Pixelscopic’s Kickstarter for their new game Delver’s Drop was successfully funded recently reaching a grand total of $150,745 out of their $70,000 funding goal.  While this was enough loot to see the game released on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, and Ouya, it was not enough to see the game ported over to a major console.  Not all hope is lost for this new 2D Action RPG!  Pixelscopic has actually extended the funding campaign via the Delver’s Drop website!  Anyone who is interested can contribute to the development of Delver’s Drop using paypal!  There are plenty of stretch goals to go and the last one is $240,000, which is a lot, but that is where we will see the game appear on a major console!  More screens, information, and even a trailer for Delver’s Drop can be found below.

 

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Your characters are a set of scoundrels, the remnants of old adventuring guilds. These miscreants make their livings in less than legitimate trades in the fortress city of Spirewatch. This trade town fosters shady dealings, having fallen into disrepair under the shadow of the towering castle its stone gates once led to – The Wandering Halls, secluded abode of the reclusive Gilt King. This castle hold wraps around and is carved into a massive single mountain called the Cornus Spire, a cloud-penetrating stone pinnacle thrust skyward out of vast Murk swamps below it. Only a few miles away from Spirewatch, the castle walls can be seen to shift mysteriously, its rooms and towers, walls and parapets folding and rearranging themselves, propelled by mechanisms deep within the Spire.


 

Living below this strange and impenetrable towering fortress, the ne’er-do-wells of Spirewatch ply their shady trades cautiously. For in spite of the chances for fortune, Spirewatch is frequently raided by the royal family’s gangs of guards — those adventurers unlucky enough to be (rightly or wrongly) apprehended for misdeeds are dragged off to be held within the Wandering Halls, never to be heard from again.

The prisoners are stuffed into a ricketty cages and hoisted on immense chains to the highest levels of the towering castle structure. Shackled in this freezing stratospheric prison known as The Chill, the adventurers wait in cells with others of their guild class.


THE DELVERS


 

For unknown reasons, the jailers will periodically release one prisoner, and order them down the Drop — an immense hole that tunnels deep into the mountain’s core — with the promise of loot, fortune, and freedom. At every level though the Drop is sealed, closing off ancient and abandoned levels of the castle’s shifting structure, and it can only be opened through exploration, puzzle solving, and battle.

Each Delver tries to go as far down as they can, descending toward ground level, hoping for escape from the dungeons surrounding the Drop. They also begin to find that some people are still living inside the castle structure: lost souls sealed off from the outside world, each with a story to tell. But few things are truly known about these dungeons. Does this hole lead to freedom, or just deeper under the earth? For the adventurous Delvers, either option beats rotting in a frigid jail cell. And every time a Delver dies in their escape attempt, the jailers release another.

 

THE DANGERS

 


What each Delver doesn’t know is that every predecessor who failed to find freedom returns as a skeletal version of their former selves — the Undelver wight. They bear the weapons and some previously equipped items and are very agile, making them incredibly dangerous. But defeat an Undelver, and you may just pry your previous weapons from their now fully dead skeletal hands!

Since no Delvers survive for long, it’s never been discovered how or why the Undelvers return to life. But it seems these wights may be connected to the magically sealed tombs that enclose the living spirits of Princes and Princesses — the Gilt King’s royal children. Hidden away in the recesses of the castle, a Delver will occasionally stumble upon these sepulchral doors. But if they find their way in, they may have to grant the royal child’s request… or escape like the scoundrels they are.

 

 

But the dungeon seems to have a mind of its own, twisting and changing for every new adventurer. And at the end of each zone, the ancient core of the dungeon blocks the Delvers’ passage with a Chamber Guardian. Manifestations of the living dungeon core, they are room-sized beings animated by magic and ancient mechanisms. These bosses cannot truly be defeated, only temporarily deactivated to allow passage… so even if one Delver succeeds, another may have to brave the Guardian Chamber once more.

And there is only one way to improve one’s chances at surviving the Drop – to find and consume what the jailers call a Stranger’s Heart. A severed heart floating above a pristine pillar, these items are found in rooms brimming with traps designed to eradicate those who attempt to penetrate them. The allure is that a Stranger’s Heart increases a Delver’s life, but at severe risk… the curses that weave through the Drop will make the Delvers pay tenfold for their theft. And even after extending one’s life, the question remains — who is the Stranger?

 

 

And what is the purpose behind the Drop?

GAME MECHANICS

 

 

 

GAMEPLAY & CHARACTERS

  • Starting the Game — Start in a dungeon cell, choose one character to free out of several classes
  • Unique Classes — Each class has a specific HP level, weapon type, special class ability, perk tree, and physics-based movement properties
  • Class Leveling — Leveling is permanent for each class — experience points and perks are retained after a character dies.
  • Semi-Permadeath — The player loses all items and the dungeon re-randomized upon death. It’s a twist on the roguelike formula that we’re calling “Semi-Permadeath”!
  • Undelvers — when the player dies, their corpse is reanimated, becoming a dangerous wight that hunts them when they replay the level! This skeleton will carry whatever equipment the character had upon death, making them even more dangerous.

ACTIONS & ITEMS

  • Player Actions — The player can attack with their primary weapon or use one 5 expendable inventory items such as bombs, potions, crossbows, or spell books. They can also activate the class special ability if the meter has been charged, with each class having a unique charge mechanic.
  • Shield Bashing — All classes can carry shields that protect their life meter. When the player receives damage a shield is lost, but this can be used to knock back enemies in a “Shield Bash,” with some shields having unique damage properties.
  • Random Drops & Items — All equipment, class weapons, and items are randomly dropped, and randomly generated from pre-designed templates, with variable attributes.
  • Mysterious Item Usage — Sometimes the player may not know what an item does until they use it! Items may also have passive effects while in the inventory, creating unique permutations of effects.

DUNGEONS & PROGRESS

  • Dungeon Randomization — Dungeons will be created from sets of randomly selected (and dynamically modified) rooms made from hand-crafted templates. We call it “Randungeonization!”
  • Puzzles — Like many classic Action RPGs, Delver’s Drop will feature puzzles, with the unique twist that many will be physics-based.
  • Dungeon Navigation — Traversing a level will become a puzzle in itself, when the player can use magic or the shifting mechanisms of the Drop to rearrange the dungeon layout.
  • The Drop — At each level, the player will have to solve puzzles to unseal the Drop, allowing them to jump down to the next level. But die too many times, and the drop will re-seal, causing progress to backslide and forcing the player to retry the previous level.
  • Bosses — We will have some mini-bosses that appear in intermediate levels, and a major boss at the end of each zone. These final bosses, the Chamber Guardians, are room-filling creations that are living parts of the dungeon. They cannot be destroyed, but must be battled into deactivation in order to progress to the next zone.

MODES

BASE MODES:

  • Campaign (Story Mode) — An epic dive into the dungeons of the Drop, uncovering its secrets and revealing the true story behind their characters’ imprisonment.
  • Endless Drop Mode (Survival / Fast Play) — You’ll complete one random self-contained room after another, while the game tracks how far you go. This mode has 100% PERMADEATH! We will be showing this Mode at PAX East in March, 2013!
  • Horde Mode — A set of several combat arenas, which spawn waves of enemies with increasing frequency and difficulty, while items and power-ups occasionally drop in. This mode will track your highest achieved wave as well as kill counts.