Playable demos are so old-fashioned. Playable teasers seem to be the done thing these days, so it wasn’t a huge surprise when Bare Mettle announced an entire prelude was being put on Greenlight, with a name that I am cursed to forever read, pronounce and spell wrong.
Exanima is born as a prelude to Sui Generis… a smaller yet complete game in its own right, a dungeon crawler that takes place in SG’s underworld some twenty years prior to its events.
After a promising start Bare Mettle have been uncharacteristically quiet of late, and given the fate of so many Kickstarter projects, especially the wildly ambitious ones like Sui Generis, it was tempting to think the worst. It wouldn’t be the first time money had just disappeared into the Kickstarter black hole but with Exanima’s appearance on Greenlight the developers have given us a timely piece of assurance that not only are they still actively working on the game but they’re making real, solid progress.
With the Greenlight announcement Bare Mettle have lifted the NDA on Sui Generis so between that and the playable build of Exanima they just handed to contributors I’ll have more to say very soon – the build is installing even now.
Once (if?) it reaches Steam Early Access the crowdfunding campaign will come to an end and switch to a direct sales model so if you want to take advantage of the tiered backing model you’re running out of time.
Examina Exanima
Explore, fight, survive and unravel mysteries in this unique and unforgiving 3D isometric RPG set in an original dark, low fantasy world. Exanima’s exceptional attention to detail and realistic simulation of all things provide a deeply immersive and dynamic gameplay experience.
Features include a deep skill based combat system, complex and smart AI, fully interactive environments, an advanced damage model with accurate collisions and locational protection, roguelike elements and an arena mode to hone your combat skills.
The prelude is designed to serve as a way of showing off the things that made Sui Generis so appealing all those months ago – the moody art style, the intriguing combat and physics. Hopefully it provides a taster of the character creation system backers were shown too, which has the look about it of something one could spend far too much time lost in.
Not examina. No.