Hothead Games the developers of the Penny Arcade Adventures series for GNU/Linux, Mac and Windows are working on a new cRPG adventure game names DeathSpank.
While a GNU/Linux client is still unconfirmed I’m sure it will be done like with their previous games.
DeathSpank is a funny and comical combination between The Monkey Island and Diablo.
From 1up.com preview :
“When Gilbert takes the controls for our tour, he starts by talking about the game’s story, but it’s hard for me to focus for the first few moments. I’m distracted by the game’s art style, which is equal parts British children’s show and fantasy novel watercolor, presented from an angle that makes it look like you are perpetually on the side of a small hill. He says they devised this “forced rolling perspective” to make the world feel intimate, and it works in conjunction with art designed to look 2D in a 3D space, and limited left/right camera control to preserve the view. DeathSpank’s world is flat, but it looks like a giant pop-up map wrapped around a horizontal tree trunk, where you control an ant-sized DeathSpank as you crawl around it…using outhouses as a teleportation subway system.”
“But now I’m playing cut and paste with Gilbert’s demonstration, because in-between the adventure game detailed above, there’s an action-RPG where you spend time killing enemies like orcs and chickens, leveling-up, and collecting loot. The design goals for this half of the game seem centered around two concepts: making sure the combat requires strategy, and offering enough items so everyone who plays can customize their character as they choose.
The base mechanics work very simply — you have direct control over your character, with a mix of melee and ranged attacks, and can lock-on if you want to attack someone specific. And as you kill enemies and complete quests, you earn XP to level up, which increases your health and strength, and allows access to certain level-locked weapons and pieces of armor.
Combat relies pretty heavily on what the game calls “abilities,” which, should you be playing the game on a control pad, you can assign as you wish to any of the face buttons. These include the ability to put larger enemies to sleep temporarily while you fight their friends, or the ability to send the Flock of Chickens towards enemies as a low-damage, high-range attack (the latter you earn by killing “something like 100″ chickens while playing).
Kill other enemies, and they may drop more significant loot — helmets and pieces of body armor with varying stats for things like strength and fire protection, weapons that give you different types of attacks, etc. Gilbert says there will be over 100 pieces of armor, and over 100 different weapons you can track down if you spend enough time with the game, some of which you’ll get from enemies, and some of which you’ll find randomly places in barrels or treasure chests. When you visit Pirate Village, you’ll even be able to don a pirate hat, shoulder pads, chest plate, and twin parrots to get into character. The game also has a potion system, so either through purchase or gathering and combining items, you can boost things like your health, foot speed, anger, or the damage you cause to enemies.”
About The Game
Charming. Intelligent. Enigmatic. These are just a few words that nobody ever uses when describing DeathSpank. He doesn’t shoot first and ask questions later. He doesn’t even realize there are questions.
Described by top scientists as Monkey Island meets Diablo, DeathSpank’s gameplay is divided between uncovering the epic story via conversations, solving complex puzzles, equipping your character to maximize his dispensing of justice, not to mention his charming good looks, plus battling just about anything that moves. As DeathSpank vanquishes evil and heroes the downtrodden, he will collect loot, level up, collect loot, acquire new abilities and of course, collect loot.
DeathSpank features witty dialog, improbable scenarios, unexpected villains, and a robust collecting system for weapons, armor, items, and abilities. The action is easily accessible for short bursts of unsupervised fun, but the story is revealed over 15+ hours of gameplay. In addition, you can choose to search out rare items and tackle DeathSpank’s many side quests.
Features
- Massive seamless world with no load screens!
- Hundreds of pieces of Armor!
- Hundreds of weapons!
- A real story…not a crappy video game story!
- Mind numbing – yet completely fair – adventure game puzzles!
A mysterious thing called The Artifact! - A beautifully hand crafted Quest Log to keep track of Important and Unimportant things to do!
- Stuff that blows up!
- Stuff that doesn’t blow up!
- The most interesting and eccentric cast you’ve ever seen!
Screenshots
Looks fun and promising! 🙂 Thanks for the nice article.