Planned Release Date: To be announced

About This Game

Arcfate is a tile-based action roguelike simulation where you can improvise: throw tables and chairs, swing swords, block doors, shoot guns, ignite carpets, cast spells, or sneak past enemies, all while exploring a dark, immersive world.

• Medical system: Injuries affect actual body parts. Significant wounds must be treated to avoid dying of infection or blood loss. You can bleed internally.

• Fast and versatile tactics: Throw anything, fight dirty, juggle weapons, multitask. Everything is fair game.

• Real-time lighting and shadowcasting:

• 8-directional combat: Ranged attacks require chess-like positioning which demands player skill and makes melee tactics viable against gunslingers.

• Detailed gun mechanics: The inner workings of firearms are simulated and animated. Manually operate the bolt of a rifle, pull back the slide on a pistol, insert and eject magazines, or even rotate the cylinder on a revolver.

• Tangible world: You can pick up and move (or throw) anything that's not bolted to the floor.

• Odor mechanic: The game gives detailed descriptions of what's in the air. You can smell blood.

• Fire and gas simulation: Fire spreads and emits smoke, which has volume.

• Liquid and stain simulation: Clothing and weapons can get dirty with blood. You can clean your sword with any item that absorbs liquid, making that item dirty instead. You can pour liquids from bottles or into other containers.

• Non-lethal options: You can choose to incapacitate enemies without killing them, keeping your hands clean.

• Clever but fragile opponents: Enemies may fall back, throw objects, pick up weapons, or even surrender. They are playing by the same rules as you.

• Moddable engine and multiplayer support: More on this below.

 We <3 simulation

Arcfate simulates the little things.

Pop the cork on a wine bottle and pour it on the carpet, in your mouth or into a glass. Throw the glass at a wall, and clean up the stain with your own shirt -- or that of a fallen enemy.

The game tries to respond believably to what you do. Striking a wall with your sword will chip the blade, while slashing a defenseless enemy might incapacitate on the spot.

Arcfate is inspired by games like Dishonored, Thief, Dwarf Fortress and Space Station 13, and is being developed by only two people.

The engine

This game comes packaged with (and is built on) Arcfate Engine, our moddable, multiplayer game engine for top-down, tile-based, simulated games. It's the work of a single programmer called Penter (hiya!) and initially started development in late 2022.

Engine features:

• Real-time lighting and shadowcasting

• Built for modding using TypeScript

• Dedicated servers, with needed code automatically downloaded from servers

• Entity Component System (ECS)

• Support for infinite worlds

• Hot reloading

• Framework for clever and reactive NPC behavior

• Particle system

• Designed for multiplayer, offering control over netcode and packets

Engine goals:

• Intuitive controls yet high player agency

• Artistic appeal without sacrificing simulation

• Consistent pixel art style across all game modes

• Multiplayer and easy modding

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

This game contains frequent violence, including textual descriptions of it. Blood can stain characters, the environment, and weapons.