As we enter April and start to enjoy the fresh springtime air we get another update. Grimorio of Games has recently been having publisher issues. That hasn’t stopped them from working on the game. We continue to receive updates for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant every month. In this update the team talks about getting a new game writer, the Nintendo Switch version, and about some monsters. So, let’s dive right in.

Community Greetings from The Grimorio of Games Team

Like every month Grimorio of Games started by greeting the community. So, they kicked off this Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant update by stating the following:

Hi everyone!

Not many exciting things lately, but as always, we keep working on the game at a steady pace. But slower than we had originally planned due to the lack of publisher funding. This one will be mostly text until the end, where we show a bit of what we’re currently working on. So please take your time to read. We keep receiving messages asking if Revenant will be out by June (as it was the stated milestone during the campaign).

As we clearly explained in the January update, that will not be the case. Remember that we had to delay Revenant’s development and we are now working in parallel on the original game’s remake, Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection, to help fund the sequel (again, we’re very sorry for this change in the plan, but there wasn’t much we could do). This “parallel work” is going well, and as we anticipated it’s not making a big dent in Revenant’s progress, because the projects share pretty much everything. Resurrection is coming along nicely, and we will share a trailer and more details soon.

New Game Writer for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant

When looking over the update I thought it was interesting to hire a new game writer. This is what they said about this new game writer for Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant:

We recently hired a writer to help us with Revenant‘s dialogues and some “narrative design” for the side quests. Up until now, the same person in charge of game design, half of the programming, and writing these updates (hi!) was the only one who had the “writer hat” too. Hopefully, this will hasten development a bit. The new writer is working closely with the team to keep the tone of the game while adding their narrative knowledge.

Nintendo Switch Version Update

The team spoke a little bit about the Nintendo Switch version of Sword of the Necromancer:Revenant :

In our previous update, we told you about how we managed to make the game run at super stable 30FPS on handheld Switch, barring a few scenes with lots of NPCs. We have also been working on that, and we optimized the entity management, by performing some common tricks. Now the game runs at the desired FPS, at the cost of sometimes seeing a monster or an NPC popping off at a long distance (anyway, we try to mask it as well as we can). And like every month, we want to use this update to talk about one aspect of the game: this time being.

Update on the Monsters of Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant

Grimorio of Games also decided to give us some insight into monsters for the game. This is what they said about the monsters in Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant:

The original Sword of the Necromancer release had 20 monster species (which was later expanded to 30 with the free update, the 10 new ones consisting of backer-designed and new designs from the team). For a monster-catching game, that would seem a low number, but you had to take into account that this was a real-time game, and every monster had its elemental variants.

For the sequel, we decided not to use any of the backer-designed monsters from the first game (we didn’t want to pick favorites, it wouldn’t have been fair), and make a selection of 20 monsters from the remaining ones. There were some we couldn’t use due to being from collaborations with other games, and others simply didn’t work with a free camera in 3D or because of how the new dungeons would be (for example, the door mimic in the first game wouldn’t make sense in a cave or a forest), so picking them was fast.

New Monsters Models

The team explained more about the new monsters in Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant update with the information below:

Then we decided to have at least as many new monsters as returning ones, which meant we had to make 20 new designs! This time, we feel a bit more free about what we can design, as we have different environments that we can take advantage of, and we don’t have to worry about “making it make sense” in a 2D environment. We can now have certain monsters exclusive to certain locations, which is reflected in their design.

Also, making them in 3D makes it very easy to animate (when we worked on the 2D SOTN we had to make every animation at least in 5 different directions, frame by frame) On the other hand, monsters have now more states and can perform up to 4 different attacks each, so that’s a lot of animations. But again, the 3D makes it fun to come up with movements to give each monster a personality.

Here you have a sneak peek at some of the new monsters in their tri-dimensional glory!

For now, we leave what each one of these does up to interpretation, but there are some clues (the giant butcher knife, for example). Also, remember that monsters can now have attributes with out-of-battle effects. For example, is there some Burning Mist that is causing you trouble in a dungeon? Use a monster with the Dispersion attribute to get rid of it!

That’s all for today’s update. See you next time!

Kind regards!

Wrap-Up

It is great to know we can depend on consistent updates from Grimorio of Games. Even with the publisher issues, they stay consistent and focused on the game. I will admit I was nervous when I saw they hired a new game writer. Then I read it was to alleviate some of the work from the other person doing multiple jobs. I enjoy the fact the team stays focused on consoles even the Switch. Some developers would focus more on the Xbox and PlayStation. Another great thing is the team has been providing images and clips since the real early stages. I like to see teams be confident in their work. Plus, it’s always nice to get these peeks into the game. Stay tuned for more updates on Sword of the Necromancer: Revenant from me.

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