A new dungeon crawler just entered Early Access. One of the developers described it as "Gauntlet mixed with Dungeon Master". It is action and arcade oriented - and looks like it may be a lot of fun.

It is played in first person, it is in real time and does not have grid based combat. You control a team of 4 players, and it will be at least 5 classes in the end. Each person will have 2 active skills, 1 passive and 1 ultimate skill. You need to constantly rotate between characters in combat to manage skills and cooldowns.

The game will have roguelike elements, such as permadeath of characters, randomised environments and puzzles as well as randomised loot (in first person and in real time - take that purists!). It will have a town with guilds, stores and places to hire heroes.

It is very much in early access at the moment, but I think it shows some very good potential.


Website - http://battlecursed.com/home/

Early Access Launch Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9dlxmVAGv8

Steam page - http://store.steampowered.com/app/454370/Battlecursed/

gOg wishlist - https://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/battlecursed

That sounds incredibly annoying, given that it is real-time. They should either abandon that mechanic, or else make the game turn-based.

not at all. imagine it as a FPS where you have 8 weapons to choose from

Yes, but don't usually cycle through them firing one shot at a time. Anyways it looks ok, I agree the cycling may be a game killer. Is there a pause also, or is it pure arcade.

I.e. Is it like hexen with the addition of switching characters?

its not quite one at at a time, you have to be tactical to manage the cooldowns and avoid getting swarmed.

There is no pause, as the focus is on action (i.e. Gauntlet in first person with a team)

I think the combat needs explaining. it is a bit unusual, and I think many had the first reservations as I had when I first saw it, but it actually works. It kind of makes it a FPS without ammo, but with a bit more tactical considerations on which 'weapon' you use.

There is a screenshot below, in which I have made some annotation to show how you fight. Keep in mind that movements are standard FPS - look with mouse, move with WASD. First of all, you can see the 4 characters in this party (in this case two elementailists and two hunters). They are here numbered 1,2,3 and 4. On the bottom of each portrait you can see their active skills (annotated as F1-F8). Each skill has a cooldown (fast attacks from about 4 sec, up to half a min for heals and heavy AoE).

There are two ways to use a skill. Firstly, in this image, #2 is the active character (the larger portrait). You can select who is the active char by pressing 1-4 number keys. The active chars skills can be used by clicking left or right mouse button, respectively for left or right skill. Alternatively, I can use the other chars skills by using the corrosponding F-keys. So if I want to have the hunter here active to use "Snipe" with left mouse button, i can still use #4 elementalists skill "Explosive Sphere" by pressing F7. When a skill is used, it is grayed out and a clock ticks down the cooldown until it can be used again.

it maybe seems a bit messy, but it works very well when you get into it. The only thing missing for me now, is that i would like to rebind the keys, I would like to have the skills on the number keys and the chars selection on z,x,c and v.

Hope this makes sense. It makes for a dungeon crawler which is a bit more actiony and fluid than most.