The Empire of the Necromancers

I had wanted to know what it would feel like to walk the sands of Zothique since first reading Clark Ashton Smith’s stories. Then I wondered what it would look and sounds like to walk amongst the necropolis of Cincor. This idea became the foundation of a nine-month project to bring to life a story inspired by The Empire of the Necromancers.

Below is a 26-minute game demo video of the game project. The video tends to default to a lower resolution. I recommend selecting 1080p quality from the settings menu for best viewing.

I made this demo to learn FMOD and apply what I had learned. I built the game in Unity and learned how to use the software alongside learning FMOD. This is a fan project inspired by Clark Ashton Smith's wonderfully macabre story concerning two necromancers who instill themselves upon the throne of a dead city and raise its long-departed denizens from their tombs to serve their diabolic demands.

Zothique is the last inhabited continent on Earth in the far flung future, where sorcery and demonism prevail again as in ancient days. The project is a story-driven first person puzzle game, set in a necropolis of Cincor just after Mmatmuor and Sodosma have swept through. The player is a lich, a resurrected scholar of Yethlyreom, who must uncover the identity of those who raised him, and journey to Yethlyreom to confront them.

All writing, voice over work, sound design and music are my own. I composed the music in FL Studio using EastWest instrument libraries. For sound effects I used free and library sounds, as well as creating/synthesising some of my own, and edited them in audacity and FL Studio.

While composing, I tried many styles, textures and instrumentation choices before landing on the current soundtrack, which is a hybrid of traditional Arabic instrumentation and maqamat, Middle-Eastern percussion and dungeon synth elements.

The monuments, characters' appearances and necropolis design were directly inspired by the Arabian Nights tales, as well as the cultures of the Abbasid Empire and Greco-Roman world.

Many game prefab assets are human-made. Some generative tools were used to assist with further 2D/3D asset-creation and coding.

This is a non-commercial fan project. Permission has been granted to display this video by the Estate of Clark Ashton Smith.