What happens when a warrior, a cat, a cyborg, and a ghost must team up to save their homelands?
I can’t say I’ve ever asked myself that question, but that is the question posed to us by a new top-down horror RPG by developer Connor O.R.T. Linning that has recently made its way onto Steam’s Greenlight platform. Towards The Pantheon is the story of four unlikely heroes who venture through dangerous worlds and suffer great hardships in order to defeat the source of The Sworn Light at The Pantheon.
Eschewing the RPG tropes of potions and magic youths waging wars on elemental gods, Towards The Pantheon attempts to strike a balance between light-hearted fun and dark, mature themes in the adventures of Freyja the warrior; Bam the cat, Mishima the cyborg, and Phenez the ghost, all of whom have their own motivations for taking on this quest.
While seemingly cute and lighthearted on the surface, Towards The Pantheon is designed to build character relations and invest the player in the story, world, and characters. When the group finds themselves having to trek through an abandoned mansion, everything changes. Gamers familiar with series such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, Fatal Frame, and Haunting Ground will find the dark atmosphere they crave along with numerous twists and turns.
Taking its influence from a diverse set of classic games including Paper Mario, Golden Sun, and the Silent Hill Series, Towards The Pantheon looks to innovate on the 2D RPG formula by bending the rules of game mechanics, storytelling, pacing, and audio.
The world of Towards The Pantheon can be fully traversed similar to the
large worlds of Zelda, and players can ride cute hamsters named Speedsters to cut down on unnecessary backtracking. A race of wild Llamas have filled the world with shops so that players can purchase and sell a wide variety of interesting items.
The music for Towards The Pantheon spans various genres, ranging from orchestral to noise to chiptune to breakbeat. The result is a soundtrack that combines a familiar retro style found in Super Nintendo, Gameboy, and Sega Genesis soundtracks with modern production techniques and recording techniques often unheard in traditional 2D RPG music.
Towards The Pantheon is roughly halfway through development and is currently aiming for release at the end of 2017 on PC, Mac, and Linux. After the initial release I will be immediately looking at iOS, Android, and Windows Phone 8 mobile ports, possible Tizen and Amazon Fire ports, aswell as console ports (Xbox One, PS4, PS3, PS Vita, Razer Forge, etc) if the game is successful and development kits and licenses can be acquired.
Social media pages for Towards The Pantheon are updated daily with new screenshots, pixel art videos, development blogs, and soundtrack demos, and the developers livestream development of the game regularly on Twitch.
Links:
Website: http://www.towardsthepantheon.com
Steam Greenlight Campaign:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=864776690
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TowardsThePantheon
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PantheonDev
Tumblr: http://towardsthepantheon.tumblr.com/
Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/connor-ort-linning-wip/sets/towards-the-pantheon-demos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/towardsthepantheon/
IndieDB: http://www.indiedb.com/games/towards-the-pantheon
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/connorort
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/ORTmusic
Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/114060823024573957788?hl=en
Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/towardsthepanth/
