Kot In Action, the developers behind the Steel Storm series, has announced the alpha release of their forthcoming Tomes of Mephistopheles title.
For those where this is the first time hearing about this new Kot In Action title, the developers describe the game as “a first-person action-RPG dungeon crawler. With its fast-paced fluid combat, a multitude of medieval and magical weapons, an in-depth custom spell system, and randomly generated persistent worlds, ToM is a pinnacle of the genre.”
Like Steel Storm, this new game is also using the DarkPlaces engine. DarkPlaces is the very advanced open-source Quake Engine modification that also powers Nexuiz, Xonotic, and other games.
Those interested in trying out Tomes of Mephistopheles can try out the alpha for $10 USD, which the developers are using to fund the game’s development. More details about the game can be learned from the ToM web-site or from the alpha trailer video embedded below.
Alexander Zubov, the founder of Kot in Action, wrote an email to Phoronix with additional details. Zubov wrote, “We are really hoping that with the help of Linux gamers we can raise the money needed to continue game [development] full time for at least few month so we could make bigger advancements with Tomes of Mephistopheles and Steel Storm 2. To accomplish that we need to sell 3,000 copies of Tomes of Mephistopheles (Steel Storm 2 hasn’t made it into alpha yet as we are still digging up Unigine to determine whether it will be feasible to make the game using Unigine vs DarkPlaces).”
It certainly would be interesting to see Steel Storm 2 running off the Unigine Engine, which is far more advanced than DarkPlaces, but we’ll save that for another article.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py7HJiOeJjw&w=480&h=274]