The Technomancer is an upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG by French based developer Spiders. A demo version of the game was playable at the Focus Home Interactive booth at E3. The game is based around a war for water in a settlement on Mars.
The game works with some familiar elements for people who have played RPGs. The game opens with allowing the player to customize the appearance of the protagonist. After this they are presented with two skill trees and one point to use in each. Like with most RPGS, the player builds their playstyle up based on the skills they acquire as they level up and where they put the points into their skill trees. After this the player is given the option to either go through a tutorial level, showcasing the various “technomancer” abilities and fight styles at their disposal or continuing on with the game.
The Technomancer’s skills mostly consist of variations of electrical attacks. The first two electrical attacks are electrifying the weapon the player is using and the other is a simple lightning bolt attack. Attacks can be assigned to specific button combos, allowing the player another element to building their playstyle. The player’s fighting stance can also be switched, between 3 styles. These styles are: using only a staff, a shorter staff and gun combo, or a shield and mace combo. The player chooses which style to use strategically. Essentially they must choose which stance to use in which situation. The staff stance works better for a stealthy play style, the gun/short staff combo works best for head on attacks, and the shield/mace stance works for a defensive style of play. Another reason for using the shield would be as a strategy to use while low on health. The demo version that I was playing did at times bug out by either lagging or the camera being briefly pointed in odd positions. The graphics also appeared sort of washed out mostly consisting of dark browns, which makes sense for the setting but ultimately makes the game appear a bit flat.
The Technomancer is set to be released June 28th, 2016.