Preview: Eitr – An Indie Action-Adventure RPG With Sleek, Stylistic Pixel Art

Eitr is an action-adventure dungeon crawler game with an overall theme inspired by Norse mythology. It is currently in development by the indie company “Eneme Entertainment” which consists of David Wright (artist and game designer) and Tobi Harper (coder and developer). They’re claiming to model Eitr‘s gameplay around their favorite games such as Diablo, Dark Souls, Path of Exile and Zelda.

The art has a minimalist pixel-focused direction, developed on the Unity3D engine and using gloomy shadows and dynamic lighting to emphasize the creepy enemies the player is forced to strike down. The character you control blasting through undead and skeletons is labeled the “Shield Maiden”, a simple-looking Norse woman doomed by Loki to restore the light to the worlds cast over by darkness.

“Gain experience points by killing enemies and completing quests to Level Up! Increasing your Level will enable use of additional skills, abilities and equipment.”

The developers also describe the game’s narrative as centered around the mythical Norse tree “Yggdrasil”, which connects nine different worlds and is poisoned with the substance known as “eitr”, which “spews darkness” into the worlds.

[mks_separator height=”1″][mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”650″ size=”18″ bg_color=”#dd3333″ txt_color=”#f1f1f1″]The Game, Eitr, is an Action RPG which takes inspiration from games such as Dark Souls, Path of Exile and the Diablo series. The game will be challenging and require timing and precision to progress through the environments. Players will need to use a combination of blocking, combos, buffs and positioning to succeed in battle.[/mks_pullquote][mks_separator style=”solid” height=”1″]

The project is currently making its run through the Steam Greenlight arena, having been posted at the end of October it has already gotten a little under 100 comments on its Steam Concept page so far. There have also been talks from those playing the current build of the game that a demo will be released to the public in the near future.

“There will be a range of abilities to use in Eitr, this one is called Snowflake Guard. It requires timing and precision to master, however when used effectively it can be devastating to enemies.”

The gameplay will consist of a few standard dungeon crawler elements. Items and armor that you collect will improve conmbat, as well as change the players apperearance. It is said that a deep skill tree will allow players to level their characters to their playstyle. A small compenent displayed in the gameplay video is a roulette system that selects your punishment when your character is killed. The consequence of death shown in the video is a loss of experience, but could range to gold and materials gathered.

[mks_separator height=”1″][mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”650″ size=”18″ bg_color=”#dd3333″ txt_color=”#f1f1f1″]The game will be challenging and require timing and precision to progress through the environments. Players will need to use a combination of blocking, combos, buffs and positioning to succeed in battle.[/mks_pullquote][mks_separator style=”solid” height=”1″]

Eitr does not seem to be laid out as a hack-and-slash-only system, although there are sections with dense mobs that the player must wade through. Everything is still early in development, so tweaks to the ways things operate can still be introduced, but at its core Eitr looks to be a simplistic indie experience with an encapsulating art direction that stands out.

You can follow the development on Eneme’s Tumblr, or through Facebook and Twitter.