Eldmoor: The Unbound

You wake on cold stone, inside a sarcophagus, with no memory of who you are. Something glints on the floor beside you. Far above, there is daylight.

Eldmoor: The Unbound is a top-down pixel-art RPG on an island of two kingdoms: Aldermark of the faith in the west, Veskar of learning and trade in the east. Climb out of the catacombs, find your way to the town of Ashford, and step into a world that goes on living whether you are watching or not.

A whole island, one step at a time

Eldmoor is one seamless world. Walk from the fishing villages of the west coast to the red sands of the east without a single loading screen: through eight duchies and 25 towns, villages and forts, past cursed forests, marshes and snowbound peaks, along roads where signposts point the way.

Every town has its people, and every person has a day to keep. Shopkeepers open in the morning and lock up in the evening, the smith has a drink at the inn after work, the sick stay home and cough, and somebody always knows the way to the place you are looking for.

Rain sweeps in over the moors, storms flash over the mountains, fog settles in the valleys. Torches light the crypts and walls throw real shadows. By day sheep and yaks graze on the slopes. After dark the bats come out, and sometimes the dead.

Stories that end more than one way

Twenty-one handwritten quests, and many of them can end in more than one way. Help someone or sell them out, spare a monster or strike a deal with it. Some choices cost gold, some cost friends, and some can never be undone.

• The lost princess. The duke’s daughter has been carried off by a dragon, says the notice in the tavern. The mercenaries’ guild won’t touch the job, and the town has a long memory and a short tongue.
• The salt well. A fishing village’s well has turned salt, and in the morning wet footprints lead away from it. Below it lies a reef of the merfolk, and you can stay down there only as long as you can hold your breath.
• The cold hearth. High in the peaks, giants guard a hearth that has gone cold, and they don’t let little ones in. Lift their stone, beat the two-headed one at dice, or come with the word of someone they trust.
• Things that should not be. People vanish from Ashford at night. A glade in the woods is full of statues that were not there before. Every seventh night, the cursed forest screams.
• A price for everything. Demons wait on the roads after dark, ready to grant a wish. They always name their price.

A hero with strengths, and flaws

• Five peoples, eight classes. Play a human, elf, dwarf, halfling or orc, and become a warrior, barbarian, rogue, ranger, mage, necromancer, priest or druid. Every people of the island takes to yours in its own way.
• Mentors and hidden paths. Each class has two specialisations, taught by mentors across the island, and a third kept secret until the story opens it. A mentor of another class can retrain you.
• Flaws worth playing. Leave an attribute at 1 and live with what it brings. With Strength 1 your bag holds half as much. With Dexterity 1 you trip over your own feet. With Intellect 1 the whole world speaks gibberish: names, quests, even your own replies.
• Death is not the end. Fall in battle and you wake where you last rested. Strike the wrong bargain and you may walk on as one of the undead, and a necromancer can rise again as a lich.

Living off the land

Gold is scarce on Eldmoor, and nobody hands it out.

• Take contracts from town notice boards: hunt a beast in its lair, bring back herbs, look in on a distant place.
• Lend a hand with odd jobs, pick wild herbs, rent a garden and grow your own.
• Catch marsh fever in the swamps or rat fever from a bite, and cure it with herbs, a cure-all or a priest.
• Trade with merchants whose prices change from kingdom to kingdom, and win or lose your purse at dice and twenty-one.

Steel, arrows and spells

• Swords, axes and maces, bows with a quiver of arrows, throwing knives and axes, and magic staves that shoot fire, frost and lightning.
• Over a hundred skills, from Shield wall and Backstab to Fireball, Raise the dead and a wolf companion at your side.
• More than 80 kinds of creatures, from cellar rats to a golden dragon. Gear comes in levels and grades, and 21 named items have stories of their own.
• Play in real time, or switch on turn-based mode and the world waits for your every move.

And also

• Nine languages: English, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Russian, Polish, Czech, German, Japanese and Chinese.
• Every visual effect, from rain to torchlight, can be switched off.

In development

Eldmoor: The Unbound is free and in active development. Version 0.1.2 holds the first chapter of the main story, 21 quests and the whole island to explore, from the catacombs to the bottom of the sea. More stories, places and peoples are on the way. Comments and bug reports are very welcome.

Controls

• Left mouse: walk, attack, talk, open, pick up. Hold it to keep walking.
• Right mouse: the skill in the bar’s RMB slot. 1 to 6: the skills and potions on the bar.
• I inventory, C character, K skills, M map, J journal, F5 save, Esc menu. Mouse wheel: zoom.