Can a free-to-play conglomerate like Kabam truly make a game that is good, friendly free-to-play, with a story aspect to it as well? That’s what they’re trying to do with their upcoming action-RPG Spirit Lords, which we got a hands-on demo of here at GDC. The game features 4-player real-time dungeon crawling and loot collection, as you build up your character and your powers to fight off evil enemies. We’ve got a lengthy demo below:
Daniel Erickson has done design and story work on the game, and he hails from BioWare, having worked on the story for Dragon Age: Origins and worked on Star Wars: The Old Republic for six years. He comes from a background where he sees free-to-play being the normal and expected thing, and he wants this to be “white hat" free-to-play. Every piece of loot can be earned by playing the game, and premium currency can be earned through in-game actions as well. Essentially, spending money will only be used to speed up progress so that you can earn things without having to grind or otherwise earn them. We’ll see how this shakes out, of course.
Story is meant to be a big part of the experience, and there’s even a big hardbound art book that Kabam is producing for the game. All these things sound super-intriguing and promising, but we’ll see in the next couple months as this game goes worldwide if it can deliver on its promise.
