What is it?
Akaneiro: Demon Hunters is a free to play Action RPG with a unique Japanese inspired art style and setting, developed by the independent studio Spicy Horse which developed Alice and Alice: Madness Returns. If you've ever played Okami, the art style is very similar. The game runs on the Unity engine and can be played in a browser or via the stand-alone client on your PC or Mac.
Note: Steam coming soon.
How is it played?
The game is controlled by your mouse with a fixed camera. You left click to attack and right click to use your main ability. You can have up to three abilities per "set" which you can use with hotkeys in addition to right clicking (i.e. #1 key / #2 key) and you can tab through each ability set as necessary. Skills are bought with in-game currency (called Karma) from merchants and leveled up by buying additional upgrades.
Loot Whores:
If you love loot, this is the game for you. A ton of loot drops, similar to Diablo and other such games, and you collect this and equip/sell it accordingly. The game has a very large number of items with a fully randomized item system so the loot potential is virtually limitless. On top of this, there is also a crafting system so you're able to craft additional unique equipment to help power up your character and stand out from the crowd.
The Hunters:
Prowess: This is your warrior class, whom focuses on up close and personal fighting styles with big weapons and medium armor. You'll be hulk smashing everything that walks into your path if you choose this Hunter.
Fortitude: Sporting heavy armor and even bigger weapons, this hunter is focused on survivability and support. Most of this hunter's skills employ methods of raising defense, healing and group damage. Play this class if you enjoy being able to take a beating while dishing out mega AOE stun damage to everything around you.
Cunning: As the name suggests, this hunter is your ninja-like stealth/ranged class which uses fast attacks, evasion and positioning to its advantage. If you want to be a dual katana wielding machine of death that can teleport around the battlefield and pick off targets from a distance, choose this hunter.
Customization:
After choosing your initial class you have a large variety of options for making yourself stand out from everyone else. Characters can be customized via different abilities (you can mix and match from different class trees), specializations, and stat growth. There's different types of armor (light, medium, heavy), various weapons and all of them change your appearance - so you can min/max as much as make your character look unique from everyone else.
Maps:
Initially, you begin at Shigemori River which has 3 different missions that you can take on. These missions all have different bosses, some variety in enemies, and each progresses the story a bit. Once you have 2400 Karma saved up you can unlock Jawbone Ravine, which contains another set of missions you can play through. Each area that you unlock has its own theme, bosses, and mobs that are unique to that area so expect a large variety in maps. As of this writing there are a total of 8 areas you can unlock.
Media:
Videos:
Developer Interview
Gameplay Trailer
Gamespot "Now Playing" with American McGee
Where can I get it?
Click on the banner image, or navigate yourself over to http://www.angry-red.com in order to sign up and start playing. The community is very active and the devs regularly interact with the community and are very open to suggestions and ideas.
FAQ:
- The in-game currency is called Karma which is shared across all of the characters on your account.
- Though there is currently a kickstarter running for the game, it is officially released. The kickstarter is to fund a number of additional features which they simply did not have the budget to include in the official release.
- While the game does offer a way to pay real money for currency, like many other F2P games, it is a very balanced system. If you choose to purchase currency it's going to be for the convenience as you can earn everything in-game without having to purchase it with real money.
- While it may sound daunting having to use in-game currency to unlock new areas, it does accumulate fairly quickly so grinding should be minimal.
- The game saves constantly, so if you disconnect in the middle of a mission you can return right where you left off without having to do everything all over again. This makes the game very easy to pick up and play for short durations with no worries of losing progress.
- For the best experience, it's recommended to download the game client and install this on your computer. Currently, it's only 570 MB in size so the space consumption is negligible. That being said, the browser version does work perfectly fine and even gives you the ability to chat with other players and devs (though there is an in-game chat as well which works with the regular client) whom hang out there regularly.
- Coop is not in the game yet (this is a kickstarter goal), but you can summon other players (or a bot) to join your game and help you out.
More to be added later.
