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[Batowski]

FABULAR: Once upon a Spacetime has been successfully FUNDED on Kickstarter! Greetings! We are Spiritus Games, 3 guys originally from Budapest, Hungary (code, design & art, art direction & world design). We've known and worked with each other for a long time, but this is our first independent game project together. We are more than a year into development, but we plan on doing 'retrospective' devlog entries about the history of the game, art, animation and tech stuff as well. Let's introduce the current state of the game first, then hopefully the devlog entries will start pouring in after...

Fabular: Once upon a Spacetime is a Medieval Space-folktale with action-RPG and roguelike influences. You explore an abstract, storybook-like universe as a young space-knight in your trusty ship that functions as your armour, your figurative warhorse and your mobile home as well. You need to manage your resources, upgrade your ship, be skillful in combat and make the right choices during encounters. Only then will you be able to defeat the dreadful League of Black Knights who terrorize the realm as if they were a Seven-Headed Dragon.

Here's our first teaser video:






Our first full-fetured gameplay trailer:






Screenshots:

Features: Top-down, physics-based melee and ranged combat with stylish real-time-lit pixel art visuals and smooth animation An artistic vision of the Middle Ages infused with futuristic elements, as medieval knights clash in armoured spaceships Deep and atmospheric universe with dozens of procedurally generated out-of-this-world locations on an ever-changing starmap Hundreds of randomly generated text based events featuring colorful characters, locations and items inspired by classical folktales such as Table-Be-Set, Seven-League Boots or The Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs Multiple playable ship types, upgrades, skills, items and lots of unlockables offering huge replayability value

Gameplay snippets:



For more info feel free to visit any of our sites:

Fabulargame.com

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[Batowski]

Reserved for first devlog entry.

[Cakeprediction]

The idea sounds great and the art looks incredible!
I definitely want to see more of this

[Bluebutton]

Looks beautiful and the music is fantastic!

[c023-DeV]

Now this is something I'll be looking forward to!
Love the detailed mechanical animations!

Best wishes! And sign me up as testing volunteer if you ever need one!


Damn, can't stop watching the gif's .... 

[Batowski]

Thanks for the comments so far. Here's a piece of the GUI that illustrates the depth of the item-management and RPG elements some more (click for full size). Also, Gothic integrated circuits!




The ship will have 3 main statistics that can be upgraded:

• Power: increases armor (ship health), melee damage and mass (ship becomes slower but heavier)
• Speed: increases speed and maneuverability, decreases skill cooldowns, increases critical damage
• Energy: increases duration and size of skill effects, increases energy damage and capacity regeneration (mana-like resource)

Stardust is the main currency in the game. Below that the player's main resources are displayed that can be used in combat or in the random events, some of the skills/items consume these. They can be looted, traded for in events or purchased in 'shops', such as the Starsmith or the Alchemist.

In the middle you can equip the ship with items. Some of these are passive, and some give you usable skills on the battlefield. There are common and 'Fabular' item types. Fabular objects are our universe's version of famous magical objects from folktales and fairy tales, such as: Table-be-set, or Seven League Boots. In our game they will be boosters, engines, ship cores, weapons and special equipments, but their function will strongly imply their folktale counterpart, such as Seven League Boost will allow for very fast travel both on the starmap and in the action battles as well. Fabular objects may also have more stat boosts, and will involve more interaction, such as an option to consume the item for a great one-time effect destroying it in the process. You can even talk to some of the spirits contained within them, inspect them and gain new info or quests. Some of them will provide you with an additional dialog option in a random event.

Equipment slots are locked in the beginning and can be unlocked by spending Stardust in the upgrade tab. More on this later, but basically you can spend Stardust in the 3 main statistics, enhancing their inherent effect and opening up new purchasable passive abilities on the way.

On the right you can see your cargo hold with items you looted from battle or purchased/traded for. Your cargo hold has limited space with unlockable slots as well.

This way Stardust behaves like a real currency that can be used to 'change' a resource type into another when you trade, and it's an integral part of the player's long-term decision making, whether to spend it in the upgrade tree, or to save it for later hoping that a shop or travelling merchant will be encountered.

[Batowski]

@c023-DeV: Thanks! We may hold you to your promise later about testing. Until then, feel free to subscribe to our mailing list on our website, or we can follow each other on the Tweeties.

[c023-DeV]

Done that and sent you a steam invite, maybe I can support you folks there too.

[JobLeonard]

Lovely aesthetic, reminds me of Nausicaa.

While sadly not the type of game I would play these days - short on time, I go for short-but-sweet stuff - I'm definitely interested in seeing how this develops

[Defcon1]

At first glance I though, oh another shmup (not my thing). But then I realized that this is a spaceship with battle axes on it...awesome!

[Bakuda]

Very nice.  I'm a fan of pixel games and, as someone else pointed out, the music is great.

[Batowski]

@JobLeonard: thanks! You mean this Nausicaa?





May I ask what aspect of our game reminds you of that?

@Defcon1: that is a very typical reaction to the game by the public. We've been battling the tag of 'space shooter' from the beginning, despite being pretty far from that. Yes, there is shooting in the game, and ranged skills, but their use is highly tactical and tied to different kinds of resources. The main focus of combat is melee, maneuvering, clever use of skills/items, and having a good 'build' (good combination of items and upgrades).

It would be very helpful to know how to better communicate the game to avoid the space shooter tag. Any ideas?

[JobLeonard]

@JobLeonard: thanks! You mean

Nausicaa? May I ask what aspect of our game reminds you of that?

The aesthetic, in a good way!

Nausicaa is a post-apocalyptic science fiction movie/manga (and I advise checking out the manga, I bet you'll find a lot of inspiration there, and the story is better developed in there). The art style is a mix of medieval technology and futuristic technology. Basically a mix of what knowledge society managed to preserve, and knowledge they had to revive because the advanced technology was lost.







Also, knights

But it's also the shapes, really. I don't really know how to put it, but Miyazaki's linework has a nice softness to it; it's rounded at the edges, there's no real jagged pointy bits edges anywhere. I kind of get a similar feeling from the artwork here.

[Batowski]

@JobLeonard: Wow, this is beautiful stuff, and a very useful resource for us! Thanks so much for this! The manga is indeed better from a design perspective, so much clever stuff even on these few pages. And that linework is marvelous indeed.

I will be on the lookout for more of this...

[JobLeonard]

Glad I could point out a source of inspiration!

[binaryboi01]

This looks really cool. 2 of my my favorite themes combined  Nice art style too, keep it up!

[Defcon1]

When I see your logo, the last kind of game I'm expecting is a space shooter, so your logo and font work well there. Then you see the first screenshot and you think you've seen this a thousand times.

So, I think you need some hero artwork of the spacecrafts to show off before people see the screenshots, perhaps even integrate it into the logo, just for now while building an audience.

Well there's my two cents!

[Batowski]

Then you see the first screenshot and you think you've seen this a thousand times.

Could you elaborate on this? What exactly puts you off? The top-down spacecraft thing itself?

So, I think you need some hero artwork of the spacecrafts to show off before people see the screenshots, perhaps even integrate it into the logo, just for now while building an audience.

Thanks a lot for the input, the hero image is already in the works, it will look roughly like this, obviously this is just a mockup:



Do you think it's a good direction?

[Pixel Noise]

Hey - nice! Following

[MekaSkull]

Since spaceships with axes is so awesome, that would be a nice thing to know straight from the logo. Kinda like how towerfall has an arrow going through theirs. It already feels like you really dig your idea, so if you show it off, it's gonna feel more like I should dig it too :D

The hero art is a good start, but it could be more iconic and really sell the "spaceship with axes is amazing!" because it is 

Highlighting the event in gameplay would be a nice touch too. Slow motion for a bit when you finish someone with a melee attack + some final fantasy style "critical hit" fx?

So yeah, just throwing around stuff from the top of my head. The game looks great 
Should also heed to this advice myself