Summoning Wars

Summoning Wars is an action role-playing game with 3D graphics, which can be played in a single-player or in a multiplayer mode for 2 to 8 players.

Players can choose one of 4 playable classes, each with unique skill tree. There are many types of enemies and collectible items. Players will take part in a story told by cutscenes and scripted events and can take some side-quests as well. The game world is split into areas, where some of them are predefined, while others are randomly generated on each play.

Controls
The game is controlled with a mouse and a keyboard. Mouse is used for character movement, combat and environment interaction, while keyboard shortcuts can be used for things like opening the inventory or quick use of consumables.

Gameplay
After creating their character and selecting one of the 4 playable classes (Archer, Mage, Priest or Warrior), players can start the game. First part of it works like a tutorial and some mechanics of the game are optionally explained to player. Eventually, players will advance in the story and meet several NPCs.

Players gain experience for defeating enemies and when they gain enough, their level raises. When this happens, they receive attribute points to spend on improving their attributes (like Strength or Willpower). Occasionally, players receive on level-up skill point as well, which allows them to unlock new skills.

Players can collect gold and items from defeated enemies. Gold can be used for getting better equipment and supplies. Items like armours, weapons, rings and amulets can be worn and improve player's combat strength, while potions can be used for quick health restoration. Unwanted items can be sold to merchants for gold.

The game also features a player respawn mechanics and a waypoint system. These mechanics are used and explained in game's story.

Used technology
Summoning Wars are using custom engine written in C++ with Boost libraries. The engine uses OGRE for 3D graphics and CEGUI for UI rendering. Multiplayer networking is using Enet library in the background. Game data is described with XML files, which may contain Lua code for additional logic.

Project state
As of time writing this article (June 2021), the project seems abandoned for roughly 7 years now. While the game code and data is available on SourceForge, original homepage and forums seem not to be accessible anymore (but are archived on Wayback Machine ).

Source code and all assets are available (under GPLv3 and CC-BY-SA 3.0, respectively ), as well as binaries for Windows. The game can still be successfully compiled on Linux.

Current latest release of the game is version 0.5.8.