This city eats people. Don the mask of a serial killer in this deckbuilding roguelike interactive story-based RPG. Become The Loner and explore the rhetoric of your mind, defuse gangs and psychopaths, massacre your enemies, and unravel the secrets of the city.
Release Date:
Coming soon
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Teaser | Project Serial Trailer1
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Coming Soon To Early Access

The developers of this game intend to release as a work in progress, developing with the feedback of players.

Note: Games in Early Access are not complete and may or may not change further. If you are not excited to play this game in its current state, then you should wait to see if the game progresses further in development. Learn more

What the developers have to say:

Why Early Access?

“Our goal with Project Serial is to enable player freedom and construct a deck that reflects their decisions.
Project Serial is comprised of two coalescing features: interactive storytelling and personalized deckbuilding combat. Players must make decisions during scenarios freely in the form of open, one word input, i.e. they can type in anything with expectation for an appropriate response. As such we require player feedback to know their expectations and provide results in order to add immersion to exploration and interactivity to the story. Each player brings a unique perspective to a scenario, and player feedback is fundamental for Project Serial's ability to interpret rhetoric and construct a personalized gaming experience.
An added result of player decision-making comes in the form of card rewards, which are used for the deckbuilding portion of the game's combat. We require player feedback in order to balance card combat and assess the various decks and strategies to ensure each player's personal rhetoric enables game progression.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?

“We estimate the game to be in early access for about a year, subject to change.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?

“The full version of Project Serial plans to give access to the story of The Loner with more events to explore the city, more cards to collect, and more combat opportunities. The final version is planned to include feats to alter player combat, time progression while exploring the city, a series of nights to pass and progress the story, and more enemy variations.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?

“The Early Access version of Project Serial contains the game's intro, apartment exploration, 10 random events each with multiple outcomes, a reachable destination in the city, and several rounds of combat at the player's goal. These features compile into what can be described as Night 1 and represent the core gameplay loop of Project Serial as a deckbuilding roguelike interactive storybased RPG.”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?

“Project Serial's price will increase when it is released in its full version, however we plan on adding new content and features during Early Access without increasing the price in order to give back to players who invest in Project Serial's early development. Additionally, players who purchase Project Serial in Early Access will be provided the full game upon release.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?

“Players are welcome to leave reviews and participate in the Community Hub in order to provide feedback that will be reviewed by our development team. Additionally, players can contact us directly via Bluesky or X with direct messages to report bugs or share expected story interactions. Project Serial is contingent upon player decision-making and thus requires community feedback to discover potential avenues for interactive storytelling.”
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About This Game

Project Serial is a deckbuilding roguelike interactive story text-based RPG that takes place in a deranged, lawless city filled with gangs and psychopaths. You are The Loner, and your job is to traverse the violent nights one street at a time to reach your target destination. Once there, you reveal your true self; a manipulative and merciless serial killer ready to slaughter everyone in the room.

Adopt your own rhetoric

  • Everyone here has their reason for violence. Survival? Reaction? Curiosity? Enjoyment? Whatever it is, it's your choice, and you can choose how to handle the dire situations set before you. With every decision, you prioritize reason, ethics, amusement, or something else entirely, all of which will improve your skills to reveal more about the world around you and alter your approach in combat. Explore your psyche and choose the rhetoric that fits your playstyle.

City exploration

  • As you stalk the streets, you will encounter various situations, each randomly generated and containing multiple outcomes. Your skills will offer up observations and hints, after which you will input a single keyword to describe your intentions. Will you threaten or appease gang members? Will you distract or hide from psychopaths? Will you spare or kill a dying man? Each action has its own result, its own reward, or its own punishment. How will you survive?

Turn-based card combat

  • Your actions while exploring will boost your skills and grant you cards. These cards are then used in turn-based combat as you fight groups of thugs. Punch, Kick, Grapple, Block, Talk, Surrender: the names of each card describe the action you take and adhere to the rhetoric skill you've adopted. But be wary of your wrath, too much carnage raises urgency, boosting your enemy's capabilities. Instead, manipulate your victims and kill them softly to maintain control.

Interactive story

  • The story of Project Serial is yours to create. You input single words to influence your role in the story and change the outcome of each situation. Every input is yours to freely decide, and careful observation of the world may reveal hidden keywords for story progression. But you are not alone, your skills will help you with keywords to enact their rhetoric. There are many secrets to this city, and different skillsets will provide you with new perspectives.

City Secrets

  • What happened to this city? A once prosperous and peaceful paradise has eroded into madness and slaughter. The city's population has dropped to a quarter, all law and order has been abandoned, corpses are strung about, only maniacs and violent psychopaths inhabit these concrete walls. You don't know much but you do know this, the people's eyes are bleeding and something unseen lurks the streets.

*Project Serial is made by humans, not A.I.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

There are written depictions of violence and gore throughout the game along with one image of implied gore that may be seen in the game's intro. There is smoking and alcohol use and implied use of illicit drugs. One message of potential religious hate may be encountered during gameplay, however it exists only within the fictional scope of the game with no real world comparisons. There are written depictions of suicide, implied self-harm, and mercy killing in the form of text. There is minor glorification of serial killing only in that the player character is identified as a serial killer, there are no direct comparisons to real world serial killers.

System Requirements

Windows
macOS
    Minimum:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    • OS: Windows 10 or later
    • Processor: Intel Core i3
    • Memory: 250 MB RAM
    • Storage: 250 MB available space
    Recommended:
    • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
    Minimum:
    • Processor: Intel Core i3
    Recommended:
    * Starting February 15, 2024, the Steam Client will no longer support 32-bit games or macOS 10.14 or lower.
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