By John Walker on October 18th, 2012 at 12:00 pm.
Alientrap, they behind the absolutely superb Capsized, have released a trailer for their new game – Apotheon. Sit up and take notice, because if you didn’t play Capsized, you missed out on one of the best PC platformers in ages. Apotheon is calling itself a 2D Action RPG.
Sword-n-spear based combat is already looking lovely in the 2D paper-craft animation. Embracing the Black Figure style of Greek pottery art, it uses silhouetted figures to what looks like splendid effect to me. We first mentioned it back in February, and now you can see it moving. Take a look:
So Hera has overthrown Zeus, and is taking out her rage on the mortals. You play humanity’s last champion, side-scrolling through the land of the dead in order to infiltrate Mount Olympus. Apparently said mountain is to be a “massive open world”, for the single player campaign. And there are plans for multiplayer deathmatch and team-based modes. Not a lot more is known at this point, but we’ll be hounding Alientrap for more details.
Meanwhile you should definitely check out Capsized via Steam. There’s a demo too.
18/10/2012 at 12:07 Hmm-Hmm. says:
That’s a really neat artstyle.
18/10/2012 at 13:18 Eddy9000 says:
Really does look amazing doesn’t it? I always think you can tell a good idea when it makes you think “why hasnt this been done before?”
18/10/2012 at 13:36 Porkolt says:
Except http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW9xrGCvQxY
18/10/2012 at 16:43 Tatourmi says:
Actually what really bugs me is that their style is almost perfectly coherent, appart from the effects they use for weapons and fires, and animal bites. And it really put me off quite a bit. Don’t make sort of “fancy disappearing lanes” behind weapons, none of that ever existed back in the day. Nothing should be transparent, or colourful. They should, in my opinion, have stuck with it to the end.
18/10/2012 at 18:52 Brise Bonbons says:
Have to agree with this, those elements felt very jarring to me. Especially when combined with the fast gameplay and frantic movement…
I guess I just like action and movement a bit more restrained/naturalistic for my slow old eyes.
19/10/2012 at 05:09 crinkles esq. says:
Agreed, that’s definitely the one bit that stood out to me. That, and I’m a bit leery about the combat mechanics. But generally, I love what I see here.
18/10/2012 at 17:19 Magrippinho says:
It certainly looks beautiful, but it’s also a bit confusing from a gameplay standpoint, as your character, and your enemies as well as other things of interest, don’t really “pop”.
It’s not too bad though, thanks to everything being pretty clean & crisp… I bet that wouldn’t have been possible before the trend of high-res sprites… and that’s why we haven’t seen it that much.
In other news, if we were actually using Greek letters, the title in the end would read: “AROTHEOP”
18/10/2012 at 22:12 dsch says:
Actually, it would read LROTEEOP (first E is a long eta, the second epsilon).
18/10/2012 at 12:16 Oozo says:
“2D Action RPG” in a world inspired by Greek mythology? Gives me a very welcome “Battle of Olympus”-flashback. Even if it’s nothing like it, though, at already looks absolutely lovely.
19/10/2012 at 04:37 abandonhope says:
Indeed. That game mystified and enchanted my stupid kid brain in a most wonderful way.
18/10/2012 at 12:23 Crazy Horse says:
I trust not games bearing Greeks.
18/10/2012 at 13:47 maninahat says:
How much does a Grecian earn anyway?
18/10/2012 at 13:57 Prime says:
Not much these days, sadly. Next year I plan to holiday in Greece and visit the ruins of their economy.
18/10/2012 at 14:18 maninahat says:
…
18/10/2012 at 19:06 ElVaquero says:
Don’t worry, I saw what you did there. And it was pretty great.
18/10/2012 at 14:51 zeroskill says:
Just be sure to not go anywhere near their military installations…
18/10/2012 at 14:55 beetle says:
It depends on how much they’re owed.
18/10/2012 at 21:11 belgand says:
I can never remember the Grecian formula to calculate that properly.
18/10/2012 at 22:46 Prokroustis says:
http://goo.gl/dYWa1
19/10/2012 at 00:14 Dwizzy says:
If you are greek this is funny. If you aren’t, I hope your country goes bankrupt and you have to worry about making enough money to feed your family.
18/10/2012 at 12:24 Everyone says:
Hera surely?
Uh, Diablo was 2d, so was D2, D3, Torchlight …. I could go on. I think they mean “Side Scrolling Action RPG”?
It looks amazing!!
18/10/2012 at 12:34 El Mariachi says:
Huh? The two Ds don’t have to be north-south/east-west for something to be “2D.” Up-down/left-right counts.
(Look at the difference between the 2D universes of Flatland and Planiverse.)
18/10/2012 at 12:39 Zanchito says:
I don’t care, my monitor is so crappy everything looks 2D on the screen.
18/10/2012 at 13:53 Everyone says:
Urm, see my other response below. :-)
18/10/2012 at 13:06 John Walker says:
Huh – the stupid autocorrect in my brain had my fingers retype that. Fixed.
But no, it’s definitely in 2D.
18/10/2012 at 13:53 Everyone says:
Yes, it’s 2D but but my point is that so are all of the other A-RPGs I mentioned, so “2D” does not distinguish it; being side scrolling as opposed to top down view does though.
(And before some scallywag says “Diablo 3 was 3d!”, yes the graphics are build 3d but the environment is 2d.)
18/10/2012 at 14:15 XenonMD says:
Isometric I say!
18/10/2012 at 12:34 Cytrom says:
Nice way to turn a greek vase into a videogame.
18/10/2012 at 13:20 Eddy9000 says:
Someone should make a Grayson Perry vase into a computer game, I’d buy that in a second.
18/10/2012 at 12:38 Ansob says:
That plot has some really unfortunate undertones.
18/10/2012 at 12:45 JackShandy says:
Like most of greek mythology, I guess?
18/10/2012 at 13:26 Unaco says:
Like most of mythology, I guess?
18/10/2012 at 16:09 Crazy Horse says:
A female villain? Those sexist bastards!
18/10/2012 at 21:15 belgand says:
Hera always was kind of a jerk in the myths though. At the same time it was usually because Zeus was a philandering asshole as well. Frankly, all of the gods were pretty much terrible. If anything they were symbolic more of negative human traits and vices than as beacons of what humans should aspire to be.
I’m still waiting on the cartoon that recasts them all as high school stereotypes. It would work far too easily.
19/10/2012 at 17:34 smacky says:
I take it you haven’t seen “Xena: Warrior Princess.”
18/10/2012 at 12:43 El Mariachi says:
Do they know that the logo at the end of the trailer says “LROTHEOP”
People, stop using Greek and Cyrillic letters as the Latin ones they resemble, it looks stupid.
The game looks lovely though.
18/10/2012 at 12:49 Gap Gen says:
Yes, this game looks neat, but its official title is now LROT-HEOP.
18/10/2012 at 13:08 zbmott says:
Actually, transliterated to English it’d be closer to ‘LROTEEOP’– the Η is a capital η (eta). The Greeks didn’t have a letter for our ‘H’, just a diacritical to indicate aspiration/rough breathing. What bugs me most if they had just done it right (‘ΑΠΟΘΕΟΝ’), it’d still look pretty cool.
But yeah, I’m really stoked for the black figure style, and I’ll be buying this one as soon as it comes out.
18/10/2012 at 14:13 Berzee says:
They probably didn’t want everyone referring to their game as Anooeon.
18/10/2012 at 14:14 particlese says:
Moldy physics memories (mostly just lower-case letters and trying to figure out how to write ξ) made me read that as “Apotheop” at first glance, which I think sounds much more amusing, but I like your “ΑΠΟΘΕΟΝ” proposal.
Looking forward to playing this, at any rate!
18/10/2012 at 15:59 Danny252 says:
Thank god I’m not the only one who was confused no end by that letter. Right pain to pronounce, and it sounded like half the other letters, too… (“Ksi!” “You mean Kai?” “No, Ksi!” “Psi?” “No, Ksi!”)
18/10/2012 at 17:10 Grargh says:
I just witnessed this problem again today… and it’s even more fun with people who can’t even paint a convincing curly bracket, but are forced to fight that monster of a letter ξ .
18/10/2012 at 22:39 Prokroustis says:
Ξ(ξ) is ok, who I pity are the Chinese..
18/10/2012 at 23:42 particlese says:
One Greek (not US fraternity “Greek”) guy I know said that a lot of people just make a scribble, and everyone knows it’s ξ. No idea how universal that is, but it certainly sounds reasonable. And even better, it makes me imagine writing huge, elaborate scribbles in place of ξ, and nobody thinking anything of it.
Prokroustis: Here, have some biángbiáng noodles.
19/10/2012 at 03:50 Prokroustis says:
Well, the most common thing is something between a scribble with close resemblance and the actual letter. It really depends on one’s handwriting. It still is not that hard…
18/10/2012 at 22:37 Prokroustis says:
That h would surely be Χ(χ), no?
18/10/2012 at 22:59 zbmott says:
I have read this comment over and over again, and I cannot for the life of me figure out what you mean by it.
19/10/2012 at 03:46 Prokroustis says:
Something about some comparison between some latin and some greek alphabets.
18/10/2012 at 17:59 The Random One says:
How does it compare to qrth-phyl?
18/10/2012 at 13:20 TomxJ says:
Looks nice! immediately thought of the game Gods if made by Terry Gilliam.
18/10/2012 at 13:43 Lokik says:
Capsized was a beautiful game and so is this. Happy to see it looks pretty good in motion as well.
18/10/2012 at 13:59 Lemming says:
I swear this has been done before, and wasn’t there some sort of dispute that two games were doing the same thing? I’m sure RPS covered it or I’ve gone into an alternate reality again.
18/10/2012 at 15:01 Milos says:
If you follow that link to the post back in February you can see it mentioned in the comments. I don’t think there was any dispute, simply two games that happened to have the same visual gimmick
18/10/2012 at 22:07 Nathan_G says:
Aye, that was me that brought that up. The other game was Hellas, and the similarities were acknowledged as coincidental and everyone behaved like a grownup about it and it was all very lovely.
Still, look at Hellas though, being the underdog and all.
18/10/2012 at 14:22 Idiot says:
The hero should be nude if they are following greek pottery aesthetics.
18/10/2012 at 17:13 Grargh says:
Also, following videogame greek pottery conventions, shattering the whole gameworld should yield a medipack and some ammunition.
18/10/2012 at 17:30 MrNash says:
Now this looks nice. Always liked this art style. Capsized was really fun from what I played of it, so I’ll be keeping a close eye on this game.
18/10/2012 at 18:01 Lucretious says:
I’d play this just for the art. Looks fantastic.
18/10/2012 at 18:29 deadly.by.design says:
It looks pretty neat.
FWIW: The “best PC platformer in ages” only supported 360 controllers. Is it really that hard to support those of us with Logitech, etc, gamepads?
18/10/2012 at 19:38 Thirith says:
For anyone who likes the visual style and has a PS3: check out Outland. It’s not exactly the same, but visually it feels similar – plus it’s a joy to look at, listen to and (for the most part) play.
18/10/2012 at 20:19 Andrew says:
While working on this it’s a shame they couldn’t find the time to fix the broken achievements on Capsized.
18/10/2012 at 22:59 bdd458 says:
I’ve been following an indie game like this, that’s been in development for a while, called Hellas. The dev said this after someone said it looks like Apotheon.
“I’m glad you like the look of the game. The superficial similarities with Apotheon are unfortunate, but they announced after I was already months into development. It was discussed in the devlog thread if you want to know more: Forums.tigsource.com”
Link if you’re interested: http://www.moddb.com/games/hellas
19/10/2012 at 00:24 ScoutAbout says:
I’d buy this right now.
19/10/2012 at 13:04 wodin says:
Looks cool. SPARTA! Would like to see a Spartacus game similar with arms and legs flying off..oh and sex..Or Clash of the Titans..or Jason and the Argonauts..
Seriously though the only bit that seemed odd and stood out was the sword swipes..
21/10/2012 at 12:55 Jackablade says:
Someone had a crack at a Jason and the Argonauts game a while back. It managed to be even less accurate to Greek mythologies than God of War is, and didn’t have the most jaw dropping of gameplay, but it was still quite a fun world to explore.
20/10/2012 at 01:10 purifico says:
The visuals are VERY reminiscent of a 2011 metroidvania-style game Outland. That game was beautiful. Too bad that it’s only available on PSN and XBL.
21/10/2012 at 23:25 Stackler says:
What a cool idea. I really like the art style!