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Description

TechnoSorcery is a fresh rhythm arcade game. It aims to breathe life back into the genre by making it more accessible, and more challenging. Memorize spell sequences of different elements and cast them to the beat. Build up your skills as a Sorcerer as you embark on a narrative driven adventure. Unlock an extra challenging, fast paced Card-Battling mode using your own deck of cards. Even create and share levels of your own online.

• Rhythm-Based Spellcasting

• Master 8 elemental notes and memorize over 100 unique spells.

• Narrative Driven Story with over 40 levels

• Advanced Card Battle mode against bosses

• Customize your own deck of cards

• Engage in PvP 2-Player Online Card Battles

• Fully featured Level Editor to create, upload, and share levels with the community

• Competitive Leaderboards

Kevin, Founder and CEO of The Ancient Arcanum, quit his corporate job as a Staff Software Engineer in late 2022 to pursue his lifelong passion for making games. Ever since he picked up a programmable calculator in the 6th grade, he was hooked. Since then he has tinkered with C++/OpenGL, Microsoft XNA, and finally landing on Unity as the framework of choice. The last 10 years had been corporate coding by day, and Unity tinkering by night; no easy feat to balance, as most Indie Devs can confirm. But finally with the support of his Wife, and a little encouragement from his role model Thor of Pirate Software to “Go make games”, he decided to make the leap of faith.

That leap landed directly into TechnoSorcery; a project that he had been chipping away at for the full 10 years of learning Unity. It was one of many projects he had experimented with, but what kept pulling him back to it was that he found the fun in it early, and knew he had to bring it to completion. Fast forward to January 2023, and he made a New Years resolution to complete the game in a year.

“We realized that Rhythm games with the longest lifespan have tools that enable the community to continue creating and sharing their own content. That is why we focused on the Level Editor so much in TechnoSorcery. Now the community can use the exact same tools we used to make great content!”

“TechnoSorcery actually started because I was struggling with remembering, well, everything. The natural progression was to create a game that made the player feel like a sorcerer while memorizing spells.”

“I just make things that I want to play. If I get bored of playing, I add a bit more to make me excited again. I have been iterating like this on TechnoSorcery for a couple years. I would hope there is a bit of something for everyone to enjoy by now.”

“The story of TechnoSorcery is about mute sorcery trying to succeed in a world of verbal incantations. I just love a good story about an underdog who doesn’t fit the norm. And the thought of defying peoples expectations has always driven me.”

“Indie dev is hard. Like really hard. You have to put on so many hats, and work long hours. We do this because we love it. What made it the most difficult for me was trying to balance a corporate job writing software with coming home and writing software for fun. You might spend a weekend fixing some silly bug, only to context switch back to the corporate grind. Maybe next weekend you don’t want to start back up again. The most freeing sensation I have ever felt is being able to work a full 8 hours a day on TechnoSorcery, and then sign-off and live life too.”

“Find the fun. I had so many ideas. Most of them just weren’t fun in practice. Rapid prototype to find the fun. Everything after that is polish.”

“At first my ideas for games fueled me. But I kept burning out working on them. An allure of bringing an idea into reality can only go so far. What mattered more was enjoying the process. Find a type of game or aspects of making games that you enjoy, and focus on that. If you enjoy making the game itself, you won’t burnout.”

“TechnoSorcery started as a simple Sci-Fi Arcade game…10 years ago. Feature creep is real. I kept expanding it over the years, reworking it, and eventually completely re-writing it as a Fantasy game with a full story and alternate game modes. I wouldn’t change a thing though. I learned a ton along the way.”

“I felt like Phil Fish from Fez; except instead of pixel art, it was UI Buttons for me.”

“Sometimes I hop off my computer to fix dinner and start thinking, oh gosh I need to get some work done. But then I realize I had been working for the last 10 hours. Most of it just feels like play now.”

“Crypt of the NecroDancer was a big source of inspiration. TechnoSorcery certainly isn’t a dungeon crawler, but we thought it felt great doing actions in sync to a beat, without the rigidity that came from other Rhythm games like DDR. Giving the player more rhythm freedom just has a great feeling.

“Imagine casting Hearthstone cards at 128 BPM. That’s the vibe we are going for in the advanced battle mode (which is unlocked about halfway through the story). You have to know what all your cards do, learn their input combo (like Street Fighter), and cast them in real time.”