Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades - Current State

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News about the current state of Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades:

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The current state of Pathbreakers

Hello everyone!

Now that Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades has been officially announced, we've received questions about our plans and timelines and such, so here's what we have so far.

Release Date
We don't currently have a clear idea of the release date, and there's still a lot of work to be done. It's an ambitious project, and as usual, we're not willing to compromise on quality to get it out the door faster. We believe sometime in 2026 for the final release is probably likely.

That being said, we are strongly considering an Early Access on Steam. We were very happy with the amount and quality of feedback we got for our previous game, Fell Seal, during its Early Access, and we're hoping for a similar result with Pathbreakers. As such, an Early Access sometime in 2025 is likely.

General flow of the game
Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades is going to be a less "well defined" genre than Fell Seal was. It has more varied systems and gameplay mechanics and is, in essence, more "multi-dimensional" than Fell Seal in terms of gameplay.

When the game starts, you'll get to select one of many origin stories. An origin story has a protagonist, with their backstory, goals, and starting situation. There'll be an option to create a custom one as well.

From there, you'll start somewhere on the Stormtossed Isle, a large island populated by multiple factions, some friendly, some hostile. You'll be controlling a troop of mercenaries, with a general goal defined by your origin story. The game is meant to be very open-ended and you can pretty much do whatever you want for the most part. Each origin story character has their own story and goal, but you could put it on hold and focus on exploring the world instead. Think of something somewhat like Skyrim on that front.

As time passes, you have take care of your expenses: salaries, food supplies, new gear, recovering from battle injuries, etc., so you'll need some income. You can focus on contracts for your company, trading across the various cities, or exploring the wild island in search of grand discoveries. Or you could do all of those things, or even resort to banditry (which won't exactly give your company a sterling reputation, but it'll pay the bills).

Map exploration takes place on a large world map, filled with roaming enemies and populated with cities, dungeons, and lairs to discover. Lairs contain hostile faction leaders, often barricaded and enjoying favorable terrain. Battling them will yield rich spoils, but it'll be dangerous. Dungeons will have your protagonist walk around in dark and dangerous environments, filled with traps, patrolling enemies, and hidden passages. But dungeons can be as rewarding as they are dangerous, and unique riches can be found at their heart, including legendary equipment and holy statues that will bestow powerful traits upon your company.

As you progress through the game, your overall goal is to amass worthy mercenaries and equipment. Mold them up into glorious combatants through your selection of advanced classes, stats, abilities, passives and traits. Only in this way will you truly be ready for whatever awaits you at the end of your origin story.

Inspirations
I think the closest match to what Pathbreakers is, would be a hybrid between Uncharted Waters: New Horizon (or Horizon's Gate) and Battle Brothers, which one could say are the 3 main inspirations for the game.

Pathbreakers has the same focus on exploration, trading, and combat as Uncharted Waters and Horizon's Gate, but with a combat system and contracts system more akin to Battle Brothers. The overall feel is closest to Battle Brothers, but with a significantly more complex trading system, a dungeon exploration system, and battles with more diverse options, through a system of classes and abilities. Each unit, at max level, will have access to 5 active abilities to use in combat, on top of the basic attack option and their equipped items. This leads to a lot more options on the battlefield and a more fantasy feel overall.

Visual style
Anyone familiar with Fell Seal can easily tell that we've decided on a very different art style for Pathbreakers. We've opted for a more traditional pixelart style for this one. There's always pros and cons to these choices, but all in all, we're hoping this will be a net positive. The biggest upside of the new style is going to be much more detailed and smooth animations across the board for sprites.

Otherwise, just like for Fell Seal, Pathbreakers will be boasting a lot of customization options for your mercenary units and you'll be able to change the colors of various pieces of their attire.

Another style change is going to be on the UI front, where we've decided to design the game from the ground up for keyboard and mouse primarily. It should have a much more PC-style UI, with easy-to-access tooltips and a very mouse/hotkey driven UI. We'll have full gamepad functionality as well (we are targeting consoles as well after all, although nothing is confirmed yet), but the recommended input is going to be mouse and keyboard this time around.

In closing
Remember to follow the Steam Pathbreakers: Roaming Blades page if you want the latest information about the game: we'll be focusing all our announcements right here!

- 6 Eyes Studio team