Drifting Lands is an original mix of classical horizontal shooter with modern hack & slash standards. The base recipe to craft Drifting Lands:

take the core gameplay of a standard horizontal shmup,

open it up and extract most of the mindless auto-fire required to destroy enemies

replace this by a set of skills selected among the list available for your clas

use these skills with various effects (dash, area of effect attacks, time control, etc…) during your runs with classical resources consumption and cooldowns management

add random loot, crafting and exhaustive inventory customization of your ships and weapons.

Drifting Lands is designed to meet both shmup and hack & slash enthusiasts’ expectations. With the choice of your pilot class, you’ll have the opportunity to take control of different ships, best suited to your favorite gameplay style.

You’re a super player of bullet hells and don’t mind dying on the first few impacts?

You’ll find a perfect class for you with high-damages / low-resistances interceptors. You’ll benefit from a smart customization of your gear, but your performances on the field will be mainly based on your skill.

You enjoy the progressive design of a powerful build through skills and inventory optimization ?

Your class will offer more resistant ships, able to put up with a lot more impacts. But if you want to shine, you’ll have to be smart in the selection of your special powers and how you create synergies with your equipment !

What is Drifting Lands?

This is the very first public demo of Drifting Lands or more accurately only a subset of what will be Drifting Lands. For now, please do not expect a lot of content but a first taste of what’s to come. If you have tried the Stun Fest version a few months ago, you’ll find not much more except a few additional skills and a brand new interface. New content is on its way !

How do you play this game?

Drifting Lands is a shooter mixed with action RPG elements. You can play with a pad or a keyboard but for now you’ll have to use menus with a mouse only. One stick to move, one button to shoot (RB or LB by default), 4 buttons to launch skills (A, B, X, Y by default)

Need help to understand the interface?

The red bar is your life. The white bar is your shield. If you take damage you lose your shield first and then your life. Shield will replenish automatically after a few seconds without hits but life will only regenerate if you use healing skills. The blue bar is your energy, necessary to launch skills. The orange bar is your focus bar to increase score (see scoring tips below). You can also see your set of selected skills and their status / cooldown. bottom bar

And what’s that round white thingy appearing around my ship?

This is a way to see which skills are available without losing sight of your ship. Each time a skill is ready or you try to cast an unavailable skill, it will appear. A full white arc means the corresponding skill is ready. If the white arc is filling, the skill hasn’t finish its cooldown. If the white arc is stripped, you don’t have energy to launch the skill.

What is an active skill and an automatic skill?

You have four active skills like the four button buttons of standard pads. Active skills cost energy and must be launched by pressing one of the four buttons. Please note that some skills may require that you keep the button pressed to build up in power, to keep channeling or just because they take time to launch. Most active skills have cooldowns.

You can have 2 automatic skills. They do not have energy cost and can’t be ‘manually’ launched. Automatic skills will trigger in specific circumstances for instant effects or over time effects. Once executed, automatic skills must finish their cooldown in order to be triggered once more.

What is the ‘customize ship’ screen and how does it work?

In there you can change the build of your ship. The actual set of 4 active skills and 2 automatic skills, you will use for every games until you come back here and change your selection. This screen is also where you’ll find detailed descriptions for all skills.

In the complete game, each skills will exists in 6 variants. Right now, you only have access to a limited list of skills with one or two variants. To get a description of a skill variant, roll over one of the white icon. To add it to your build, click on a skill variant and select a slot in the bottom diagram.

You cannot add two variants of the same skill to your build at the same time. You can only add active skills to the four active slots. You can only add automatic skills to the two automatic slots. It’s possible that you may later assign automatic skills to active slots too.

Survival Tips

It’s not a pure classical shmup you will not die on the first impact and you can heal. You should heal…. No REALLY, you should heal often. If you don’t select at least a healing skill in your build, I hope you know what you’re doing because… yeah, you won’t be able to heal, and that’s bad.

There are shields too to avoid bullets but not direct collisions with ships! But more important, you should heal.

Scoring Tips if you want to top the leader-boards

Destroy as much enemies as possible and grab all the released money loots.

Focus level

Build your focus level by filling multiple times the orange focus gauge. To increase the focus gauge, you have to fly as close as possible from bullets without touching them. Each focus level increases your score by 20% to a maximum of +200%. Each damage taken decreases the focus level by one no matter how much damage is actually done.

Finally, increase your chance of dropping money loots by using the automatic skill All-In Bounty. When it’s active you have a 100% increased chance of dropping money when killing enemies. Be aware that it’s a risky strategy : if you stay under the energy threshold necessary for its activation, you may not have enough energy to heal yourself or cast a shield for emergencies.

Storyline

Drifting Lands takes place in the skies of a shattered planet. Powerful gravitational anomalies have long ago frozen this world in a state of partial disintegration. The last floating continents fit for human civilization are controlled by big private corporations acting as totalitarian states but a few stateless nomadic communities try to survive with a certain degree of freedom.

You’re part of one of these bands of outcasts. A fighter pilot among a caravan of outlaws, smugglers and mercenaries. Always trying to survive, always on the move.

How Our RNG for Random Loot and Bonuses Works

For our lootbox system, we have implemented an innovative Random Number Generator algorithm. This is identical to the ones used by casino bonus operators at the time of calculating the results of machine-operated casino games such as virtual blackjack, roulette and slot machines. A reliable RNG mechanism ensures the fair outcome of all results. If you ever had doubts playing at online casinos with a bonus, suspecting that their games could somehow be rigged, we guarantee that it’s not the case. If you play with a hefty casino bonus at a licensed operator, your chances of winnings will be real and tangible. Also, grabbing some nice casino bonuses can be a good idea in case you need immediate funds to purchase your copy of Drifting Lands – or get one for your friends! Find a licensed, reliable online casino, open your account, cash in your bonus and start playing with extra fund for a chance of landing some cozy winnings.

Our Stance on Lootboxes VS Gambling

We are fully aware that the use of RNG for random loot to be obtained through lootboxes has caused somewhat of a stir over the Internet in recent times. Lootboxes have been compared, by several media operators and websites (such as The Verge) as a form of gambling which can result in behaviours that are similar in nature to gambling addictions. While we believe that lootboxes add plenty to the gaming experience we have envisioned for Drifting Lands, our common sense demands that we take a stance on such a sensitive matter.

We are therefore considering adding a sort of self-exclusion option for Drifting Lands gaming accounts which would – temporarily and upon a player’s explicit request – disable the possibility to access lootbozes and purchase mystery boxes. These features have been offered by online casinos and bookmakers for years, but are nothing short of revolutionary for the world of video games.

FAQ

On what platforms will Drifting Lands be available?

Drifting Lands will be released on PC and Mac probably nearly at the same time. A Linux version is possible, though it will take some time to confirm.

Do you have an estimated release date?

Not yet, we would very much like to be able to release a first version, worthy of being called ‘commercial’, early 2020.

Will there be a beta before that?

Of course! We will communicate on this as soon as possible.

Is Drifting Lands a multiplayer game?

No, at its core Drifting Lands will be a single player experience. Though we have very cool ideas to create community-based features and asynchronous cooperation or competition between players.

Will Drifting Lands be a free-to-play?

We’re not interested by micro-transactions in any form. There will definitely be a free version in the form of a demo at the very least. If the game has any sizeable success, we hope to be able to offer a large portion of it for free and limit only some exclusive content with regular updates for paying players.