Antharion is a huge fantasy world that allows you to explore and play at your own pace. Tons of towns, cities, monsters, quests, castles and dungeons scattered throughout the world will keep even the most hard-core dungeon crawler busy.

• Turn-based tactical combat

• Immense open-ended world

• Create and customize a party of 4

• Dynamic lighting and shadows

• No Level Scaling

• Full day/night and weather cycles

• 3 Magic Schools featuring 45+ unique spells

• Smart NPC and monster AI

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Antharion gives you complete control over character customization. You choose each character's race, class (or create your own custom class), and appearance. You can either select from a set of existing classes (where your skill and attribute points are assigned automatically) or you may choose to create your own class (and assign skill and attribute points however you like). Currently there are 9 skills including: Black Magic, White Magic, Ranged Weapons, Defense, Lock Picking, Stealth, Mercantile, Gray Magic, and Melee Weapons; 5 attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Constitution; and 5 races: Human, Orc, Necrophil, Lynx, and Elf.

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Antharion's world isn't just huge ...it's massive! Over 100 dungeons, 20+ cities, 50+ unique monster types, this thing is enormous! It's important to us that everything in the game feels unique - you should never say to yourself, "Where have I seen that monster before?" or, "Wow, those NPCs looks really familiar." As you can see from the video, Antharion is crammed with tons of unique environments and we'll keep adding even more until it's finished. It's important to us that Antharion feels alive. NPCs don't just mindlessly sit there all day waiting like cardboard cutouts for you to enter their shops, they have lives of their own: going to their jobs during the day and then home at night. Steal in front of someone and you may be in for a fight, or they may just flee to find the nearest guard depending on their individual temperament. Get reported for committing a crime and you'll have a bounty on your head - if a guard spots you he'll throw you in the nearest prison (probably taking a bit of your coin for himself).

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Combat is the heart and soul of Antharion. We set out to create the sharpest, crispest and most responsive combat system possible and we're very happy with the results. Combat begins when either a player or an enemy initiates it. At the beginning of a new round all players and enemies are assigned a certain amount of action points (AP) as determined by their individual stats. Movements cost 1 AP while attacks and spell casts cost all of it (unless you're hasted). If the player initiates combat then all of the player's characters move one by one until none have any AP left. Then the enemies would move one by one until they're all out of AP. Then a new round starts and everything repeats until one side is dead. What sets Antharion's combat apart from other games is the snappiness and transparency of it's combat system. What you see is what you get.

There are three schools of magic (Black, White, and Gray). Each school has a corresponding skill which determines the spells you can learn plus how powerful those spells are.

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Ever since the murder of the beloved King Mallory (uniter of the Kingdom) at the hands of his own debauched son (and now King) Zeverith, the Kingdom of Antharion has been ravaged by political turmoil. Zeverith’s first act as King was to dissolve the Senate; his second was to sell off large chunks of the Kingdom to rich noblemen who promptly enslaved many of their inhabitants. The Order was a collective of adept magical enthusiasts who for centuries collaborated in secret to tame and refine their arcane magical knowledge. Zeverith quickly became aware of the Order's existence through his network of spies and immediately swore to neutralize them. Many of its members were killed by Zeverith’s forces but others fled deep into the depths of long forgotten caverns - some of the more masterful wizards even managed to magically construct artificial planes of existence to escape off into. In response, Zeverith began what would come to be known as The Great Purge, sending his men from city to city and town to town to hunt down every last wizard. As part of a poor group of peasants from a small quiet town on the outskirts of the Kingdom, you suddenly found yourself swept up in The Purge when a group of Zeverith’s men stormed your town, murdered the townsfolk, and burned every last house to the ground. Taken deep into an underground dungeon for a torturing and execution, you somehow manage to overpower your captors. What happens next will be up to you...

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Antharion has been a passion project and a labor of love for us. But we've reached the point where we need a bit of outside funding in order to continue working on the project full-time. Pixel art, original music and producing original content are all time-consuming and costly. Reaching our goal will ensure that we have the resources needed to finish Antharion in a timely manner. Exceeding our goal will mean tons of game play improvements and loads of additional content.

A little over a year ago Antharion was just a dream. Today the game's engine and development tools are complete and the challenges from here on out will consist mainly of: (1) polishing core gameplay mechanics (such as combat and magic); (2) producing content (such as more pixel art, animations, and an original soundtrack) to fill up Antharion's massive open-ended world; and (3) porting Antharion over to the iPad without compromising core gameplay. We're confident that reaching our goal will allow us to overcome these as well as any future challenges.

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Alextended said:

I guess GAF won't be funding this, oh well...

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tsumineko said:

Who isn't burnt out on Kickstarters...

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Alextended said:

I'm not, I skip most, I've backed like 5, a couple of which didn't make it, one of which I'm already thinking I'll be disappointed in though. I saw no reason to back some of the biggest either, like Project Eternity, I'll wait and judge the game itself. Though I've had issues with my cards lately so even if I wanted to back some of the recent Kickstarters I couldn't. But yeah, asking me if I'm burnt out on Kickstarters is a bit like asking me if I'm burnt out on games and seeing games I want get made. Well, no, obviously.

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Orphic said:

Hey guys, Im the lead dev of Antharion.

Thanks a lot for you feedback, it's very very important to us because, after all, Antharion is a niche game and you guys are its target audience. Lots of complaints about big heads so we are considering scaling them down and/or making them more serious looking - luckily this would take almost no work on our part as heads are drawn separately from bodies/equipment. Before we launched we spent several days implementing an idle animation (maybe it's not too clear in the video because of the pace) and we are considering doing some kind of walking animation that wouldn't affect core gameplay too much. Let me just reiterate that Antharion is a work in progress and we're very nimble with implementing quick mods, so keep the suggestions coming!

Thanks,
Ari
Antharion Team Leader

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Hey guys, we just passed $6,000 and are on track to meet our goal but we still need your help! Please like us on Facebook and tell all of your friends about Antharion! Every little thing helps.

We wanted to share with you a few features that we're going to be adding along with a few that we're considering.

We're definitely adding: alchemy, female avatars, pick-pocketing and a traits system (advantages/disadvantages that you can choose from during character creation).

We're considering: crafting, a persuasion skill, a blood particle system, optional walking animations, feats/perks, scaling down head size and a gambling mini game. There are a few other things but they're more tentative.

Also, let us know what kind of stretch goals you'd like to see.

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Q: Antharion won't be limited to the PC, but will also be released on the iPad. How do you make sure you do not sacrifice design complexity and tactical options because of the limitations of a tablet platform, including interface limitations, and the apparently "casual" character of tablet gaming?

A: To be clear, Antharion’s design was not influenced in any way by the prospect of an iPad port. There’s a lot of room for serious games like Antharion on a casual platform like the iPad. And it just so happens that a game like Antharion would translate quite well to a platform like the iPad without any real functional sacrifice.


Q: Why did you decide to take Antharion on Kickstarter and not develop the game the traditional indie way?

A: It just kind of happened that way. We recently hired a full-time pixel artist, and dramatically scaled up the number of assets we needed as the scope of the project grew, and next thing we knew, our savings accounts were low. At this point Kickstarter made perfect sense. It’s turned out to be a really great thing, we’re getting tons of helpful and positive feedback from our backers and they’re really helping us to make Antharion a better game.

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It's been a really busy last couple of days for us. Programming-wise I've been polishing the smart AI system for enemies and NPCs along with making some balancing tweaks to combat and magic. Our artist Peter has been churning out monsters like crazy and just created a female avatar body for each race. Our world designer Jen has been creating some really cool towns and dungeons which all look amazing. Everything is coming together beautifully and it's incredibly exciting!!

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DiscoJer said:

Is it me, or is the art style reminiscent of Finieous Fingers?

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Alextended said:

Didn't make it... They plan to retry soon though, with more stuff to show, hopefully better PR... I hope that goes better.

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NemesisPrime said:

That is not really how Kickstarter is supposed to work.

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Hey guys! Antharion is all about immersion and creating a beautifully unique and alive fantasy world for you to explore. In order to make this world feel more convincing, we've spent countless hours trying to make its inhabitants feel more intelligent. In Antharion each NPC will have its own unique temperament, personality and combat strategy. We want the creatures of Anthartion to react to your actions in tangible ways so as to make everything you do feel more meaningful and important. In this video we demonstrate just a few of Antharion's working AI features...

[Note: In the video you'll notice NPCs moving sometimes quickly without the player having moved. This is merely for the sake of demonstration and is achieved by holding down space bar which has the effect of passing on the player's turn]

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We're at 125% and almost 500 backers. A few of you have asked us about Antharion's day/night cycle, so we decided to make a short video demonstrating it.

To make a virtual world feel compelling and alive, it needs regularity. Antharion's day/night cycle gives it this regularity and helps to give you a sense that you're fully immersed in a living-breathing world. Day and night also have tangible effects on game play. Adventuring outdoors at night becomes a dangerous affair since even with a torch you still can only see a few feet ahead. Searching for inns to sleep at during nights becomes quite important. Also, NPCs have schedules and will often go home at night after work. One new feature we just added that you'll see in the video is light shafts coming in from windows. Light shafts start to shine when the sun comes out and eventually disappear when the sun goes down. The atmospheric music in the video was created by our composer Eric.

[Please note that in the video we essentially fast forward through parts of Antharion's day/night cycle for the sake of demonstration. In actual game play, changes to light or color would occur at an imperceptibly slow pace.]

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Hey guys! We're now just $1,584 away from hitting our first stretch goal!! With over 500 backers, if each of you upgraded by just $5 we'd instantly unlock our first stretch goal and be well on our way towards hitting the 2nd! Tonight we're introducing several new reward tiers to give you guys more upgrading options...

$50 All Digital Pack (Includes all previous rewards)

iPad version of Antharion
50 page digital PDF comprised of Antharion's original hand-written design notes and sketches
Your name will appear in an in-game book as one of the "Founders of Antharion"

$80 All Digital Design a NPC Pack (Includes all $50 level rewards) - plus you'll work with us to design and name your own NPC. Want to make an NPC in your own likeness? Just give us a photo and we'll have our artist recreate you in pixel form. (Note: this reward is NOT included in any higher level tiers.) This tier is limited and will only be available to the first 20 backers.

$500 Immortalization Pack (Includes all $100 level rewards) - plus you'll be immortalized in Antharion's world. You'll name one of Antharion's major towns plus we'll create a statue of you and place it prominently in the center of town for all to see! You'll also become a part of Antharion's lore and we'll even create an entire in-game book about you! This tier is limited and will only be available to the first 3 backers.

**Clarifications:

The $80 All Digital Pack doesn't include any physical rewards
Anyone with a current pledge of $50 or higher will automatically receive all of the new $50 tier rewards!

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Hey guys, as of right now we're just $1,274 away from hitting our first stretch goal!!

Why are the stretch goals so important?
Okay, so we all want to hit our stretch goals and unlock tons of cool new content, but there's another compelling reason for hitting them. More funding translates directly into more work being put into the game, more content being added, and more cool new game play features being integrated. In short more funding = an even more amazing Antharion. You guys have been so amazing with your support in helping us reach our stretch goals we just wanted to say THANK YOU! If it weren't for your guys' passion and overwhelming support for our original project we definitely wouldn't be here today.

Other cool projects
I also wanted to mention Telepath Tactics' Kickstarter Page. I tried the demo the other day and it brought back some great memories of playing Battle for Wesnoth. You should definitely check it out, it's a very cool project and could use some help as it's towards the end of its campaign. We wish them best of Luck!

Recent progress
In addition to the normal Kickstarter maintenance stuff we've managed to do a considerable amount of work on the actual game this last week. Below you'll see just a little of what we've managed to accomplish including a new interface skin, 3 new monsters Peter just finished, and a new combat track by Eric.

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You guys have been incredible and thanks to all of your amazing support we've managed to unlock our first 15k Stretch Goal with a whole week left to go!!! Again, we cannot thank you all enough for believing in our project and making this happen! Races are something we haven't really talked too much about so here's a little overview of each and how they fit into the world...

Races
Humans - Humans are the ruling dominant race in Antharion. After thousands of years of brutal Orc rule, humans united Antharion's various factions under a single flag and proceeded to enslave the entire Orc race in a single sweeping act of retribution.

Orc - For thousands of years Orcs used their surperior strength and fighting ability to dominate all other groups. This led to a deep-seated resentment among the other races culminating in the Orc race's complete enslavement by the debauched King Zeverith. Though Orcs are officially classified as a commodity in Antharion, a few still exist freely in small pockets on the outskirts of the Kingdom.

Lynx - A naturally solitary race, Lynx prefer to live out their lives alone on the fringes of society. Many of them survive off of thievery leading to a general distrust of the entire race.

Elf - During Orc rule, Elves were kept as pets and artificially bred for aptitude in white magic, beauty and tiny brains (a trait elevated by Orcish culture). Humans are quite happy with the small state of the Elf brain as that's one less group to potentially challenge human dominance.

Necrophil - Originally the summoned magical creations of powerful Black Wizards. Necrophils began a recursive sequence of self-replication whereby each successively summoned creature was capable of more powerful magic than the last. This resulted in Necrophils being even more powerful than their original summoners. Necrophils are the most feared and reviled of all the races, and the greatest threat to the Human's hold on power.

20k Stretch Goals
In order for Antharion to unlock its full potential, we've got to unlock these stretch goals. Here we take a look at the 20k Stretch Goals in greater detail to understand why they're so important...

Undead Race - The undead live out their unnaturally eternal existences in the depths of old caverns far below the world's surface. Whole groups of undead are even rumored to be coexisting in sprawling underground city complexes.

13 Level Mega Dungeon - With so many people complaining about how dumbed-down and easy RPG games have gotten lately we think it makes sense to stuff some insanely difficult challenges into Antharion. The 13-level mega dungeon is more than just a dungeon, it's almost like a self-contained expansion in terms of the amount of additional content it adds. If there's one thing old-school RPGs did really well it's huge insanely complex and difficult dungeons that could take forever to complete but once you did complete them, you'd get some incredible reward totally proportional to the challenge. This dungeon is strictly optional, but if you do manage to complete it you'll be rewarded with one of three of the most powerful items known to exist in Antharion! Expect multiple large scale boss battles here culminating in one gigantically epic final battle - taking down this dungeon will definitely give you something to feel proud of and to brag about.

More Environments - Antharion is a seamless massive open-world. From the start of the game you can go anywhere without restriction. Part of the challenge in creating an open world like this is to make a lot of different outdoor and dungeon environments so that the player isn't seeing the same tiles over and over again. So far this is something Antharion has done very well, but we'd like to take it a step further. If we hit the 20k mark we'll double the number of dungeon tile sets. That's twice as many dungeon types! ….And we'll add lots and lots of completely new outdoor tile sets as well.

5 Gigantic Boss Monsters - Everyone loves huge epic battles with gigantic monsters… each of these five unique bosses will reside at the end of their own dungeon and will take a lot of skill and effort to defeat. Each of them will also leverage Anthartion's smart monster AI system which allows monsters to do things like summon a minion, buff the minion, and then heal it when it takes damage - plus a whole lot more! We'll also create a custom AI for each of them so that their combat strategies are all totally unique in challenge and style.

Upgrading
For those of you still considering upgrading to help us reach our Stretch Goals, we recently added several new reward tiers to make it easier:

$50 - All Digital Pack - A PC or Mac digital download of Antharion, the wallpaper, the digital sountrack, beta access, a digital strategy guide + art book, alpha access, your name in Antharion's special thanks credits, the iPad version of Antharion, your name in an in-game book as one of the "Founders of Antharion", and a 50 page digital PDF comprised of Antharion's original hand-written design notes and sketches.

$80 - All Digital Design a NPC Pack (Limited Edition) - Includes everything from the $50 plus you'll get to design an NPC! Just send us your image and we'll have our artist create a pixel version of you - we'll even name the NPC after you. Become a part of the game! [Only 17 remaining]

Other Cool Projects
We just wanted to show our support for Days of Dawn. Another really great looking Kickstarter. They were kind enough to mention us in one of their previous updates. We really hope they can pull it through and we wish them best of luck!

Our Final Week Ahead
We're going into our last week which is the most crucial time for any campaign and we'll be kicking things into overdrive starting today with an update everyday until the end, so check back here daily. Also expect one or two major video updates demonstrating entirely new facets of our world and game play in the coming days. With your continued help and support there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to reach our 25k stretch goals and beyond!

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