The project is close to being financed on Kickstarter to be taken to other platforms as a culmination to two years of development.
Lords of Exile is a mature project by the Cordovan studio Squidbit, formed solely by the developer Carlos Azuaga, who after three years of development is now launching into Kickstarter with the idea of having the necessary money to face the final phase and the complexities of a cross-platform launch. The project is the accumulation of 12 years experiencing solo and passion for the era of 8-16 bits, the pixelart and the immortal sound of the synthesizers of the time, a hobby that has gone hand in hand with the daily work of the Creator as an engineer of a large software company. What started as yet another experiment began to take shape and mature until it materialized in the dream of launching a commercial game.
On the shoulder of giants
Although Castlevania seems like a clear reference, it is easy to see in the trailer that the game has many other influences such as the Ninja Gaiden, Blue Shadow or the Batman of Sunsoft, all great classics of 8-bit action. It is a linear game, with eight clearly established levels and their final bosses and although it is inspired by the capabilities of the 8 bits, it is not chained to them either in order to achieve details that would not have been possible in a NES in its day. Jump, movement and attack physics are more typical of a 16-bit machine, the color palette alternates between those present in the European and Japanese NIntendo consoles, with some extensions and the addition of some techniques to maintain reminiscence with the past but at the same time achieve better environmental effects. And the sound, very promising, has elements straddling the Famicom Ricoh RP2A03 and the iconic Yamaha YM2612 from Megadrive (and several other machines), possibly with some other license.
The game has an excellent aspect so it can be seen in the trailer, in the screenshots and gifs present on the presentation page, where various techniques and features are illustrated in detail. As the developer himself makes clear, this would be his first commercial game, which may raise doubts, but it is evident that we are not facing the seed of a project, but that it is already something tangible and mature. This has allowed him to raise in just a few days € 8,600 of the 12,000 he needs to complete the required financing, with which he will be able to support the reduction in the hours of his usual work and concentrate on the always complicated final part of any development, in which many games are played their final quality, something that disaster will comfortably achieve and allow us to have another interesting patio project in perspective.
- Kickstarter project
