[Kickstarter] Zaharia, an isometric cRPG set in a Middle Eastern inspired fantasy world

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Dave Devetter

Stiltzkin's Apprentice
Feb 21, 2014
2
0
#1




A Kickstarter campaign launched for Zaharia recently. They have a pre-alpha demo / prototype that you can DL. I think this game looks really promising and I'm always looking for cRPGs that are not in the standard generic Tolkien style fantasy setting. And it has turn-based tactical battles, which is my favorite.


Some of the proposed features:
• Real time stealth system, similar to the one of Commandos series.
• Nonlinearity in the narrative and interpretative aspects, allowing the player not only to choose which quest to start from, without urgent obligations, but also to make a lot of choices and then solve a problem in more than one way;
• A Fallout-like open world;
• Lots of choices and consequences that dynamically influence the context of the game;
• A huge variety of abilities and statistics to manage, in order to craft and personalize one’s own alter-ego in every possible aspect;
• An original setting created from scratch, completely different from the usual fantasy worlds and inspired to the late Medieval Persia and Arabia
• Living NPCs, provided with an IA that allows them to react dynamically to the player’s actions and to create really deep interpersonal relationships
• No fillers, like useless fights, made to extend the game’s longevity in artificial ways;
• Presence of mature themes like slavery, sexuality, racism, theology, philosophy, morality, politics, and so on;
• Five main factions to choose, each one deeply characterized and different from the others;
• Innovative magic system that turns mages into something different from just portable siege machines;
• Fights are not mandatory in most cases, and it won’t be necessary to use a character who excels at combat to end the game;
• Tons of multiple choice dialogues, in order to grant the player a large range of interpretations;
• No moral dualism.

I'm pretty excited about this game, but I fear they won't reach their funding goal. I'm getting a little bit tired of the standard Tolkien style fantasy setting. I'll always like visiting that world but I think the genre could use more variety.