Sevnborne: Fortress of the Demon King (Indie Dev Grant)

[Gnome's Lair and the Kyttaro Games blog are presenting the Indie Dev Grant nominees that Bundle In A Box will be funding. Voting for the indie dev that will get the grant will begin on Monday June 4.]

Zed (@dedhedzed), whose real name isn't exactly Zed and who runs the Games by Zed site is apparently throwing himself "upon the mercy of the voting public to try and salvage a career from the wreck that is [his] daily life... Bloody hell, that sounds depressing, doesn’t it? Must lighten that up".

Happily he did lighten the mood by reminding us of his most famous game so far: the Intense Staring Simulator. He then added: "I’m relatively well-known for entering Ludum Dare, multiple times, and other such gamejam things. I do a lot of ‘messing about’, which goes a long way to explaining why I am where I am, career-wise. I’ve never had the time or resources to be able to sit down for an extended period and develop one title to full ‘commercial’ quality, which is something I’m optimistically hoping to rectify, with the Indie Dev Grant".

The game he is submitting is called Sevnborne: Fortress of the Demon King. It’s a narrative-driven, dungeon crawling twin-stick shooter that owes a lot stylistically to Gauntlet and Smash TV, and thematically to Terry Pratchett’s universally loved Discworld series. 

Here’s a breakdown of its key features:

·         Fast-paced twin-stick shooting action, with pickups and three levels of attack power for added depth and strategy.

·         A whopping 200 levels, with (technically) 200 more in a ‘remixed’ European Extreme difficulty mode, which offers a complete overhaul of enemy placement and challenge, rather than just bumping up the enemy’s ‘HP’ stat.

·          Hundreds of optional collectibles ranging from jewellery to weapons, and hand-written notes, each with a robust and comedic description.

·         A (hopefully) well-written, comedic plot with fully voice-acted dialogue in several inter-level cutscenes, telling the story of ‘Raika Sevnborne’, an orphan and wizard’s apprentice who must leave his relatively comfortable home life, where his biggest challenge is washing up dishes, to rescue his Master from the malicious Demon King Malleus, all with his transgender demon sprite friend Pixie in tow.

·         20 boss fights and 15 original enemies for added variety throughout the monstrously large number of levels.

The current state of the game is basically a debug room that shows off the main gameplay mechanics, allowing you to spawn enemies in a safe environment. Watch an early video of the project here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK9rMa55WiI&feature=youtu.be