Publisher: To be announced
Developer: Kot-in-Action Creative Artel
System requirements: Windows XP/Vista/Win 7/Linux, 2.0 GHz dual-core CPU, 512 MB GeForce 8600/Radeon HD 2600 graphics card, 2 GB RAM
Genre: Action RPG
ESRB rating: Not rated at press time
Release date: To be announced

Tomes of Mephistopheles has the body of a first-person dungeon crawler and the blood of a rogue-like. To find the titular Tomes, players have to descend into the dark, atmospheric depths of randomly generated dungeons, finding magical artifacts, ancient weapons of lore, and true love along the way. OK, maybe not that last one. But it does feature a wicked melee system, which is as close to true love as you’re going to find in a dungeon with rotting corpse monsters.

ToM’s first-person combat succeeds at being very fluid and fast, using quick combinations of both melee attack and spells. Enemies don’t just charge at you, but bob and weave like they should. Combat is collision-based instead of using hidden dice rolls, meaning it’s how well you fight that matters, not the numbers next to your name. The magic system in particular is well thought-out, letting you customize what you cast and how. For instance, you can alter how a spell moves, what kind of area it affects and how it’s guided. You can also add chain effects and multiple elements.

However, dungeons get lonely, no matter how large their monster tables are. That’s why ToM supports multiplayer of both co-op and PVP varieties. Using randomly generated persistent worlds, just like in Terraria or Minecraft, the game features characters you can take online to explore, fight, and even engage in clan matches. If you don’t find love online, perhaps you can be feared by your enemies, see them driven before you and read the forum posts of their women, pleading for you to make it stop.

Tomes of Mephistopheles is currently a work in progress, but a very playable one. While many features are still pending (such as crafting and quests), the core combat is solid. If this sounds like something you want to see made, you can support developer Kot-in-Action by pre-ordering the game, which gets you access to the current alpha build. There are some very exciting ideas inside Tomes of Mephistopheles, and unlike the real Mephistopheles, we’re excited for it to emerge from its hidden depths and come into our homes.