Tears of Magic is a turn-based role-playing video game developed and published by Good Old Pixel.

■ About

Unleash the dragon within you and explore a world of remarkable characters, as you define your personality, create bonds with allies and learn about the true origin of magic to stop a second Calamity. Tears of Magic is a fantasy RPG inspired by titles like Breath of Fire and BioWare games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age, where you play a dragon in a beautiful pixel art 2.5D world with rich story, colorful characters, and fluid mechanics.

■ Story

You were born as one of the last dragons in a world where dragons have not been seen for over a century. After manifesting your powers for the first time, you witness the disaster such unbridled power can wreak, and sought the training and protection of the Seekers, an organization of mages that work to prevent Corruption from occurring around Vesterose, the western continent. Under their guidance you learned to control your power and have now been sent on a mission to investigate a series of Corruption cases caused by unknown forces, where you will meet both horrifying new foes, and powerful, steadfast allies. A journey which will uncover the secrets of the world, dragons, and magic.

■ The Great Calamity

It started with a sudden, worldwide storm, one century ago. Thunder roared through the sky and a torrential rain soaked the earth. The “Tears of Magic,” as it was labelled later, were believed to be tears of the goddess Aria herself, disappointed with the selfishness of mankind.

When the sun finally broke through the retreating storm, it shone a light on a much harsher world, were animals became crazed monsters of fury and hunger. Likewise, even some people began to lose their sanity, attacking anything or anyone in sight. The effects were more severe in those with higher magic, converting many of the strongest warriors and magicians into soulless killing machines. The few who resisted “Corruption” fought to survive and protect others, but no matter how much they struggled, the waves of enemies were endless.

When the last embers of hope were about to burn out, the Dragon Clan came to humanities aid, raising their morale and helping them recover. They divided their clan members to defend all nations and became the main force against the Great Calamity, fighting in the front lines against hordes of corrupted monsters and humans. It was not an easy battle, with many dragons dying and entire towns disappearing in a matter of weeks. Place after place, the corrupted swarmed to overwhelm humans, increasing the pressure after each of their strongholds fell.

With the situation getting worse every day, the Dragon Lord himself dove into the depths of the Great Calamity. With his group of brave companions, he fought through hordes of monsters to reach the source of everything, ending it, and returning peace to the world. However, the triumphant heroes returned without the Dragon Lord, who had bargained with the goddess to put an end to the Great Calamity, a bargain which costed his very life.

■ Clans

Valdren is a fantasy world inhabited by anthropomorphic people with animal traits. During your adventure, you will meet several races gathered under clans, each with their own culture, history, architecture, economy and much more! Join our Discord server to read more about the lore of each major clan of Tears of Magic!

■ Characters

Kaiser

• Clan: Dragon
• Magic Affinity: Void
• Age: 20 (15 during prologue)

You are Kaiser, a youngster who inherited the power of the Dragon Clan. You can set your gender, your appearance, and shape your personality to customize your own experience. You grew up in Selee, a small fishing village in the most remote part of Riverholm, together with your parents, grandpa, and younger sibling. After your dragon powers manifested, you joined the Seekers to learn how to control your new ability.

Basir

“Kid, you better sleep, cause I’m not carrying you like some fairy-tale princess in the morning.”

• Clan: Lunarfang
• Magic Affinity: Defense
• Age: 25 (20 during prologue)

One of the top ranked Seekers and the only apprentice of Petra, Basir is serious and responsible on duty, while off duty he enjoys alcohol and flirting. He is also a bit of a rebel because he was born under two new moons. For the Lunarfang Clan, being born during double new moon is considered a bad omen, meaning you will live your life without the blessings of their twin gods. Because of that, he has suffered serious prejudice from his Clan before finally joining the Seekers.

Eris

“I-I’m not a dragon! I just happen to have horns! And fins, AND scales!”

• Clan: Tide (mixed)
• Magic Affinity: Water
• Age: 19

Born from the union of a Stronghorn and a Tidean, Eris is kind, shy and impulsive. She lost her mother at a young age, and grew up under the oversight of her overprotective father, Dylan. She never got the opportunity to make friends of her own age because she spent most of her childhood on her father’s merchant ship, which is one of the reasons why she has a reserved personality.

Darius

“To the point, fool!”

• Clan: Quickfeet
• Magic Affinity: Agility
• Age: 22

Drunk, perverted and greedy. Former druid in training and currently a mercenary, Benji was considered a prodigy in earth magic affinity in her home village, Banrir. However, she hated responsibilities and high expectations so much that she decided to run away and experience the outside world. She is always together with her best friend, a fairy named Bibi who is always arguing with her, but is also always there when she needs her the most.

Benji

“Ya know… I could help ya. For a price, that is…”

• Clan: Longear
• Magic Affinity: Earth
• Age: 23

Drunk, perverted and greedy. Former druid in training and currently a mercenary, Benji was considered a prodigy in earth magic affinity in her home village, Banrir. However, she hated responsibilities and high expectations so much that she decided to run away and experience the outside world. She is always together with her best friend, a fairy named Bibi who is always arguing with her, but is also always there when she needs her the most.

Dylan

“Kids these days! They don’t know the satisfaction of a hard day’s work.”

• Clan: Stronghorn
• Magic Affinity: Power
• Age: 44

Dylan is the strict and diligent captain of a merchant ship. Always reminiscing, Dylan grew up in Sunhaven, where his family have been sandship makers for generations, allowing them to ascend into noble status. However, during a time of turmoil and revolution in which the kingdom seized all his family assets, Dylan decided to “steal” back one of his ships and left the kingdom. He then started his career as a merchant, which led him to meet his Tidean wife and mother of Eris. Even after becoming a widower, he is still loyal to his wife, and the pain of his loss reflects his overprotective behaviour towards his daughter.

Violet

“Oh, my! You are red all the way down to your ears! How adorable~”

• Clan: Slithering
• Magic Affinity: Fire
• Age: 27

Clever and seductive, Violet is a merchant of exotic goods who left her home town at the age of thirteen, when she was considered independent by her clan. Unlike most Slithering women, she didn’t want to be supported by a pampering man, but instead wanted freedom to live her own life. With only the streets to teach her the hardships of the world, she became a competent merchant capable of getting some extra coins using her charm.

Nino

“What man would idly watch as injustice prevails?”

• Clan: Sky
• Magic Affinity: Wind
• Age: 35

Formerly a captain of Zephyria with an impulsive heart full of justice, Nino is now a mentor of the Seekers. Raised as a commoner in upper Zephyria, he was assigned an overseer position in lower Zephyria, where he saw the unjust treatment of people who were born without the ability to fly. During that time, his sense of justice caused him no end of trouble with his superiors, which resulted in the loss of his wings as punishment for treason and heresy. He then decided to self-exile in discontent.

Lilith

“The Sky Mother may not always guide us, but she will provide a light in the dark for us to find our path.”

• Clan: Sky
• Magic Affinity: None
• Age: 18

Intelligent, zealous, and innocent, Lilith is considered a Crawler because of her inability to fly, the result of her weak affinity to wind magic. Raised in a sheltered environment because of her grandfather’s high position in Zephyria, she was educated from an early age in the faith of the Sky Mother, but also looked up to her father, who was a curious scholar and always open to the wonders of the world. After her mother became severely ill, her father left Zephyria to find a cure for her condition, and suddenly stopped sending letters after some time. Unable to convince people to form a search party for her father, she decided to leave Zephyria on her own to find him without the consent of her grandfather.

Yggi

“I’m bewildered, what are thou doing?!”

• Clan: Whispering
• Magic Affinity: Intelligence
• Age: ???

Impolite, direct, and full of curiosity, Yggi is a member of the Whispering Clan who travels the word in search of knowledge. By the end of his wandering stage, he met an inventor who created the armor that allows him to speak human language and keep moving even after partially rooting. Fascinated by the inventor’s research, he decided to stay by his side as an assistant to continue learning.

■ Gameplay

Tears of Magic is a game about adventure and role play, conceptualized to generate constant excitement for what comes next, rewarding the player with beautiful graphics and music, rich lore, and meaningful development to the colorful characters and story. It is also designed to make you the writer of your own story, and not just the reader of a fantasy book. The mechanics of the game have all been designed to enhance this experience.

• Custom Protagonist – Be whoever you want to be, pick your own gender, name, skin color, hair and even clothes! Your personality can range from entertaining to reserved, kind to practical, brave to cautious, diligent to relaxed, and resilient to emotional. Your choices will define your personality, which will affect dialogue options and cutscenes.
• Dragon Transformation – Transform into powerful dragons! There are multiple forms to fit different combat styles, each of them customizable with different traits to change their skills and elemental affinities. With the right combination of form and traits, you can even unlock a legendary transformation!
• Relationships – Socialize with party members, learn about their past, motivations, and bond with them! If you build enough affinity, they can become loyal friends or even engage in a love relationship. High friendship also allows you to borrow their magic power to unlock new dragon forms.
• Skill Growth – Choose your own path to adapt your play style! Each skill can evolve to fit the role of damage dealer or support, changing their effects to customize your characters. You can also learn skills from mentors by completing tasks, and Kaiser can learn specific skills from opponents in battle.
• Crafting – Forge your own personalized equipment! You can improve your weapon and armor by using different materials, runes, and monster cores to promote unique styles of gameplay. Apply the right runes and they may even combine into a powerful enchantment!
• Minigames – Have fun building your headquarters, fishing, cooking and hunting dozens of achievements! Stretch goals will also add an exclusive card game, a new game+ mode, allow you to challenge yourself with the randomizer and much more!

■ Combat

Tears of Magic was designed to have a high paced turn-based combat system with a good degree of strategy. There is no transition from exploration to battle, which means opponents will be doing their default behavior in the scene, like eating or patrolling, until engaged, with battle starting immediately without changing to a new scene. Turns alternate between actions of all allies and actions of all opponents, with the ability to choose the sequence of actions during your turn.

• Tag Attack – When two characters attack the same target, they may combine their strikes into a stronger version with a single animation. For example, two basic attacks from different characters are combined into “Flank Attack”, which is stronger than both attacks combined. A fire spell can also be combined with a sword attack to form a “Fire Slash”, and so on. There will be a visual indication when an attack can be combined.
• Danger Sense – When an opponent is about to unleash a powerful signature move, you will see a visual indicator under the targets, so you can react accordingly. That will give you the opportunity to defend, heal or interrupt the attack, among other actions. Each opponent has a weakness that can be exploited, interrupting their signature attacks. That can be damage from a specific element, healing an undead or casting some effect at the right moment, like a sleep skill. There are multiple ways to discover the weakness of an opponent, like a reward for exploration or using the analysis skill in combat.
• Geo Effects – Each battleground may have a specific effect in combat, indicated visually in the environment and in the HUD as a geo effect. Fighting in soaked grounds, for example, can make lightning skills damage everyone, including allies. That would be especially bad if the opponent could heal with lightning damage, forcing you to work harder to interrupt their signature attacks. Other battlegrounds, for example, could be cursed and make healing impossible. You must keep an eye on the battleground effects to not allow your opponent to benefit from it, or even better, to use it to your advantage.
• Battle Assistant – Party can have up to five members in battle, in which four have an active role while the fifth is an assistant.
  The battle assistant cannot be targeted by opponents, and affects the battlefield with autonomous effects, like occasionally healing an ally, applying their signature buff to the party or attacking opponents with offensive skills. Higher friendship unlocks stronger assistant skills.

■ Music

Our music is designed to be adaptive, changing volume, rhythm, and tune based on the context of each scene. Those changes happen seamlessly in real time, without the use of a predetermined script, reacting to you and the environment. Music becomes frought with danger as you close on your enemies, and becomes quiet and calm as the night approaches. The tracks transition smoothly, immersing you in the ambience of the adventure.

• Yoshino Aoki – Best known for her work on Breath of Fire III, with Akari Kaida, and Breath of Fire IV, as sole composer, Yoshino Aoki is an ex-Capcom Japanese composer that also worked on Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force.
• Travis Moberg – Based out of Colorado, video game composer Travis Moberg is known for his emotionally impactful and melodically driven music that brings life into fantasy worlds. As a multi-instrumentalist with a diverse background in audio, Travis is incredibly excited to help tell the wonderful story of Tears of Magic through music as part of the audio team.