Ritual: Crown of Horns is a slaughterhouse.

Inspired by a variety of unique takes on the Western genre, from Alejandro Jodorowsky’s "El Topo" and Clint Eastwood’s "High Plains Drifter" to cult "The Wild Wild West" TV series. It's a wild tale of an unlikey duo: a bounty hunter who comes back from beyond a grave, yearning to exact revenge on his homeland, and a witch who aids him with a series of powerful rituals to further her own secret goals.

You were a lawman on a mission to track down a dangerous witch. Upon reaching your goal, you found yourself in a fatal ambush prepared by horned beast-like men. Your death was probably just collateral damage. Not one of your government supervisors cared. Now, brought back from beyond the grave by the dark magic of the witch you were supposed to take out, you find yourself in a forced alliance against a common enemy.

Understand the powers responsible for your misery and get rid of them once and for all. Make friends and enemies along the way. Visit places inspired by real locations in the United States and discover their myths. Look for symbols that the Land of the Free was based on and purify them. Ritual: Crown of Horns is a game about icons and myths, and tales we tell ourselves in order to make sense of our world and our identity. It’s about facing the unfaceable and living to tell the tale.

“We’ve been working on Ritual: Crown of Horns for quite a while now and the game went through some radical design changes during that process. Last year we made a decision: either we’re going to start over and make a prototype that we feel is exciting and fun or we’re going to scrap the game and, maybe, get back to it some time in the future. As you can see: we’ve made it, the prototype was fun and it only kept getting better as the time passed. However, it became clear that we will need some help: because of Ritual’s arcade gameplay and the way it’s structured, we’re going to need you - the Players - to help us in developing the game further.”

“Currently we aim for Fall 2019 as a launch date for the full version of Ritual - it will take roughly 4-5 months to finish the game. However, it depends on how YOU are going to react to what you’re going to see and what kind of features you’d like us to include and how long it’s going to take us to fix all the bugs.”

“We have some plans for the full version that we will share, and will keep sharing, with our community -- things that we want to see in the game but just didn’t have the time to implement properly yet. For example: we are going to include the full storyline in one of our major patches. We are also going to add more levels (our current aim is around 50, in contrast to 18 available now), more challenges and spells, and other things we’ve always planned for. Other major feature is the Real World Data-driven challenge mode that’s going to arrive in one of the patches and also -- to be honest -- we need to gather your feedback and listen to you closely while designing the Endless Mode and accessibility features we want to include in the full game.”

Key Features:

• a unique auto-aiming system that distinctly sets itself apart from your average twin-stick shooters: instead of spraying and praying, you are an elite gunslinger who makes every shot count.
• a satisfying arsenal: shotguns, six-shooters, rifles, crossbows, and a few surprises that are a little less era-appropriate.
• outrageous enemies: brainwashed cultists, supernatural legendary creatures, bizarre murderous contraptions – you name it.
• gear: mysterious capes, hoods and amulets that you can customize and get powerful buffs for your character.
• creative spells and power-ups that can violently alter the way you approach each combat encounter.
• plenty of insane levels for you to master, each complete with unique challenges tailored to push the combat system to its limits.
• a unique gothic-horror-meets-weird-western artstyle.

Ritual: Crown of Horns is in development for PC, coming to Steam Early Access in Q2 2019.