Digital Dragons Indie Spotlight: Dark Envoy

Cast spells with your mouse in this mana punk, guns and sorcery indie RPG.

There were a lot of games at the Digital Dragons 2023 Indie Zone, and they ran the gamut from small games to those that could pass for AAA at first glance. Dark Envoy from Event Horizon fits on the latter end of that spectrum. Dark Envoy is a “guns and sorcery” RPG that will provide 20 to 30 hours of gameplay that’s completely voice acted and backed by some impressive fully 3D graphics that bring a mana punk world to life. The story puts you in control of two siblings, a brother and sister, who are drawn into a conflict between two competing factions, behind which a god is pulling the strings.

The game is a full-fledged RPG, complete with companions to recruit to your party and class specializations and subclasses for your party members. There’s also an extensive crafting system – you can find recipes for weapons, armor, and gear, and then collect the necessary resources to make the items. You can also commit additional resources to increase the rarity of the crafted item, and increase the effectiveness of the random bonuses assigned to the item when it is created. You can even commit resources to re-rolling the bonus stats if you’re in the mood to gamble a bit. In addition, there is a similar system in the game for creating enchantments.

As I noted earlier, the game provides for up about 20-30 hours of play, but there’s potentially more than that as there are four different endings to the game and so you can play it again for a different experience. Throughout the game you will need to make choices, not only in conversations but in the actions you take as well, and these will have an effect on your path through the game. Your choices also affect your standing with the game’s two factions, and that in turn determines which dungeons in the game are available for you to conquer.

Dark Envoy also features an interesting combat system that has both tactical and real-time elements. You can control the speed at which the battles play-out, and even pause them to give some thought to your next move. The battlefield itself also comes into play, as you can use cover and mana sources to your advantage. The game’s mix of spell craft and gunfire adds some interesting elements to the battles as well. One of the things that stands out in the game’s battles is that the mouse is not used to simply click where you want a character to move or to pick a target. The direction and arc of spells are drawn out with the mouse as they are cast, allowing you to do things like cast a ring of fire around an enemy. While I was watching one of the Event Horizon devs demo the combat system, seeing his hand move quickly about in different motions almost made it look like he was casting the spells himself.

Look for Dark Envoy to be released later this year both on PC and console. If the game sounds intriguing to you, you can wishlist it on Steam.