Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant Dec ’23 Update

As we close out 2023 we get one last Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant update. This update provides a few different things. We get a word from the team and insight into new dungeon mechanics. In addition, we get to see the level selection screen and a first look at Revenant special attacks. So let’s get into December’s update!

The team wanted to start the update by talking to the fans and community. They apologized for being busy around the holidays and for the late update. They said this to the Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant community:

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Sorry for the late update everyone! We’ve been very busy sorting out several things, so we thought that at this rate it’d be better to do a 2×1 and delay the update until the holidays so we can also use it to send you our best wishes! The refactoring is 90% done, and by doing that we have solved almost all of the problems we encountered while showcasing the game at Gamescom and other places. Also, it seems we have optimized the game a bit “by accident” while making things in this new way, so that’s nice.

As we told you in the last update, we’ve been working on the game’s new HUD lately. We also added more info for both playable characters and monsters, so you can see for example if a monster (be it one of your summons or an enemy) has a stat buff or an ailment. If you have equipped an Accessory with the special attribute “Sensor” you can see extra info like the regular enemies’ health bar! Today we will explain a bit about how the dungeons will work in this game.

New Dungeon Mechanics

The team this time wanted to talk about the new dungeon mechanics and how they are different than the first game. So they went into a little detail and explained this about the Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant dungeons. This is what they had to say:

The first Sword of the Necromancer was very simple in this regard: you had a dungeon level where you had to find a key; once you got it, you could open the boss room door, and if you defeated the boss you advanced to the next dungeon level. Every level was bigger than the previous one and (potentially) had new traps. Do this a few times, and done, you’re before the Final Boss. The problem is that this didn’t allow us to put puzzles or more interesting levels, because players should be able to beat the levels no matter what they had on them. 

If we put a puzzle where, for example, you needed a bow to hit some switches and the player didn’t have a bow on them, what do we do? Gift a bow so they can complete the puzzle? Make it so they can skip the puzzle in case they don’t have a bow? That would defeat the purpose of the puzzle, so we ended up removing these situations.

We wanted to go back to that idea we couldn’t give form to, and we thought of different solutions. As you know, Dark Chronicle is one of the inspirations for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant, so we decided to take some clues from it. And the most important change is the level selection screen.

Level Selection Screen

Another thing that differs from the first game is the level selection screen. The team wanted to talk about that and how it’s used. They said this about the Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant level selection screen:

While dungeon levels will be mostly procedural (some will be handcrafted.) We decided to make them shorter but put more of them. Each level will have its own pool of monsters, items, and everything else, so even if they will have different layouts, the experience will be similar between playthroughs.

This allows us to introduce “missions” for each level, like clearing it in less than X minutes, or not using certain weapons. By completing these missions you will earn special rewards, but you won’t be obliged to do them. Think of them like “pseudo-achievements”, like getting the 3 special coins and reaching the top of the flag in a Super Mario game.

As you can see, we are showing the difficulty level for each dungeon floor. This means that sometimes, you will reach a branching path and there will be an easy way (maybe longer and/or with lesser rewards) and a difficult one (with more rewards and potentially shorter to reach the end of the dungeon). Or maybe one of the branches requires you to have a specific item or monster to continue!

More Level Selection Details

The team continued in detail. They said this about the Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant’s level selection and dungeons chains:

With this, we solved the problem we had to introduce puzzles and blocks to bypass.

By beating different levels in succession you will build up your Dungeon Chain. Which will get more EXP from battles and better items from chests. This brings us to another option. You can exit the dungeon at any point from this Level Selection Screen. So even if you need some healing or an item you don’t have, you can just continue later after going to the cities to prepare or save your game. Exiting the dungeon will make you lose your current Dungeon Chain, though, so think about it!

Now, boss levels are just a level like the others, so you won’t be forced to beat the boss for a chance to leave the dungeon, like in the original game. Lastly, some levels will have Special Conditions that are imposed on you when you enter it. For example, one level might forbid you from using summons. Then another will not let you heal yourself. With this, we can give each dungeon floor its own flavor, and come up with engaging challenges.

We hope these changes help to make the Dungeon Crawling part of the game more interesting! To wrap up this update, as it will probably be our last this year, we would like to show you one thing we’ve been cooking for a while.

Revenant Special Attacks

Grimorio of Games also wanted to talk a bit more about Revenant special attacks. They are very important to the game if you can’t tell by the title. This is what the team said about the Revenant special attacks in Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant:

During our playtests (going back to when we were having the Kickstarter campaign), several people commented that, while Revenants were useful and more powerful than the regular summons, they lacked some “oomph” that justified to use them instead of 3 monsters that can cover a bigger area even if they are way weaker.  The way Revenants were envisioned was more for boss battles, where they could lend you a hand if you were having some difficulties, at the cost of not being able to use regular summons for a while. The Revenants themselves are also time-limited. So you wouldn’t be able to cheese your way against a boss by not fighting and letting Revenants do everything.

So to make them more special, we took advantage of said time limit. If you summon a Revenant for long enough without getting it killed, when its time is up, you will see a prompt to unleash a final attack before automatically recalling it. As we are in the Holiday Season, we will show you the attack of the Revenant that most resembles Santa Claus (?): Castel, the Amber King.

Castel’s Finishing Move is Roar of the Lion. With it, you can hit up to 5 enemies with a devastating Fire Element attack. You can also get a glimpse of the Revenant’s Theme by Dale North here! These attacks can come in handy, but you need to stay alert to trigger them! If you lose your opportunity, the Revenant will just disappear. Then you won’t be able to summon it again for a while!

We hope you like these new finishers and use them when you get to play the game! We are having a lot of fun making the animations, giving them a nice “Tales of…” Mystic Artes vibe. That’s all for today’s update. As you can see we were saving up some things to have a meatier one as our year’s last!

Wrap Up

I know we are getting this update later than usual. But I still appreciate Grimorio of Games putting in the effort to get us new information. We all know things get hectic around the holidays and they are still hard at work. I can’t wait to see how Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant turns out when it releases. Stay tuned as I continue to bring you all the future updates!