Dark Deity
Developer(s)Sword & Axe LLC
Publisher(s)Freedom Games
Director(s)
  • Chip Moore
  • Dylan Takeyama
  • Molly Zhang
Artist(s)Jonathan Kinda
Writer(s)Nicholas Solari
Composer(s)Sam Huss
Platform(s)
Release
June 15, 2021
  • Microsoft Windows
  • June 15, 2021
  • Nintendo Switch
  • March 17, 2022
Genre(s)Tactical role-playing
Mode(s)Single-player

Dark Deity is a tactical role-playing video game developed by Sword & Axe LLC and published by Freedom Games. It was funded by Kickstarter, and released on June 15, 2021, on the Steam platform for Microsoft Windows. It was later released for Nintendo Switch on March 17, 2022.[1] It follows a group of military academy students in a fantasy universe who are suddenly conscripted into the army years prior to their normal graduation due to the onset of war in the kingdom.

The game garnered positive reviews on PC and mixed reviews on Switch, with reviewers praising its overall gameplay, character artwork, and amount of class choices, but criticizing its map graphics and design, menu layout, performance issues and bugs, while calling its story and similarity to the Fire Emblem series lacking in originality.

Plot

The game starts in the Delian Kingdom, where the ruler, King Varic, has started an ill-prepared war. He forcibly conscripts all the students in the Brookstead Military Academy, even if they are not yet ready to graduate. Four students, Irving, Garrick, Maren, and Alden, are among those recruited, and become embroiled in war, as well as a more shadowy conflict involving nefarious figures searching for ancient magical artifacts known as Eternal Aspects, which also have the gameplay purpose of adding unique modifiers to characters' stats.[2]

Gameplay

The gameplay consists of moving units around on a grid-based battlefield. Characters utilize an "Advantage system" where they all carry four different weapons that target different enemy weaknesses. These weapons can be upgraded using Class Tokens, which is essential for the game. Weapons have 4 tiers that require different rarities of Tokens to upgrade. Upgrading a weapon twice will advance it to the next tier.[3]

The game foregoes the use of permadeath or casual modes as seen in Fire Emblem. When characters are defeated in battle, they remain playable, but gain a permanent wound that costs them a random stat point. This still punishes players permanently for losing a character, but lets players decide to continue fighting if they decide that the tradeoff is worth it. Due to the lower penalty for losing units, the game's difficulty is balanced to be challenging.

Characters can have support conversations that increase their affinity for other characters, with thirty playable characters in total.[2]

Development

The game was first conceptualized by Chip Moore and Dylan Takeyama, who came up with the concept while in college. The developers had the goal to match a retro gameplay style with an updated modern look, scaling down high-resolution character art to lower-resolution sprites. They created the game in GameMaker and launched a successful Kickstarter. It was later surprise-launched on Steam.[3]

Reception

Dark Deity received "generally favorable" reviews for PC according to review aggregator Metacritic, with critics citing its gameplay, art and story;[4] the Nintendo Switch version received "mixed or average" reviews.[5]

Audra Bowling of RPGFan rated the game 91/100 and gave it the Editor's Choice award, comparing it to Fire Emblem but saying that it diverged in key ways, and calling it an enjoyable addition to the strategy RPG genre. She criticized the game's lack of a tutorial and minor technical issues, also calling the story "standard fantasy fare", but saying that it served its purpose and that she enjoyed the game's tongue-in-cheek moments.[2]

Graham Russell of Siliconera rated the game 8/10, calling it a small game that "cuts clear corners", but calling the battle sprites and animations "on-point and nostalgic".[12]

References

  1. ↑ Romano, Sal (August 27, 2021). "Dark Deity coming to Switch in 2022". Gematsu. Archived from the original on August 27, 2021. Retrieved August 27, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Bowling, Audra (June 15, 2021). "Dark Deity". RPGFan. Archived from the original on May 12, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  3. 1 2 Wilson, Jason (June 15, 2021). "Dark Deity is an ambitious strategy-RPG from a rookie team that's out now". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on March 27, 2022. Retrieved March 30, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "Dark Deity for PC Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on June 28, 2021. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
  5. 1 2 "Dark Deity for Switch Reviews". Metacritic. Archived from the original on April 26, 2022. Retrieved April 27, 2022.
  6. ↑ Gipp, Stuart (March 31, 2022). "Dark Deity Review (Switch eShop)". Nintendo Life. Archived from the original on March 31, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  7. ↑ de Freitas, Alex (March 20, 2022). "Dark Deity (Switch) Review". Nintendo World Report. Archived from the original on April 1, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  8. ↑ Trumbull, Jack (July 6, 2021). "Dark Deity review – Fire Emblem comes to PC". PCGamesN. Archived from the original on March 18, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  9. ↑ Wachter, Sam (April 11, 2022). "Dark Deity Review". RPGamer. Archived from the original on April 11, 2022. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  10. ↑ Tischbein, Cory (March 25, 2022). "Dark Deity". RPGFan. Archived from the original on April 1, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  11. ↑ Musgrave, Shaun (March 28, 2022). "SwitchArcade Round-Up: Reviews Featuring 'Rune Factory 5' and 'Dark Deity', Plus Today's Releases and Sales". TouchArcade. Archived from the original on April 1, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
  12. ↑ Russell, Graham (June 15, 2021). "Review: Dark Deity Wants to Rekindle Strategy-RPGs' Fire". Siliconera. Archived from the original on April 19, 2022. Retrieved April 1, 2022.
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