Umbra ARPG achieves Kickstarter goal

French developer SolfarFall Games have achieved their Kickstarter goal needed to continue development of their ARPG, Umbra.  The Umbra Kickstarter launched on May 16 and has surpassed its initial goal of $225,000 but continued backing will likely lead to development of some stretch goals.

The game has already been in development for four years and boasts some intriguing features.  Apocalyptic Form is determined purely by play style and allows characters to morph some aspect of themselves such as growing a third arm to wield another weapon or turning their skin into lava. There are no class restrictions; pick skills, weapons and armour as you desire. Character customisation seems fairly free, determined more by play style and equipment choices and limited only by how you use the three resource pools, rage, stamina and mana.

Destructible environments stop your pursuers in their tracks

Although SolfarFall promise all players will be unique, in my experience popular builds soon establish themselves and the question is more how expansive and varied will the build pool end up being.

Your lightning attack is magnified when targets are stood in water

As you’d expect from any ARPG there are quests, side quests and all manner of foe to battle (different in day and night) in the randomly generated dungeons.  In fact, one of the stretch goals (with more Kickstarter funding) is the ability for players to create their own dungeons for others to play through.  The dungeon would be built on to the players’ house.

Player housing, a much pined for feature of ARPGs such as Diablo 1 and then Diablo 2 and once again Diablo 3 is already in Umbra. Houses won’t be purchased but rather created by players via the housing UI and will provide somewhere to showcase your very bestest loot.

A place to call home

Umbra currently offers single player only but with further Kickstarter funding SolarFall hope to include multiplayer modes such as Co-op and Player vs Player vs AI.

If you’d like to help push this particular project forward you can do so via their Kickstart page.