Celestia: Divine Revelation

Welcome to the Celestia: Divine Reveletion devlog where we provide regular updates and glimpses into the development of our retro RPG!

The Story

Celestia: Divine Revelation will take you on a short detective story set in an Italian monastery. You play as one of the “refugee monks” who have fled their Franciscan monastery because of the Black Death. During your journey you will uncover some “mystical” secrets of the mysterious abbey.

The story is partly separated from the main game loops in the dungeon. As one of the refugee monks, you will explore the dungeons underneath the monastery, collecting fragments (lists) and books, which will be used as currency to unlock evidence. As you unlock new evidence, you will be able to interact with the monks in the abbey and uncover more dark secrets!

RPG System

At the moment we are in the early stages of development, so some systems are changing every day, but let’s take a deep dive into some high-level decisions regarding the RPG system:

• At first Celestia is about mastering strategy and trying to beat random dungeons with limited resources. As you progress through the story, new ways of playing will be introduced.
• After each dungeon run, your character’s progress and equipment will be salvaged and you will have to start from scratch. But don’t worry, there are some permanent upgrades that will make you stronger in advanced dungeons.
• You will not be able to finish every dungeon run. Sometimes the gods of chance will not be on your side and you will have to abandon the dungeon after the first few floors.
• We have decided to include classic RPG systems with collecting XP to gain levels, adding stat points and improving your character with various traits.
• Another important part of the gameplay is equipment, and in Celestia we decided to tie some spells to weapons. So not only do you have to decide which weapon suits your playstyle based on stats, but also based on the spells that are available.

This is just a first look at some of our systems, we will be exploring each system in detail in one of our upcoming devlogs.

The Current State of the Project

We started development in Autumn 2023, we currently have designs for the main features and are now working on putting them together to make a playable prototype. We have also started working on pixel art for a first type of dungeon with all the monsters, items and secrets.

What comes next?

• Our main goal for the next month is to design a map generation system that combines handmade rooms with procedurally generated corridors, loot and enemies.
• The long term plan is to start getting feedback from alpha testers at the end of Q1 2024, so if you want to try out Celestia alpha phase and help us to shape the game – join us on our Discord!

.. and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. – John 1:1