going through the game. If you are a completionist though which means getting all the monsters, all the Revenants, doing sidequests, etc. there is plenty more gameplay.
Lack Of Updates
I’ve been getting updates sporadically for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant since I backed it as a Kickstarter. The team wanted to give an update as to why and said this about some setbacks:
Hi everyone! Sorry for the radio silence lately, we’ve been very busy. The project keeps advancing at a steady rhythm despite some minor setbacks one of them (small optimization issues) is not allowing us to release a demo for backers during this month as we wanted to do, which is one of the reasons we’ve been very busy. We want you to have a good first impression, and PC versions are always tricky because of the very different configurations that are possible (it’s much easier to develop for a closed platform as consoles), and decided to not hurry and take our time. We are having an external engineer to help us with these issues, so everything will run fine. You will have to wait a bit longer, sorry! Leaving aside this “bad” news, let’s start with the good ones!
Gamescom Indie Booth
For everyone that might not know, Gamescom is Europe’s biggest videogame trade fair. Gamescom is held in Cologne, Germany in August. During the event, they have a booth called the “Indie Arena Booth” which is meant to reunite and showcase the best indie games from all over the world. The team has been selected to showcase Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant at the booth. The original Sword of the Necromancer was also selected in 2020, but because of the COVID-19 pandemic, that year’s event was online only. Not this time though the event is in person and Grimorio of Games is excited. That means that they will showcase the demo live on the show floor. The demo will also be available for backers to play at home. With this in mind, the team is also delaying that to kill two birds with one stone.
Indie Dev Day Barcelona!
Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant and the team will be at Indie Dev Day. The team has this quick note about it:
Indie Dev Day is another event that has been growing very fast in the latest years in our own city, Barcelona. As the name implies, the event is focused on Indie Games all from Spain. This year they are holding the biggest event yet with the help of Devolver Digital. We will also have a booth there, showcasing the demo in September!
New Game Mechanics
The first game only had one puzzle in it at the beginning. Well in Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant the team wanted to add a new focus for puzzle mechanics and they said this:
We’ve been working on puzzle mechanics for the game! The first Sword of the Necromancer had a very simple puzzle (the one and only) in the tutorial. This was to explain how to use the different weapons (a bow, specifically). You can see a reference to that puzzle in Revenant‘s Kickstarter trailer (the moment Kara activates a platform shooting an arrow). Many people told us that they’d love it if the game had more of these puzzles. So for this sequel we have doubled down and introduced puzzle mechanics, like switches, dragging boxes, pressure plates, etc. You can see an example here (and also, you can take a look at our playground level where we test things)
New Shaders And Effects
During the optimization process for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant the team has been making changes on some things. They have been focusing on some of the post-processing effects, shaders, and VFX of the game. While they were at it the team said they used this occasion to make things look a bit prettier!
Backer Designed Monsters and Revenants
The backers for the game had the chance to come up with some different designs for monsters and Revenants for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant. When it came to these designs the team had this to say:
We have received some designs for Monsters and Revenants from Backers in our Discord Server. As we didn’t set a deadline yet (because we weren’t sure what it would be.) It seems things have slowed down and the submissions stopped shortly after we opened the channels. We have now decided on a deadline of August 31st, so we have enough time to make the monsters and backers have enough time to present their ideas. After that, we will have a voting period of a week and we will announce the selected ones.
If you are a backer and have an idea for a monster or a Revenant, don’t forget to post in the respective channels before the deadline! For backers who have a monster, boss, or Revenant design in their pledge, we will contact you during June, keep an eye on your mail!
Whispike Survivors Announcement
Way back on April 1st, since I am providing this update a little late, the team played a little joke on people. Here is what the Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant team did and said:
On April 1st we posted an April Fools joke on Twitter about us ditching Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant and working on a Vampire Survivors clone. We have been working from time to time on this game, and it’s finally ready! We are now working on the console ports to release it on all platforms at once, but we have already made the Steam page public and you can wishlist the game! And on the occasion of this announcement, here you have the game’s trailer showing the gameplay!
Grimorio of Games Devs continued explaining by saying this:
Whispike Survivors blends two trendy game genres: horde survivor and farm simulator. Cultivate the strongest monster in this horde survivor farming game! Fight against waves of creatures to beef up your Whispike and use its seeds to create even stronger hybrids! We will release the game for PC and consoles very soon (for a very cheap price!), and hopefully its earnings help us (even if it’s just a bit) with Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant‘s development. This ended being a long update! We will try to update more often. Again, sorry for the wait. Thank you very much for your support, and kind regards!
Wrap-Up
Everyone can expect these updates whenever I receive them just like Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. I can say I’m super excited to see how the game turns out. Interesting features such as town building, an improved battle system, and puzzle features should add plenty of depth to the game. The crazy thing is those are only just a few of the game’s features and what Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant offers. You can expect the game to release on all platforms once it hits the streets!
