The King's Surveyor

Far From Home

The King’s Surveyor is a first-person exploration adventure in the old-school tradition. A simple man, lost in a fantasy world far older and stranger than he is, must find his way home. Embark on adventure. Embrace wanderlust. Endure the journey.
Sebastian is the King’s Surveyor. Not a soldier, not a mage, just a careful man with a torch and a good eye, who has never once failed to come back from the unknown. He does the work because he is good at it, because it keeps his family fed, and because he does not stop.
The Aurelith crown sends him south to chart Vesterra, an ancient valley at the edge of the realm. Something very old reaches out of the darkness, corrupting the surveyor’s path, and he wakes beyond the edge of every map he has ever drawn. Whatever it is, it does not want him to get home.
A Land that remembers

Vesterra has been empty for a very long time. Whatever happened here left ruins in the mountains, halls no one has walked in centuries, and dead that still remember what they were. Sebastian carries a sword, though fighting is done out of necessity, not enjoyment.
The Light
Magic here is not something you cast. It is an old, quiet relationship with the Light, the tether to the undercurrent of the world. Sebastian carries a torch. It is how he sees, and what the dark keeps its distance from, and it does not last. The things down here avoid your light. They will come into it if they have to, but they would rather wait at its edge, and you can see them waiting. Some things wake to light and react. Not all of them kindly.
Chart your way home

There is no experience bar and no skill tree. Sebastian gets better the way a surveyor does: by looking. Climb, leap and slide across a land that was never meant to be crossed. Knock on old stone and find the passages behind it. Study what you find in a field journal drawn in his own hand, and watch the map fill in beneath your boots. Your left hand does the work: the sword, the staff, the knock, the climb. Your right hand holds the light. One mouse button for each.

Made by hand

Built in an engine written from scratch for this game, with a display simulation that builds the image the way a real tube does. An homage to the games that first made a dungeon feel like a place you were really standing in.