Aeon of Sands announced

Word reaches me that there’s a new first-person dungeon delver in development by Two Bits Kid (a two-person team consisting of Marco Pedrana and Florian Fischer). The game is Aeon of Sands, and its first chapter is called “The Trail.”

The premise:

“The Trail” is the first chapter of the Aeon series, in which you follow a young city clerk on his adventures in a world under two suns, between the life they nurture and the ruin they bring. The clerk Setrani is unwillingly sent on a critical mission, searching for a missing diplomatic caravan in the most dangerous territory. Will he track it down in time to save his precious dome city and its sacred tree, or will this prideful outpost of humanity be claimed by the sands, and by what lurks in the desert’s hot dark heart?

The developers state that Aeon of Sands will be real-time and story-driven, with unique (presumably branching) role-playing choices. The devs compare the overall experience to something like Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master.

AoS is planned to have hand-painted visuals, more than 20 dungeons, more than 30 monsters and bosses, more than 300 item types, and “more than 150 illustrated scenes for plot nodes.” You can see what they’re going for graphically in the screenshots below.

Aeon of Sands is planned for release early next year for Windows, Mac and Linux.