Animal Gods: Top-Down Action Adventure Open World RPG For The New Generation!

Newly-founded indie game developer Still Games bring their beautiful vision of the past into the future. Featuring retro gameplay, stunningly painted backgrounds and a fifteenth century fantasy plot in an open world, this Legend Of Zelda inspired game needs your help to get Kick-Started and Steam Greenlit.

You play as Thistle, a hero whose personal mission it is to free the Animal Gods from the curse that haunts them. Wielding a seventeenth century BC bronze sword, you will hack-and-slash, shoot your bow, resolve puzzles and explore the open world to reach your goal.

DID YOU KNOW? Animal Gods were prominent characters in several animated films from the eighties, including Studio Ghibli’s anime Princess Mononoke and the adaptation of Richard Adams’ Watership Down.

Aiming for a modest $26,000 with their KickStarter Campaign, the creators have set a “Fall 2016” release date, which suggests that they are putting a lot of time and effort into their launch title, rather than simply “getting it out there” like some games development companies do. Perks for Backers include copies of the game (obviously) both digital and physical, soundtrack, art book, signed goodies and even opportunities to contribute creatively to the game itself with a credit in the final game release.

Earlier in the year they started a crowdfunding campaign through KickStarter, but decided to end it early, citing a need to showcase gameplay, for better media outreach and other things, admitting that they felt they were" unlikely to reach their goal and that they were clearly not ready for their campaign just-yet, but would re-launch later, which of course they have. I think that was very honest and brave of them, and they are all the better for it because the new campaign has already gained hundreds more Backers and nearly five times more funding than the original one did, and there are almost two weeks left still.

“Game design is surgery and music; both require time and patience. So we came to the mountains.

And in the mountains, we're free.” – Still Games

Still Games work from a small games team of four people with a vision to create beautiful, atmospheric, plot-driven games. They design their game(s) from a peaceful cliff over The Potomac River, citing its beauty and seclusion as an essential part of the process. They describe it on their website as having “space to breathe and room to let [their] craft sing”, which I think is a wonderful way of describing it and truly shows their passion.

The finished game will feature painted backgrounds, a top-down RPG feel, an open world to explore, long range and short range battle, fully augmentable weapons, plenty of NPCs (computer characters) to interact with, and judging by the trailer, a beautiful soundtrack to boot.

You can vote for the game on Steam Greenlight and back it on Kickstarter now.

Further links: Demo, Official Website.

Personal note: As a woman, I find the fact that the head programmer for the game is female to be very positive.