Turn-based party RPG · Windows PC · In early development
Two friends who fix things for a living. A new utility network that opens passages into a district the city sealed thirty-two years ago. And a lakefront city that has been keeping things from its people.
Early development. No release date yet. Every picture here is from the game in development.
Eli Mercer and Jonah Price make their living repairing the ordinary things that keep their neighborhood running. Then Calder switches on Commonline, a new utility and transit network, and it opens passages into Lowbank, the waterfront district the city sealed thirty-two years ago.
Eli wakes up able to sense what comes through. Jonah learns to measure it and push back with equipment. Together they look after their neighbors, and start to find out what their city has been hiding.
The friendship is the center of the story, and everyday life is the point: food, shops, music, and the people next door.
Eli and Jonah start together, Mara joins in the first chapter, and Darius in the second. Four fight at once, and more join as the story goes on.
Spellblade
24
Joins in Chapter 1
An Eastbank maintenance apprentice who restores old hardware and fences with a local recreation group. Quick to volunteer, and uncomfortable when people turn him into a symbol.
Melee pressure, weapon enchantments, and counters.
Technologist
24
Joins in Chapter 1
A repair technician who builds audio gear and fixes devices other people gave up on. He talks through possibilities and makes a joke while concentrating hardest.
Firearms and disabling devices. His effects come through equipment, not spells.
Cleric
30
Joins in Chapter 1
A clinic practitioner who learned small protective practices from family and community teachers, and has been helping people quietly for years.
The party’s best healing, cleansing, and protective magic.
Guardian
39
Joins in Chapter 2
A transit rescue specialist who knows service corridors, station equipment, and what panic sounds like before it becomes visible.
Interception, guarding the others, and breaking armor.
Dialogue changes the speaker’s expression line by line. The four friends and three of the people around them have nine each.
Calder is a fictional lakefront city. Its backgrounds are painted the way a ’90s anime paints them, soft, unoutlined, and sun-washed, and the people are two-tone cels with thin colored lines.
The friends’ home: repair shops, a canal-side market, gardens, and the fountain plaza.
The transit concourse, the clock tower, city offices, and the shopping streets around Loop Books.
Brick housing, workshops, and gardens along the docks.
The game plays in natural colors. An optional film filter adds warm haze and grain, like an anime taped off late-night TV.
Turn-based battles where every character acts on their own turn. Watch who moves next, interrupt the big wind-ups, and break an enemy’s guard to stagger it.
The Concourse WardenThe turn order shows who moves next
Choosing an AbilityJonah’s Shock Shot against the Warden
Substation AnchorA boss in EastbankThe city is only the start. The road runs out past the lakefront to small county towns and wetlands, up to a rail town in the hills with an old observatory, and on to a reservoir with a research campus on its shore. And somewhere under all of it is Lowbank, the district the city sealed thirty-two years ago.
The game’s two themes so far: Eastbank, a flute theme over piano and a swung groove, for exploring, and Undercurrent, a tighter, faster arrangement for battle. Both are early versions of the score.
Calder is in early development. Follow along as the city comes together.
Drag to turn · Scroll or pinch to zoom · Arrow keys to turn
