Hello PlayStation fans! My name is Daniel Leaver and I’m delighted to be posting here once again. You may have heard of Dreadbit’s previous game, Ironcast, but today I’m proud to announce something entirely different: Seraph, coming to PS4 in 2016.
Seraph is an acrobatic platforming shooter with a unique twist: all weapons are automatically aimed by Seraph, our title character!
That’s right, Seraph will aim at the demon-spawn of hell for you while you focus on snapping off controlled bursts of gunfire as you backflip from walls and tumble through the air. It’s high-octane platforming action without the limitations of aiming.
“But, Daniel, what is this madness? How can you possibly have a skill-based shooter without aiming?” I hear you cry. Well, having grown up with mind-blowing action films such as The Matrix, Christian Bale’s Equilibrium and, of course, anything directed by John Woo, I’ve always dreamt of playing a video game that could truly deliver on the promise of the player becoming a dual-handgun-wielding-badass! There have been some games that came close, but it always felt to me that the slick acrobatic choreography often came second to the player having to aim at the same time. A task made even more tricky if aiming two weapons at different enemies!
So, I thought, why not ditch the requirement for the player to aim altogether and instead let them focus 100% of their attention on acrobatic evasion and, of course, accurately landing Seraph’s divine special powers? Seraph effortlessly aims her dual pistols at the oncoming demon hordes while the player shoots, flips, and dodges the rapidly moving unholy spells and attacks. The thought turned into a playable prototype within a few days… and we were utterly convinced.
“But, Daniel, if you don’t aim isn’t the game just easy-mode-auto-win casual fodder?”
Another excellent question from our astute PlayStation fans! The answer is of course not. Because the player doesn’t have to aim we instead allow them to focus on all of the stuff that matters more: evading exploding pillars of flame, sliding down a wall firing an SMG one-handed, and cartwheeling over a boss whilst simultaneously unloading a shotgun shell into its demonic face. Because the player doesn’t have to aim we have room to make this kind of gameplay really challenging!
This is what playing Seraph is all about — looking and feeling amazing.
In addition, Seraph also features an on-screen, dynamically scaling difficulty rating, so it will always match your ability level. The better you play the harder the game becomes! But don’t worry, the higher the difficulty rating the greater the rewards dropped by slain demons for our crafting and upgrade systems.
There are tons of unlocks, daily challenge modes, and special Twitch streamer features we’d love to talk about more but I’m out of time.
Thanks for having me, PlayStation fans! Why not drop some questions in the comments section below and I’ll get right back to you?
Wow! This looks and sounds amazing! A very interesting gameplay approach but I can see it is paying off.
Questions about the aiming: If there is one enemy your character will aim at it. If there are two, and you are dual-wielding, it seems your fire will split. What about three enemies or more (is there a way to toggle through targets)? What happens if the enemies are behind cover? What if a boss has certain targeted areas you need to hit? Assuming some of the targeting is based on proximity, do you find yourself navigating around the area so that your auto-aim picks the targets you intended?
Thanks!
Those are good questions, I’m interested in those now as well.
Excellent questions! Let’s begin at the top:
One enemy – full focus with both weapons. 2 enemies – split focus (we actually have specific skill upgrades that will boost your damage when shooting 2 targets at once!).
When there are 3 enemies, Seraph will shoot the closest 2 and keep shooting at those 2 until you stop firing or one of them dies, at which point she will pick the next 2 closest enemies.
However, if you feel you wish to focus a particular enemy (such as the painful “healer” demon), you can nudge the right stick in their direction to force the lock of both weapons onto it. This lock will only be broken if the demon dies, the player nudges the right stick towards a different demon or if the target is off screen for more than 5 seconds.
This way you can really focus damage when you need to. It really is awesome! You’ll have to get the game into your hands to feel it.
Hope that helps?
Great, thanks for the details! You might want to describe this re-targeting feature more in your promo materials as some folks will still want that level of control :-)
Looks like it’s off to a good start. Like the commenter above, I’m interested to know what happens with three or more enemies are on the screen. Will Seraph auto-target the strongest/most threatening, or will it be first-come-first-killed?
I’ll be keeping an eye on this title for our website.
I have replied. Hope this helps. :)
The auto aiming idea is interesting. It kind of reminds me of the game Wet in which you use a Max Payne bullet time type of move only Ruby just looked way more bad ass when she did it because her animations were super smooth just like Seraph’s here (They look really slick good job!) and her second pistol would automatically lock onto one target while the player focused on someone else. Not to mention shed freaking slide down a ladder head first and start shooting lol. It also looks like there are some power ups we can use and of course different weapons. Is there going to be some type of combo system in which we might be able to juggle enemies sort of like DMC or is it more like Velocity in which you run through enemies very quickly and just try to stay alive (I know Velocity isn’t exactly the same but this sort of reminded me of it). Last questions I have are simple ones, are we going to be able carry multiple weapons and switch them whenever we want or are they kind of like random pick ups? Also what about reloading how does that work? Is it manual or automatic? I feel like automatic might ruin the players momentum. So far the game looks really cool though so I’ll be keeping an eye out for more news in the future.
Weapons: You can only carry 1 pick up weapon at a time, but it can be swapped at any weapons locker with a new one. You have infinite ammo on your pistols (because ANGEL REASONS).
We had ammo clips and reloading in an earlier version, but it ended up getting the player killed more than not, and they just looked at me like “Why?!”. So, now our weapons never reload; you get full access to burn through your ammo until the weapon is dry. :)
After looking at this video I like what I see & normally I need to know more but this is one of those games that was a instant like for me.
Awesome! You’ve just made my week. :)
This is now on my radar. I agree with Paulogy and would like to know how the auto-aiming will segregate the targets. This reminds me of the first Tomb Raider and the way they did their auto-aiming. In that game it was first come first kill and close proximity. The rewards and loot have me very excited as well. Thanks for all your hard work and looking forward to learning a release date and price.
I’ve already responded about aiming above, so I’ll take this opportunity to talk about the loot and crafting.
We have 2 forms of collectibles in the game; Shards of Seraph’s missing power and demon body parts. The demon body parts (scything talons, wriggling fronds etc) are used to Transmute new upgraded weapons, protective items and Miracles (spells) that Seraph can perform.
The Shards are essentially valuable skill points for a form of Skill tree. However, the rarer the quality of the Shard, the STRONGER the skill’s effect will be. For example, a Common Shard will give about 3% critical strike chance when attached to that specific skill, whereas the Epic Shard will give 12% crit chance. Get it?
This is the kind of stuff I love in games and it’s been a pleasure to integrate these features into Seraph.
Sounds great, thanks for the reply!
Daniel, you had me at John Woo, Equilibrium, Matrix. Then you add in Angels, a Devil May Cry kinda thing. I can’t wait, this looks so much fun.
I knew it! I knew someone else out there loved Equilibrium as I do. Forget Batman, this was Christian Bale’s finest work. :P
Daaaammmn, Daniel!
Believe it or not I’ve not even seen this meme, but people keep saying it to me. :D
Interesting concept, and it looks really smooth and fun. It’s definitely a title I’m going to keep my eye on.
Great! Follow us on Twitter etc to keep up to date. We’ll probably livestream some builds of the game soon.
Oh, I like this, very much. The art style, the monsters and an awesome character with duel wielding guns. The auto-aim practically sells me. I struggle with aiming in shooters, but I am a sucker for platforming. This looks right up my alley. I can’t wait to see more!
We’re happy you think so! The game feels awesome and there’s plenty of challenge to make up for the lack of having to aim.
We can’t wait till you can get your hands on it. :)
The one thing I would ask for is the ability to control the difficulty yourself as well.
Sometimes I really want to push myself, and make the game too hard for me so that I’m forced to get better… but other days, like today, I’m feeling sick(flus suck) and just want some easy fun enemy slaughter action. Automatic difficulty is a great option, but sometimes manual difficulties can offer people the choice of how they choose to play.
Difficulty always begins at 1.0 rating, but if you complete the game you unlock the ability to start a new campaign at a higher difficulty rating. The game will match your ability, so if you’re having a sucky day, then the difficulty rating won’t sky-rocket.
If, however, you’ve rinsed through 3 levels without taking a single hit… well, you’ll find things will start to heat up real fast!
Holy crap this looks sexy. I only hope there’s going to be a decent variety of enemy types, weapons, levels etc.
I would love to see a 3rd person version of this game, like Warframe meets DmC.
“But, Daniel, if you don’t aim isn’t the game just easy-mode-auto-win casual fodder?”
>> I never understood this way-of-thinking. You don’t aim in Mega Man (save for Mega Man & Bass, but whatever); you just place him around the screen and let him shoot forward. Aiming wasn’t the challenge in those games; it’s everything else, and they’re plenty challenging! That’s part of the reason why that dumb, first person Maverick Hunter X game Armature was working on (that thankfully got cancelled) was so insulting – they just completely misunderstood what Mega Man was about. But I digress.
This looks pretty rad! You guys have certainly honed in on some awesome action, by the looks of it. Truly capturing a sort of 2D “gun ballet”. I like that; I like it a lot! The actual presentation looks a little unfortunately drab to me (especially since you’re playing as an angel) – just more corridors and dare-I-say minimalist 3D assets don’t do liberty to the premise. But the gameplay chops is what matter ultimately. I’ll keep an eye on this for the future, and hope it all turns out as good as possible! :)
Excellent post and some great feedback! We’ll do our best to spruce up the environments. :)
When is this game out? I can’t wait more…
I have to say…this is looking EXCELLENT! I wil most definitely be keeping an eye out on Seraph!