Shroud of the Avatar

**Shroud of the Avatar** is an upcoming five-game series of single-player offline and massively-multiplayer online fantasy role-playing game in development by Portalarium, headed by Richard Garriott (a.k.a. Lord British or General British) of Ultima fame. The developers sought funding through a crowdfunding campaign primarily executed through Kickstarter with supplemental funding being raised through the game's offical site. The minimum goal of $1 million has already been raised, and the campaign concluded April 7. A new campaign to raise more funds is expected to begin April 14.

## Platforms

The games are currently planned only for release on PCs. It will be built on the Unity game engine, which supports Windows, Linux, and Macintosh.

A possibility of some kind of mobile version has been mentioned, but has not been committed to.

### System requirements

At the time of this writing, no system requirements have been revealed.

## Episodes

Shroud of the Avatar will be comprised of five episodes, each one a full-length standalone game using the same game systems. The episodes are listed below:

 2

## Concept art

* Fallen Keep concept art
* Forgotten City concept art
* Forest concept art
* Lave Field concept art
* Mountain Pass concept art
* Skull Island concept art
* Shardfall Crater concept art
* Ardoris Castle concept art
* Shardfall Crater concept art
* Control Point Pass concept art
* Ardoris City concept art
* Dragonbone Throne concept art
* Hills concept art
* Oracle Temple concept art
* Shardfall Crater concept art
* Standing Stones concept art
* Tower of the Shuttered Eye concept art
* Shardfall Ruin concept art
* Cave concept art
* Island of Choices concept art
* Moon concept art
* Oracle Swamp concept art
* Avatar concept art
* More avatar concept art

## Screenshots

* Gypsy camp prototype screenshot
* Overland prototype screenshot
* Town siege prototype screenshot

## Gameplay

The developers of Shroud of the Avatar are promising to deliver games focused upon role-playing rather than level grinding, allowing avatars to take on the classic role of an adventurer or instead taking on the role of an explorer or even homesteader.

### Online and offline play

Shroud of the Avatar will be playable both as an offline single-player game and as a online single or multiplayer game with a persistent world. Single-player online play allows your character to affect and experience the persistent world without encountering other players. There are also intended to be a variety of a multiplayer modes allowing the player to play with the other players he or she chooses to.

It will be possible to transfer and/or copy characters from the online world to the offline mode, but the reverse will not be possible in order to reduce the possibility of characters using exploits entering the persistent world.

### Classless character system

Characters will not be limited to a class chosen at character creation.

### Player housing

Players will be able to purchase land in the persistent universe and build houses. Houses will allow for secure item storage, though sieges may prevent characters from having access to these stored items at times. Village housing is cheaper, but farther from many essential services and less well-protected. City housing is the most expensive, but close to essential services and far better protected. Town housing offers an option in between.

### Crafting system

Characters will be able to craft either as a hobby or as a career. The designers have indicated the crafting system will avoid busy-work.

### Incentive-based player-vs-player

Player-vs-player combat in Shroud of the Avatar has only been described so far as "incentive-based."

### Dual-scale map

The game will be using a dual-scale map where the world is divided into an overland map where objects are rendered in a different, smaller scale than they are in the scene-based encounters in the game. For many reasons, this will allow the developers to more quickly develop content and deliver more of it.