ANATHEMA - Official Announcement + Trailer (1080p)

Welcome to our brand new Clickteam Community Hub! We hope you will enjoy using the new features, which we will be further expanding in the coming months.

A few features including Passport are unavailable initially whilst we monitor stability of the new platform, we hope to bring these online very soon. Small issues will crop up following the import from our old system, including some message formatting, translation accuracy and other things.

Thank you for your patience whilst we've worked on this and we look forward to more exciting community developments soon!

Clickteam.

    UPDATED 7/15/2017:

    The below info is outdated and a new version of Anathema is in development. You will find this thread evolves over time into the new version, and it has been left intact so that the evolution of the game is documented. You can grab the demo at any of the following links:

    STEAM
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    INDIEDB
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    ITCH.IO
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    OFFICIAL WEBSITE
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    NEW TRAILER
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    ----OLD VERSION----

    Hello everyone,

    After working endlessly for the last 4 months, it is time to officially unveil what I have been working on.


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    ---TRAILER---
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    ---STORY---
    During the late 14th century, the angel of death, Azrael - fell out of favor with God and launched a campaign to create an army using the souls he was meant to deliver for judgement. He unleashed a terrible plague that devastated millions, giving him the souls he needed to wage war on humanity. During this time, a rancher and squire named Corbin Delacroix endeavored on a quest to slay the fallen angel. He was successful in his task, and with the angel of death destroyed, Corbin inherited the powers of Azrael. He journeyed throughout the continent, liberating the souls that were once under Azrael's dark spell.

    Many years passed, and Corbin's divine task began to take a toll on his body. A cult led by a vampire sorceress named Aeron sought to restore power to Azrael saw their opportunity, and killed the weakened Corbin. However, Corbin's powers transferred into his next of blood - his daughter, Aurora.

    Now, using the deathly angelic powers she has inherited, alongside the whip her father crafted from the bones of Azrael, she seeks out to avenge the death of her father - and slay the resurrected angel once and for all.


    ---GAMEPLAY---
    Developed using a custom platform engine, players will use a gamepad (designed for Xbox 360 gamepads) to traverse stages in various settings, using multiple subweapons with special powers and her whip to swing across chasms and slay enemies. Players can expect classic platformer action with modern graphics and sound running at 1080p 60fps.


    ---SCREENSHOTS---
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    ---THE BIG IDEA---
    I have always loved the Castlevania series, in both the classicvania and metroidvania incarnations. The problem is, Konami has not issued a new Classicvania style game since 2009's Castlevania - The Adventure Rebirth. That was almost 6 years ago. Some may abhor the fact that I am trying to somewhat make it feel like Castlevania. I make no contest that this game is heavily inspired by the aforementioned title, but my whole heart is in the fact that Konami has left the Classic/Metroidvania styles out to dry for quite some time now. My hope is that fans of the series will enjoy this game, if nothing else, to tide us over until Konami issues an official 2D Castlevania.


    So there you have it. Anathema in a nutshell. I hope that you all will look forward to this project as it develops.
    Presently, there is an alpha demo that is being polished, and will be at the 2015 GDC, but until it is further developed and I launch the Steam Greenlight campaign, it isn't available for download yet.

    Thanks, everybody for reading!
    If you want to keep up with the project, you can like my page on Facebook at Please login to see this link. and Twitter @esperware

    -Matt

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    Edited 3 times, last by piscesdreams (July 15, 2017 at 3:11 PM).

    I have made a quick new video of some of the gameplay up to the sub-boss, some things are still needing to be revamped like the stairs animation, but the whip swing has been updated, as well as other minor things. 1080p 60fps is recommended for best viewing.


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    Nice! The game definitely has that japaneesy feeling, and evoked the memories of both earlier Diablo and Castlevania games. The character art and animations are cool. Was that main character digitized? :D (man, that would be fun to see these days)

    Some of the scenery is a bit awkward with its perspective. If you still want to polish the backgrounds, you should make 'em match more, for example with some single-colored atmospheric haze. Though the distant scenery is quite nice looking, its a bit too sharp and detailed for my taste. I'm not trying to be nitpicky, since the walls and castles are cool, but I just feel that the art way back in the distance could be almost silhouette, and certainly out of focus more.

    That's just my take on the art, great work overall! :)

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    SirRandom - I hear ya. I am constantly looking at stuff a week, a month or more later and tweaking it as I see things. The graphics are all prerendered 3d sprites, though digitizing would be awesome too! Can you be a bit more specific on the parts that you think need some tweaking? I am always open to feedback.

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    Yeah! Well, everything that's more than 10 meters further into the distance should have some sort of blending haze in my eyes.

    For example in the latest alpha build gameplay footage the mountains way back are done nicely and beautifully, but my eyes struggle with the fence posts and the mausoleum(?) in the background. Because they are both as sharp and with the same depth of field, they seem like they are equally close to the camera.

    In the section which starts at 2:44, the mountains in the distance should be a bit more out of focus, have an atmospheric haze or both. The prerendered art is nice and sharp, but it's so close to "photoreal" style that our eyes view it differently, than say, the 8bit or 16bit Castlevania games. :)

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    Looking good! For some reason it's reminding me of the old Shinobi game on the SEGA Saturn. Hope it's not as hard, that game was the impossible game of my childhood haha. Keep up the excellent work so far!

    Beatiful work with the graphics and the game play looks very nice too. There is a game on the nintendo DS called soul of darkness, its a pretty nice castlevania clone, check it out if you can. keep up the good work.

    The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied -Pro 13:4

    Thanks for the feedback and kind words!

    I agree, some animations are very much placeholder. I will be revamping the walk and stairs animations.

    Sometimes I wish I had a PC Kinect to motion capture the animations instead of hand animating.

    I have never heard of Soul of Darkness, but will definitely check it out!

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