Earthlock (formerly titled Earthlock: Festival of Magic) is a Turn-Based Combat Eastern RPG developed and published by the Norwegian company Snowcastle Games for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U. The Xbox One version was launched on September 1, 2016 worldwide.
The game's story takes place in the world of Umbra, where a cataclysmic event occurs that stops the planet from spinning. This leaves part of the world scorched by constant sunlight, part of it perpetually cold due to lack of sunlight, and a patch of livable land in between. The incident ends up burying much of the past advanced civilization, but humanity survives and society begins anew in the habitable part of the planet. The story follows the adventurer Amon, who, among his usual activities of scavenging ruins, gets entangled in a much larger conflict with the ruling Suvian Empire.
A sequel, Earthlock 2, has been announced and is set for release in the future. A spin-off, Ikonei Island An Earthlock Adventure, had an Early Access release on August 18, 2022, with the full version planned for a post-2022 release.
Tropes:
- Ambiguously Brown: Olia Alagbato is darker-skinned than the other human characters, and the -gb- in her name is often found in West African names (e.g. the politician Laurent Gbagbo). On the other hand, she's a very light brown, and her hair is bright red.
- Flunky Boss:
- Mushriga (optional, but drops loot required for 100% Completion) is a giant mushroom, which spawns smaller mushrooms with a poison attack.
- The Final Boss spawns shadow versions of the party. Don't spend too much time fighting them, though — the boss soon sacrifices them to power itself up.
- Item Farming: Weapons and potions are crafted from plants that you harvest at base camp. They drop 3, 6 or 10 items depending on how often you harvest them, and after reaching 10, they will eventually drop a seed for a more powerful version.
- Relationship Values: Party members generate "Battle Bond" by fighting in pairs. Levelling up the bond unlocks passive benefits, which are different for each pairing of the six characters.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Ghost-type enemies are damaged by healing spells and items. If you use a healing item on them, you have a chance of a Critical Hit.
- Stance System: Each character has two different stances that they can switch between to change how they fight
- Amon acts like a standard video game thief in his Thief Stance complete with Video Game Stealing, Status Effects, and dirty attacks like bleeding cuts. In his Blaster Stance he acts more like an alchemist doing elemental damage with a spud gun that fires magical potatos that you craft yourself in an aversion of Bottomless Magazines.
- Gnart focuses on party wides buffs in his Focus Stance to the point of not even being able to attack. His Pestle Stance acts more like a standard White Mage with various healing spells, weak attacks, and a few Status Effects.
- Olia's Warrior Stance is your typical fighter with various physical attacks and a few Shouts that augment the party's physical attacks. Her Veteran Stance makes her automatically Counter-Attack when enemies attack her and has a varity of personal buffs and a Practical Taunt to draw aggro but has no ways of directly attacking.
- Ive's Scout Stance acts like a Foil to Amon's Thief Stance with the exact same Video Game Stealing but with defensive buffs and a healing spell instead of Status Effects and indirect magical Trap spells that do damage when an enemy attacks instead of straightforward physical attacks. Her Sniper Stance similarly imitates Amon's Blaster Stance but with crossbow bolts instead of potatos and favoring lightning ammo early on instead of Amon's fire ammo.
- Taika deals elemental damage in his Predator Stance and can copy new elements from enemies. In Packmate Stance he instead prevents elemental damage.
- PAT's ATK-bot Stance has a speed buff and debuff, but mostly does physical and lightning damage with an Action Bomb attack thrown in. DEF-bot Stance lets him grant defensive bonuses to the party and penalties to the enemy based on which Upgrade Talents he has equipped as well as some tanking abilities.
- Techno Wreckage: Almost every region has some kind of ruins with advanced technology, though unlike normal examples of this trope, most cases have a Schizo Tech look, with ancient-looking architecture and building materials but futuristic layouts and defense systems. Only the ruins in Burning Desert and Anu actually look as advanced as they are.
- Thirsty Desert: The Burning Desert region is so intensely hot that your character will pass out and die if they remain in direct sunlight for too long (roughly 15 to 25 seconds, depending on the character). The ruins of a technologically advanced civilization dot the area, and you need to strategically reactivate their machinery to create a path in the shade.
