Scarred By Heaven is a beat-em-up about an otherworldly murder mystery, aiming to combine unique 2D brawling with a strong narrative and a small but rich sandbox.

The game is being created as a solo project by me, and is planned to be released for free. An early access release of the game is playable below!

For the past year, the coastal city of Jadewater has been plagued by a string of grisly murders, with the bodies of five victims left lying lifeless in the city streets, completely drained of blood. As an unlucky delinquent finds out, however, the truth behind the deaths seems to lie in a different world entirely...

You play as Sakiko Mizukawa, a brand-new young adult who's recently left her childhood home behind. Arriving in Jadewater by pure chance one night, she soon finds herself at the center of the city's paranormal mystery after a seemingly ordinary street fight takes a bizarre twist.

Wielding an otherworldly power tied to a strange new scar over her eye, Saki plunges into the 'other' Jadewater to discover the truth behind it all--but soon learns that she's not the only one to have been 'Marked'.

Scarred By Heaven features a beat-em-up system inspired by fighting games, focused on fast-paced brawling, combos, and parrying.

Face off against against gangs of local thugs in the real city and monstrous 'Phantoms' in the Otherworld with an ever-growing array of attacks and weapons. The game also features several unique 1-on-1 boss battles with others who've been granted powers, each having their own attacks, tricks, and style.

Combat aims to provide a lot of potential depth, but still be enjoyable at all skill levels. The game will feature a robust set of difficulty modifiers, allowing you to pick from a selection of presets, as well as customize and fine tune details about the game like enemy damage, the complexity of boss attack patterns, the leniency of parry timing, and more.

 

The strongest warriors know what they're fighting to protect!

Outside of combat, Saki can explore the city of Jadewater--a sandbox of side content with a variety of distractions and tiny secrets to discover, including shopping, cooking, fishing, arcades, eating at restaurants, and helping locals out with various problems in unique sidestories.

You'll earn  XP from exploring (as you also do from combat) that you can use to upgrade your combat abilities--as well as discover various other small rewards that can both help you become a better fighter, and further enrich Saki's life outside of combat.

Early Access Release

'Version 0.5' is an early access version of the game that isn't finished yet, and only contains the first act of the main story, and less side content than the final version will. I estimate it to have around 6 - 8 hours of main story content at the moment.

Scarred By Heaven is currently planned to be released in two separate parts, each being their own seperate game consisting of about 5 chapters. '0.5' is the first three chapters of Part 1.

The remaining story of Part 1 (as well as more side content) will be added in a future update, and save files from this version will be able to be transferred to the full release .

The game is fully functional in terms of gameplay and free of any placeholder assets at the moment, so I decided to release it this way so I could finally get it out into the world after years of development, and also so I could start gathering feedback and bug reports. 

I've tried my best to comb for bugs, but it's quite a big game, so letting the public help with playtesting is probably the most efficient way to refine things... (^^;)

If you do choose to play, thank you for helping out!