Soul Reaver Alpha Screenshots

Recently, a rare footage from a supposed Alpha version of Soul Reaver has sprung up on YouTube. The video showed the first portion of the game and is different in many regards than what he have seen so far. Raziel has a white aura around him, just like the sluagh, and disappears once he switches to material realm, where the health coil appears instead. There is even the early "ying yang" shift symbol in the Glyph menu and the Glyph menu has 8 slots. However, the video was taken down not long after it was put up. The uploader said he had sold the alpha build. However, it is strange and unfortunate as to why the video had to be taken down as well. That footage has a huge historical value for all LOK fans, so I documented it in several screenshots below with short commentary. If anybody has more info about any alpha build of Soul Reaver which is out there somewhere, please contact me, I´d be eternally grateful. It supposedly has the Undercity still built in and hopefully the Turelim clan territory as well. Thanks goes to Thiago, who saved the video from being lost to the abyss.

EDIT: It seems that the video has been put back online again. Watch here.

 Raziel has white aura as soon as the cutscene starts

 The footage is very dark

 The vortex of souls looks different

The placeholder pillars symbol is seen through the warp gate

 Soul as seen in the Lighthouse demo

 There are blue particles spawned as Raziel devours souls

 The soul spawner is blue as well, unlike the green colour it has in the final version

 There is also a wondering sluagh in this area

Sluagh training room

 This cutscene starts earlier

 Walking on air is present

 The planar portal looks like from SR2/Defiance

 The debug menu in a normal font, unlike in Beta

The ying yang symbol seen before in early magazine reviews

and 7 additional slots for glyphs

 Material health coil only appears in the material realm

 The underworld entrance is left open when in the material realm

The footage ends here unfortunately

Soul Revenant - New team and switching to Unity

Greetings to all the fans supporting this project!

I got some news to share with you regarding what is new with Soul Revenant. After my old programmer left the project, I was alone and had to rethink how to complete the project. After posting the ad about looking for a programmer, I got a few replies and I can announce that the search was successful indeed. Now we have a team of five people (a programmer, two 3D animators/modelers, 3D environmental artist and me as the director/designer). We talked over what would be the best course of action for the project and after days of considering how to proceed, we decided we have to switch engines in order to fully unleash the game´s and team´s potential, as 3DGS was holding us back in many regards – be it the archaic programming language, lack of screen post-processing effects, high-end graphics, particle effects, etc. I believe that switching to Unity has many advantages and in the long run is a better choice for making this game.

Initially there were many problems to solve and one of them was the environmental shifting which was very problematic and in the old build it only swapped two models around. The combo of Unity and Blender with new talented artists will enable us to make a true HD remake in every sense – all of the environments will be fully remodeled in higher polygon count and more detailed architecture. Also, the Hylden gave us permission to use his amazingly detailed models of Kain and Raziel for the game. Unfortunately, all the code has to be written from scratch as well, as the language of the current scripts is nothing like what Unity uses. However, the new programmer is very skilled should be able to fully replicate all the needed systems for the game and I will try to help out with the basic functions as well. More so, we are all dedicated LOK fans on the team now, so remaking the game should be easier in this regard as well.

We will work in the scope of monthly goals to achieve, so there is always some progress done but it gives the team enough time to work but not become overwhelming. Please always bear in mind that we are all volunteers and have other responsiblities like work, studies, etc., so meeting a deadline might not be always possible. Developing a free game is very flexible process and depends mostly on the availability of the team. Currently, we started working on remaking the Drowned Abbey, so even though the updates will be less frequent, they will be worth the wait I hope. I might update this post with a little sneak peek of what we made so far. Thank you all again for your support and remember – as long as one of us stands, we are legion!