LogInGame Developer Michał "Venris" Cieczko has told us about Whispers of the Eyeless' mechanics and abilities, discussed the role Poland's history played in the game's setting, and explained why partnering up with a publisher was the right decision for the team.
Whispers of the Eyeless
My name is Michał Cieczko, but I am better known as Venris from the Total War: Warhammer community. For the last 7 years, I have been creating the SFO: Grimhammer mods, the most subbed overhaul mods in the history of the Total War series. I am self-taught, both in modding and in game development.
Most of the team members behind Whispers of the Eyeless have been working with me on the SFO mods for the last few years. There are five of us working on Whispers of the Eyeless full-time and two who contribute regularly on a part-time basis. We are located all around the world and communicate daily via Discord. We are a small, tight-knit group and are very focused on our development track.
Sources of Inspiration
I am Polish and live in the beautiful city of Toruń. Poland has a very rich history, and the 17th century period is culturally vibrant and not often represented in electronic entertainment. The idea of a game about taking a city from within, not with grand armies and political power, has existed in the dark recesses of my mind for many years. I have always wanted to play a game where I take a city piece by piece by wielding my followers and having them do my bidding. The idea of a dark cult worshiping darker gods was a natural evolution of this idea.
In Whispers of the Eyeless, you play as the First Prophet of the Dead Gods, an enigmatic character with a mysterious history. He is an outsider who has just arrived in the city of Aranthor, a city where those who leave the protection of its walls are never seen again.
Your goal in the game is to take the city of Aranthor in the name of the Dead Gods. You achieve this by guiding the gods back to power by secretly spreading their worship throughout the city. We are keeping the details of the story between ourselves and the Dead Gods for now. I will say that Whispers of the Eyeless is a dark fantasy game, and the traditional ideas of good and evil may not be so clearly defined.
Art Style
Our art style is heavily inspired by games like Darkest Dungeon and Children of Morta, but we wanted to make something quite original here. All of our UI and everything on the screen has been hand-painted with the objective of evoking the sense of looking at a moving painting, one that evolves and changes based on your choices. To achieve this, we limit the visual effects on the screen and utilize subtle changes in the art to draw our players into our dark universe. As for the engine, we chose Unity to power Whispers of the Eyeless.
Combat Mechanics & Special Abilities
Our game features turn-based combat, where you select your actions between turns. You can also use Gifts granted by the Dead Gods to gain an advantage in battle; unfortunately, tapping into these dark powers comes at the cost of some of the Prophet's sanity. You must manage his sanity properly, or he will experience significant debuffs. The Prophet's dark powers can also drain the sanity of his enemies, applying these same debuffs to them.
There are many build options for the Prophet, and thanks to the randomness of each run, we aim to provide our players with variety and interesting choices. We have also designed the combat to be more about attrition than simply winning or losing; the Prophet is sturdy and powerful, but he cannot take on the whole city by himself. Thus, your goal is not only to win each combat, but to minimize the damage you take so that you can continue for as long as possible, and recover more resources for your cult's hidden base.
Fates Mirror is a game mode that uses some parts of the campaign and puts them in a survival scenario. The player has access to most campaign features, but at a faster pace and without the campaign story elements. One example scenario goal is to survive waves of enemies while upgrading your base, in the style of games like Age of Darkness and They Are Billions (but turn-based!).
Gifts are the special abilities that the Prophet uses in combat at the cost of his own sanity. As the player guides the Dead Gods back to Ascension, more gifts will become available depending on which god has gained power.
Our perk system is called Blessings, which are primarily found randomly and equipped during runs but can also be gained permanently as the Prophet gains experience and levels. Blessings provide stat buffs to the character, which can be simple bonuses or more powerful but situational effects. Permanent blessings can be easily changed by the player between runs, encouraging experimentation, limiting RNG, and giving the player control over their build.
Dead Gods
Players can choose any one of the three Dead Gods, Wrath, Desire, or Madness to favor as they play, or a combination of two or even a completely balanced approach. Gameplay-wise, gifts, blessings, other powers we have not discussed, and some actions are tied to one of the three Dead Gods. Leaning heavily into a specific god can unlock powerful, synergistic builds relatively early, while balancing your efforts can allow for more flexibility.
The Prophet's voice lines and appearance will also be impacted by your favored god, as will the UI and visuals. Many of the game's random events can be solved in different ways depending on the strength of the gods, and many of your cult base's improvements are also tied to the power of the gods.
As for the story, the choices that you make can lead to new paths while locking others. Your decisions will also impact the state of Aranthor; when you take a district, the god you devote the district to will permanently alter the city and your subsequent adventures within.
The Choice of the Publisher
Our publisher, Camlann Games, has thankfully taken over the promotion of our game. As for working with our community, this is a crucial skill for a mod team to develop, and I like to think we've gotten quite good at it. We aim to strike a balance between taking player feedback into consideration while maintaining our vision for our game. We communicate regularly on our public Discord!
The biggest obstacle our studio has had to overcome has been funding. Our small team does deserve to be paid for their work after all! And on the other side, investors deserve to understand the product they are investing in. For us, this left us in a 'chicken and egg' situation for a long time, where we needed to be able to demonstrate our vision for the game to get funding but lacked the funding to build our demo. Thank goodness for Kickstarter and our wonderful backers!
Camlann Games was a natural partner for our studio. They are gamers, just like we are, and they like niche indie projects just like ours. With Camlann handling our advertising efforts and many of our administrative tasks, we are free to focus entirely on the development of Whispers of the Eyeless. We also sometimes bounce ideas off of them when we get sick of talking amongst ourselves.
Future Plans
Our next step is the Steam Fest demo in October, followed by Early Access release later this year. It's very important for us to have every main game mechanic ready so we can expand on them during the Early Access period in subsequent updates. For the EA release, we aim to have an endless mode and custom games so players can understand and experience the game. The campaign won't be available until our full release late next year, as it combines all the elements of our game into one complete experience.
We post regularly on social media and have a thriving community on Discord, which is our favorite corner of the internet. We hope to see you there!