Tactical indie RPG Iratus Lord of the Dead has reached 108% of its Kickstarter goal. The Unfrozen Studios project is inspired by the likes of Darkest Dungeon, and as is the case with successful Kickstarters, the game looks like it has a lot of promise.
Iratus is a turn-based tactical RPG heavily inspired by Darkest Dungeon. But where the latter puts you in control of rag-tag parties of adventurers who fight off hoards of dark and evil foes, Iratus Lord of the Dead has you fill the boots of the bad guys. You’re the titular Iratus, an “envoy of the damned” who is slain and then resurrected after selling your soul to the dark arts. With your new necromantic powers, you amass undead forces to slay the heroes that enter your dungeon. How delightfully devious.
This is where Iratus’s unique selling point comes in. In order to amass said undead forces, you’ll need to cobble them together using different body parts like a proper necromancer. You can collect these assorted body parts, each with their own unique qualities, in order to produce a multitude of different undead creatures like skeletons, zombies, vampires, and banshee. Your enemies will be just as varied too, “from unsuspecting miners in the depths to evil-seeking paladins.”
There’s a sort of Dungeon Keeper quality about it, with the exploration and expansion of an evil underground lair (or as Unfrozen Studios put it, “the Belowground Lair (the cooler, edgier brother of underground lairs) and that also shines through in the morbid sense of humor about Iratus. There are plenty of dark yet comical one-liners that play around with puns about being undead and lamentations of the boringness of the eternal void of the afterlife, and it all comes from the prolific mouth of Stephan Weyte, best known as the voice of Caleb in the Blood series.
There’s a demo available through the Kickstarter page if you want to give it a go. The developers will also be holding an AMA on the PC Gaming subreddit tomorrow at 8am EST, where you can ask questions about Iratus Lord of the Dead‘s development. If you back the game at the $45 dollar tier, you can also access the closed alpha on July 1.
