Songbringer announced

Nathaniel Weiss has sent word (or should I say, brought song?) of a new procedural Zelda-alike he and the rest of Wizard Fu Games are developing. In case you haven’t guessed, that would be Songbringer.

You may recall me mentioning Songbringer in our last Back to Back; the game got funded to the tune of 167% of its goal, and now development begins in earnest. The premise:

you journey through procedurally-generated worlds overflowing with recently awakened demons, virus androids and other sullied creatures. Along the way you will uncover long lost devices and combine them into powerful artifacts. If you are skilled with the nanosword you will vanquish giants and save a planet from being overrun.

This isn’t the first procedurally generated Zelda-alike we’ve seen–there’s King Voxel and Lenna’s Inception, to name two–but this might be the most visually rich one to swing around the block thus far:

The planned feature list includes:

• Procedurally generated – over 300 million possible worlds
• Deterministic six-letter world seed always creates the same world on any platform
• 1 world seed uniquely generates: 1 overworld, 9 dungeons, 9 bosses, 25 combinable items and at least 200 secrets
• Roguelike-inspired permadeath option with extra rewards for players who dare so greatly
• Online leaderboard highlighting the top players based on completion time, percentage of secrets uncovered and game mode (regular or permadeath)
• An epic science fiction narrative featuring a spacecutter named Songbringer, its crew of art-warehouse comrades, psychedelic cacti, an ancient evil army, and the Second Great War of Wizards
• 8-bit pixel art fused with 32-bit shaders and 3D effects
• Gamepad support

Songbringer is being developed for “PC, Mac, Linux and possibly iOS, Android, PS4 and Xbox One.” Weiss writes that the game is currently about 30% completed; the earliest possible release would be at the end of 2015.