Narrative-heavy adventure game Near-Mage announced for Switch

Stuck In Attic has announced Near-Mage, a narrative-heavy adventure game. The project is planned for Switch, though there’s no word on release timing at present.

Here’s an overview of Near-Mage, along with a trailer:

Near-Mage is a narrative-heavy adventure game with a bit of role-playing DNA that aims to appeal to hardcore players of the genre and newcomers alike.

You’re Illy Vraja, a teenager at a crossroads in her life who gets invited to Transylvania by her mysterious Great-Aunt, Domnica, only to find out she comes from a long line of witches, and is entitled to enroll in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick!

As a Near-Mage, you are entering a summer preparatory school, hoping to graduate into a full-fledged spell caster. You’ll take classes in different types of Magick and see how you can use your growing powers to affect the lives of those you come across.

We are from Transylvania, Romania ourselves, so we’re doing a deep dive into its rich lore, legends and superstitions, heavily drawing on them in creating Near-Mage’s dark and colorful world.

Travel freely between three main hubs: the real-life town of Sighișoara, the mythical town of Rakus, that lies beyond a magickal veil and cannot be seen by most, and the Transylvanian Institute for Magick.

Near-Mage will allow for a lot of freedom when approaching the situations you’ll encounter within the Transylvanian Institute for Magick and its surroundings. When it comes to spell-crafting, you can choose what type of classes you’re taking on a whim, or you can look up recipes in a spellbook and strategize your build.

This build variety will in turn lead to different outcomes for some quest lines, affect certain NPCs’ fates, and result in high replayability. Maybe you’ve erased an NPC’s memory on your first play-through. What if you used a different spell on them this time around… or no spell at all?

You’ll be able to play Near-Mage as a point and click, or you can control the character directly. Walk to your objectives, run at full speed, or even fly there!

Make friends or enemies with fellow students, learn to be closer to your magickal calling, and lift the veil off of ancient mysteries in Near-Mage!

Key Features

– Study spell crafting in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick as a Near-Mage;
– Experience a deep and engaging story that plays like an adventure game;
– Craft your own spell inventory, use it with different results in every play-through;
– Dozens of vampyres, pricolitch, moroi, strigoi, ghouls, shtima – your spells change their lives for better or worse;
– Hand-painted in glorious 4K and traditionally animated frame-by-frame;
– Dozens of itemized outfits and hairstyles to customize your main character;
– A game about Transylvania made by Transylvanians!

Stuck In Attic has raised nearly $100,000 on Kickstarter to help create Near-Mage. If you’re interested in contributing, you can do so here.

Thanks to mind_combatant for the tip.