Behind the scenes of The Last Artifact
“Live the The Last Artifact experience.”
5 islands torn from the mainland. An endless storm. One last crew sent into the skies of Maska.
The Last Artifact is an adventure game. You play Valar, the King's Claw, sent into a sea of clouds to save a land that magic has torn apart. A story of destiny, doubt and sacrifice, told across 5 flying islands and a world hidden behind the real one.
The region of Maska
The duchy of Maska and the lands torn apart by the Cataclysm: forests, Moon mountains, rivers and villages that Valar crosses from one floating island to the next.
A world woven from magic
The kingdom of Luzmo lives under the gaze of a single god, the Dream Weaver. At birth, every soul receives an astral imprint that sets its place in the Great Constellation. Only the Readers, blind priestesses, can read it and ink it onto the skin. But some are born with no readable imprint: the outcasts. The hero is one of them.
Before Luzmo, a now extinct civilisation reigned: the Ancients. Their magic, blended with technology, gave birth to wonders, and to a weapon able to bring down a god. Its source is a parallel world invisible to the living, the astral world, whose passage only the Ancients had mastered. That is where the true nature of Krystal, the last station still standing, lies hidden.
Three months ago, the sky split open
At sunrise over Maska, a light with violet reflections burst out of the mountains. The birds fled. The earth split open. Whole swathes of the region tore away towards the sky. Today, 4 islands orbit above the void, around a fortress risen from the depths of time.
One man is responsible. Goran Dragomir, once the greatest general of Luzmo. Everyone believed him gone since the massacre of the Order of the Mycelium, which he carried out on his king's orders. That crime broke his faith. 20 years later he returns, set on seizing the last Artifact and ending the Weaver's reign.
King Ekoh sent his fleet into the skies of Maska. Almost every ship broke against a storm steeped in magic. Not one man came back.
The last ship
5 islands, 4 pillars
You sink deeper, island after island, to the heart of the astral world. Each island has its own light, its creatures, its pillar. Maska's map reads itself as you descend.
The Windbreaker ran aground on a forest long believed cursed. During the war it was cut down to build ships. It grew back faster than it was felled, and the workers began to disappear. Since then a single man lives there, Timblin, a lone woodcutter, with his dog. When creatures pour out of a stone circle and attack, he is the one who reaches out to Valar. At the foot of the island's oldest tree, the hero is pulled into the astral world and binds himself to the first pillar.
Visina was a peaceful herders' village on the edge of the mountains. Since the island began to float, its garrison has been decimated and the Rooks, miners turned bandits, besiege it. To reach the sacred cave and the second pillar, Valar must obtain what is never granted to his kind: that the Reader inks his imprint. Deep in the cave, he meets Dragomir's gaze for the first time.
A piece of the great city of Maska, torn away with its famous university. In its streets: automatons gone mad, a well-established underworld, and a peerless researcher, Aglaée Brisedété, pioneer of the astral mist. To enter the forbidden library, Valar will have to outwit, build a jammer and learn to cross the veil. The third pillar is barely won when a warrior falls upon the university: Methena, Dragomir's sword arm.
120 characters,
a voice for each one
From the King's Claw to the humblest sailor, from the researcher to the hermit, every character in The Last Artifact has been drawn, modelled, animated and voiced. 120 characters, written by a dozen authors, carried by 328 dialogues.
all voiced
Click a character to open their profile: description, traits and a voice sample.
All of this was built by hand
Music born in Sofia
The main theme of The Last Artifact was composed by Arthur Chanson and performed by the European Recording Orchestra in Sofia. 84 musicians, 20 choristers, 6 traditional Bulgarian singers. 110 people for a single piece of music. These same choirs recorded the soundtracks of Fantastic Beasts, The Witcher and Assassin's Creed Odyssey.
Alongside them, well-known voice actors lend their voices to the game, among them Brigitte Lecordier, Marie Chevalot and PADG.
Made by humans, for real
0 generative AI in the artistic production. Every drawing, every model, every note comes from a human hand.
Close to 400 contributors since 2020, including 80 active volunteers today, with no commercial model.
The game will be given to the community, with nothing asked in return.
Built with the SME
Le jeu repose entièrement sur le Skytale Map Editor, développé en interne depuis 2020 : 16 bibliothèques et 26 modules, qui ont permis de bâtir les îles, d'animer les personnages et de scénariser les énigmes. Sa publication en open source est prévue à la sortie du jeu.
When the game is released, it will be opened to everyone.
The gameplay, keyboard in hand
Beyond the sets and the music, The Last Artifact is something you live: you explore, you solve, you fight. A gameplay sequence, captured straight from the game.
