Legends of Dionysos

Legends of Dionysos is a 2,5D Action RPG that combines RPG elements with fast paced gameplay and hordes of enemies! Minmax your character, level up and find precious loot. Venture through a beautiful open world and slay loads of orcs, demons and giant dragons!

Hi I'm Max, a solo indie developer from Germany. A few years back, I decided to pursue my childhood dream of making games, so I quit my day job. I converted an old ambulance into my cozy living and workspace, which I fondly call "The Gaming Van". During the summers, I retreated into nature, developing my first commercial game, "Legends of Dionysos." It's been three years of hard work, and I am excited to finally release the game.

What inspired you to create Legends of Dionysos, and how did you come up with the concept of blending RPG elements with fast-paced gameplay in a 2.5D environment?

Since I was a kid, I always dreamed of a game that blends RPG elements with fast-paced action. I grew up playing classics like Street Fighter, Metal Slug, Sonic, and Super Mario—games set in pixelated worlds with intense combat and platforming. But I also had a soft spot for RPGs like Final Fantasy, Secret of Mana, and Diablo, where you explore, fight monsters, and level up your character. Legends of Dionysos is my take on combining the best of both worlds. It's got the speed and excitement of beat 'em ups, along with the depth of RPGs, complete with character progression and loot.

The combat system in Legends of Dionysos seems quite unique, with players not being restricted to specific classes but rather having access to all weapons when fighting. How did you develop this system, and what challenges did you face in ensuring balance and player engagement?

In "Legends of Dionysos," there are no fixed classes as typically seen in RPGs. Instead, your skill set dynamically adjusts based on the weapon you wield. As you progress through the game, you acquire various weapons, each offering unique skills and spells with their own effects and cooldowns. Combat entails fluidly switching between weapons to adapt to different situations. For instance, wielding a sword and shield may allow you to heal yourself. To effectively engage enemies, strategic weapon swapping is essential to manage cooldowns and employ crowd control and offensive or defensive spells. As a consequence, the attribute system is also different from other games. All stats benefit you. The choices of what stats you prefer do not depend on your class, but on the way you want to play the game.

The arena events in Legends of Dionysos add an extra layer of challenge and excitement to the gameplay. Could you tell us more about how these events work and what rewards players can expect when participating in them?

"Legends of Dionysos" has a keystone system like Diablo. Throughout the world, you will encounter arenas where you need to fight waves of enemies followed by a boss. When you survive the waves and the boss, you get a guaranteed weapon drop of varying quality. These arenas can be replayed on different difficulty levels. By placing a Keystone of a certain level, you can activate the arena on that level, and the enemies and the boss will be of the corresponding level. So, for higher keystones, you get more difficult enemies and bosses, but also better loot and more gold and experience.

Character customization has always been a highlight of the RPG genre but is not very common in platformers. Can you shed light on the character customization and what choices they have in terms of appearance and species?

Even though in “Legends of Dionysos” the character customization is purely cosmetic and does not impact the gameplay at all, I wanted to have it in the game because I think it adds some depth to the game and makes every playthrough a little more unique and memorable. There are two playable species, humans and cats, and a lot of different hair choices and body morphs. The player has the option to select bright colorful hair tones and the face and body morphs can be excessive, so you can create colorful, wonky, and funny-looking characters, but you don't have to.

The game is designed with hardcore gamers in mind and includes an optional hardcore(permadeath) and speedrun mode, with built in timer, and local Highscore board.