Razbury Games revealed the Early Access launch trailer for Vidar, an RPG Puzzler Where Everyone Dies, and announced that the game will be available on Steam Early Access on January 31, 2017.
Vidar is focused on random story-telling and random puzzles. You play as the Stranger, a character who was lost in a snowstorm and made it to a town at a time when no one can leave. The town of Vidar is plagued by a terrible beast with an appetite for those who still live; so long as this Beast is left to feast on the remaining villagers, Vidar’s days are numbered.
Each resident has his or her own stories to tell, their own quests to give the Stranger, and their own relationships with each other. As their neighbors, lovers, friends, and family die, each is deeply affected by the loss – and their story arcs diverge accordingly. As the game progresses, the stories of the living change in response not just to what the player has done, but to who has died as well. Because the order of deaths in Vidar is random each playthrough, every game is a new story. In order to stop the Beast, you’ll enter a puzzle dungeon that explores classic mechanics with new twists, each chosen from a bank of hundreds to create a unique playthrough each time.
With art from Becca Bair (Arcadian Atlas) and music from Adrian Jakubiak (The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine), Vidar references a desaturated and depressed version of the SNES golden-era of RPGs in order to create feelings of nostalgia and a yearning for the past.
“I’ve been so fortunate to have a community of hundreds of supporters that have watched Vidar since its early prototypes, who are now willing to give feedback on every version of the game. Based on their comments, I’ve iterated dozens of times on core concepts, and distilled Vidar to the essential focus on grief, loss, and mourning,” said Dean Razavi, founder of Razbury Games in New York. “It’s been a long journey, and I can’t wait for the rest of the world to see what I’ve been working on for the past three years.”