I am extremely excited to announce the latest game in the Siralim series: Siralim Ultimate!

(I know the title of this game might be a bit confusing for some people, so I’ll just come out and say it now: Siralim Ultimate is essentially Siralim 4. I decided to go with a different naming scheme this time around for a variety of reasons.)

In early 2020, I will launch a Kickstarter for Siralim Ultimate with the hope that I can acquire enough funding to add even more content to it and support it for a long time to come. The Kickstarter campaign will also give dedicated fans a chance to shape the development of the game. I’ll provide more information about the Kickstarter in a few months.

Let’s not waste any more time. I’m sure you want to hear about the main features of the game, so let’s get started:

Fuse your creatures together.

The breeding system from previous games is long gone. Now, you can fuse two creatures together instead. The resulting creature not only inherits the traits and stats from both parents, it also inherits their visual properties as well.

Seriously, this is the best thing that has ever happened to the Siralim series. With over 4 million different appearances available, no two players will have a team that looks the same.

(The resulting creature receives the average amount of its parents’ stats and experience points, along with both of their traits. You can’t fuse a creature that has already been fused once before, so choose the parents wisely!)

(You can choose from one of four different appearances for your new creature. I’ve wasted countless hours checking out all the different combinations of creatures I have in my stables. The choices that are offered to you are based on the “model” of Parent A, and the color scheme of Parent B.)

Choose a specialization for your character.

Learn perks that are exclusive to your specialization to change the way your creatures fight in battle. Will you be a Necromancer and raise an army of minions (minions are an all-new battle mechanic, by the way) to fight alongside your creatures? Perhaps you’d rather go it alone with only one or two creatures in your party as a lone wolf-style Druid. Or maybe you’re prefer to manipulate healing effects to cause massive damage to your enemies as an Inquisitor. There are 15 specializations for you to choose from, and each specialization has at least 15 perks for you to level up.

(This is a description of the “Hell Knight” specialization. Each specialization has a unique costume. Of course, there are hundreds of alternative costumes to collect as well.)

(Can you guess what this specialization is called?)

Customize your castle.

This time, the kingdom of Siralim (yes, we’re back in Siralim again) is truly your own. There are thousands of decorations to collect, along with dozens of tilesets for you to customize your castle and make it look exactly the way you want. Many decorations do something special when you interact with them. I also hope to add a way to allow you to visit other players’ castles, but I can’t promise anything on that end just yet.

(Note: these aren’t actual screenshots – they’re mockups, and they are not reflective of the actual castle layout.)

(Note 2: those aren’t actually creatures depicted in the screenshot. They’re plushes. There’s a plush you can collect for each creature race!)

Revamped graphics.

Every creature from the previous Siralim games has been completely redrawn. In previous Siralim games, many creature races contained a bunch of re-colored creatures without any other obvious differences, and that problem has been solved in Siralim Ultimate.

In addition, several other visual components of the game have been revamped, such as the battle backgrounds.

(Doomguards always looked too similar to each other. They’re much more diverse now, and look way better than before!)

(Some creatures needed some serious help. I always thought Golems looked pretty bad… so this race, along with several others, were overhauled from the ground up. This is the Haunted Golem.)

(What do you think about the new Brim Smith?)

All-new user interface.

We all know that the Siralim games are extremely deep. For that reason, I felt that the user interface could use some serious love to make the entire game feel more accessible. The new UI features thousands of icons to make information more readable and visually appealing. Functionally, the UI is more streamlined and easier to use, and includes a plethora of quality-of-life features such as on-the-fly sorting and filtering for all menus.

(This is the new and improved Bestiary interface. I wonder what those empty bars that say “0%” are for…)

(Oh, by the way – legendary crafting materials all have unique icons now.)

(The inventory UI isn’t quite finished yet, but it’s coming along nicely. You can press the F key at any time to change the way your items are sorted.)

Over 300 new creatures to collect.

Most of these creatures belong to new races, while there are a few additions to old races as well.

(This creature belongs to the new “Sea Shambler” race. It was designed and drawn by Unagio Lucio.)

(This creature belongs to the new “Cockatrice” race, and was also drawn by Unagio Lucio.)

(Whoa.)

6 new realms to explore, and 6 new gods to meet.

This brings the total number of realms and gods to a whopping 21. In addition, old realms have a few new objects to shake things up a bit.

(This realm is called Bastion of the Void. It is comprised of shadows… some of which have come to life to wreak havoc on your party.)

(This realm is called Titan’s Wound. It is comprised of nothing but blood, bone, and flesh. You can pop zits to earn resources, which I believe is a first for the gaming industry.)

Over 100 new spells.

Along with these new spells, there are several new Spell Gem properties. One property is called “Magnetic”, which increases the spell’s potency for each other gem of the same type your creatures have equipped. Another property, “Singular”, increases a gem’s power for each empty Spell Gem slot the caster has.

The Spell Gem system has also been completely overhauled, but that’s a topic for another time…

Visit the Menagerie.

Your castle has a facility called the Menagerie, where you can interact with your creatures directly. You can feed them, talk to them, and even send them out on missions. Your creatures will also have one of 20 different personalities which affects their in-game dialog, among other things. I want players to feel a bit more emotionally invested in their creatures than in previous games, and the Menagerie is where that will happen.

Tons of side quests.

One of the most prominent pieces of feedback I received about Siralim 3 is that many Godspawn creatures were frustratingly rare. In Siralim Ultimate, you will unlock each of these creatures via optional side quests instead. There will be plenty of other side quests as well, all of which will grant precious rewards.

A dynamic world.

Siralim Ultimate features an insane amount of in-game events. New creatures will be released frequently after launch, and there will be plenty of holidays (both small and large in scale) to ensure that there’s always something new for you to do when you play. In fact, there’s so much going on that we’ve added an in-game calendar to help you keep track of when these events will occur!

Tons of post-launch content.

I hope to support Siralim Ultimate with massive content updates for at least a year after it is released. I have so many ideas for future content that it’s actually kind of ridiculous. The better our Kickstarter performs, the more content we’ll release for Siralim Ultimate!

As endless as ever.

If you thought the previous Siralim games had a lot of content, Siralim Ultimate will blow you away with its diverse and limitless post-story content. I can’t get into too many details about this quite yet, but keep an eye on this blog as I continue to reveal new features over time!

FAQs

Are you excited? I’m sure you have a lot of questions about the game, so I’ve prepared a preemptive list of FAQs to tackle some of your most likely concerns. For everything else, please keep an eye on this blog, as I will release frequent development updates to reveal new features and dive deeper into some of the ones I’ve already mentioned.

I’ve also opened up a new category to discuss the game on Discord, so if you haven’t already joined us on there, now is the time to do so!

Q. When will Siralim Ultimate be released?

A. I don’t have a firm date to announce yet, but the game has been in development for a long time and we’re getting closer to a point where it can be shared with the public. I’m hoping to launch a Kickstarter in March 2020 and provide backers with a demo version of the game at that point. Closed beta testing (again, for backers) will follow shortly after that, and then I hope to release it on Steam Early Access by June. Of course, I’m absolutely terrible at predicting release dates, so keep that in mind. In the meantime, I’m excited to share more details about the game with you on this blog!

Q. What platforms will Siralim Ultimate be released on?

A. Steam (Windows, Mac, Linux), iOS, Android, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.

Q. How much will it cost?

A. I haven’t decided on this yet. It will either be $14.99 USD or $19.99 USD on Steam. I haven’t even thought about pricing on the other platforms yet.

Q. When Siralim Ultimate is released on other platforms, will I be able to transfer my save files like I could in the previous Siralim games?

A. Yes, with the exceptions of PS4 and Xbox – I’m not 100% sure that I can support save transfers for those platforms yet.

Q. Why are you going to use Kickstarter this time?

A. The cost to create Siralim Ultimate is about 300% more than all three of the previous Siralim games combined. While the Kickstarter isn’t an absolute requirement for me to finish this game, it will certainly help quite a bit. It will also give players the opportunity to add their own ideas to the game, such as creatures, spells, decorations, and more.

Q. Who is working on Siralim Ultimate?

A. I’ve had a lot of help from several people – many of whom are part of the Siralim community.

Mario (Umaro) and Sergio have written some wonderful lore for all the new creatures in the game, just like they did for Siralim 3. In addition, they are writing the game’s story this time around. The story is a lot more complex and deeper than in previous Siralim games.

Nieve (gay monster aunt) drew the thousands of icons and other art that you’ll find in the new user interface. In addition, she drew all the decorations and tilesets that you can use to customize your castle.

Erin (Unagio Lucio) designed and drew several new races of creature, including the Amphisbaenas, Cockatrices, Crabsters, Sea Shamblers, Snaptraps, and Sparktails.

JC Malapit drew a lot of miscellaneous art for the game, such as the all-new gambling dwarf games (which are much more fun in Siralim Ultimate!).

Studio Oray is a team of artists who re-drew all the old creatures, all 6 new realm tilesets, over 100 new NPC sprites, and much more.

Joshua Queen provided us with over 300 new sound effects and 12 new songs that are sure to get stuck in your head long after you take a break from playing.

Janette Ramos drew the title screen art and app icon. This is my favorite title screen art for any of the Siralim games, and I was sure that Siralim 3’s art would be impossible to beat.

Rachel (RacieB) re-drew a few of the old creatures from previous Siralim games – most notably, the salamanders and gargoyles.

Alongside their primary roles, many of these people have provided valuable feedback and suggestions (in other words, they bluntly told me that some of my ideas were bad, and also came up with some great ideas of their own) which is sure to create a better game from the very beginning.

Q. What about The Negative and the Siralim CCG?

A. I’ll have more to announce about those games in a few weeks!

Thank you all for your continued support! With your help, the Siralim series can only get better. Stay tuned for regular development blog posts to learn more about the game in the months leading up to release!