Hey, I’m Stephan Logier, Creative Director here at Thunder Lotus Games. It is my honor to meet you all to introduce you to our new game. 33 immortalsa 33-player co-op action roguelike!
I joined Thunder Lotus a few years ago to lead a brand new team developing the studio’s first-ever online multiplayer title. Our goal: to create an innovative multiplayer co-op experience set in our signature immersive, hand-drawn art and animation style.
It’s been a long journey to reach this goal and I can honestly say we’re very proud of what we’re unveiling today. But let’s start from the top!
In the beginning, all we knew was that we wanted Dante’s The Divine Comedy as the basis for our game world. For the uninitiated, “The Divine Comedy” is a 14th-century Italian poem, a true literary classic and a personal favorite of our studio founder and many members of our team. We were committed to our source of inspiration, but almost everything else about the game was a blank slate.
The team and I began exploring the historical context, religious symbolism, and mythology of The Divine Comedy in depth to see what we could bring to our game’s universe. As epic as the story of Dante’s journey through the afterlife is, quite literally the key story in a multiplayer game is what the players spontaneously create in the game. We had to use the literary setting as a basis to create a world full of incredible creatures and epic landscapes where it would make sense to have many players fight together.
Finally, we settled on our key ideas: What if players were souls in the afterlife, doomed to eternal punishment in the inferno? What if they rebelled against their fate and risked the wrath of God? What if all the great characters of The Divine Comedy would help you on your journey?
After the basic settings were clarified, we came to the specifics of the gameplay. I’ve always been fascinated by the massive range of raids and epic multiplayer missions found in MMOs. But the hurdle to getting into raids – the time, preparation and training it takes – as a player, I found those things daunting. This begged the question: What if we made a game that allowed players to instantly immerse themselves in epic, social, and cooperative raiding experiences? We’ve focused our efforts on making the transition into each run as quick and smooth as possible – to make this a “pick-up-and-raid” experience for… how many players?
Admittedly, we didn’t go for 33 right away. We started developing a prototype for our game with the idea that many players would enter a world, group organically to face the difficulties, and gradually unite to fight a gigantic boss. And when we thought about building the game to 32 players, I wanted to choose a unique number to express our imagination and world. The Divine Comedy has one hundred chapters and is divided into three main sections: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso, each with 33 chapters! It was decided: 33 immortals was born!
So we connect everything together: in 33 immortals, you are a renegade in the rebellion of souls, a soldier in the fight for your eternal life. Runs are fast, hard-hitting, and very challenging – death can and often does happen (as it can when defying the Almighty). But players can tweak their builds to suit their playstyle, combining and customizing weapons, perks, and permanent upgrades to steadily improve their rebellion’s chances of success.
Each game session ends with a massive raid-like boss encounter that challenges the rebels to work together to counter deadly attacks and defeat their gargantuan foe. Above all, 33 immortals Actively encourages players to work together during runs to ensure the largest possible and strongest party survives to the boss fights.
There is so much more to tell – but we also have a way to go! 33 immortals will be on Xbox Series in 2024 33 immortals Beta later this year.
Visit www.33immortals.com to learn more. We hope to see you there!
