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In 2021, we took a deep look at Dark Deity, a tactical RPG from indie developer Chip Moore and his studio, Sword & Axe. Four years later, the team delivered the sequel Dark Deity 2 that looks to build on the first’s world and ideas to make something a bit larger and more polished.

Narratively, Dark Deity 2 takes the path of many before it: it’s a story sequel and it’d love if you cared about the old characters, but it’s not crucial. The game takes place 25 years after the first, so you’ll see some of the old party , but a lot of the core crew is a new generation. The writing’s a lot stronger, too — it helps to bring on a dedicated writer, so well done — though we did find ourselves losing a bit of patience in a few of the more verbose scenes. The best consequence of a stronger focus on story is the opportunity it gives players to make meaningful choices. A few times during the game, you'll choose a side in a fight, making different allies and sometimes seeing entire factions wiped from the map.

Though the first game wasn’t shy about its influences, Dark Deity 2 feels like it moves just a shade closer to its main inspiration in a lot of areas: classic Fire Emblem. Rather than the four different weapon trees of the original, this sequel sees a move to equippable weapons. The upgrade items for skills and stats are similar in frequency and use. Even characters feel a bit more Fire Emblem-y.

One area in which it doesn’t feel like Fire Emblem is its pace and focus on objective-based maps. Dark Deity 2 essentially treats every chapter like a special event, with the pressure on and multiple priorities to juggle. You’ll need to protect and rescue civilians, seize particular points on the map and fend off waves of reinforcements, all within a tight turn limit. (There is a difficulty that removes the time restriction, if that’s a dealbreaker for you.)

Whether that pace feels overwhelming will likely hinge on how often you use training maps. The game offers a rotating selection of ten training maps, and these are much more generic “defeat all the baddies in your own time” fare. Challenging one costs 1,000 gold, allowing you to grind up units’ levels if you want but making it come at the expense of upgrades and weapons.

There’s also a change that makes it a bit more tolerable to bring underleveled units into battle. The first Dark Deity felt built around its “grave wounds” system: permanent stat decreases instead of permanent death. This sequel makes that less severe, with penalties that last for the next chapter or so. You’ll still try to avoid it, but most of the time it happened for us, we found ourselves shrugging and just taking the penalty for a map.

Dark Deity 2 comes much closer than its predecessor to nailing its target aesthetic. The first one had excellently animated attacks, but the maps were less professional (even after a much-needed revamp) and the interface didn’t follow the pixel art look. This time around, the map sprites are charming, the environments feel like they’re done with more care and there’s even a pixel font in the menus that largely fits in with the resolution of the other art. The character art is still jarringly high-resolution, unfortunately, but it largely gets away with it.

That said, there are still elements of the game that show that it’s a small-team Game Maker project. Maps have an extra row and column that you can’t reach but your cursor can move into, losing itself off the screen. We don’t have an exact answer why, but we’d guess it’s a workaround for some limitation of the game engine. The enemy ranges, which many players keep on permanently as a nice help, don’t update with reinforcements or when terrain changes, so you have to toggle it off and on again like you’re running IT . And the “ally” movements are often less than ideal, either idling out of the way instead of helping or running full-speed into enemy territory to their inevitable deaths.

Dark Deity 2 is far from perfect, and it could use a few rounds of post-launch polish. But it’s a strong step forward from the first game’s base, adding and refining smartly to make something within their means that’s still engaging to play. We hope they’re able to keep delivering games like this in the future!

Dark Deity 2, developed by Fire & Axe and published by Indie.io, launches March 24, 2025 on Steam.

The post Review: Dark Deity 2 Refines Both Its Pixels and Its Tactics appeared first on Siliconera.

In case you missed it, the Dark Deity made its Switch debut just a few weeks ago. Thanks to our friends at Freedom Games and Sword & Axe, Siliconera has a few codes for the Switch version to give away this week.

If you're a fan of strategy RPGs and haven't given the game a spin yet, it comes highly recommended. Dark Deity is rooted in its creators' love of those early Fire Emblem games. There are some changes to the formula, though. For example, it dispenses with weapon durability.

Here's a trailer showing how it works.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp2DhM9IkS8

Siliconera’s Dark Deity giveaway will run until April 23, 2022. Winners will be selected and ed on April 25, 2022. The giveaway is open to those with North American Nintendo Switch s.

Dark Deity is available on PCs and the Nintendo Switch.

Dark Deity Switch Giveaway

The post Giveaway: Win a Dark Deity Nintendo Switch Code appeared first on Siliconera.

When it comes to strategy games, Nintendo Switch owners are pretty lucky. We have entries in the Fire Emblem and Valkyria Chronicles series here, as well as Advance Wars on the way and Square Enix SRPGs like Triangle Strategy and the The DioField Chronicle. But when it comes to Fire Emblem, not all of them are traditional. We have the actual port of the very first game in English, yes. That’s great. But Fire Emblem: Three Houses and the Fire Emblem Warriors games are very different. Which is what makes an indie port so appreciated. Dark Deity brings with it more classic Fire Emblem elements.

There are many ways in which Dark Deity evokes the Fire Emblem spirit while remaining its own, unique entity. The first is its presentation. This is a strategy game that relies on its sprites and grids. When you head into a map, everyone is on their own square, with the traditional sort of appearance you’d expect from such a game. Some maps can involve gimmicks like being adjacent to certain people or objects for special interactions or being on top of portals for movement. But you have the classic look and movement scheme that calls to mind 3DS, DS, GBA, and SNES installments.

Dark Deity is also a game in which the distinct classes really feel as though they matter. In this way, it can feel more like the Fire Emblem entries we played between the NES and GBA eras. Characters’ skills stick with them and define them. So while you can shift around when you promote them at levels 10 and 30, it isn’t as though you can cobble together an army of Galeforce s who will wipe out most of the opposing forces during a single turn. People sit comfortably in their niches. You need to work with that.

This can mean Dark Deity demands the same sort of smart decisions as early Fire Emblem entries too. Yes, there is an “easy” difficulty level called Mortal. It makes enemies less intimidating and bolsters your own forces. But knowing you must work with the characters and classes you get, while also potentially dealing with stronger than usual enemies and fewer rewards on the Deity difficulty could prove intimidating. I’d almost even say the Grave Wounds system, which appears in place of permadeath and randomly cuts into one ally stats by 10% each time they fall in a fight, could end up being more harrowing than dying. Because at least if someone is gone, you know you can focus on other units. An impaired unit could gradually become worse and worse if you aren’t cautious.

I also appreciate that Dark Deity includes a feature that folks online cobbled together unofficially for Fire Emblem games. Some people in the community made it possible to, say, randomize what people are capable of or when you’ll get them. Think of it as a way to up the challenge or add replay value. When you begin a Dark Deity run, you have that option. You can change aptitudes, randomize enemy classes, items, and weapons, and alter the recruitment order for party . You can also modify stat increases, the amount of gold you’ll earn, and experience earned. It’s exhilarating. It takes every possible player into .

The downside is, there is some awkwardness with the Switch version of Dark Deity. In some cases, it involves the input choices. For example, when advancing after a battle or choosing a promotion, you're pressing the minus symbol to accept, rather than A. Which can take getting used to, since A is used to confirm otherwise in the game. You'll also spend some time staring at loading screens. Which can feel like a bit much, given this is a 2D, sprite-based game.

Still, Switch owners who take a chance on Dark Deity get a new Fire Emblem-like that respects the “old” ways. It may offer modern conveniences, like dispensing with weapon durability or seals to promote. However, at its heart it respects the traditional approach in of art and gameplay. It’s another great option for people who like to think critically and are searching for a challenge.

Dark Deity will come to the Nintendo Switch on March 17, 2022. It is also available on PCs.

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Another Fire Emblem-like tactical game is heading to the Nintendo Switch. The Dark Deity Switch port release date has been set. Folks will be able to go through it on the go starting on March 17, 2022.

Like Fire Emblem, Dark Deity is a grid-based strategy game. As you send units into fights, they level up. Eventually, you can even change characters' specialties. Relationships can form as they fight alongside each other. Also, rather than permadeath, characters who fall in a fight take on Grave Wounds that reduce their stats going forward.

When Dark Deity comes to the Switch, it might look and feel different. This is due to some adjustments and rebalancing done between the PC and console release. The 28 maps ended up getting new art. Its equipment and abilities also ended up being adjusted.

There’s also a new Dark Deity release date trailer. The video shows what its story segments, maps, and battle segments all look like. It also shows the relationship-building elements. At the 45 second mark, it starts going over the remastered maps. Also, while the trailer is entirely in English, the game also will include Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish language options.

Dark Deity will come to the Nintendo Switch on March 17, 2022. It will cost $24.99, the same price as the immediately available PC version.

The post Fire Emblem-like Dark Deity Switch Release Date Set for March 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

With the deluge of game releases these days, you tend to miss a few you’d probably love! Today, we here at Siliconera are recommending what we think are the best 2021 games you might have missed. Maybe you’ll find a new favorite!

Gnosia is still a solid pick for people who think the concept of Among Us is interesting, but don't want to get together with other people and be mean. There are so many secrets to uncover! And they only come up if you keep going through the time loops. Want answers? Keep playing and hoping for the best. Also, it might sometimes be more difficult to appease these fake people than real people in a multiplayer social deduction game. — Jenni

No Longer Home remained my most anticipated game of 2021, and for good reason. As a semi-autobiographical story by the developers at Humble Grove, it navigates the uncertainty of immigration and a fear of the future with perfect balance. It isn't necessarily a long game, and functions are something of a point and click riddled with magical realism. But the journey is very much worth the hours spent. — Kazuma

Mischief Games' Adios isn't a big game by any means. Clocking in at maybe three hours if you like to putter around and look at everything, it's the kind of title that you lose in the shuffle of big productions and flashier indies. That said, it punches quite a bit above its weight and wastes none of the space it has on fluff.

It's about a farmer who no longer wants to dispose of bodies for the mob, and the conversation he has with the man sent to kill him. That's all I can really say, and it's not a spoiler (it's right there in the store page!), but it's quite the conversation, and one I'd say is well worth experiencing. — Josh

Subway Midnight kind of dropped out of nowhere in the second half of 2021. You play a kid who gets chased by an ominous creature while taking a midnight subway. On the surface, it looks like a cute, quirky indie game with some horror appeal. It's more than that, though. Without spoiling the story, Subway Midnight is essentially a collection of smaller games wrapped into one. Some parts of the game are purposefully vague as to what its portraying. Others will mimic metagames like IAMSCARED. It's creepy, unsettling, borderline terrifying at times. And I loved every second of it.

In a year filled with lengthy JRPGs, it was nice to occasionally play a less demanding title. Bonfire Peaks is an extremely simple puzzle game with a chill soundtrack and the much-appreciated ability to immediately switch off your anxiety. The main character is a guy who wants to just set all of his stuff on fire, and while any actual story is scarce in this title, it’s easy to empathize with a character who just wants to let the past go. If voxel art is your aesthetic, consider that an added bonus. — Carley

2021 didn't see a Fire Emblem release, but it did manage a game that scratches that itch quite well. Dark Deity is smaller in scope and presentation, but its gameplay ideas are worth a look! Especially if you, like me, find your appetite for the tactical RPG genre quite insatiable. — Graham

What are the best 2021 games you think most people missed? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter! And read our other handy roundtables for more thoughts from the Siliconera team.

The post Best 2021 Games You Might Have Missed appeared first on Siliconera.

Indie studio Sword & Axe announced that the tactical RPG Dark Deity will launch on Nintendo Switch sometime in 2022. The announcement was part of IGN's during Gamescom 2021. There is currently no confirmed release date or price for the Nintendo Switch port.

https://twitter.com/DarkDeityGame/status/1431358191938457603?s=20

Dark Deity launched on June 15, 2021, after a successful Kickstarter campaign connected the developer with publisher Freedom Games. Creator Chip Moore noted in an interview with Siliconera that he conceptualized the project during college back in 2018. As a direct homage to GBA-era Fire Emblem games, the creator explained that he hoped the game would serve as an introduction to the strategy-RPG genre to a new generation of players. Moore even hinted at a possible Nintendo Switch port for Dark Deity. At the time, he stated that it would depend on the performance of the PC release.

The tactical RPG is inspired by the Fire Emblem series, updating the genre for modern audiences with higher resolution character art. As we noted in our review of the game, Dark Deity offers a variety of improvements and adjustments to the typical formula such as replacing "permadeath" with permanent stat decreases. The game received a generally positive response, currently sitting at a "Mostly Positive" on Steam.

Dark Deity is available now on the PC via Steam. Sword & Axe and Freedom Games plan to release the Nintendo Switch port sometime in 2022.

The post Dark Deity Nintendo Switch Port Announced for 2022 appeared first on Siliconera.

A surprise release during this year's E3 festivities, Dark Deity takes elements from classic Fire Emblem and other strategy-RPGs and gives them a modern spin. We talked to the indie game's creator, Sword & Axe's Chip Moore, about the state of the genre and what Dark Deity does differently.

Graham Russell, Siliconera: First: why did you make this game?

Chip Moore, creator, Dark Deity: In 2018, I was a junior in college getting an econ degree, and I would find myself frequently Googling “games like Fire Emblem.” Obviously, I’m a gamer. I love Fire Emblem. I play all sorts of things, but Fire Emblem in particular has always drawn me, because there’s nothing else like it. I was super-disillusioned with the degree I was getting. I hated the work I was doing at summer internships. And I thought, during winter break of junior year: “I’ll just make a game. Why not?” So I taught myself to code.

It’s been two and a half years since then. The first six months or a year looked very different than they do now, let’s put it that way.

I think this genre deserves more of a chance than it’s getting. Especially among my younger generation who are so used to these big multiplayer games now, and the strategy-RPG is just nonexistent.

You were talking about being a junior in college in 2018. This game that you’ve made is an homage to Fire Emblem, for sure, but it’s an homage to an era of Fire Emblem that you weren’t really alive and playing games for, so how did that come about? How did it become this GBA-era thing?

It’s a combination of things, right? Partially, it’s what we’re able to achieve as a small studio: 2D. 3D has its merits, and there are ways in which it’s easier, but what I looked into learning was 2D. Partially, it’s because I have always thought that the 2D sprite work in these sorts of games is significantly more expressive.

But how it came about that it harkens back to the GBA or older games... I have older brothers who played Fire Emblem, so I got the hand-me-down Game Boy and that sort of thing. As a gamer, I’m really not a true strategy or RPG fan, I play all sorts of things. And what we wanted to do with Dark Deity is to take the strategy-RPG, the format of a Fire Emblem, and just take the baseline and run with it in every way we can and make it our own. That’s how we came to the class system we have, and the advantage system.

What were the main things that you saw as... not necessarily problems, but things you could do with the genre that were not being done before?

The biggest thing is players making choices that make an impactful difference and that have both positive and negative ramifications. Games in general are trending in this direction, but especially SRPGs. You might make story choices, but they don’t impact the game you’re playing very much. Or you might make class choices, but you don’t really change the character all that much by doing that. We wanted to make a game where the player has a huge amount of agency in how their characters turn out every time.

On a more granular level, there were a couple of problems that we wanted to address. Of course, probably the biggest one being permadeath. I think it’s a huge barrier to entry for a lot of new fans. It’s a small part of why the genre never really took off in the way that I believe that it could one day. Because it’s a scary prospect that if you play poorly, you’ll permanently lose these units.

When Fire Emblem introduced the idea of permadeath and casual mode being the two extremes, it sort of created a split in the fan base. With neither in my eyes being the best solution! So we wanted to find how to handle defeat states without making it too punishing to the degree that you’re just wasting your time? And how do we not take it all the way to the point at which playing poorly means nothing? That led us to the Grave Wounds system. When a unit is defeated, they lose ten percent of one of their stats, depending on what killed them.

Your 2D style, your pixel art... the type of player who is nostalgic for that look is often nostalgic for the punishing “permadeath only” thing. It’s interesting that you’re trying to take on both of these problems at the same time. Do you anticipate any friction with that?

We’ve definitely had some pushback on permadeath not being a thing. Which is totally fair! Because people want that. But the game, and how easy it is to die, is centered around Grave Wounds. It’s easy to lose your units! In a normal SRPG with permadeath, it has to be achievable to not lose your units. In Dark Deity, enemies are really strong, your units are really strong and things scale pretty high.

Making mistakes can be very punishing at times. Not having permadeath has given us freedom to really go wild with the systems and really create a sandbox for building these characters. They can get really strong and enemies can get really strong and it’s not going to make the game this unpleasant experience where you get an hour into a level and you have to restart.

Speaking of a bunch of systems and going wild with them! I don’t want to belittle the amount of time in your life two and a half years is [laughs], but for a super-small team indie game, that’s not a particularly long dev cycle!

No, it’s not!

What did you do to rein in your scope and make sure that it was something that you could complete?

That is a fantastic question! A couple of things. Everyone has four weapon trees that they can upgrade as an individual unit. These don’t change the cosmetics of their attack, so a cleric has the cleric attack animation. We sort of saved a lot of our dev time on being efficient with that. The spells do change the animations, though.

In of limiting scope, the bonds are the big deal. Hitting a reasonable amount of bonds that we can write and have be good. Every character has ten other characters that they can bond with and view three conversations between each pairing. So there’s 450 conversations total. Which is a lot! But we had ample time to write them.

There’s sort of an artistry to — and this isn’t the most delicious quote — but there’s an artistry to cutting corners where people aren’t going to notice that it’s a corner cut. We had to learn very early what is actually cutting corners and what is focusing on things that are impactful.

Part of our scope control was knowing our strength was in creating a sandbox where we’re just going to give you as many amazing options as we can, and if it’s not the most curated experience, we can live with that as long as it’s really fun to play.

That’s interesting to me. At first glance, doing this GBA-style pixel art for animations is geared toward people who love that aesthetic, but when you talk about scaling back the number of animations and things like that, that leans into the portion of the audience — that ittedly, I’m a part of — that after the first map or so, you turn off the animations because it’s taking way too long.

When you play these games, do you turn off the animations?

I am like you, I turn off animations. But I like some of the animations! You can hop in the options and just turn them off, but if you want, you can hit a button and skip one. So it’s sort of a middle ground. Sometimes it’s nice to watch, like, a cool spell happen, but if you’re just trying to get through, in the moment, you can do that. I think it improves the pace a lot.

On a similar pacing note: map size. What is your ideal map size? This is the kind of thing that defines games, you know, how long a map takes. What were you going for?

There are some levels that take significantly longer than others. It was a huge focus for us to tie the levels deeply into the story, so when you’re playing the level you feel like you’re playing the story. And that sort of requires that they be flexible, length-wise.

We have a 14-unit team size, so they get pretty big! And building a team in Dark Deity is different from building a team in another strategy-RPG. The characters have extremely well-defined niches, and you build them to do very specific things.

I think it’s important to note that Dark Deity is more of an RPG than it is a strategy game. It is both, and the strategy is important, but the primary focus of this game is in building your units up and creating cool builds.

Okay, last thing. I have to ask this because everyone in the comments section will hate me if I don’t. I know you’re just releasing the game and this is a mean thing to ask.

Yeah.

You porting this thing to Switch?

We would like to.

The truth of the matter is that this is the first game I’ve ever worked on. I’m 23, I’ve never shipped a game or worked on a game. I would like to, it depends on how the Steam launch goes? It’s something that I will try to make happen, but I just can’t make any promises. There’s no guarantees right now. But if I can, I will!

Thanks to Chip for taking the time to talk with us! This interview was lightly edited for clarity. Dark Deity is available now on Steam. For more, check out our review!

The post Interview: Dark Deity Creator on Making a New Old Strategy-RPG appeared first on Siliconera.

Dark Deity lead developer Chip Moore is a firm believer: there should be more games like Fire Emblem. And the game shows that clearly: it’s an homage to those grid-based games. Animations. Weapons. Archetypes. It’s a new game that wants to feel familiar, delivering some fun gameplay stuff without pulling you out of your comfort zone.

In Dark Deity, you control a small band of fighters. Your role in the story… changes! A lot! As you might expect from a game in this genre. But your team stays together. No matter what! Which is a departure from games like Fire Emblem.

Instead of “permadeath” — a unit goes down, they’re dead forever — Dark Deity uses what it calls the “Grave Wounds” system. When a fighter goes down in battle, one of their stats is randomly chosen and decreased by ten percent. You still want to avoid this, for sure, but the idea is to make it less painful to keep your finger off the reset button.

Sometimes it’s okay! Your slow character loses even more speed, or your mage takes a strength hit. Other times? Not so much. So Dark Deity’s late-game backup characters are more for if unlucky level-ups and a few wounds have left a character largely ineffective.

Of course, you can fix a character if you really want! That’s because Dark Deity streamlines its shop and weapon systems. Stat-increasing items are expensive, but they’re always available to you. There’s no weapon durability, and all character weapons can be upgraded through a generic token of increasing tier. Each class has four types of weapons. One focuses on damage, one on accuracy, one on critical hit rate and the last finds some middle ground between these.

It’s generally not a mistake to go with the balanced option, but some characters benefit from leaning in one direction. Like patching up your low-accuracy melee tank? Or building up a slow, one-shot archer to take out targets that hit back hard if you let them? The fun of the game largely lies in finding and making these interesting character builds.

While Dark Deity is interesting and fun in a lot of ways, it sure is also a small-team indie game. It doesn’t explain itself very well, often asking you to make unit promotion choices for new characters without using them or knowing their strengths. It glitches out in menus and drops controller until you fiddle with things for a bit. To enjoy the game, you need to have an understanding and tolerance of these limits, even if some of the tech issues get patched along the way.

Aesthetically, the game gets some things right. Battle sprites and animations are on-point and nostalgic. They look like GBA-era Fire Emblem in all the right ways, and look better and more detailed in others. They’re expressive, and they make characters look like they’re having fun out there. The unit portraits are fine, too, and the choice to use Awakening-style partial voice lines works for the game and also feels right.

The maps do let down the rest of the experience a bit. Not from a gameplay perspective! Sure, some maps are open and largely featureless, but these generally focus on one boss or objective, and the more detailed and lengthy battles have interesting tactical confines. But visually, the environments never measure up to the characters within them. And some of the maps really do look a bit phoned in. You can push through it, though, for the most part. (There’s one map that uses similarly-colored portals, and that one’s a nightmare for those with normal vision, much less colorblind players.)

But about those tactics: there’s a clear attempt to vary the feel of each map. Sometimes you escape an unbeatable wave of foes. Sometimes you slip through the corridors of a prison. You even sometimes just fight one big dragon? And even on normal maps, you’re often presented with different start positions and given that strategic choice. The idea is that one set of character builds won’t carry you through everything.

And those builds are a big part of the game, too. Each unit has one innate special skill. At levels 10 and 30, you promote them to one of four classes, and each has stat modifiers and two new skills. The promotion tree is flexible, so you can pivot at level 30 to something completely different and have a distinct set of skills. Or just stick to the one and specialize? But these choices essentially are the game.

Dark Deity’s campaign is reasonable, with about 20 hours of gameplay if you play at a decent pace. The replay value comes from the game’s wealth of customization options. There’s a set of sliders to adjust experience and gold. There’s a setting to randomize the order you recruit new heroes. Even more challenging is the “randomize enemy weapons” option, as it totally throws off the balance of intended play.

These sorts of things have been modded into strategy-RPGs in the past, but Dark Deity ing them out of the box certainly makes it well-suited for challenge-seeking players (and content creators) who want to mess with the settings. Is it a good way to play? Probably not, but that’s not the point. This genre attracts players who love pain.

Dark Deity is a small game that understands its limitations. It delivers thought-provoking battles, if not necessarily the most balanced ones. It gives players a lot of tactical choice, if not in the most informed way. And it cuts clear corners, but it feels like they’re the right corners to cut. Because what’s here is a fun time.

Dark Deity, developed by Sword & Axe and published by Freedom Games, is out now on PC via Steam.

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