Sandstorm

[Lazy 3]

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Introduction

Since the day you were born, you had to live with the Curse of the Sandstorm. Able to destroy from flesh to metal, the Sandstorm kept all from leaving the great city of Ranaria.
You are Arakim, son of Samos, the hero who protected Ranaria from total annihilation at the great war. Your demigod blood never meant anything to you, who lives as a street rat, hated by many.
Looking for redemption, you put yourself to the test, trying to enter the guild of bounty hunters known as Falcons, fighting for recognition and fortune, you will soon find out there is even more to be gained.

 

Story

Genesis

The first deities to be part of the Universe and sources of all existence, known simply as "transcendents", Matter and Spirit, are born.
The complexity of the Matter caused it to start degenerating and losing control over itself. Out of desperation, Matter asks Spirit for help, and together they put effort into bringing to their own dimension a being capable of building and destroying. Opening a rift through space, they bring Dimension, representative of chaos, and Dimension heals Matter.
Dimension's sole presence start confounding both deities, Matter decides to erase Dimension, for his presence is not necessary anymore. Spirit tries to protect him, and a colossal war of cosmic proportions starts, known as "Zenith". The chaos generated by the conflict empowers Dimension greatly.
A final impact ends the conflict, destroying and fragmenting both, Matter's remains create all planets and stars, Spirit's remains create all spirits. From the shock a small part of them fuse together, creating Eld, representative of life.
Eld escapes into a planet and gives it the name of Aterai, there he creates life, and said life grows beautifully, and untouched. After millennia, Eld creates a lucid, intelligent life form, called mankind.

 

The Great War

Proud of his creation, Eld goes into a deep slumber. Dimension, wandering through the Universe, finds Aterai, amazed by life's ability to recreate itself, Dimension managed to use it for his own good, creating smaller forms of himself, these are the Children of Chaos.
Dimension finds mankind, and realizing its great potential, fills them with self hatred, unleashing wars, poverty and pestilence. Empowered and dominant, Dimension is soon considered an unquestionable god by many.
Aldrad, the greatest city ever built, is made in the name of Dimension, the city is then invaded by Children of Chaos, so much conflict is caused, Eld wakes up, and noticing the threat that Dimension is, starts building his own army to defeat him.
7 Bodies are built by Eld, and given to the best men in Aterai, these are the demigods, and they are the strongest people in existence. They couldn't win the great war by themselves, and great destruction is brought to Aterai, completely annihilating Aldrad, Dimension is weakened, and decides to leave Aterai, so he can return recovered.
Before leaving, Dimension absorb the power of the demigods, and brings a curse to all four remaining human bases. These turn into the four Main Cities.
Being born in Ranaria and the son of a demigod, you are a Bounty Hunter looking for greatness.

Style and Features

Sandstorm is an old school, turn based RPG with a lot of focus on customization and battle, has an absurd amount of content both obligatory and optional and a lot of custom, original artwork.

• 9 playable characters, with full party customization at all times. (You can play without the protagonist if you wish, as long as you have one party member to occupy his slot)
• Free to save anytime
• Custom sprites for all controllable characters and NPCs!
• Dozens of skills for every single one of them (one of them passive) with all kinds of effects, from mercy killing to instant immortality!
• Skill trees
• You can spend Skill Points to increase your character's attributes instead of learning new skills
• Skills to be used outside of battle for every character with varied effects.
• Each character can evolve into a new class, there are 2 different classes to choose from for each one, since 2 of them cannot evolve their job, there is a total of 7 initial and 14 advanced classes!
• Each class has 5 unique battle skills, a passive and their own sprite.
• Craft system that is both massive and simple at the same time, allowing the creation of potions, bombs, poisons, accessories, weapons, armors and more!
• Over 350 unique items, both healing and loot for crafting.
• Gigantic 500x500 fully explorable world.
• Fully explorable underwater
• Over 40 buyable weapons
• 58 weapons to be crafted, each one with a special effect!
• Over 40 buyable armors
• Over 60 armors, among shields, helmets, accessories, clothes and gloves to be crafted, each one with a special effect!
• Over 400 unique enemies!!! Each one with an unique skillset and flavor to them!
• 18 Boss battles, most of them optional
• 50 Floors Battle Tower!!
• Arena where you can battle groups of enemies and earn prizes
• Golem Arena, where you can fight using your own summoned golem against others
• Eraser NPC, which can make one character forget all skills for a price
• Collect ores to create metals!
• Synchronizer, an NPC that allows you to sacrifice a rod to teach its spell permanently to a character.
• Cheap fast travel using boats or trains.
• Extract metals from your weapons with the Disassembler NPC
• Custom interface and options
• Glyph summoning system, use glyph combinations to summon stronger enemies!
• Battle animations to indicate status ailments on enemies
• Herb cultivating system
• 4 Different endings, based on your actions and quests
• The game is divided in four chapters, the first is about ending the curse of the sandstorm, the second about ending the curse of other main cities, in this chapter the world is explorable, the third about finding a way to invade and destroy the transcedent fortress and the last is the final dungeon
• Puzzles.
• Dungeons without random battles.
• 10+ Hours of gameplay for completionists

Characters

Son of Samos, the demigod and Ranaria's greatest hero, Arakim grew up with absurdly high expectation, which he failed to achieve, he lived as an outlaw, creating a lot of trouble and getting into fights. Arakim inherited the power of his father, but lost it for a greater good.
As a baby, Arakim was used in a ritual to protect Ranaria from the sandstorm, sacrificing the invaluable artifact, the Chaos Hand, and turning him immune to the chaos essence, a powerful flow of energy, doing that, Arakim lost his demigod strength.
As a way to prove his worth, our protagonist enters a rigorous and painful test to become a Falcon, a member of a Ranaria guild of great prestige.


{Member of a cult of talented Void mages known as the Netherspace Revenants, Clyther had no magical abilities, and was a very scared kid, afraid of ghosts and spirits. Trying to induce him to face his fears, his father took him to the Room of Sacred Statues, said to unleash the powers of the void.
Closed inside and trembling in fear, Clyther mastered both the arts of the Void and Spiritual magic, for the amusement of all the cultists. Now a fearless mage, Clyther is a respected Revenant.
After a great explosion happens at a construction site in Ranaria, Clyther and the other members of the cult go to investigate, suspecting it might be caused by a Magic Core, a source of infinite magical energy, that may be keeping the sandstorm.


Raised by a family of farmers, Reron always dreamed of becoming a hero like Samos, and joined the Ranarian army.
The Ranarian army was extremely corrupted and preyed on the population, during a plague infestation, they had to murder many citizens, using his skills and combat abilities, Reron managed to become a royal guard for the emperor.
One day, Reron saw a suspicious figure invading the castle, and ran to protect the emperor, instead of attacking the emperor, the invader, a famous assassin, talked peacefully with him, revealing shocking truths about the sandstorm, Reron secretly listened to them, and got found. Defeated by the assassin and senteced to death, Reron was saved by the general of the Ranarian army, who helped him getting life in prison instead. Reron now wants to reveal the truth to all people of Ranaria.



Zach lived in the streets for a good portion of his life, determined to change it for the better, he joined a feared guild of assassins in Ranaria.
After going up the ranks, Zach found out about a shady plan by Siran, the leader of his clan, afraid of the consequences, Zach decides to betray Siran and put an end to the madness he is about to bring.


Nys'ale came from the forests of the northern region in the city of Lyeed, she has always been an adventurer, walking and hunting to help her people. During the great war, the final battle happened in the absence of Nys, the Lyeedians received the Curse of the Silence, being now unable to sing the Eternal Reckon, the battle song that granted them victory and taught by Eld.
Nys decides to find the courageous group of people that destroyed the Magic Core of Ranaria, to try to get rid of the curse of Lyeed.


During the great war, being able to conjure all types of magic was extremely valuable for the people of Ghadray, the city of mages.
All kinds of experiments were conducted to create "elementalists" capable of casting all four chaotic elemental spells.
Honrold, the demigod of magic, was the leader in a research to create mages using ether, Agatha was the result of this experiment, and was taken care of by him. Controlled by hiw own insanity, Honrold destroyed all data and discoveries found during the process, afraid of causing even more harm, Honrold left the young Agatha at the door of an influential family and left Ghadray, to never be seen again.
Agatha grows up as a prodigy of the elements and an overachieving mage. After being visited by a curious cultist known as Clyther, everything she knew about magic will change.



Raytan, founder of the snow city of Tanman, was a demigod with the divine power of light, his people were faithful and serving, until the curse of infertility came to them. They had to face starvation, disease and poverty, Raytan couldn't take care of all of their demands, and seeing what they have become, abandoned them.
Unable to have children and suffering, the people of Tanman, became angry and paranoid, until Edari, a hunter, faced his fears and went into the gelid plains, bringing enormous beasts for the people to eat. Raytan returned to Tanman, only to see he was replaced by this man.
Raytan told Edari that he was going to help them hunt, and they left the village, and never returned. The people of Tanman once again began to worry, until a miracle happened: Edari's wife was pregnant, besides the curse that affected all of them.
Edari's hope survived as a child, and her name was Kalash, that meant 'Hope' in the language of the ancients. Bringing dead crops back to life and keeping Tanman prosperous Kalash was like a ray of light in a dark cave.



Born in South Aldrad, Anasthor had his father sent to prison and killed while fighting the Zamon, a race of monsters from the north, accused of treason. Motivated to fight for his country, Anasthor became a soldier and soon an elite knight of the Aldrarian forces, fighting the Zamon in many battles.
Travelling with his scout group, Anasthor and his companions saw soldiers from West Aldrad trading with the Zamon, controlled by his fury, Anasthor fought them and slaughtered them all. Now considered a traitor like his father, Anasthor fights West Aldrad with an group of paid mercenaries, while he investigates the Hand of Steel, a dictator in control of the deserts of Aldrad.
With the help of spies, Anasthor finds out about the Hand of Steel's plan, and decides to finish him for good.

Screenshots

Edited January 4, 2015 by Lazy

[amerk 1,122]

Very nice. Whatever that is coming out of the hedge looks creepy.

[Lazy 3]

As long as it doesn't look cute...

[scuba steve 0]

Downloading now & will start it this week sometime, but my initial reaction (based only on the screenshots) is that the character animations don't look like they fit with the tilesets

 

Not a knock on it, as I assume it's a case where you drew the characters but passed on the chore of creating your own tilesets. Totally understandable, but looks like it will lead to a game where the characters look out of place (again, not bad or anything, just that they look like they came from different game or something)

 

Everything else though (in terms of game features & such) looks totally great & is the reason I'm giving it a go. Will post my thoughts on the game in a few days after giving it a shot

[Saiffu 26]

Are all four chapters present in the game?

[Lazy 3]

Downloading now & will start it this week sometime, but my initial reaction (based only on the screenshots) is that the character animations don't look like they fit with the tilesets

 

Not a knock on it, as I assume it's a case where you drew the characters but passed on the chore of creating your own tilesets. Totally understandable, but looks like it will lead to a game where the characters look out of place (again, not bad or anything, just that they look like they came from different game or something)

 

Everything else though (in terms of game features & such) looks totally great & is the reason I'm giving it a go. Will post my thoughts on the game in a few days after giving it a shot

 

People told me this before, about the characters not fitting the enviorment, they always looked fine to me, though, I don't think the RTP looks realistic, in fact, I think the standard RTP looks pretty bad, but I couldn't bring myself to make one from stratch, I hope you like it!

 

Are all four chapters present in the game?

Yes, the game is fully playable and beatable, the third chapter is the less linear, all quests are somewhat optional, so you have to make one specific "type" of quest to be able to reach the last dungeon. (The title screen says v0.49 but it is in fact 1.0, my mistake.

Edited January 4, 2015 by Lazy