Make Your Own Dreamcast Games With Elysian Shadows Toolkit

By now, you'll no doubt be aware of Elysian Shadows - the successfully-funded Kickstarter RPG that is coming to Dreamcast, Steam and a whole host of other platforms. Now, this isn't widely known, but Elysian Shadows Team will be bundling the ESTk development tools with every copy of the game. ESTk stands for Elysian Shadows Toolkit and as anyone with even a passing interest in game development will know, this is massive news for the Dreamcast indie scene. ESTk will allow gamers to create their own content for use within the Elysian Shadows engine and it will also allow more talented coders to create whole new games from scratch. Yes - you read that right.

"ESTk is the custom multiplatform Toolkit/Level Editor developed with C++ and the Qt framework written specifically to create the immersive worlds of Elysian Shadows. It shares a significant amount of code with ESGamma and boasts advanced tiling and sheet management tools, including the ability to create 2D worlds with 3D depth."

- Elysian Shadows Website

While this isn't new news, a lot of people may have missed the initial announcement, and I certainly wasn't aware of this - even though it was made public back in 2014! Regardless, this is simply incredible and literally blows the the door wide open for a whole new generation of indie Dreamcast games with all manner of cool audio and visual features, accurate environment physics, light sourcing, particle engines and more. On top of this, there's also Dreamcast SD reader and coder cable support. Jaw-dropping stuff. Here's the original video from Elysian Shadows lead developer Falco Girgis:

Remember, you can still support Elysian Shadows - go here and pledge what you can!