Pithead Studio: Ex-Gothic Developer Revery your first game: Calon 17 Comments
Bel: Studio Pedio
What kind of game does the Pankratz couple actually operate, who founded their own studio in front of the former employer Piranha bytes? Now the cat has been left out of the bag: Calon is the name of the former Gothic developer’s 3D dungeon crawler, which is meant to capture inspiration from the genre’s classics.
After almost 25 years, Björn Pankratz, together with his wife Jennifer, left the beaten developer Piranha Bytes, which achieved fame through role-playing games such as Gothic and Elex in previous years, but which is now history.
Logo Logo (Beld: Studio leaves)
The two announced the base of their own studio Pithead in Bochum in the summer and showed that they are working on a deep action adventure, thus the plans which were only roughly described at the time.
Calon becomes a modern dungeon crawler
At Calon, the two developers of classic dungeon crawlers such as Ultima Underworld or Arx Fatalis were inspired by the revelation of how they reveal in an interview with Gamestar. The rather linear world instead of the open world spans several freely accessible and supposedly seamless fusion levels. The number of tiers has not yet been revealed, but the season is also expected to be in double digits through individual decisions.
Calon falls into the mine tree
The story revolves around the hero Calon, who has persecuted a demon that has threatened a village. During the hunt, the calon lands at the bottom of a mine shaft, the lowest level of the dungeon. The defeated hero must then try to find the way to escape. Not only puzzles and traps await the promised adventure elements, but also strange creatures for Calon, which must be fought or circumvented.
Players must always have an aggressive or careful approach. The latter offers classic stealth mechanics of a thief, showing an eye if the hero has been discovered or hidden.
RPG elements and coal
The role-playing elements must be covered with many objects, stocks and crafts. Some objects that can be found in the game can be recorded or examined. In this way, ammunition or coal can hide.
Vis à vis (bild: stotio 2 de studio
The latter is at the same time the currency of the game and it is no coincidence: the Bochumer Confesting not only named the studio after the English mine shaft, but also cooperated with mines in the development and incorporated some images from the real mining world.
Jennifer and Björn Pankratz (Image: Pithead Studio)
A lot of freedom and decisions
On the one hand, Calon should appear purist and show a few elements on the screen. At the same time, players should have a lot of freedom and be stimulated to think. In some situations you have to decide for yourself what to do. Various quests, NPCs and factions await the supposedly visually varied levels.
No appointments yet
When Calon will appear is still completely open. If you have found an interest, you can get the game on the list of wishes at Steam and Epic Games.
The main features listed by Pithead studio reveal what Calon should have to offer as a whole:
A spacious underground world with seamlessly converting freely accessible levels and varied themed areas of deep main history with side tasks and expressions of twisting and bizarre creatures, which can be both hostile and friendly with a dialogue with selection and ranked items for inspecting and gathering for upgrading and upgrade recipes and situational puzzles and scale traps and images with information and general information
Preliminary System Requirements
The system requirements posted on Steam are certainly not yet completely final or complete, which call for at least 16 GB of RAM and a GeForce GTX 1080. At least a Ryzen 5 5500 and an RTX 4060 Ti are recommended, which is also relatively moderate.
System Requirements for Calon Processor Recommended Intel Core I9-8950HK AMD Ryzen 5 5500 RAM GB RAM GRAPHICS CARD NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 1080 NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4060 TI STORAGE SPACE? Operating System Windows 11, DirectX 12 Topics: Adventure Gaming Piranha bytes Role Gaming System Requirements
A lifelong video game enthusiast, Julien reviews the latest releases and explores the technologies transforming the gaming world.
