Grimshade officially coming to Switch

Talerock has been looking to fund its new project Grimshade on Kickstarter. The $100,000 goal was met today, and we can say for certainty that a Switch version is officially happening as well.

Grimshade, described as a “a story-driven tactical RPG featuring a turn-based combat system and non-linear progression”, is targeted for early 2019 on Switch. We have more information about the game below, along with a trailer.

Grimshade is a story-driven tactical RPG featuring a turn-based combat system and non-linear progression, set in a fantasy world. Lead a group of adventurers on a journey through the world of Ree’Fah. Each decision you make has a profound influence on the characters, the game’s story and the way battles are fought. Explore a varied and intricate world, meet new characters, reveal plot-related secrets and go treasure hunting; the world around changes as you advance and directs you further through the story.

– Proper positioning and awareness contribute more to your success than stat gains;
– Control the character’s performance during battles through party and equipment management available outside the battlefield;
– Large locations full of quests, secrets, dangers, and rewards for the player to explore;
– A living world where the environment, characters, and animations are hand-drawn and carefully put together by our artists, sets the atmosphere of your journey.
– A branching narrative, that makes the game’s progress depend strongly on your choices;

Gameplay
Grimshade is a fabulous adventure during which you explore a vast and rich world and fight formidable enemies. The gameplay is divided into two distinct phases – adventure and combat.

Adventure
Adventure mode is your exciting journey through Ree’Fah world. As well as progressing the story at your own pace, you will discover different races, acquire better equipment and meet new characters.

You are free to move within the area and choose your destinations: it’s up to you to decide whether to go to the nearest city or to look around in the current location, to complete some quests (and which ones) or to test your strength in a difficult dungeon. After completing all the plot-related quests, you leave the area to the next and never come back.
Unique residents with rich history inhabit each area you visit. Embrace the spirit of the local culture and spend your time interacting with the natives — you are sure to find something to help you on your main quest or discover a whole new adventure to go on. Of course, when the stakes are this high, conflict is unavoidable, so prepare for battle by choosing the right tools for the job – find, trade for, or craft a wide range of equipment to improve your characters and make them versatile and adaptable.

Combat system
We spent a lot of time and effort developing our unique approach to battles and making them as interesting and exciting as possible. Any unexpected turn of events can get you into a fight. The world is also inhabited by a lot of hostile creatures that you will have to defeat in the course of events.

At the start, you will have to pick a squad from your character’s team including up to 4 members. The battle takes place on a stage consisting of two opposite fields, where characters and enemies are located on their respective sides. Characters move and act in a specific order according to their initiative.

We developed a unique scenario for each battle. Each new enemy has their own features diversifying the fights and making you experiment and seek new approaches to succeed in the combat encounters. Naturally, each new battle requires more skill than the previous one.

We have not forgotten about the tactical battles lovers. Some locations in Grimshade include special missions – hostile dungeons of a higher level of complexity. Here, every encounter with the boss turns into a mortal game of wits. Think over your strategy and prepare a squad that will be able to go through the dungeon in one go. In the end, you’ll get a well-deserved reward!

Heroes
Although Grimshade is a single-player game, you won’t be traveling alone. Advancing through the story, you’ll get acquainted with seven heroes. Their personalities, focus, and backgrounds are pre-set, but you can control their skills and develop the relationship between the party members.

We hope to add another hero soon after reaching one of the goals, and the script of the game suggests twelve of them.

Story
After the Great Flood, being torn apart by the heirs of Amon Darvish the Great and long-running civil war, the Kingdom of Easeon split into three states. Ree’Fah witnessed the dark age for both livs and eleores. Nevertheless, after years of wandering, each group of people still managed to find a haven from the dreadful lands of the Hardfore continent, inhabited by monsters. Amazing technologies, the legacy of ancestors, secret knowledge of the world’s nature, great and splendid objectives of the future were lost forever during battles for survival and hard work on settling the new society on the ruins of ancient cities, hostile wastelands, and dangerous mountain highlands.

Eighty years have passed. When old wounds almost healed and people just embarked on the road to prosperity, new enemy forces gained the power to enter the scene, threatening the fragile stability of every living creature’s life in the world.

Art
During one and a half years of development, the visual component of Grimshade has changed a lot. From a stylized watercolor environment with 2D characters, we moved on to adding 3D models of characters to the 2D world, creating our own shader, and a detailed environment.

Our artists drew the whole game by hand and carefully put it together, that’s why the world of Ree’Fah is full of life even in the most secluded corners. Hope you can feel this!

You can find the Kickstarter page for Grimshade here.