Who am I?
I’m Jerram Fahey, aka NoeL. I’ve been working in the pixel art industry for many years, and have dabbled in game development as a hobby for even longer.
Finally, life has allowed me the opportunity to chase my dreams and create the game I’ve always wanted: Faercana.
What is ‘Faercana’?
As I was playing Skyrim one day, I realised that rather than following the main quest, I was far more interested in pottering around, exploring caves and dungeons, and completing side quests. It was the small, “meaningless” stuff that allowed for role-playing and emergent storytelling. I thought to myself, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could just do this indefinitely?” I later discovered Daggerfall, which took this breadth-over-depth philosophy even further, and with its procedural content one could do it indefinitely… almost. The land was expansive, but still finite and static.
So that’s what I wanted to build: a procedurally-generated, endless quest-a-thon (with an optional end goal, for direction). But in what format?
For almost as long as I’ve been developing games, I’ve been using Zelda Classic – a fan-game engine based on the original The Legend of Zelda, but with substantially more features and less limitations. Given my background in pixel art, 2D game development, and love of Zelda (both retro and modern), creating a Daggerfall X Zelda (or ‘Zelder Scrolls’) experience seemed the way to go.
Has it been done?
Kinda, but not really as far as I can see? In my research to see if such a game already existed, there were only two I could find that tried to do a similar thing: Lenna’s Inception and Mystiqa (in development, though sadly that seems to have stalled). Both seem to lean much more heavily on the Zelda end of the spectrum, generating a random ‘main quest’ rather than a sandbox world (and Lenna’s Inception is very meta about its influences). Visually too, they stick very close to Zelda, whereas with Faercana I’m trying to go for a more Secret of Mana meets Brian Froud aesthetic.
What’s next?
Well, I don’t want to give too much away just yet, so let’s wait and see! The game is still very early in development, with many planned features yet to be implemented; the biggest two being biomes and dungeons. After that: content! More mobs, more gear, more spells, more items, more (and better) quests, more crafting recipes, etc.
If you’re interested, please join the Discord to stay up-to-date, and tell your friends about the game too!