The Thread is Broken
Marie Laveau is dead. For eight years, the boundary between the living and the dead has been eroding. Spirits walk the streets of New Orleans, confused and hostile. The old wards are failing. Someone needs to hold the thread.
You are a Whisperman. A voodoo gunslinger, bound to the lwa, armed with a revolver and the sacred veve. You stand at the crossroads between worlds.
Two Games. One Universe.
Tactical
Turn-based squad combat. Position your Whispermen, draw veve for spiritual attacks, manage your lwa bonds. Every decision has weight. Every spirit remembers.
First Person
Revolver in one hand, veve traced with the other. A gesture-based casting system built from real Vodou ritual. No spell menus. You perform the magic.
Rooted in Real Vodou
Not voodoo dolls. Not zombie powder. We went to ethnographic sources and built our game systems from the actual tradition.
The Lwa
Rada, Petwo, Gede. Three nanchon. Not good vs evil. Temperature. Your patron lwa shapes your abilities, your personality, your fate. Go deep enough and the spirit rides you.
Veve Casting
Sacred geometric symbols drawn to invoke the lwa. In-game, you trace them by hand. Each pattern channels a different spirit's power. Ritual as mechanic.
Gris-Gris
Charm bags with herbs, oils, stones, and prayers. A crafting system with cultural roots. Every component carries traditional significance.
Baron Samedi
Lord of the dead. Your narrator. Drunk, irreverent, hilarious, and terrifying. He decides who lives and who dies. Think Darkest Dungeon narrator, but with rum.
The Five Attributes
No generic stats. Every attribute maps to the Vodou tradition.
Aggression, force, revolution. The hot spirits fuel your wrath.
Healing, protection, ancestry. The cool spirits guide your hand.
Death, truth, the crossroads. The liminal spirits open your eyes.
Willpower. The strength to hold the thread when spirits pull.
Your bond with the lwa. Deeper communion means greater power, and greater cost.
Built at Digital Forge Studios
Whispermen: 1889 is in active development using Godot 4. We're a small studio that believes the source material is always more interesting than our assumptions about it.
The real Vodou tradition gave us a class system, a casting mechanic, a crafting system, and a narrator. We just had to follow the thread.