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 :-)