A lonesome city and a giant Kinami tree!

The Kinami giant tree, a rare and precious shelter in a sea of sand, on whose colossal trunk and branches a hardy people built a whole city, Pantella.

Such giant tree cities are  are the only known settlements in the desert, self sufficient city states, protected and bounded by magically blown glass domes. Cities have basically no contact between each others, or with anybody else in the hostile desert.

Pantellans refuge in the tree’s growth, get water from the pits in its shadow and farm land between its roots: they revere Kinami as most sacred, they groom it and cure it from pests. Only a few outcast and questionable, yet hardy characters travel outside the city’ safety, to patrol the sands and bring back the occasional nomad activity report, or a trophy, or unearthed oddity; very rarely, to guide a diplomatic caravan to other settlements.

Here starts our story.

 The Missing Caravan!

And in fact, a caravan – the exceptional effort of a town to overcome its xenophobia, and commerce with other settlements – a caravan carrying supplies and legations to a distant sister city has disappeared from the trail.

Was a trick of its intended recipients? Was it a dreaded nomadic tribe raid? Or something else entirely?

The scare that the fact provoked in Pantella demands inquiry and answers! But nobody among the Brown Leaves, the ruling class, is willing to risk safety and skin to go in the big and dangerous Out!

If only there was a completely expendable guy they could blackmail into go in their stead…

 Enters Exits the Hero!

Setrani is the main character of the story: vain and clumsy, he’s one of the young men and women who keep the Kinami tree in good health. Setrani is a cross between a gardener and also a lowly fac-totum for the city government: he basically crowdfunds supplies to maintain all the tree caretakers. He’s also a professional slacker and a nap taker, the last person you would give any mission, unless it’s so desperate that, you would not care for whoever you send to return.

The BIG HOT Problem!

The desert!

A land scorched by two suns, the Giving Lord and the Harsh Master, with only very few hours of respite, when both of them fall over the horizon.

An endless and shifting earth, scoured only by by vicious nomadic tribes, slavers and scavengers by trade, and horrible beasts who thrive under the ill rays of blinding light.

Fear the trail that shifts and disappear into the evil core of the dust storm!

 Choose your adventure!

Aeon of Sands adventuring is based on multiple choice illustrated dialogues: through them, the players are introduced to new situations.

Based on the actions or attitude that the players make Setrani take,  new areas can be explored, while other become inaccessible, or they meet new companions or make enemies for life.

Most of the time, both of them at the same time.

The story has many different paths, locations to visit and three different endings.

Them who roam the desert!

City states sometime suffer the incursions of the men and women who live in nomadic tribes on the desert, always moving, always raiding other settlements, and usually in a state of constant war between themselves.

Their tribes are usually composed by scavengers, who may be the only people in the whole world, that understand a little of technologies lost in time, and brute marauders, and powerful warlocks, who bend the elements to their will.

But there might be more people, rogues and pariahs, settled in hidden havens, and if the desert teaches anything to Setrani, he must be wary of appearances.

And, you know, creatures!

While Setrani might be afraid of strangers, there’s no shortage of critters to really freak him out, and possibly eat him, and as many companions as he brings with him: the more, the merrier.

From the common sandcrawler, to giant centipedes and leeches, from creatures of the underground, to creatures of the sky.

To whatever it is the one in the image above, wherever it might come from.

Meet interesting people (in combat)!

This is Bob, Bob the fashion blogger. He wears a stylish headdress made of a carved pumpkin-like red animal skull or just pottery (the jury is still out), and a sprawling necklace of sandcrawler innards, with a touch of sweet aroma of decay, Charnel N.5.

Name: Bob

Occupation: rogue working with basic 9 to 5 contract with his employer settlement, committing routinely roguish acts of random robbery on desert travelers, but he dreams of becoming a star fashion blogger.

Greatest skill: perfect duck’s lips face in pictures.

Greatest drawback: nobody ever saw his face, on account of it being stuck inside his headdress. Also: he has no internet.

And magically explode them!

In the animation above, a real-time fight with Bob, who rushed to the party to showcase his fancy sword, complete with faux rust on it; the party greets him back with a tiny knife, rounded stones and most importantly electric bolts and fireballs.

In the world of Aeon of Sands, there are two magic systems: the most common one is the manipulation of the elemental energy that permeates the land, through the consumption of reagent items.

This elemental magic is available to almost everyone in the world.

It allows, for instance, to attune a character to magic energy, through the consumption of reagents, like a bag of saltpeter, and the manipulation nuggets of of mana in crystallised form, called activators.
With that, you can cast firebolts or to rain stones from above, at the cost of getting your body saturated with poisonous mana! Be careful not to abuse of the elements!

Then, there is the infamous Auran magic, which is about the enforcement of one’s will on reality.

It is extremely dangerous to whom he uses it as much as to its victims, it is very rare and shunned by almost everybody: it’s to be expected from an upstanding citizen like Setrani, to denounce its users to the authorities right away.

Or to run screaming in the very least.

Features:

• Choose your path, or stumble around blindly! Let nonlinearity be your pal!
• Replay it! Do it differently all over, and still manage to sabotage civilisation!
• Travel the large desert like there’s no tomorrow!
• Play with magic, which is most often as dangerous to you as to others!
• Face multiple endings, and more often, your own!

• Real-time combat;
• 20 locations and more than 60 mazes and dungeons to explore;
• more than 140 dialogues;
• completely hand drawn 2.5D environment, 240 hand-drawn illustrations;
• up to 2 other characters can join your party during play;
• each character’s personality influences the outcome of the story, and opens up new paths.

• platforms: Windows | MacOSX
• release: December 4, 2018