Brazilian game developers Massive Work Studio and the Square Enix Collective have announced that Dolmen will make its grand appearance at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, California. The game is a sci-fi, horror, hack-and-slash title that is lore-rich and gore-themed.
The press release describes it as a SoulsBorne game, which is similar to From Software’s Dark Souls and Bloodborne. This is due to the fact that there’s a a similar control scheme that players will utilize, as they attempt to master the over-the-shoulder, timing based melee attacks. Dodging and blocking are essential, as well as making use of some long-range weaponry, not unlike Bloodborne.
The plot itself is very similar to Dead Space. Players take on the role of a lone astronaut who was part of a crew that was plucked from the war-torn star-fields surrounding Nynfield, and taken to an Eldritch planet known as Raven Prime. The inhabitants are extremely hostile and players will have to acquire materials and scavenge for weapons to create a means to defend themselves and kill the monstrous abominations. You can get a glimpse of what the game is like with the debut trailer below.
As you can see, there are both humanoid and multi-pedal creatures you’ll encounter, some small, some medium, and some very large.
Your weapon stash will be composed of items you craft or loot from the dead bodies of enemies you encounter. This will include melee weapons such as swords and staffs, as well as makeshift shields. As depicted in the trailer, there are also long-range weapons with limited ammo supplies.
Massive Work Studio actually produced a brief developer walkthrough guide on how the combat system works in the game. There is a light, heavy and jump attack. In the video demonstration we also briefly see the long range attacks being used mostly as a status-effect weapon where you’ll be able to slow down foes using a cryo-effect so you can get in and break them to pieces, or you can set them ablaze with a fire debuff.
They also showcase a little bit of the crafting, which is done from inside your downed spaceship.
Your inventory space is limited, so you have to retrieve items and store them at your base. If you die while scavenging or exploring the planet, whatever items you have on you will drop at your last location. So the rogue-like element will make it a lot harder to just breeze through the game by hacking and slashing your way to the finish line.
The crafting element definitely reminds me a lot of Deck13 Interactive’s The Surge. It appears the developers are taking a little bit of everything from existing games in the over-the-shoulder survival-horror genre and combining them together, using the Eldritch horror themes from Dead Space, the combat from Bloodborne and the crafting from The Surge.
A Kickstarter campaign is scheduled to go live for the game starting April 5th, next month. If you want to keep up to date with the progress of development, you can do so by visiting the official website.
