Thunder Lotus Games, the team behind the hand-drawn indie hit Jotun, has posted the Kickstarter for their next game, Lovecraft-inspired Metroidvania-esque title Sundered. Described as “ a replayable metroidvania game where you resist or embrace ancient eldritch powers… at the cost of your humanity,” Sundered has currently hit over 200% of its funding goal in under a day.
The Kickstarter reveals a bit more of Sundered’s plot by describing the plight of its protagonist, Eshe:
“Sundered tells the story of the mysterious Terror, a cataclysmic event that causes the undoing of society and plunges the world into madness. You play Eshe, a scavenger who becomes trapped in a strange sandstorm which drags her into a mysterious cavern. You have stumbled upon the source of power that led to the world’s destruction centuries ago.
The backstory tells the tale of how this strange power attracted the Valkyries, an armed group of scientific revolutionaries, and the Eschaton, mad cultists following the teachings of an obscure god, to this place. As she picks up the pieces, the player uncovers the conflict that sundered the world.”
All monster spawns are dynamic “based on a number of factors (time, difficulty level, current region)” with subsections of each map procedurally generated every time the player dies.
“This allows us to make design choices which are core to a Metroidvania experience, like backtracking and unlocking new abilities that unlock new sub-sections, while keeping the experience fresh,” the dev team explained.
The dynamic monster spawns and procedurally generated map subsections are calculated to foster a sense of uncertainty and growing uncertainty (perhaps madness?) in the player. “This adds a multiplicative layer of uncertainty, since the layer of randomness of the dungeon gets added over the random monster spawns. The final game will have three unique regions, each with a multitude of monsters, secrets and challenges,” says the Kickstarter page.
The Sundered Kickstarter is only asking for a fraction of its total budget, which it has raised from the success of Jotun as well as investment from the Canadian Media Fund, which also helped fund Jotun. The extra money will be used for “polish, feedback and using Kickstarter funds to make Sundered the best it can be.”
The Sundered Kickstarter is currently at $38,000 out of its $19,024 goal, with CA$ 15 and CA$ 40 tiers already sold out.
Will you be pitching in? You can find the Sundered Kickstarter page here and a more in-depth look at the game’s mechanics here. Feel free to talk Sundered in our comments section below.
