Grimoire. A Moba Infused With Magic
by Julie Morley
[dropcap]A[/dropcap] Grimoire is a very important textbook; most notably known as an instruction manual for creating and using talismans and amulets, spells, charms and the like, and summoning miscellaneous supernatural beings. Grimoires are sacred texts directly for magic education. That being said, it’s an ideal name for OmniConnection’s new game, Grimoire.
Mages, cast your spells!
I’ve never seen a MOBA designed in a first person shooter style. Grimoire is one of the first games to give it a try. In Grimoire, players are fighting within a medieval world. There are three different game modes: PvP Conquest, Arena, and Co-Op Safeguard. Choosing between one of the five (soon to be ten) magical abilities, players go against one another in a magical free for all with their unique spell set, switching between first and third person to suit the player’s preferences.
Currently, OmniConection has developed Grimoire to a playable single player combat preview and multiplayer alpha, which is available for down and sign up on their Kickstarter page. I gave the combat preview a go myself and had a lot of fun playing it (and realized what an awful mage I am).
First of all, Grimoire has a pretty in-depth story. In a northern territory, a land named Aesir, contains two houses against one another, desperate for the fate of the Empire. Unfortunately, this rests upon which actually balance the power of the Grimoire. After all this time, House Magnus has guarded this sacred book carefully, ensuring it’s not ill-used. But House Validus has a different plan for it and intends to change the world of magic forever. This conflict has spiraled so out of control that full blown war among the wizards has broken out.
Earth, Lightning, Ice, Fire, Nature. The houses split the 10 different wizard classes. Currently, Grimoire is broken down into five but the Kickstarter campaign will ensure additional ones. Before beginning every match, players choose a class, which offers four primary spells, and the remaining two are completely up to the player. In the combat preview, I experimented with all five classes, finding earth and fire to be the most versatile.
Unfortunately, we do not explore the different game modes in the preview. In Conquest, we are thrown right into the action smack dab in the middle of the story. Conquest is an 8v8 battle over territory. Arena is a significantly smaller game, including both 3v3 and 5v5. In this game mode, players completely slaughter one another for the right to ancient weaponry. Safeguard is a co-op game mode where players go against miscellaneous creatures. It’s more flexible for the player but equally as intense.
The Combat preview only gave me a small taste of what Grimoire is about but I had a ridiculous amount of fun. Pick a class, choose your spells, and it’s practically a tower defense game. As a wizard, I was required to protect the church at all costs. It had a health meter and skeletons of various sizes (and impressive magical abilities) were coming at me left and right and attacking my house. I have roughly 10 minutes on the clock to fend them off. For the entire time I played through, I was unsuccessful. It seemed no matter what I did, a giant skeleton with lightning magic would find a way to take me down.
If the preview closely displays what Grimoire will be like, I’m looking forward to the tremendous amount of fun (and hilarity) that will ensue upon release. OmniConnection is onto something different, attractive, and strong that will establish a solid community for a long time, I predict. I highly recommend checking out the combat preview and signing up for the multiplayer alpha if you have some interest in Grimoire.
You can track the progress of Grimoires’ Kickstarter campaign on our Campaign Calendar.
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[author image=”http://cliqist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/julie.jpg” ]Julie Morley is a freelance writer and comic artist from Spring, Texas. She attended the Academy of Art University for two years, studying Animation and Illustration. Whilst here, she learned about writing comic scripts, storyboards, and general storytelling. Since leaving college, she has been working on personal comic projects, stories, and illustrations. She aspires to release a self published comic within two years. For the majority of her life, she has been playing console games, typically being third-person shooters and sandboxes. Her favorite game of existence is Dark Cloud II (Dark Chronicle) and her favorite Indie game is Gone Home.[/author]
