1542: Rise of the Witchhunter is the tentative title of an action-adventure RPG combining a historic presentation of the 16th century with supernatural mythology.
You play as a Witchhunter of the Roman Inquisition. Bearing the Mark of Cain, you are part of a brotherhood of men uniquely gifted with the ability to see, hear and confront demons. Using holy artifacts and occult incantations you can take the fight to the demons - or corrupt your soul to make use of their power.
Features:
Play a Witchhunter from various European nations such as Denmark, Hungary or the Netherlands.
Choose a unique background for your character such as âChosen Oneâ, âHeartbrokenâ or âSouldebtorâ, each with an exclusive side quest.
Buy your own mount; an Arab Thoroughbred, a Friesian Charger, or maybe just a donkey.
Influence historic events like the Siege of Malta or the Battle of Lepanto; meet historic figures like Martin Luther, Heinrich Kramer or Charles V.
And much, much more
You can play the first two chapters for free here:
Just few tiny comments about the Polish choice:
KrakĂłw, not Krakow(o and Ăł are different sounds)
There are such names as Grzegorz(very common nowadays), Gregory(rare),
Gregor(even more rare). The only âGrygorâ I ever heard was a surname of some sportsman.
Bazyli, Wasyl or Wasyli, not âVasilyâ, I would say.
Kazimierz and WĆadysĆaw(not Wladyslaw) are names, not surnames.
LeszczyĆski, not âLeszczynskiâ(though it bases on the word leszczyna, âhazel (tree)â)
But these are just my nitpicky nitpicks.
I will not pretend I know the history very well, so I cannot help you with much with own knowledge, although I can translate some texts for you, if you wish (for example, here âInquisition in Polandâ on wikipedia http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkwizycja_w_Polsce )
Good luck with the game! I wait unpatiently for updates.
Perfect feedback on Polish names, which I admit I know very little about. Sadly, ChoiceScript does not seem to allow me to display letters like ö, or Ăł, et cetera. So I opted on purpose not to include them. But Iâll take your other points into account and freshen up the Polish name choices!
ChoiceScript supports special characters by the way. I use UltraEdit and itâs simply a matter of inserting the character from the ASCII table. Iâve written some passages in German and French and the accent marks all show up.
The concept is actually quite interesting, Iâm curious to see what you do with it. With that said, that means itâs worth some merciless feedback.
One major misspelling: âExcorcismâ in the stats should be âExorcism.â
Also, âwitchhuntingâ properly should be âwitch-hunting,â and same for âwitchhunter.â (Ordinarily, this would be left for the copyeditor, but major words that will be repeated a lot are worth pointing out now to save time later.)
Not sure how much this matters (historical nitpick), but the Netherlands should be predominantly Catholic as of 1542.
On the subject of stats, I suggest building each pair of Righteousness/Corruption, Orthodoxy/Heresy, and Fanaticism/Mercy as opposed pairs instead of individual stats. For example, in choicescript_stats.txt:
opposed_pair Righteousness
Corruption
Then in the future, have all game functions related to either call the Righteousness stat, and have Corruption checks measured by using Righteousness < target number. Does that make sense?
I actually started out with opposed pairs and I decided against it because I didnât like the way it looked. Also, I donât want to place Righteousness and Corruption on a continuum. I think both can be present in the same person. So I purposefully keep those 6 stats separate to reflect positive AND negative choices, as opposed to a sum total of choices.
For some reason I think Witch-hunter looks really ugly, as does Witch Hunter, so I kind of opted to spell it wrongly it on purposeâŠ
Looks like youâre right, I should rephrase the situation of The Netherlands, thanks.
âTHIS IS THE END OF THE DEMO, PUNK!â I laughed so hard at that!
I love what you have so far. This is such an interesting topic for a game.
I know that the church back then probably wouldnât have been ok with women having significant witchhunting power, but do you think you might be able to add an option to play a woman disguised as a man?
Iâm not sure if youâre aware of this, but thereâs a bunch of extra stuff after the end of the demo that looks like it came from the Choicescript tutorial. Did you leave that on by accident?
This thing has a lot of potential. Canât wait to see more!
At first I was thinking, due to historical accuracy, it could only be a male character, but your idea is actually pretty funny to include a woman disguised as a man. So I think Iâll add that to the features, thanks for the suggestion!
Obviously whatever comes after THIS IS THE END OF THE DEMO, is not a part of the demo I kind of left it because I donât want to delete anything that might cause errors, but Iâll get to it soon enough.
Wow, that was fast. You added the female option already!
I like the epithets that you added. âThe Unremarkableâ was pretty funny. I had the google a couple of the weapons you listed as choices, so I was thinking you should add a short description to each weaponâdescribe the obscure ones and then maybe list the pros/cons, too.
This game concept is kinda like making a game about being a conquistador fighting for the just rule of Christiandom over the evil native Americans⊠Or playing a heroic member of the Gestapo searching out evil socially unacceptable subhumans (aka, Homosexuals, Jews, Roma, etc.)
Youâre painting a group whose actions in history were absolutely atrocious in a positive light by making a fictional version of the world in which their hate filled delusions were actually true. Obviously the game isnât exactly meant to be taken seriously (Hell, the name choices are all famous people from the period.) but I just thought that it was worth pointing that out.
