Unholy Hunters; The Tactical RPG Project

[Before I start this post off, if this thread belongs in a different category, feel free to move it. I didn't quite think it fit in the Video Games category since it doesn't exist yet, but that's up to all of you. I'm also going to constantly be editing, so stay tuned and feel free to give me some insight feedback on it! Thanks in advance!]

So, for those of you aware and unaware, I had recently kick-started a HUGE long term scale project for an RPG, that for now I'm referring to as the Unholy Hunters. As someone with a decent amount of drawing and spriting knowledge, experience with writing stories, tinkering with the mechanics of existing RPGs and who is willing to put a fair amount of time into it each day, I'm going one step further and have ultimately decided to go on board and create one myself!

So, without further ado, let's kick off this thread!

[Update #1: Storyline and Setting]

-Prologue-

"The world had been a cold and powerless for a long time. Many of its inhabitants died off, lacking the knowledge of how to live in a seemingly empty place. At the moment at which many creatures thought they could survive, divine forces would bring tragedy, and as a result, these inhabitants would be lost forever. This vicious cycle lasted for millions of years; until the butchery was forcefully stopped. A rebelling divine force, referred to as demons, came to the land, and provided its inhabitants with a powerful resource; magic.

Magic ensured the survival of the land’s inhabitants. With magic, they could create tools, and with tools, they could obtain food and create shelter. Regardless what chaos divine forces summoned upon the land, magic still protected the inhabitants. This had upset the divine entities, and as a result, they purged and banished as many of the rebelling demons living among them to a realm far away, not accessible through normal means. As a result, magic became scarce, and those who wished to survive required as much of it as possible.

Tools became weapons, and the inhabitants of the land begun to slaughter one another, absorbing the remnant magic essence from those who were weak. This had appeased the sadistic divine entities. But as things seemed to go their way, they were out of luck. A small number of demons escaped their origin place before they were banished, and lived on the surface among the inhabitants in secrecy. These demons were now known as Appraisers.

The Appraisers were highly surprised by the raw strength and power the inhabitants had using the magic they were given, and were even fearful of it. These original entities were too powerful, driven insane by the great power they possessed. They wanted the inhabitants to survive, but not in a hectic manner like this. If power crazed inhabitants with too much of it roamed the land, civilization would ultimately destroy itself, and the former cycle would continue once again.

So the Appraisers had a plan. They personally confronted those who lacked power, and offered them a deal. The Appraisers could convert the souls of those who were willing to serve them when they needed them to ones that could freely use and manipulate magic energy. This way, the inhabitants were regulated, and their abilities could be forcefully limited if they were to act out against the will of their rightful Appraiser.

Civilization began to stabilize, but the original entities who contained vasts amount of magical energy still roamed rampant across the land. They needed to be stopped. So, the Appraisers rallied their self-created warriors together in guilds, who set off to terminate these entities. And to the divine entities surprise, the Appraiser’s new method was nearly successful. Once the power crazed inhabitants were slain, their magical essence needed to be contained, or else one of the vanquishers would become corrupted, and the inhabitants would have to turn on each other.

So the Appraisers sealed the raw magical essence from these powerful entities into legendary swords, and scattered them across the land, very far apart from one another, far beyond reach of anything that wasn’t a demon. If all the swords were brought together, a power like that of which nothing has ever been seen before could be awoken. Possibly even catastrophic.

Many, many years later, a true civilization was officially settled in. Regions with villages, towns and kingdoms were established, and many different species of inhabitants coexisted with one another. They lived to greatly appreciate the magic given to many of them, provided by the Appraisers. Some of these inhabitants still fought one another, but it was at a manageable magnitude. However, also during this time, the first major rift that separated the demons from the land was created, in which they had begun to flood it.

Some were just like the inhabitants; they just wanted to coexist and survive with the others. But some grew corrupt, angered by their isolation in a faraway realm, and blamed it on the inhabitants. And unfortunately, the corrupted demons outweighed the passive ones, and attacked everyone and everything in sight. The Appraisers had to take serious action once again, and fast. To combat the aggressive demons, several of the Appraisers had organized guilds once again, only this time, dedicated to pacifying and subduing the attackers. And these individuals who took on this role, became known as the Huntsmen.

In modern day, a small percentage of Huntsman still exist to keep the peace of the land. However, it is not a task many are willing to take on. Those who become Huntsmen constantly have to leave home, risking their own lives to protect many others. Some Huntsmen keep this promise, but some have other plans and intentions, betraying this responsibility. The lives of others are only second, or even lesser, of their priorities, and instead focus on obtaining wealth, weaponry, or additional power. And even those who do fight for what they are expected to, have harsh intentions of their own that they hold secret.

But now, something both inhabitant nor demon has ever witnessed before lives among them. An individual with a potent soul mysteriously appeared in a human village named Ilysrech one fateful day, unconscious and discarded. Several weeks elapsed, and the young man finally awoken from what seemed to be a coma. Unable to recall his past memory, but the sole fact that he was a Huntsman, his existence was a sheer enigma to the townsfolk.

As he searches endlessly to uncover his mysterious tale, as well as his incredible potential, he fights alongside the Huntsman guild, the Unholy Hunters. But little does he know, that his true story begins now, and that the fate of his world depends on it.

And that young man, goes simply by the name of Brand."

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So with that, the game centers around Brand, a Huntsman from parts unknown, completely unaware of the world around him. Nobody knows who or what he is, or what he is exactly capable of. After regaining consciousness, he awakens to meet Jeri, a rather small Appraiser who had created the Unholy Hunters guild in order to protect the once-defenseless human village of Ilysrech, which had offered the rather passive demon a well-conditioned facility to conduct his business in return. While Jeri has but the slightest idea who Brand is, as much as the townspeople and guild members, he discovers that Brand might potentially be the most powerful Huntsman he had ever seen before, offering a deal with him to join the guild as its 5th member. With the only memory he can recall being a Huntsman, he sees the opportunity of joining the Unholy Hunters in his best favor, allowing him to possibly make a living while trying to recover his lost memories.

Because of this, he will soon discover that not everyone in this world is who they seem to be, especially himself.

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And with this, this will be the end of the post, until I update it again of course! The most important thing about this thread is everyone else who reads it! Your feedback is the most important thing, as well as your questions and ideas for the project. I'd also love to see some fanart too!!! And if there's an idea I especially like, I may even implement it in the game at one point, giving you full credit and even running everything related to it between you in private to ensure your complete approval.

Let me know what you want to know about the project next in the comments, and I'll get to you on that ASAP. c:

in what kind of setting is it like medieval times or something?

golducky wrote:in what kind of setting is it like medieval times or something?

It's actually a mix of all kinds of different settings. Some towns have a medieval theme to them, while others may have a somewhat futuristic themes to them, but those won't show up into much later on in the story line. For the most part, the beginning phase of it is going to have a medieval oriented theme, or classical/traditional styled areas.

Healthy mix of all kinds of things. c:

Pretty sure the only thing I have to do now in order to start things off is plan the layout of the starting area and a bit around that. If I'm making a demo within the next couple months I'm thinking it would be best to end it at the first boss fight.

Seems like a solid plan. If you ever need level design help (not actual mapping, but just how to make the maps feel good) or if you need a spriter, I'd be more than willing to help out ^u^

I think I'm gonna be set on maps and spriting, but feedback and review might come in handy once I end up making some of those.

Ideas for monsters, characters, obstacles and etc would be pretty awesome though. If you have some really awesome original content, I might be able to work that into one of the levels for you in your honor.

(I'm currently trying to get BetaX on board)

Well, if you ever need a spriter, or just level design guy, I'm here. I did just post a sprite today, so if you want to see some of my work, there you go ^^

I'm off today, so I'm possibly going to work on the map layout shortly for the starting area. Just got finished with some intense missions in my favorite MMO, and I need a bit of a break from that rapid action.

So it looks like Llama and I are going to actively collab on this. Awesome.

I'll be working on more map layouts this week then.

The weekend is here, and I'm finally free from all the work I had to do. My plans for the weekend is to hopefully finish up some of my map layout plans and to potentially work on some storyline and dialogue that I haven't touched base on yet.