Far South Creations has shared a video, showing a new action RPG called Sunless Chronicles. According to its description, this is an early prototype of a one-man project heavily inspired by the Dark Souls series, that it is being developed entirely in Unreal Engine 4.
This prototype video shows a demo level using UE4 Infinity Blade maps (Frozen Cove) to show off the combat mechanics, which are still in progress.
Sunless Chronicles will be coming to the PC, hopefully later this year.
Enjoy!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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It certainly looks and plays like a single person project, he could use a few team members.
He should put it on Patreon, and with enough community feedback and support it might just come out above decent.
You know what realy grinds my gears? – Blood animation on Skeletons.
Those are the small details that add up to make amazing games. This is pretty impressive for one person and who knows how the final product will turn out; I don’t expect it to be Souls/Nioh/Bloodborne quality. Just comparing this game to either the Souls type games I mentioned or Zelda, those games besides being AAA titles, have so many small details that add so much to overall presentation.
Thing is very few of the assets are his own. It really isn’t all too impressive. I do hope he makes something good with it, but right now, he needs to make his own assets.
A single person cannot work on all assets alone, it’s very easy to say “It really isn’t all too impressive” when you’re not working on something yourself. Even if those assets didn’t belonged to him, putting them all together, working on the logic, attacks, animations, lighting etc is a huge amount of work for a single person, this is an achievement. I don’t really understand why people are so negative these days, anyone who tries to do something receive sh*tty responses in the name of criticism when there is none positive to be found, people can’t even draw a sketch properly and criticize others like they are best artists out there.
Because the combat system is from the store, too. And I am currently working as a technical artist. As I said, I hope he does something great with it. I also offered to help him yesterday. Its also Unreal Engine 4, most people with basic knowledge of the engine could put this together.
So what dude ? how many times you actually see someone putting something like this together even in unreal engine ? the store is meant to help you start a prototype and then you can improve it from there, a lot of 2D artists buy stock images and modify them to meet their needs, so they are bad too ? any sensible person should know that someone building a game alone cannot make all assets by him/her self but instead of appreciating it we go on with insults like it’s a “Ripoff”, “It can be done in afternoon” and so on.
It’s good that you’re trying to offer help but try to appreciate him too, he could be using Disqus like us to bash others and then most of us would be clicking vote ups on his posts but here we are saying “Oh look at it a ripoff of Dark Souls”, this is our standard unfortunately.
If you go to the UE4 forums and look under the WIP section, a new project similar to this one appears every few hours. Please, take a look.
You talk like you’re the only one who knows about UE, I am also a modder and use UE almost every day and I know what appears on forums, my question though what’s the point of criticizing that much when you’re not doing something like that yourself, Indie developers start like this and they grow eventually, give him time and it possible appreciate what he’s trying to do, it’s not too much to ask.
I am actually doing something similar. Just not showing it until I iron out a few more things.
That’s really good, hope you show it us when possible. For me it’s always interesting to see what talented individuals or groups can do with these engines.
developer quote – “To address a few of the questions below, the combat system was developed from scratch. That doesn’t make it better/worst than any asset store plugin, but it gives me 100% control on the combat flow and mechanics.”
what make you said if it was from asset store?
Ah. Must be the animations then. They look very similar, if not the same as animation assets on the marketplace. I’ll edit my comment to that later.
You can make a game in UE4 with little to no knowledge in coding/scripting, using assets from their storefront and putting it all together in the Blueprints flowgraph system.
If it’s so easy then everyone should be doing this, why don’t you show something like this before criticizing it without any reason ?
typical indie garbage
like minecraft it’s imitators are on it like flies on $hit
You better try to make something half like that before calling it garbage, running mouth is so easy on internet.
i despise indie culture, of headless sheeps praising half arsed ripoffs and early access, among kickstarter (which is basiclly worse than pre-orders)
and other shananigans which these “indie” devs pull out their a$$es
(see the latest yuka-laylee game and how underwhelming it is to 2017)
It is the Indie culture that gave us a game like Divinity Original Sin.
It’s a popular genre so it will attract a lot of people. Calling “imitators” a label is something we should reserve once the product is out and evaluated by everyone. This is the strength of the open nature of the PC gaming platform- everyone has a chance to show off their wares, the market will decide whether their wares are worth our money.
I remember Shadow of Mordor was called just another Assassin Creed imitator or poor man’s Batman Arkham Asylum but now everyone is asking why can’t other third person open world games have the same Nemesis system. I don’t see anyone calling Alien Isolation or Resident Evil 7 imitators for copying game mechanics from Amnesia The Dark Descent.
shadow of mordor was just exactly that, an imitation of more than two games
and it wasn’t even a lords of the rings game
and there is a huge difference from copying mechanic to having mechanics inspired by…
examples: titanfall is inspired by call of duty and mirror’s edge
Sniper ghost warrior 3 is basiclly far cry 4 with more depth (american guy on foreign soil, killing sepratists etc…)
to compare it with indie games
Freedom plant is a sonic inspired game with unique elements from mega man and Gunstar Heroes, it’s a unique game on it’s own. (hence inspiration)
Spark the electric jester is a jumbled mess of sonic speed with generic level designs with beat em up enemies which was ultimately underwhelming at best (a lame clone)
…. The Nemesis System is literally the only original thing about Shadow of Mordor. Besides, nobody ever said the Nemesis System wasn’t original, you’re deflecting.
Yes, Shadow of Mordor is an Assassin’s Creed/Batman Arkham combo-pack ripoff. Yes, it does have a teeny, tiny original detail called the Nemesis System (not implemented too well, though). So what? It’s still a clunky ripoff.
There’s a difference between copying & copy/pasting, tweaking, & then slapping on something on the side in order to make the game look original.
That’s kind of ironic, given that Minecraft started out life as an Infiniminer clone.
dark souls was never first, first there was demon’s souls
and before that, we had severance blade of darkness (one of the best dungeon crawlers that existed in that era)
and before that there were $hitty easy as pie PS1 games with a difficulty slider
it’s not about originality with those indie developers, they just pick what’s popular and has a large market share and cater to that exactly
creativity be damned
Blade: The Edge of Darkness is not a dungeon crawler, It’s an action game or a hack’n slash.
But yes, is a very good game.
Demon’s Souls was made by the Dark Souls developers, though, so I’m not sure what your point is, here, exactly?
it’s the other way around, dark souls was made by the developers of demon’s souls, which was inspired by the difficulty and horror of the king’s field franchise
Yeah, sure, Demon’s came first, & served as the predecessor to Dark Souls, whatever, point being, they were made by the same people, though. Or, at least, they were directed by the same person, if nothing else.
Unfortunately I still seem to be missing your point, all things considered 😛
the point is… the more you support unoriginality, the less original content you’ll recieve
take call of duty for example, best seller right? it’s an FPS
so other companies rip-off it’s formula and they sell
and then years go on and the FPS genre gets stale, unoriginal, uninspired cutscene fest with regenrating health and scripted events
if we are to recieve original IP’s, we should not support ripoffs
we should support those who create new genres and new standards
“typical indie garbage”
typical “my game taste is better than yours” elitist attitude that plagues the gaming community. Its made by 1 guy you idiot, this is pretty impressive for one dude. Id like to see what you can do as a one man team so we can all call it garbage. also the souls-like genre is picking up steam which is good to see in a world where almost every game holds your hand like a baby. Maybe if others get into the souls-like genre they can freshen it up or do something different. Which, in case that was too much for your tiny mind to comprehend, is a good thing. More options being available is always good for the consumer and that includes you. Dont like it? Dont play it and move along. But for those of us that like dark souls/bloodborne type games we have another option to look at if we so choose.
so? are we glorifiying $hit copy/paste developers who lack creativity and make underwhelming games?
go back to your indie cave hipster
lol you actually used the word hipster un-ironically. If you check out my steam library i have indie and AAA alike. We know nothing about this game, it might be great, it might be average or it could blow chunks, we dont know. but regardless, for one guy, even if its average thats a massive win for this dude. Try being less negative, its good for your lifespan
good for him i guess… doesn’t mean i have to like his poorly made game
how do we know it was poorly made? the hits look like they have a sense of hit and weight to them, lock on seems to work fine, fps seems stable. seems fine. not great or mind blowing but just fine. maybe by the time its out itll actually be pretty ok. we dont know yet
From what other comments are saying almost everything was taken from elsewhere including the combat system.
blood on skeletons, movement feels like PS2 animations (all stiff)
sound-effects are all way off there is a lot things wrong with what i saw, it’s not even worth mentioning cause i’m not planning on buying it
You’ll never create anything anyone will ever enjoy.
i whoop some delicious chow mein,corn soup and other Asian delicacies
and you say i never created anything to enjoy? hahaha
you just prove my point about indie games fanboism
indie games are cancer, like the AAA industry, they prey on hipsters
which is another green more organic version of the console peasant (kids, bro dudes)
no. i support the AA industry (Witcher 1, lords of the fallen, FROMSOFT when they were an unknown company DeS and DaS 1)
people should judge games by their worth, not by their developer group (see what happened to bioware)
You are a failure in life
I don’t see how this “game” intends to release “later this year” if it is still using example levels from Infinity Blade with a generic character.
Quite inspirational tbh. Just a guy following his passion. I can respect that.
Nothing more inspirational than using pre-made and template assets from the UE4 store.
The assets from the UE4 store serve as a great source for learning. most assets usually get replaced with better content once the game project has taken hold. If you ever watched a “making of” video everything starts out with basic construction, guidelines, and prototypes in their simplest form.
Hey guys, thank you all for your comments. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting this kind of reception so early in development. A few thoughts:
1) This is an extremely alpha stage of development. The video attempts to show off the main combat mechanics, which I’m still developing. As many have noticed, the map is full of placeholders (Actually, it is an example map from Epic Games!).
2) I’m not striving to produce a new dark souls. To be fully transparent: the soul series are a true masterpiece and, since these games were the main inspiration behind this project, it made sense to mention it.
3) Indeed, most of the art/sounds was outsourced to 3D developers, including asset stores. I don’t specialize in 3D modelling or sound production, so it makes sense to work with people who know their stuff.
To address a few of the questions below, the combat system was developed from scratch. That doesn’t make it better/worst than any asset store plugin, but it gives me 100% control on the combat flow and mechanics.
Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. Oh, and sorry about the skeleton-blood stuff. Particle effects are still a work in progress.
Have a good day!