The Steam trailer for open world RPG Dreamspring contains: shooting spiders with a revolver. Hanging out near a green ocean. Fighting green skeletons. Most curiously, it features an armoured knight convulsing on a bed as if being shocked, from the inside, by some sort of magical electricity disease. Did this knight eat an entire pack of bad batteries? Do batteries even exist in this world, described as “a realm in ruins…beneath a twilight sky”. It’s a damn hell ass bum mystery, and mystery is exactly what I want from a game that lists both Morrowind and King’s Field as influences.
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“As a spellsword gunslinger,” – truly, the millionaire astronaut cowboy DJ of RPG classes – “you’ll explore ethereal landscapes shrouded in twilight, battle fearsome creatures, and uncover ancient secrets. Explore the dying Kingdom of Mortis and its different realms in first person action combat, in a world mixed with retro and vaporwave aesthetics”.
Despite the FromSoft influence, Dreamspring is aiming to be “a less punishing type of Souls/Scrolls-like game,” which I reckon is something that gets more important the bigger your world is. Otherwise, it looks to have most of the stuff you’d expect – branching dialogue, branching storyline, branching trees with branches branching toward an uncaring skyline, all the classics. It’s in early access at the moment, with the “core loop” apparently done, and the main quest and world still being worked on.
There’s no demo, although developer Billyfighter’s previous game Necroslayer is roughly the price of Greggs’ bake at the moment. Will you feel good after playing it? I can’t say. But you will likely feel better than after eating a Greggs’ bake.