Something stirs beneath the stone of the Highland Plateau. The dead have stopped staying dead in the woods of Silvercrest. The cold has stopped answering prayers on the Miram Drift. Three very different doors into the same mystery - that's Everforge Legacy in a nutshell. This is the first real post to this community, so let me actually introduce it.
I'm a solo developer building the game. Work Game Design is me, myself, and I, in Unity. Everforge Legacy is a single-player action RPG set in a world called Thal'myr, and it's my love letter to Final Fantasy XI's job system, reforged for one player instead of a party. There are six starting Jobs - Warrior, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage - each with their own repertoire of spells and abilities. Level a Job, then mix its abilities across your 8 active slots. Weapon skills, skillchains, and elemental affinities carry over from the FFXI side of the inspiration too, just tuned for solo pacing instead of party math.The world splits into three origins - Dwarven, Elven, and Human - each with its own zones, cast, and bosses. They have not been developed as one is "more complete" with the other two being tacked on for content. All three are complete playthroughs with completely different story beats and a different starting point each. All three converge on the same ending: something's coming together at Misthaven, and each path gets you there a different way.Each zone also keeps a Journal on you as much as you keep one on it: a running tally of what you've found and what you haven't, no map markers pointing at the answer. Quest markers are available for weary travelers but not on by default. To be guided is to cheapen the experience. Scattered throughout those zones are Named Enemies - real rare-spawn fights, not palette swaps, and there are a lot of them to run into across all three paths if you go looking.What's playable right now is Chapter 1, a level cap of 20, a complete arc with a real beginning, middle, and end. Not a slice, not a demo cut off mid-thought. I'd rather ship something whole and small than something sprawling and half-built. This first release is aimed at getting a complete game in front of players with the hopes they come back hungry for more.I'm one person building this in public-ish now that the Steam page is live and socials are flowing. I'd rather be straight with you about what Chapter 1 actually includes rather than what's still a sketch on a whiteboard and oversell something that isn't there yet. If you've got questions about the Jobs, the setting, or what Chapter 1 actually covers, feel free to ask.Thanks for being here on day one.