cyborgboy95
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Basic introduction on Steam:
ABOUT THIS GAME
Malus is a Action Role Playing Game with an emphasis on horror, combat and gameplay. The game is much slower paced than your typical ARPG.
In Malus, the world has been overrun by eternal darkness. Demons have won the Celestial War and taken over the world. Every corner of the land you will find evil lurking. Humanity is in the brink of extinction. You play as either a Male or Female, you wake up in the middle of a forest, not knowing how you got there, you scower the land in search answers.
Soon uncovering dark and horrific secrets about the land and also yourself.
Key Features:
Unique Combat System
Malus features a lock on mechanic, while in combat that allows you to maneuver around enemies effectively. You also have the ability to Block (if you have a shield equiped) and Dodge on command. Combat is slower and more tactical compared to other ARPGs
Realism
Your character keeps his weapon sheathed when not in combat, pulls an arrow out of the quiver when firing a bow and equips a lantern to light up dark areas. When there is no source of light, the area becomes almost pitch black. The goal is to create an immersive, believable atmospheric environment to allow players to engage in the story we wish to tell. We also try our best to minimize UI elements such as damage numbers and flashing enemies when hit.
Loot and Item Diversities
Find rare and ancient weapons. Turn your character from a peasant to a menacing fighter. Defend yourself from the evergrowing horde of darkness
Attributes & Skills
Upgrade your character using an old favorite of the ARPG formula. Learn new spells and skills and use your new found abilities to crush the demonic horde.
Horror Elements
Immerse yourself in a creepy and horrifying world. Dark and mysterious dungeons scatter the land for you to explore
This game will not include multiplayer (for now) It will instead be a single-player RPG game, The map will be Open World you can explore and do side quests and go wherever you want, there will be no invisible walls. You are only restricted by the strength of monsters in that particualr area.
More detailed introduction on indiegogo:
Unique Combat System
Malus features a soft lock-on mechanic, while in combat. This allows players to maneuver around enemies effectively. You also have the ability to Block (if you have a shield equiped) and Dodge on command. Combat is slower and more tactical compared to other ARPGs
Players can click on enemies or press TAB to target them. Once targeted, the player's character will automatically turn face that enemy, as long he is in a certain range. This does no limit your ability to move, you are free to click and move anywhere you want in this stance, However, your movement speed is slower due to being in combat stance and the character is now facing the enemy.
Players are also able to block damage by pressing the block key aslong as a shield is equiped, any attacks from the facing direction will be blocked, however, in this blocking stance, movement speed is heavily hindered. Future developments will include an ability to parry.
However as of the current alpha build, parrying is not yet implemented.
Here is a demonstration of the combat system.
Unique Save System
Malus features a "bonfire" type savegame system, similar to any "Dark Souls" titles. If you've ever played any of those, you would know, there is a certain sense of thrill when exploring deep in a particular zone, knowing that when you die, you have to start from a bonfire that is ways away, and lose all of the souls points you accumulated.
This is the type of gameplay we want to instill into Malus.
This game will feature a similar system where you rest at campfires to save you game, and if you die, you restart from that point and lose any loot that you have found prior to your death.
The loot will then be droped at your point of death, and you will have only 1 chance to collect it. If you die a second time while trying to collect your droped loot, you will lose it permanently
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Realism
Malus aims to bring a sense of realism to the ARPG genre, what does this mean? take a look at the GIF below...
Most ARPGs these days are just bloated with special effects and damage numbers, and everything just looks little too insane.
Malus will not be similar to those type of ARPG in this particular aspect. It is a more slower paced game. The point here is to focus more on immersive gameplay. There will still be loot drops and build diversities but it will focus more on engaging combat and gameplay.
In Malus your character does not constantly hold his/her weapon out 24/7.
You have to sheathe your weapon when not in combat.
This is not just a gimmick.
Here are the diferences between the two stances. (Benefits highlighted in bold)
Sheathing a weapon allows you to:
Drawing a weapon allows you to:
- Run faster
- Regenerate HP and MP
- Change Equipments
- Receive higher damage from enemies
Typicaly, ARPGs tend to have a magical light constantly shining on your character as a way to allow players to see in dark areas, this has become almost like a core indentiy of an ARPG
- Target an enemy
- Block damage (if you have a shield equiped)
- Dodge
- Receive lesser damage from enemies
- Move slower
- Cannot Change Equipments
In Malus, we implement a mechanic where the player is able to equip lanterns in order to light up the darkness. To give function and reasoning to having a spotlight on the character, In this case, its no longer magical nor a spotlight, but a light coming from something your character has equiped.
The idea is to create a horror-like feel when adventuring around the world, in caves light cast shadows off walls when turning corners, not knowing whats right around the corner.
The way this system works is that the player has 2 different belt slots, player can then use these slots to equip a Lantern. Equiping a lantern DOES NOT effect what the player is able to hold in his/her hand in anyway.
Players are able to equip lantern on both slots, if they so choose. This will make the light even brighter.
At this stage of development, there is no negative effect to using lanterns, however, in future development, the lantern would function as way to repel small pesky monsters but at the same time attract large demonic creatures. So there will be a Risk vs Reward to having a lantern equiped.
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Freeflow Classes
Malus will not feature any classes, however, it will have 4 different types of skill trees,
Melee, Ranged and Magical and Passive
It is up to the player to decide what weapons and skill he/or she decides to play with.
There are no restrictions as to what weapons you can use, however the weapon itself are limited to certain type of skills, (Bows would be obviously limited to ranged skills for example)
ATTRIBUTE RELATIONS
STRENGTH - Affects physical Damage
WISDOM - Affects magical Damage
AGILITY - Affects Attack Speed and Movement Speed
FORTITUDE - Affects HEALTH and Physical Defense
CONCENTRATION - Affects MANA Magical Defense
Here you can see a list of Atributes the player has. So this is rather typical formula, as I dont think this is an aspect of the ARPG formula that requires reinventing.
Some might argue agaisnt this however, for example Diablo 3, had the ability to manual "pump" attributes removed as was seemed by Blizzard as a redundancy (not entire certain if this was the reason)
But manually pumping Attributes is a fun and missed aspect of Diablo 1 and 2, it serves as learning curve for new players, gives them opportunity for trial and error and also adds to build diversities.
That is something seemingly lost in modern games, a steep learning curve.
Overall, you have 2 types of damage outputs and inputs (magical and physical) and different types of monsters, will deal different types of damages. The monsters will also have differnt defense types.
So the basic idea is to give all classes a way of outputing both physical and magical damage, For example a mage would have certain spells that deals physical damage aside from magical.
As for items, there are 2 types of weapons Physical weapons and Magical weapons
As of now,
Physical weapons include
Magical Weapons include:
- Swords
- Axes
- Bows
- Spear (not yet implemented)
- 2H Swords (not yet implemented)
Each type of weapons deals damage respectively, however, there will be spells and passive skills to convert one type of damage to another.
- Staffs
- Wands (not yet implemented)
- Orb (not yet implemented)
- Tome (not yet implemented)
NOTE: The current build of the game still requires alot of balancing in this aspect
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Loot & Items
(THIS FEATURE IS STILL HEAVILY UNDER DEVELOPMENT)
The game will feature a variety of loot types such as "Basic" "Rare" "Legendary"
However, as of right now. the current alpha build of the game very limited in item variety.
Our main focus is to balance out player and enemy statistics and damage relations before we start working on loot diversity.
We intend to slowly introduce new items through updates once the alpha is released. This would allow us to progressively balance out future items based on feedback of current ingame items.
We will post updates regarding this in future development
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(THIS FEATURE IS STILL HEAVILY UNDER DEVELOPMENT)
In Malus, you are set in a post-apocalyptic, dark fantasy, enviroment. The the world has been overrun by eternal darkness. It is writen in ancient texts that there was a great war between Demons and Angels many years ago, and the Angels had lost, none of them survived.
The Demonic Elders have taken over the world. Every corner of the land you will find evil lurking. Humanity is in the brink of extinction.
You play as either a Male or Female, you wake up in the middle of a forest, not knowing how you got there, you scower the land in search answers, slaying beasts and demons along the way, through dark forests and dungeons...
Soon uncovering dark and horrific secrets about the land and also yourself.
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So overall, the idea is to create a "realistic" slow paced ARPG more focused on an engaging Story and Gameplay, rather than just loot drops.
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There is no team, yet.
Hi, my name is Rahman Abdul, and I am a solo indie developer, or atleast aspiring to be, I used to work as a Motion Graphics Artist, but had recently quit my job because I found that I wasnt able to excersice any creative ideas, being stuck in a corporate food chain. I have an education in Games Design & Development and Animation & 3D Arts. And I love video games.
This Game initially began as a fun little side project that I did during my free time, however it grew into something much more and I am learning along the way aswell.
Although I studied Games Design & Development in the past, I dont really consider myself a developer, atleast not yet, there is so much more I still need to learn. To be honest, the only reason I am starting this campaign is because I am running out funds. If given the choice, I would just stay in my basement all day working on this game alone on my own. But I cant do that because I need to eat, sleep and work.
As of now, I am working on this solo, However, my ambition for Malus will ultimately require me to hire more people on board. I plan on realising an early build of the game to steam early access REALLY soon (10 March 2020)
FAQ on indiegogo
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