A Necromancer Origin Story

In The Necromancer’s Tale, you play as a minor noble in the 1700s, initially carefree and privileged, but gradually dragged into black magic and necromancy. It’s a necromancer origin story structured around an arcane spellbook that comes into your possession.

The acquisition, deciphering, and implementation of rituals and spells is a big focus in the game: the process itself and the effect it has on your sanity is central to the plot.

As the game progresses, revelations about the past and the politics of the present provide the motivation to draw you forwards through the spellbook. By about one-third of the way through, you will be raising your first skeletons, then using them as protection as you delve into caves, catacombs and forests to find the ritual items you need.

The ritual which awakens zombies is a big break-through by the mid-game. As well as equipping them, you’ll find yourself acquiring rituals of repair to keep your undead party in fighting shape. You need to build a mini-army of 10-15 minions to get you through the mid-game combats, and you’ll need to keep them hidden from the townsfolk who (largely) suspect little, so far....

The open-world offers lots of side content, some of which will allow you to acquire battle magic spells separate from the rituals of your spellbook, and to summon and enslave some daemons and a wraith.You may also get involved in the chemical-reanimation of a patchwork body, and add a more sentient party member.

Combat-Mode and Story-Mode

Although building your “party” is central to the game, it is more narrative-driven than combat-driven overall (400k words of narrative/lore, and 180+ unique NPCs). You can play in “Story Mode” if you wish, which allows you to skip the turn-based combats themselves and have them auto-resolved based on the calculated combat-rating of the two opposing forces.

The Necromancer's Tale has been picked as part of the London Games Festival 2025 Official Selection, April 3rd & 4th 2025.

We'll be there demoing it-- and would love to meet you! :-)

The Necromancer’s Tale runs great on the Steam Deck, and we’ve been doing a lot of our current playtesting on it.

Graphics
The game runs at 60fps on full graphics settings on the native Deck resolution. Text size is configurable.

Controls
The schematic below shows the game controls for the Steam Deck. You can play the game entirely using the two joysticks and buttons.

The joysticks move your character and virtual mouse pointer. During normal play the D-Pad is used for cycling through nearby hotspots (and you can use A to interact with one and automatically walk up to it). During conversation, the D-Pad cycles through your chat choices. The triggers and bumpers do a variety of camera controls and other in-game things that you would normally do with the mouse buttons/wheel.

Virtual Mouse
The right stick controls the mouse pointer, and settings include top-speed and acceleration. We have found this to be a very good replacement for mouse/touchscreen. In general, ‘A’ is equivalent to clicking the left mouse button, and ‘B’ is equivalent to pressing Escape.

The virtual mouse is used, and works very well, during inventory management and combat, which are the most complex parts of the game in terms of mouse control.

Keyboard
An onscreen keyboard appears when you need to enter text (which is rare- it’s generally just at the start when naming your character, or when renaming a save file). You can use the virtual mouse (or of course the touchscreen) to type.

Steam Cloud
The game saves to Steam Cloud so you can move seamlessly between Deck and PC play.

Touchscreen
The Deck's touchscreen works just fine, of course, if you wish to use it, but the game plays perfectly without it.

XBox Controller
The game runs equally well on PC using an XBox controller. Here too you can comfortably play without need for keyboard or mouse.

Fans and supporters, we are resetting the game release date and this announcement contains a full status update including the rationale for the new date. A huge thank you to the team who have at this point implemented over 350,000 words in the game narrative, over 180 unique NPCs, a robust combat system, and an incredible city and environs.

The bulk of game content is now in place, and has been heavily tested from a bugs point of view, but we need some more time to do playthrough testing, balancing, and content tweaks. Please continue to report bugs in the demo, in particular the specific places where you find you can run through walls - this has been an ongoing challenge since we implemented and continue to improve free-movement with WASD/joystick control. We would like to say a huge thank-you to our supporters who continue to help us improve overall quality.

We want to ensure we release the game to our highest achievable standard and trust therefore that your patience will continue as we endeavour to bring you the best experience we can.

We have implemented over 350,000 words in the game narrative, with about 25,000 words left to write. Books, lore, and journal notes are complete and add about 25,000 more, bringing the game to around 400,000 in total. This has been a huge undertaking over the last 4 years, involving a writing team of 8 part-time writers/editors.

Over 180 unique NPCs are now in the game, playing major and minor roles in the game plots, as well as many having their own sidequests. Almost all have partial voice-acting, from our 25 voice actors.

The combat system is core-complete, having undergone some major revisions in the last 2 years. A few battle-magic spells and crafted battle-potions remain to implement- these generally require knowledge that you pick up while exploring dungeons, forests and ruins.

The over-world is complete, including the city and its environs (forests, cemeteries, canyons). Building interiors are complete, as are most of the underground and arcane areas (caves, crypts, catacombs, realms of the dead)- some small underground regions remain to complete.


End-2024: Core content complete - main quests and sidequests.
Feb 2025 Controllers & Steam Deck finalising & certifying.
March 2025: Completion of voice and ambient sound.
April 2025: Completion of additional narrative and open-world side content.
May 2025: Completion of Battle-magic and Potions.

Balancing (trust and tension systems, skillchecks, combats) to run Feb-May 2025.
Coverage playtests to run Feb-April 2025.

May 2025: Release-Announcement Trailer
May 2025: New Demo (with unseen content)
June 2025: Steam NextFest
Late June/early July 2025: Game Release.

The Necromancer's Tale free demo is in the Steam Scream Fest 2024!

A major focus of the game is gaining the power to raise the dead, through rituals and spells - and then to use them as your personal army. In order to progress, you will need to explore dangerous crypts, dungeons, and wilderness areas - and for this, skeletons and zombies make ideal bodyguards.

As the game continues, you'll gain access to various other magical and undead allies/slaves, including the ghost of an ancient shaman, a reanimated flesh golem, a wight, and some daemons.

The Royal Ball occurs mid-game, at which point the player has solved the murder-mystery focus of the first half of the game, while gaining their fledgling necromantic powers. Their reality is confused now, as they struggle to come to terms with the duality of the mortal realm and the realm of the dead, while building their power in order to exact revenge on the murderer.

In the Royal Ball, the player navigates the complex social circles of 1730s nobility, while having ghosts and demons whispering lies in their ears. The player is trying to gain evidence to prove their father's killer, and narrative choices offer the risk of exposing the player's rising insanity, and having them ejected from the ball or even arrested. The process is framed as a mini-game where Concern, Suspicion, and Stress rise towards crisis levels…

Lord Richard Carnell is a weaselly sycophant, closest adviser to the Baron, and deeply suspicious of the player. He could have critical information, if he can be manipulated the right way.

Lady Agnes Carnell, the cold, enigmatic wife of Richard: stuck in a loveless marriage and harbouring one or two valuable secrets, and a flirtatious nature…

Marija and Stanislav are a couple from the northern provinces of Rulsthen. New money, newly wedded, and irritatingly in love.

The great English writer Alexander Pope is a guest at the Ball, researching his great Essay on Man, as well as a more secretive work. A useful contact and ally, perhaps, if you can stand his pompous language.

Ali Mustafa Pasha is a vizier from the Ottoman Empire, accompanied by his magical servant, a Djinn, who cannot be seen by ordinary mortals but who can see the player and some of their crimes.

The player’s uncle Jervase Van Elstrik, the Baron himself, is a man under pressure and grieving for his brother (your father).

Mirabel Van Elstrik is the player’s aunt, wife of the Baron. A sad woman haunted by her own ghosts.

In The Necromancer's Tale, a major focus for the player is building up their army of the dead, to protect them when exploring, and eventually to march against their enemies. This involves researching and practicing black magic rituals as well as a variety of spells that can be cast during combat.

Combat itself is turn-based, and involves a potent mix of undead minions and 18th-century "conventional" weapons.

The game uses a (skippable) Interactive Fiction style prologue to set your backstory and skills, and to let you explore the game's lore and history before beginning the main game-play. It's a 10,000-word, fully-voice acted narration.

Watch some footage here, or try it in the demo!

The game has over 150 unique NPCs, each with their own portrait art and side quests. Partial voice acting is included. In this clip, meet the shifty and suspicious Haelan the herbalist.