While the upcoming Slay the Spire 2 hovers threateningly over the deckbuilding landscape, one game in the genre is replacing the usual boney arithmetic with harsh words, legal loopholes, and subtle threats. All Will Rise is a “narrative deckbuilder” set in a tense courtroom where you play a lawyer cross-examining those who may or may not be involved in the brutal murder of a holy river.
“Play as Kuyili and manage her quarreling team of visionaries, cynics and dreamers in a city alive with possibilities,” says the blurb on Steam. “Mix with capitalist overlords and construction workers, ecoterrorists and godmen, conspiracy theorists and hacker seeresses. Follow leads and find allies. Build a deck of evidence and strategies. Learn your opponents’ strengths and weaknesses, and play your cards to win people over.”
If any of this sounds familiar, it might be because the game was previously announced as All Rise, but now appears to have changed its name slightly (maybe to avoid confusion with the boardgame of the same name?).
Back when it first appeared, all we saw of the game was some black and white placeholder art, along with a few menus. It has since fleshed out a lot by the looks of things, enough to be shown off during the Wholesome Direct, where it stood out among the many cutesy tranquility sims on account of there being, wow, actual conflict driving a story. The development studio, Speculative Agency, includes folks who’ve worked on Paradise Killer, League of Legends, and Horizon Forbidden West. The narrative lead is Meghna Jayanth, who you might remember as a writer on 80 Days.
The plot and setting seems inspired by the legal case in India that made the Ganges a person, and the ongoing cultural conundrum caused by the river’s mixed role as holy entity, industrial waste funnel, funeral site, and source of income for a huge number of people. The fictional city of Muziris in the game is described as belonging to “a world that could be ours” and which finds itself boiling “under pressure from all sides by corporate and political interests”.
No release date yet though. And it’s still seeking funding on Kickstarter – the second recent example I know of an indie studio returning to the crowdfunding platform as a means of getting their work moneyfied (Malys, by the creators of Stray Gods, is the other – and also a deckbuilder).