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Hero's Song is the first game from former Daybreak president's new company, Pixelmage

Former Daybreak Game Company president John Smedley has emerged with his newest game company, Pixelmage, and its debut effort, Hero's Song.

Ozzie Mejia

January 19, 2016 7:30 AM

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During the summer, Daybreak Games president John Smedly abruptly stepped down from his position with the company in hopes of recharging his batteries. A month later, he announced that he would not return, with reports coming in that he planned to launch an entirely new company. Today, Smedley has pulled the curtain back on his new endeavor, revealing Pixelmage Games and its first game, Hero's Song.

Hero's Song is described as a 2D pixel art action RPG, containing roguelike elements in a fantasy setting. The game will feature an open world, one that's affected by player choice, as well as the power of the world's gods and thousands of years of history. While players will have the opportunity to explore the vast world on their own, Pixelmage is indicating that players can control their own servers that can holds up to thousands of players, in which hundreds of them can play in a world simultaneously.

Smedley's endeavor will essentially mean he's starting from scratch and will not have the various resources that were available to him at Daybreak. While he had hundreds of developers with his former place of employment, Smedley is now working with a core team of 13, one that includes former Lead Designer and co-creator of EverQuest Bill Trost and author of The Name of the Wind, Patrick Rothfuss. It'll also mean that he'll rely on community help for Hero's Song's development. While Pixelmage has secured $1M in private funding, the studio is indicating that it will need another $800,000 for further development, a sum it hopes to acquire via Kickstarter. If all goes well, Hero's Song is expected to release in October of this year.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?