It’s the big sequel to a small indie game, and it’s been shown off for the very first time at the PC Gaming Show at E3 2019. But what is it? Well, none other than Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy.
Running as a follow-up to the acclaimed roguelite – Unexplored – the new publisher at Big Sugar (formerly Digital Uppercut) and indie developer Ludomotion have today announced Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy, a captivating roguelite action-RPG – and it’ll be coming to console and PC in 2020.
Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy will see you leaving the Dungeon of Doom behind and venturing off into a vast, wondrous world as you embark on a heroic quest to destroy the mysterious Staff of Yendor. This will see you given the chance to explore beautiful landscapes and discover hidden marvels, all while encountering magical creatures and dangerous foes.
You’ll be left to make brave choices and put your faith in good fortune with Unexplored 2, and with the game featuring a unique legacy system, advanced procedural generation technology, and rich, generative storytelling, it promises to deliver an adventure like no other.
Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy represents a significant scaling-up across every facet of the original Unexplored with major changes in the evolution including the sprawling outdoor setting of the sequel, which leaves behind the original’s dungeon-based confines, and a dramatically different visual style that imbues the world with a wonderfully vibrant and magical sense of place.
Less immediately obvious, but absolutely fundamental to Unexplored 2, is the use once again of advanced content generation. Ludomotion has continued to refine and improve its revolutionary technology, which is now capable of even more impressive results across a range of systems, from world and level creation, to generated stories and puzzles.
“The first game is a dungeon crawler, but Unexplored 2 takes the adventure outside the dungeon,” explains game director Joris Dormans. “You can travel across a whole continent of generated places. There are so many things to see and to do – so much to explore, so many challenges to overcome, so many stories to discover. Unexplored had hundreds of hours of content, but Unexplored 2 will be even bigger.”
To coincide with the game’s announcement, an Unexplored 2: The Wayfarer’s Legacy Open Access campaign has launched on crowdfunding platform Fig, giving backers immediate access to a pre-alpha test demo, amongst other incentives.
Key features of Unexplored 2 include:
- Legacy system: the actions of past heroes impact the fortunes of those that follow in their footsteps. Use your legacy wisely to give successive adventurers greater hopes of completing their quest
- Permadeath in a persistent world: when a hero dies, they stay dead. But you can choose to return to the same world with a new adventurer, forearmed with knowledge of what lies ahead. Or, if you prefer, begin a new adventure in a completely uncharted world
- Generative storytelling: there is no premeditated script in Unexplored 2. Every adventurer’s ultimate goal may be the same – to destroy the Staff of Yendor – but every hero will have their own unique story of the events and encounters that happened along the way
- Procedural generation: Ludomotion’s proprietary technology generates content that feels designed by humans, not algorithms, and can create a near infinite number of new lands, new places, new stories, and new challenges to discover
- Orchestral adaptive soundtrack: an intricate system allows Unexplored 2’s music to be arranged reactively, making subtle changes to the score at appropriate times, whether a moment of high emotion, or to provide foreshadowing
So what do you think? Were you a big fan of the original Unexplored and can’t wait to get the chance to delve into this roguelite action-RPG in 2020? Let us know in the comments below and we’ll be sure to keep you fully updated as to the development progress.
