Scarred By Heaven: About

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

The game is being created as a solo project by me, and has been in development for almost 7 years now!

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.

Act 1 Release

Act 1 of Scarred By Heaven has been released in full!

You can download the full game for free on this site, or purchase it on Itch.io if you wish to support development!

Scarred By Heaven's story is planned to be released in two separate story 'Acts', with Act 2 being a free update later on that'll include the remaining main story content, as well as more side content. 

Act 1 contains the first 5 chapters of the main story, with an estimated playtime of around 10 - 15 hours, depending on the amount of side activities pursued.

The game has been in development for an absurdly long time, so this two-part release was done so that I could finally get it off my chest, and start gathering feedback.

If you want to learn more about the game from here, then you can check out the Characters page to see the cast, or read my Blog, where I talk about the ongoing development a lot.

But regardless, thank you for your interest in the game! :)