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Nephil's Fall

Platform(s): PC
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Exordium Games
Release Date: Q4 2015

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'Nephil's Fall' Announced, Seeks Crowd Funding - Screens & Trailer

by Rainier on Feb. 25, 2015 @ 2:34 p.m. PST

Nephil's Fall is a 2D fantasy platformer, telling the story of a fallen guardian and his sacrifice in a corrupted world.

You’re Nephil. An ancient guard. Your task was to protect the four essences of life. But dark forces put you in coma and once you woke up you realized, that the world around you isn’t the same anymore. Dark forces have stolen four essences you were supposed to guard. To redeem yourself, you must sacrifice your powers, set off to find the source of corruption and restore the balance of the world.

Nephil's Fall, at its heart, is a metroidvania platformer. Exploration through action-adventure based play is the basic principle of the game. There will be different paths to take, secrets to uncover, abilities to master and timed jumps to execute. These are the core mechanics that define a great genre. And developers want not only to stay true to the gameplay experiences of Nephils’ predecessors but also improve on them with a rich story and new gameplay mechanics.

Exordium Games has launched a kickstarter campaign, looking for $30.000, to finish the development of Nephil's Fall. Interested fans can also support the game on Steam Greenlight.

"The game's plot and unique mechanics allow us to turn the genre upside down. We are doing our best to keep the core of metroidvania gameplay but induced with a lot of innovation. The choice of sacrifice will allow players to discover new paths for exploration and hidden gems," said Andrej Konvacevic, Game Designer‏.

To achieve this ambitious task developers decided to implement two core, unique gameplay mechanic to the game. First Nephil gains additional abilities and spells through the power of the four essences. Each of the essences has been locked into four segments of his armor, one for each power. The life essences of fire, earth, air and water give Nephil control over flame, ground, wind and water. Each essences gives Nephil specific abilities, ranging from a ground smashing slam to face melting fireballs.

But the twist here is, that unlike in many other platformers out there, where you start week and end super strong and skilled, here as a fallen guardian, you will start out with all the powers a demi-god has but you will have to sacrifice them to progress and eventually bring balance back to the world.

The sacrifice gameplay mechanics works in two ways:

  1. First to pass certain portals into different environments and levels, you will need to choose which armor piece (and thus its essence power) you’ll leave behind temporarily. This gives you a tactical choice: decide which of your abilities you can do without for the time being.
  2. Second - in order to restore balance to the environment Nephil needs to permanently sacrifice one of his essences by giving it back to nature. This means Nephil is getting weaker throughout the game and in result you, as a player, will have to become more skilled to compensate for the lack of abilities.

The other unique solution implemented in the game and heavily based on its story is that in Nephil’s Fall you will not travel from left to right, like in most platformer games, but in fact you will be going backwards, from right to left. This is to emphasize that in the game it doesn’t really matter what will happen in the future, as it’s in fact way more important what happened in the past. In the end this is what pushed you in this journey in the first place.

All those gameplay solutions are packed in a beautifully drawn and originally designed world heavily inspired in style by Japanese culture, art and jRPGs.


Key Features:

  • Classic platformer mechanics – run, jump, double-jump, roll!
  • Four essences of fire, water, earth and wind, which enhance your abilities and make you a demi-god.
  • Sacrifice your abilities to restore order to the world and discover what really happened.
  • Master each environment in your own play style.
  • Start strong with loads of abilities , but give them up along the way and become a master of those you have chosen to keep.

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