Steamboat Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is a single-player adventure-RPG set in a vintage Disney-esque universe in which you must befriend creatures, sail the dark seas and fight monsters in order to bring color back to monochromatic world.

The terrible Leviathan and his cronies have cursed the realm, leaving its inhabitants in colorless chaos and fear! The game strongly emphasizes sea exploration akin to: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and also contains creature collection, training and strategic turn-based battling systems similar to the classic Pokémon games.

Steamboat Billy's unique and dynamic art style grew out of our love of classic 1930s American cartoon aesthetics. We have re-mixed these vintage cartoon graphics, adding hints of Japanese anime to our characters and implemented modern animation techniques to enhance the game's visual effects.

ManaVoid Entertainment has launched a kickstarter campaign for Steamboat Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan, looking for 65,000 Canadian Dollar (aprox. 51,000 USD).

The inspiration we used to cover exploration in our game was The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker, in which you play a young boy who sails the seas. The idea of having the setting of our game in the ocean or the seas was particularly appealing because of the vastness, the looming dangers and the unknown world that lies under it all!

The scale of the map versus the player is something that we felt would give a real feeling of exploration. When you stumble upon a small island that you didn’t expect on your route, it’s a pleasant surprise and you can’t help but wonder what secrets can be found upon it! There will also be numerous treasure maps scattered across the world and if you can recognize the areas they depict on the map, you will be able to fish or dig for wondrous treasure!

The seas are also known to be treacherous… The constant danger looming over you, as your boat crosses choppy waters in a storm, is something that can’t be replicated in other settings. You’ll also have to be very mindful not to run out of gas, as this would put you at the complete mercy of the elements, as well as the creatures that dwell beneath the waves.

When you make a game about seafaring adventures, there absolutely needs to be tons of TREASURE! As you explore the waters and islands that compose the world, we want you to find cool and powerful items, building materials and also new creatures that will fight at your side during your travels. Collecting all of these elements in the game will be quite the challenge!

Inspired by the Pokémon game series, the creatures in Steamboat Billy will have different statistics, abilities, strengths and weaknesses that you will need to consider and balance, as you can only take a certain number of them on your boat. The rest can remain at Star Harbor and help the rebuilding efforts!

The premise of the game is that the world you once knew has been changed, somehow, by a dark tsunami. You awaken on the shores of Star Harbor, your home, and realize that all of the buildings and landmarks have been broken down or washed away. This leads you to go out into the wilds and find materials to rebuild the city!

This part of the game is interesting because the way the city gets built will be entirely in your hands! Do you want to build the blacksmith up before the tavern? Or perhaps the general store before the shipyard? Building each part of the city, and stocking up the stores you once knew, will require materials that can only be found through exploration!

Also, as color comes back into the world, you will be able to customize the colors to your liking!

After playing through hundreds of different RPGs during our lifetimes, we’ve found that some of the most entertaining ones were those that managed to create meaningful player engagement DURING combat sequences. This is why we decided to mix traditional RPG combat with quick time events (QTE) in our game, similar to the combat system seen in the classic Super Mario RPG!

Like most RPGs, the combat system in Steamboat Billy will be turn-based and feature actions like: Attack, Item, Defend, Abilities. That being said, while performing each of these actions, it will be possible to execute a QTE in order to get a critical hit or a dodge, depending on the chosen action! This will certainly bring a better dynamic to combat encounters, and give the player even more diversity when fighting with different creatures!

As fans of cartoons since we were kids, it was a no-brainer that our next game was going to be in the more circular american cartoon art style that Disney popularized. Seeing the critical successes of games like Cuphead, Hollow Knight and Bendy and the Ink Machine really cemented our decision as it showed that there are masses of people out there that love that style as much as we do!

The way we differentiate ourselves from the traditional style is through our character designs, which gives an anime-flair to the characters we bring to life, and through the use of modern animation techniques and visual effects!

To follow-up on the nostalgia of old-timey cartoons, our OST will be influenced by music of the era, but we also want to infuse this classic style with modern sounds and effects to give it a fresh new feel! We believe this will bring out the best of this already epic game experience!

Key Features:

• Defeat and capture chroma-crazed creatures to gradually restore color to a monochromatic world!
• Collect and build a team of skilled, quirky creatures to fight with you on your journey!
• Fish, salvage and craft items and buildings along the way!
• Engage in strategic, dynamic combat encounters inspired by old-school RPGs!

Steamboat Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is in development for PC, Switch, PS4 and Xbox One.