Belgium-based video game company Warcave is currently developing its 17th-century turn-based strategy game Black Legend, and recently dropped a demo on Steam as well as a developer diary video on its YouTube channel. With the game seemingly still in alpha, both the demo and dev diary give an early look into Black Legend’s story and gameplay.
The Black Legend demo is currently on Steam and is only about a 5GB download. It provides a nice tutorial to the game, while also showing off the quality gameplay, art, graphics, and music work that have been done so far. Once you’re in-game, you’ll enter the mist-shrouded city of Grant and meet with Maarten, who’ll guide you through various game mechanics such as inventory management, combat, and the most-important Alchemy aspects. As expected, initial character creation options are rather basic at the moment, as are the items and equipment. However, the 17th-century look and feel of everything works nicely. Your character is the silent type here, but quest-critical NPCs have quality voice acting.
The Black Legend - Dev Diary is a five-minute video with another pleasant in-character voice actor narrating through the game’s story, explaining the two important game aspects of exploration and combat. Naturally, you’re going to explore all the nooks and crannies within Grant, and that’s a good thing to do. Not only will you find plenty of items and trinkets to help you in various ways, but exploring is also one way you’ll discover crucial story elements. You’ll locate NPCs who provide info or quests, and find items and city landscape objects that have quest clues and other helpful benefits.
As the dev diary explains, combat in Black Legend consists of three pillars: action over reaction, limited random number generation, and the alchemy system. Black Legend offers a wide array of classes and skills, allowing you to customize your character for the combat styles you prefer. Combat uses action points, character facing, and positioning as important factors, allowing you to plan and execute winning strategies for combat success rather than relying solely on RNGeesus. The alchemy system is the largest aspect of Black Legend combat, and possibly the most interesting. It’s based on 17th-century Humorism, and as the narrator states, is “an answer to the Art Director’s demand of ‘no hard magic.’”
If you’ve ever wondered about playing a Solomon Kane-era video game, Black Legend seems to be a working remedy to that lapse.
Source: Warcave
