The Necromancer's Tale News

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In The Necromancer's Tale, a major focus for the player is building up their army of the dead, to protect them when exploring, and eventually to march against their enemies. This involves researching and practicing black magic rituals as well as a variety of spells that can be cast during combat.

Combat itself is turn-based, and involves a potent mix of undead minions and 18th-century "conventional" weapons.

The game uses a (skippable) Interactive Fiction style prologue to set your backstory and skills, and to let you explore the game's lore and history before beginning the main game-play. It's a 10,000-word, fully-voice acted narration.

Watch some footage here, or try it in the demo!

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The game has over 150 unique NPCs, each with their own portrait art and side quests. Partial voice acting is included. In this clip, meet the shifty and suspicious Haelan the herbalist.

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The Marns city map (1733), in development from its concept in late 2019 - now nearing completion.
Most of the work in the past 18 months has been on wilderness encounter/narrative areas as well as underground tunnels, caves and crypts (and a couple of more supernatural places you'll have to wait to see).

The Necromancer’s Tale demo has had over 1500 playtesters over the past 12 months, providing lots of analytics and around 150 in-depth responses via questionnaire. We have learned what players most love about the game (the detailed world, well developed characters, and overall interactivity)- which directly led to several features being added during 2023 (e.g. wearable clothes, voice acting, and further responsiveness in the world such as a playable piano and an interactable cat).

That’s right. It’s a gif of a cat. It’s about to hiss at you and run off.

We have also learned that players hope that the final game will offer a range of summonable creatures and various other necromantic battle-magic spells (in addition to the ritual magic will has always formed the core of the game). The one area that players felt a bit bland was combat.

Some powerful creatures you can enslave, and then summon to help you in battle.

The latest demo shows off our improved combat system, adding Mana, Battle Magic Spells, and Activity points carry-over. We have also made a more friendly in-game tips system during combat and generally improved the combat UX.



Mana: this is the game’s 10th skill, adding arcane ability to the physical, social, and mental emphasis of the existing skills. Mana will be built up in various ways as you progress through the game, either directly or through the wielding of magical artefacts. Mana has become a core skill which is now needed in order to activate undead minions in battle, as well as to cast other spells.

Battle-magic spells: we have 10 battle spells planned in total, but for now the demo offers 3. Each spell costs Mana, Action Points, and (sometimes) drains your Energy.

• “Activate Minion” is required in order to move a minion during the current combat round. Adding this requirement makes undead minions fundamentally different to your human allies in combat, adding a tactical dimension to their positioning and activation.
  
• “Death Focus” allows you to commune with the Realm of the Dead and gain a temporary Mana boost. This is a useful spell when you’re in a tight spot, perhaps during a combat round in which the randomised winds of magic are blowing only weakly.
  
• “Chilling Mist” is the first of two planned area-effect spells. This one invokes a magical mist which drains the action points of all mortal creatures in the affected area. It adds more tactical nuance to your control of the battle-field’s space.
  

From next Thursday (Dec 7th) the game is going into its second round of playtesting on the excellent [G.Round platform]. If you’re interested in being involved, for The Necromancer’s Tale or other games, please check them out!