Hexecratus: Fallen Realm

The story

"Once upon a time, there was the prosperous kingdom of Luvinia. The reign thrived peacefully, ruled by a wise king and overseen by the counsel of mages. You, alongside many valiant warriors, kept the lands safe, fighting off dragons and other savage beasts whenever they dared trespass the borders.

One fateful night, dark clouds gathered around the king's castle. Soon after, an unstoppable evil spread out of its gates, bringing death and destruction to the unaware people. You stood against the tides of bloodthirsty demons with your fellow warriors, in vain. All were slain.

Now, years later, you awaken from death. A mysterious force decided to deny you the final rest. You can only push on, through a fallen realm roamed by abominations better left to nightmares. What awaits you ahead, as you cut your way to the source of this evil? Will you finally end the curse and find peace or face eternal damnation?"

About the game

This is a fan game developed by a single person and inspired by fantastic games like Blasphemous, Dark Devotion, Eldest Souls (to name but a few). I love the dark style and atmosphere of such games, so much that I couldn’t resist the idea of building my own grim world and a lone hero who confronts its dangers. So this game is focused on melee combat against vicious enemies, but I’m not trying to replicate the hard challange and deep combat system of a true souls-like game.

Death isn’t game over and it doesn’t apply penalties. Enemies respawn and the hero is revived at the last activated warrior’s statue (the “bonfire”, to stick to the “souls” trope). Statues will not be too far apart, though. Killing monsters rewards the player with Dusk Crystals, the universal currency (will be used in future updates) that won't be lost upon death. Progress is automatically saved in real time: any door or path you manage to unlock before the hero’s last breath will stay so. All in all, this game aims to provide a more straightforward and less punishing experience, more suited to short play sessions (there is a pause button, too).

I chose to let the world tell the story. Apart from the short intro on this page, there will be no npc or document to tell what’s going on. Interpretation and suggestion will be left to the player. So, don’t worry if you aren’t really confident with English, you will need only to understand the buttons on the main menu to play this game.

The engine used to build this game is GDevelop v5. Maybe not as powerful as the big names (Unity or Unreal), but it offers flexible visual scripting and a lot of community made resources (all useful to cut down development time).

Please, keep in mind this game is in early development stage. What you can play now is a short demo, that outlines the core combat mechanics and core game design. I invite you to play the demo and leave a comment about what you liked or disliked. Your opinions are important to help me improve the game!

Current features:

• 6 short levels to play
• 5 enemy types
• Combat system with fast and heavy attack (and dashing)
• Keyboard controls
• Gamepad controls (tested with Xbox pad)
• 5 difficulty levels (can change it at any time)
• Healing & antidote potions
• Unlockable skills
• Hub where to buy upgrades and potions
• Fast travel to game areas from the Hub
• Progress is saved automatically
• Can pause and resume game

About the art

All animated sprites, both the hero and the monsters, are rendered in Unity from 3D models. This particular approach allowed me to achieve a satisfying level of detail. To build the levels I used some of the excellent tilesets available on itch.io, combined with Tiled. Other graphic assets come from various sources. A special thank to those who released their wonderful assets for free (starting from the font Antiquity Print by SciGho, available on itch.io, that I used for the game cover and menus).

All assets used in the game are listed in the dedicated Credits screen, available in the game main menu. For the people who created all those fantastic assets: if you notice somethig out of place in the credits, let me know please. I will correct it as soon as possible.

About the future steps

I’m planning to release regular updates about every two months to add new features.

Features to come:

• More Boss fights
• 10+ more levels and different biomes
• More enemy types

System requirements

The demo is currently available as an executable for Windows. I tested it on various PCs with different screen resolutions: 1280 x 720, 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440.

On the lower end, it runs fine in full HD on a humble machine (Athlon 3000G integrated graphic and 8GB of RAM). I tested only Windows 10 and Windows 11, but previous versions could be fine too.

The game features full gamepad support, both gameplay and menu navigation. I tested it with a Xbox Series pad on Windows 10 & 11, but other gamepads could work as well. Control scheme and prompts refer to Xbox buttons layout.

About pricing

This is a fan game and, as such, it will stay free to play. I enable donations just for people who want to support the project development. If you download for free, it's totally fine.