“A tactical RPG where all players’ choices come together to drive a living story, created by a AAA veteran and a chart-topping author. Funded in 9 days.”
Originating on Kickstarter in April 2016 and heavily inspired by tactical RPGs such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem; City of the Shroud is a tactical RPG featuring an explosive combo-based battle system and a narrative that builds itself around player choice. Having achieved a crowd-fund of $16,239 with the help of 302 backers, developer Abyssal Arts have been hard at work building a breathtaking world that not only feels alive, but is directly influenced by the choices made by the player across the game’s 4 episodes. The narrative will take place within the city of Iskendun, set in the backdrop of a looming civil war between five parties which will soon reach a breaking point. Players will be free to join one of the game’s five factions, which each faction gaining more influence the more members they have completing quests for them. Developer Abyssal Arts will develop each subsequent chapter based on the outcome of the factions at the end of each episode; political shifts (whether large or small) will be represented throughout the entire narrative, making the game as much a social experiment as it is a video game. Should any faction become too antagonistic or fail to secure a certain number of allies, they may be dissolved completely driving the story into unexplored waters for the players and writers alike.
Abyssal Arts announced today in a press release that episode 1 would be coming to PC and Mac in the summer of 2018, with the console ports for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (containing all 4 chapters for the game) launching the following year in 2019. City of the Shroud will be available primarily in English at the price of $19.99 / €19.99 which will include the first episode with the subsequent 3 following as free updates every other month allowing the developer to craft the story based on the community’s decisions in the previous episodes. A pre-alpha demo can be downloaded for Microsoft Windows and OS X by following the link here.
