RunicRampage - Melee Combat Hack 'n' Slay

Runic Rampage features intense melee combat, badass bosses and a beautiful, handcrafted fantasy world. Imagine Golden Axe meets Gauntlet!

Play as Grimbard and prove your skills as raging dwarf!


Latest Gameplay Video - YOUTUBE

Story
Since their mighty rune stone is lost and the four heirs to the king have disappeared, the dwarven Kingdom is doomed. You are Grimbard, one of the few dwarfs left. On your quest to save your village you discover the truth about the happenings which led to your nations downfall.

​

Features

• Push, Uppercut, Groundsmash! Firewall! Play your combos and defeat your enemies with powerful magic!
• Handpainted look combined with procedural level generation provide endless beautiful battlegrounds for engaging challenges!
• You're just a small dwarf, right? Go RAMPAGE and your foes will tremble in fear!
• Dark ambient soundscapes, heroic fantasy music and pieces of furious heavy metal.
• Relics of your fathers – Regain the lost armor sets of your ancestors and upgrade your gear in the forge.

Screenshots (mobile preview)












Links
Facebook: facebook/RunicRampage
Website: runicrampage.com







Initial Post (Back in 2013)

Hi,

me and a friend are working on our first indie game "RunicRampage". RunicRampage is a fast paced action RPG set in a fantasy world.




Watch our Teaser-Trailer and Pitch here:

RunicRampage started like this a year ago:

I started the project to get used to modeling and animation in blender and to learn unity. I built the prototype in about 3 weeks and put it aside for quite some time. It's now 6 months since i gave it another try and decided to turn it into an actual game. We started from scratch (the prototype was in JS, RunicRampage is in C#) and got pretty much done.

We initially wanted to release RunicRampage only for smartphones (iOS/Android) but found out that the game is fun on PC too!

The core gameplay is already implemented and a lot of hard work is done already.. all levels are procedurally generated, so we had to build a custom terrain-engine and custom pathfinder.

Currently we are working on visual effects and a quest system to release our alpha-version. I will update this thread when we have more to show and our alpha release ready for testing.

Feel free to ask any questions!

Cheers!
Alex

 

Awesome looking game!

Backed/Pledged.

Love the dwarf models,..I want'em!


good luck!
-Welby

 

Very cool project!
I hope you reach the KS goal
I look forward to seeing more gameplay and hearing the music you put into the game

Cheers!

 

Hey guys looks sweet, I'm loving the different type of art style you guys are using. One question did you get the idea of the intangled forest from the forest in ff 9 reminds me of it xd

 

@Welby: thanks! i've also checked out your games (your signature review got me! i kept playing MoonCards for 10 minutes or so.. so it can't be that bad Dwarf Hockey's gameplay looks pretty solid!

@Music Vortex: Hey thanks! We'll post some new gameplay features soon.

@ifirt456: thanks! The Entangled woods where influenced by the ashenvale maps of warcraft III .. more to come.

 

Hey,

after sorting out a lot of technical and conceptual issues, we are focusing now on content creation.

We have improved map generation a lot and now its highly customizable and can create very cool results.
See here a editor screenshot of the 2nd realm: Entangled Woods



a beauty shot introducing water:



and another ingame screenshot

 

This looks great!

And it would be perfect for OUYA couch co-op...

 

This, sir, looks awesome, both the game and the prototype (love the music btw!).

 

thanks!

this would be very cool indeed! like in the good ol days with Gauntlet and Golden Axe!

 

we are now working on the menue system and the 3rd realm: Frozen Fortress

here is a Soul Prison - its kind of a tower with its soul attacking the player

 

Looks very nice. Can't say that I would want to play as a dwarf though lol

 

We are now nearly finished with asset creation for the 4 worlds.

The Forgotten Stronghold is kind of a steampunkish environment where you have to fight against mad dwarves. Here are some impressions of the environment:







If you want to support us please subscribe to our facebook page
or let us know what you think and post comments and critique by clicking Reply

 

Hey, this looks fantastic. Keep it up! Is the terrain engine partly tile based? How did you add noise to make it look so natural? Its hard to believe that is procedural!

 

Very cool indeed. Totally inspirational!
Bookmarked!

 

You can never have too many hack-and-slash games. Looks solid.

 

hey there! thanks for your feedback!

yes its all procedural - no prebuild rooms or such - which is good because we can generate millions of unique levels but its also bad because we cant bake light and have to paint very convincing tiling ground textures. the terrain engine itself works like the one of warcraft3. cliff-tiles and ground tiles form a mesh, which can be deformed by a heightmap and every "node" of each tile has a texture applied.. so each tile has amaximum of 4 blended textures. then all the other stuff is added.

here are screenshots of a whole level and zoom right in so you can see how the tiles work together.

 

You have made great progress! Congrats guys

 

really nice! dr.electro, i'd buy it for iOS! = ) only I don't really like guys with hammers lol! will there be more playable characters like knight with sword action? or maybe even an option for a mage, or archer... having different options is always nice... the game will appeal to wider audience i think. but aside from that looking really awesome!

 

we thought about that and initially we wanted to integrate a playable female assassin. but its soo much work to do that we have dropped this plan. the dwarf will have a range attack too.. there will be droppable items which he can throw at enemies.

speaking of enemies - here are some satyrs:
the blue is a mage, the brown is a classic melee unit and the red one is well... you will find out



one thing to add: help us to get the word out and join us on facebook or watch us on indie-db. thanks!

 

Really Nice! Maybe the Darf can find and wield a sword ? = )

 

Very nice project

 

I heard "Golden Axe" and "Gauntlet" muttered in the same sentence. I'm in.

 

I published an article containing beauty shots of the games environment on Indie DB.
Go check it out:

 

The Bandits are a pack of thiefs, murderers and burglars, who fled from their penalties. They ambush any wanderer who tries to cross the desert, and no one is known who survived one of their deadly traps.



The Bandits were the first enemy units we worked on. When modeling, I gave each of them a very low polycount budget. We didn't have a clue how much tris our scene would contain because the environment assets didn't exist yet. That's why they look so PS1 style I learned a lot about animating convincing attack, hit and death animations. Rico built the enemy behaviours and had a lot of hassle when coding the pathinfing.

You can find more news and stuff on our IndieDB page.

 

This looks really great!

 

Very cool man.

 

Runic Rampage will contain about 9 different enemy races with up to 4 variations each.
The most recent ones are the Snake Warriors.



You can find my tutorial about Animating the "Run"-Cycle of a Snake Warrior on IndieDB. Or just judge the result below

 

We finished the Snake Warriors and gave them a tricky unit behavior

The green Snake Spitter spits toxic slime which slows you and drains life. It wields a Sword and is armored with a shield. The red Snake Drake spits fire. The fire stays burning on the ground and ignites any unit who will walk through it. If you get too close to the Drake it will attack you with its mighty axe.

 

The Trolls are a very old race and populate the outer desert and the woods. Some myths say that they also descended in the darkest caves of the mountains. Beware when you see a troll hiding in the bushes! If there is one there might be lurking a dozen others behind you.

A huge inspiration for the Trolls are the "Fallen" from Diablo. In my eyes they are the perfect Hack 'n Slash enemy. So I had to include a similar unit into Runic Rampage for pure nostalgia!

 

Its time to revive this old development thread!
Runic Rampage isnt dead but constantly developed further by me in my spare time for the last 1 1/2 years.
I spend almost every bit of time in creating 3D Assets, coding and making designs for the GUI. Also i am happy to get a very talented illustrator involved in the game. She is doing all the story illustrations (yes the game has a story!
Estimated release is spring 2015 for mobile following PC/Mac and maybe Ouya version.

Now Runic Rampage is in a state where almost all game content is finished and i can start implementing the last features and start balancing everything. The latest content in the game are the bossfights, which i worked on the past 2 weeks.

Here are some details (SPOILER!

Dark Shaman (Desert)

• Attacking the player with an Axe (pushback effect) in melee combat
• Switches over to range Attack and casts auto follow magic Projectiles
• After some time he summons Skeletons

Cursed Satyr

• Chasing player and attack with strong melee damage
• Summons thorns which slows your movement
• The player shouldnt attack the Satyr directly but 6 thorn brushes to free the fountain

I have also started working on the Oger Lord

• ground smash with his club.. this should be an area of effect damage and pushes the player back
• after each ground smash sometimes rocks fall from the caves ceiling
• the player should attack the oger after the ground smash, because the boss needs some time to get his club off the ground

If you care about the project, please like us on facebook .. i need your help to get the game some attention
Also if you would like to beta test, please shoot me a PM .

 

Fnished the Oger Lord with flames, casting rocks and pushback attack - hui! :toastR:







Well i definately have to balance the bossfights - its no good when even the developer cant beat them

 

I started working on the menu UI.

You can upgrade your equipped set in the forge.
The forge evolved from something like this:



.. into this:



Still have to redo the upgrade mechanics.

 

I worked more on the ui of the forge. The screenshot shows the forge panel.



You can socket upgrades on items of your equipped set. Some upgrades are only available to specific gear, e.g. attack speed or critical attack are only available for weapons and gauntlets. Upgrades start with the copper value. Once forged you can upgrade to silver, gold and diamont (which adds a 2nd effect).
You can unlock additional equipable sets which contains items with unique upgrades adding gameplay behaviour.

I wasnt sure if i should add stats numbers but decided to not do it because there isnt something to compare and you would always choose the next better one. What do you think about it?

 

I improved the terrain shader and sorted out an error which.bugged me since the begginning of the project.. Now i can put strong fog for depth effects in the game without having to worry about strange colour artifacts (like with the old shader)

Judge the results:

 

In the game there is no time left, to manage your inventory. Instead you will be rewarded when you complete a level! The Chestpick lets you pick 3 out of 6 treasures - so choose wisely!




Collect items to complete a set containing gear, weapon and trinket.





Once unlocked and equipped you can forge additional attributes to your gear, like bonus to critical attack, damage reflect and other stats. Each set features a unique tech tree and you will discover mighty combinations and magical effects bound to the sets previous owner.


In each level of Runic Rampage you will find mighty emblems which enables their bearer with elemental and magical powers. By skilling up your Control over these effects you will unlock even more powers.



Still have to refine the forge process.
Any crits and comments?

Cheers!


Please subscribe to our mailinglist for beta! Or send PM

Care about the game? Please Like Runic Rampage on Facebook.

 

Wow came along way since the prototype.

 

Thanks! ..and it took quite some time! ..next time i better stick to something small!

 

Some often mentioned aspects was the lack of shadows and the close camera distance. This was the result when we decided to target mobile.. back in 2012. Things changed a lot since then. Our main target is PC/Mac/Consoles and also the hardware and screen size on mobile devices increased a lot!

I improved the terrain shader to support hard/soft realtime shadows and pixel lighting. The impact on current mobile hardware isn't recognizable and on PC the game can be also run on current laptops with soft shadows. Great!



I dragged out the camera and you can still see all necessary details.



Of course everything needs optimization and the look will improve even more when i start polishing everything up.
So if you like what you see, catch up with us on Facebook.

Any further advices on improving the graphics?

 

I am happy to announce that Runic Rampage is entering Beta next week!
We are still looking for Testers! Subscribe now at http://runicrampage.com/beta

Registration closes on Friday the 13th (of Febrary) - no joke! - So waste no time and join beta to beat the crap out of hordes of tremendous enemies!

 

Still looking for some more testers!

 

The Update #1 of the current running Beta is out!

 

Great work and looks long journey of work undertaken.

i like your 3d models!

 

Thanks!
Do you participate in the beta?

 

The settings menu (mobile edition).



Get your beta invitation here!

 

I continued working on the game and i am happy to announce that i will release it this year.
It was a long way until now and i decided to revive this devlog with pre post mortems and launch preparations.

 

Cheers friend! Good luck!

 

@Bridin: Thanks!

Wrote an article on IndieDB about the adaptive soundsystem we are using.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/runic-rampage/news/introducing-adaptive-sound-system

And a gameplay snapshot to keep this thread image heavy

 

Worked on integrating the more monster sounds.. oh boy what a list

 

Today i integrated even more sounds: footsteps.. five for each ground type = thats about 30 footsteps
I should showcase it in a video..

In the meantime: Dangerous caves!

 

Currently designing the RAMPAGE feature.. actually it's funny i am doing it now when the game is almost finished.

The Rampage mode was the most important feature i had in mind when designing the game:
- when a number of combos is reach you automticly enter RAMPAGE
- your power and speed increases over short amount of time
- lighting darkens, thunder rolls, your player size increases a bit

The reason i haven't really implemented it was that it didn't feel right to enter it automaticly.. I didn't came up with a good solution and presentation. Now i have re-thought everything and came up with this:
- you collect combos
- after a certain number you _can_ enter RAMPAGE
- the more combos you stack _until_ you enter RAMPAGE defines the increase in size and power
- your look changes into kind of an avatar state

Technically you can become a giant.. "In every dwarf sleeps a giant!

Prototyped look:



What do you think?