Fate of the Elder Gods is a grim world, set to the backdrop of an uncertain political landscape of the late Victorian Era, and based on the successful board game produced by Greater than Games. Freshly out of an economic boom, the fiscal uncertainty of the late nineteenth century has caused a normally loyal political populace to begin doubting the direction of the New World. In his house at R’lyeh dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
Fate of the Elder Gods is the RPG that the mythos and the fanbase have been yearning for. A deep game, with fun and interactive gameplay that they only pay once for. Any expansions will be funded the same exact way. By players purchasing the game; you get what you pay for. No hidden tricks or surprises.
Fate of the Elder Gods is a visionary new perspective on the Lovecraftian mythos. Not often has the truth of the world been glimpsed through the eyes of the cultists. Our reality is much more glorious through your eyes; the eyes of the chosen.
We miss the days where a great game was largely defined by how good the story was; the depth of characters, the struggles and missions they encountered on the way to resolving a critical dilemma which changed the world. In Fate of the Elder Gods, the story-line is center stage. Everything in the world is woven into the lore of the environment, and is tied in with everything you do, no matter what order you choose to do things in. Providing true immersion is the best thing we can do for this game, and we’ve spent an extreme amount of time making sure that you will feel that you are the Harbinger, and that your choices have real meaning, and physically affect the people in the world.
Later, we’ll talk about how your choices affect the world and your story experience.
Items fall into varying levels of rarity. The tiers are as follows:
In Fate of the Elder Gods, you receive items which you use to combine spells, and equippable items that affect payoff your cult talent roster, or your individual character stats. Every item has different pros and cons, and is rolled from a large pool of stats, potency, and abilities (Legendary items carry special traits that are often build-around bonuses).
Similar to items, each spell is unique. You create spells by combining different components, sacrifices, and incantations you’ve learned. These spells are composed of a very large “spell effect” pool. You’ll want to learn what combination of components cause which effects to be present in your spells, and you’ll want to use this knowledge to create spells that synergize with your chosen play-style and the talents of the cultists on your roster.
In Fate of the Elder Gods, there are 8 different cult storylines (with a potential 9th through stretch goals… *cough*). Each God represents a wholly distinct personality and agenda. Because of this uniqueness, it was determined that each cult should feel fundamentally different. So, they do.
In addition, Daniel Marthaler and the team have spent months determining organization and immersion in scenes. Arkham is a dark, mysterious and magical city, and the player plays in the shadows. Immense effort has gone into making the environment feel at home with the gameplay experience!
Fate of the Elder Gods will be targeted at PC and Xbox on initial release.
** Additional platforms might be added through meeting stretch goals.
All story missions in Fate of the Elder Gods are voice acted! Characters are deep and consistent throughout the progression through the play-through. As the character changes through the progression, the emotion and tone of the character’s voice and sentiment also evolves.
You can listen to an example of a voice-over from the game by clicking on the image of Elder Insee, above. This example is from an intro to the Cthulhu storyline arc’s beginning.
A ton of effort has gone into making the soundtrack a combination of creepy and fantastic in nature. The entire soundtrack, composed by our very own Jon McNew, is deep and will keep you on the edge of your seat, begging for closure. Often, the soundtrack will feel weird, off, or just plain wrong; that’s by design!
Fate of the Elder Gods is launching along-side https://arkham-advertiser.com, your exclusive source for all things Arkham! The Advertiser will tell you what’s going on in the world, and for diligent harbingers, can be a source of in-game intel! In addition, what you see in the Advertiser will affect what you see in-game! Also, things you do in-game with significant impact will show up in the Advertiser!
The player decides what happens in the world! Based off of the player’s choices, the world is affected, and so is the story experience! Please, just please don’t sacrifice Boris, though. Everyone loves Boris!
Your choices extend to more than dialogue and NPCs, though. In Fate of the Elder Gods, you choose how you play. Want to be aggressive, search out other players, and destroy the investigator menace? You will develop a notorious reputation, and people will become suspicious of you. They will write about your transgressions in the “Advertiser”, but you can do it.
Ultimately, you choose your play-style. Immense effort has gone in to ensuring that players of all different skill-sets and preferences have a place in the world of the occult!
As the chosen champion of your cult and God, you will achieve your goals through various means. Increasing the potency and numbers of your cult is key. New cult members will be recruited to search for arcane artifacts, learn information about select locations, and track other cultist and Investigator movements. Unique cult members may also give your organization abilities or boosts in skills or talents.
Fate of the Elder Gods has session-persistent world instances, zonally instanced geographically. What this means is that people in the same area of the world as you affect the reality of your world as much as their own. Each player plays in their own dimension of Azathoth’s dream.
Players may customize their experience via in-game character and cult skins. Players are able to customize their character, cult roster, and lodge with a plethora of available skins, which are earned via achievements, not additional money. Stretch goals could potentially unlock additional skins which will be available to earn.
Every character in Fate of the Elder Gods has traits and talents which affects what they’re able to do. This includes player characters, as well as civilians and story-line NPCs, as well as investigators. These traits can influence their effectiveness in cults, investigators’ efficiency in finding you, as well as the quests that story-line characters give out, even what characters sound like and how they think!
Fate of the Elder Gods will not be multiplayer in the traditional sense. While you can play with other players in your instance, and you may be pitted against other players (and their minions) situationally, you will not see hundreds of other player “Harbingers” running around in your world, and the run-ins you do have with other players cults will be brief skirmishes over a significant objective, location, or artifact.
In Fate of the Elder Gods, you will research and craft the spells which are available to you through the collection of excerpts from ancient tomes and ingredients found on creatures from dark ancestry. In addition, you may carry artifacts, which will channel your power in various ways. Finally, the structure of your cult also plays a part in your progression through the story. Every member of your cult has archetypes, or talents, which will provide you with boons depending on what their strengths are. Don’t forget, your cultists are a resource! You may sacrifice them for rituals or Eldritch Power!
A fully immersive world must be filled with believable characters and AI. In addition to deep characters who play significant roles in the story (unless you decide to sacrifice them for Eldritch Power), who are plentiful throughout the world, investigators are clever, and will smartly position to corner you. In addition, they intelligently gain intel from civilians (and other players).
Combat in Fate of the Elder Gods is all about stealth and secrecy. There is a near infinite number of spells, as you determine what elements to combine and what incantations to say when documenting (creating) spells.
You will rid the land of investigators, or the spawn of Gods other than your chosen. You will out-wit and dispatch other cultists in your search for powerful sources of Eldritch power. You will summon your savior; The God you serve.
Throughout your quest to summon an Old God, you will battle powerful beings, deal with angry mobs of civilians, and protect your lodge from raids by investigators. You must act covertly, but quickly, as they are keen to destroy the knowledge and power you’ve gained. Such is the way of the unenlightened.
Banish conjured monstrous other-worldly entities and clash against mighty rival cults to gain Eldritch Power. Further your malevolent agenda to summon the one true Elder God; YOURS!
Campfire Studios was created in 2012. They spent several years building games white-label for other companies, before it was decided in 2017 that they wanted to make their own titles the way they wanted to make them — for players.
Along those lines, Campfire does not believe in charging players additional money for something they’ve already bought. Because of that, you will not see micro-transactions in Fate of the Elder Gods.
Kyle Richter, C.E.O., Lead Gameplay Systems Architect, St. Louis, MO, USA
Robert Jones, Lead Writer, Arlington, TX
Kira Burniston, Lead Concept Artist, UK
Jon McNew, Lead Composer, MO, USA
Trevor Nelson, Lead Systems Engineer, NH
Daniel Marthaler, Lead Environment Designer, GA
Daniel Adams, Gameplay Systems Engineer, Australia
Silvano Junior, Lead 3D Modeler/Animator, Brazil
Dan Raihert, 3D Modeler/Animator, Canada
James Anderton, VFX Artist, TX
Troy Hudson, Voice Actor, USA
Storm Watters, Voice Actor, USA
Campfire has been building high-quality video games since 2012 as a white-label game developer (developing games for other companies), many proving very successful for our clients. Since 2017, Campfire has been working on several titles that we own the rights to (including Intrusion Point, Viva Java, and Fate of the Elder Gods). Fate is the first of our internal projects that is 3D, and we refuse to skimp on anything in the game. As such, we have already invested a large amount of internal funds into the development of the game, and we will continue to do so. Based in St. Louis, we are very grateful for what Kickstarter provides, and are hopeful that the Kickstarter community will help us to execute on an epic saga that both the players and the mythos deserves (Cthulhu demands it!)! Successfully funding on Kickstarter allows us to expand the initial release of the game to be much deeper and more full than what we’d be able to do on our own, as well as supplementing the current build-out of the game’s core systems.