Forma
Hunt or be hunted in Forma, an immersive sandbox RPG set in a land overrun by living emotions, where every choice shapes a dynamic living world
NOTE: This is a demo version of Forma. The aim of making this available now is to get early feedback. To provide feedback, add a comment or join our discord
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3353160/Forma/
What's in the Demo?
Start your journey in Forma by escaping a Hive Village.
Captured and imprisoned, you must rely on your wits and resources to break free. Sneak past guards, join forces with other prisoners, or grow your power until you can fight your way out.
The demo delivers a tense, high-stakes escape, offering a glimpse into the procedural storytelling and immersive sandbox gameplay of the full game. How will you make your escape?
Forma is the lifeblood of this world.
It's currency, it's power & it's the reason the world is overrun by living emotions.
Hunt or Be Hunted
Forma is an immersive sandbox RPG focused on procedural storytelling where you are either the hunter or the hunted.
Begin with nothing and fight to survive. Grow stronger, uncover the world’s secrets, and leave your mark.
Immersive Sandbox RPG
Become stronger by fighting, tougher by taking damage, and wiser by casting unique emotion-based spells using words of Forma you track through in-game notes.
There are no weapon or armor requirements. Currency must be carried with you, and there are no quest markers, just a map uncovered through exploration.
Escape captivity your way. Wait for a guard to leave their post for food, sneak out at night past sleeping sentries, or lure them away with dropped items. The choice is yours.
Tell Your Story
You're not the chosen one, and there are no quests to follow. This is your unique story about the impact you have on the world, based on the goals you set and the decisions you make.
Will you align with a faction and uphold their ideals, or betray them in pursuit of personal power? Revenge, loyalty, and survival are all in your hands.
Losing a fight isn’t the end. You’ll grow tougher and smarter for the next one. You won’t die, you’ll be downed and taken prisoner, leading to new challenges to overcome. Even losing a limb can open paths you hadn’t considered, like dangerous deals with Forma Lords, the powerful leaders of emotions: Fury, Joy, Envy, Courage, Serenity, and Sorrow.
Dynamic Living World
Living emotions, led by the powerful Forma Lords, have overrun the world. Across multiple races, factions battle for survival, each pursuing their own strategies to confront the living emotions as their strength rises and falls over time.
Explore a world that evolves with or without you, where every decision you make helps shape the chaos around you.
Comments
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the guards stopped coming to trade me forma for bread, and after I interuppted their visit to my cellmate's cell, they got stuck in the bed with them for the rest of the game.
The previous game I got stuck in spell casting mode with 0 forma, and couldn't get out, then I quit and lost all my progress. I'm not sure how or if I can save
This game is incredible by the way, it's crazy immersive
Great to hear you liked it despite the bugs!
I've just uploaded a new version which cancels spell casting if you left or right click to avoid that happening again.
I couldn't replicate the guard getting stuck though. I'll play test some more and see what steps might cause it.
I managed to escape on day one XD
I'm glad I got a sneak peak of the world after escaping, the demo ending there makes sense.
For immersion and easy cheesing nonsense, I think if the guards see you with a weapon, or openly wearing armor, they should beat you and take it, even if you go to bed. if you're seen with visible contraband I'd expect that response, or maybe a prompt like "transfer forma" except "give up inventory" or "stop right there criminal scum"
Beating the guards within an inch of their lives is a very morbid training regimen but you gotta do what you gotta do haha
I would very much like to be able to select options with the number keys 1-9 and have running into locked chests/doors bring up the action menu, rather than having to click on them
I'm looking forward to seeing how the magic system progresses.
Agreed. New update pushed where if you have any weapons or armour equipped, you'll be attacked by guards, even when resting.
Added the ability to use 1-9 keys for dialog/action menus and holding shift when bumping into any object/person will now automatically bring up the action menu without needing to click on it/them.
I've got lots of ideas for the magic system i'm excited to implement. The words used to cast each spell (and it's modifiers) changes per save game to keep that sense of discovery.
Thanks for the fantastic feedback and trying it out!
I got stuck in between my 2 teammates (im in the doorway) and my visibility gone (cant even see the teammate that block my path), anyway 10/10 so far for alpha version
Thanks for raising. Issue found and fix pushed. Great to hear you liked it!
Is there any way to restrain guards once you knock them out? I found I could repeatedly drop them in a bed and attack them until they died, but their body stayed and was completely uninteractable. Also, I assume there's something intentional going on, but once I equipped two prisoners, they started fighting each other. Couldn't break out of the starting prison after multiple attempts
Happen to me , they where different races in my case (one green the other one my color)after that i just happen to get lucky and 2 of the prisoners where same color and they didnt fight each other
See comment below related to this. Also added the faction name to the target info screen to make it clear who & what they are
Just pushed an update.
You can't restrain but you can damage their head or torso when downed so it takes them longer to recover. Go too far and kill them and it will have knock on consequences for that faction for the rest of the game. As part of this, I fixed the issue with uninteractable dead bodies.
Made some tweaks in dialog and what they say out loud to highlight that each faction won't work with each other to escape as they hate each other that much. You have to pick a side.
To balance this out, there are now 2 members of each faction as prisoners and I've increased their stats so you have a better chance of escaping with them.
Been trying to get tons of gear and strike back but at dat 3 ish i alwats die of starvation , i even make sure to get all meals , eat more stuff by looting around and keeping some green all the time :C
Thanks for raising. Found the issue (if anyone on the map starved to death, you had a game over). Fix pushed
Thanks for the hard work , so i was making a video and by the end the backpack glitch , the inventory was still there (I could buy and sell stuff with shards inside the backpack but i could not open or acces the contents like armor and food) I have 2 backpacks, one in general inventory other equip and none open its content (Tried reloading but no luck )and the problem appear after exit the slaver camp
other than that the game is quite fun !
Fix pushed to avoid backpacks getting into that state in the first place and also added a note in the tooltip to highlight it's right click to open as that was missing.
To fix any existing broken backpacks, load into a map, drop the backpack on the ground and then loot the tile to pick it back up and it should now work again as intended.
Great to hear you found it quite fun so far, a lot more to come!
Thanks a lot , it did come to my mind that i hadnt try drop the backpack
Oh one more thing , are maps meant to be different every time , one time i leave some stuff on a box , exit the map and re enter and all the stuff dissapear, is this mean to happen ?
Maps will have the same layout and units but their stats and gear in boxes/inventories will reset. Main driver for this was faster load times but it also makes inventory management more important. It also results in higher risk hunts when you're holding a lot of shards which keeps things interesting. I have been thinking about the ability to buy a house in a village that will keep your stored items saved but that needs some more thought
I was intrigued, but the "start new game" button isn't doing anything when I click it.
Hi Tahnan, did you enter a character name at least 3 letters long before pressing the start new game button? I've just pushed an update to auto-generate an initial name if you want to get started asap
Oh, I see what happened! There was a bar that said "Enter name" and then a bar below it with some random letters, and I thought that the "Enter name" bar was a header and you were supposed to enter a name in the second box. It's much clearer now!