The action RPG Undecember does without classes – and that’s a good thing

December is an action RPG in which you slaughter your way through a dark fantasy world. But the skills system and the lack of classes make the game stand out positively.

What is December? Undecember is a new hack and slash action RPG from the studio Needs Games. Undecember takes place in a dark fantasy world and relies on creepy monsters and plenty of action. You collect better and stronger items and skills and become more and more powerful. So the typical, addictive gameplay that makes action RPGs so great.

What are the features? In addition to the whimsical action RPG gameplay, Undecember has a number of cool features that make it stand out in the genre:

• MMO items
• Crossplay between PC and mobile, but the game is definitely NOT a dull autoplay hero simulator – if you don’t actively play, you’ll quickly perish
• Chic graphics
• Dark, brutal setting
• A classless character system with tons of options

Especially the latter point is a big unique selling point of Undecember. You will learn more about this in the following paragraphs.

That’s why you don’t need fixed classes

What’s the deal with the class system? Many action RPGs let you choose from different classes at the beginning of the game. So you need to know early on whether you want to play mage, warrior, hunter, or some obscure minion or support class.

If you notice after a few hours of play that you don’t like the class you’ve chosen, you’ll have to start over for better or worse and bound items and all progress are for naught.

Here you can download Undecember for free!

In Undecember, however, you start off as a blank slate. Your hero or heroine is not assigned to any class and you will never have to decide on a hero type either. Rather, you are always the kind of hero you want to be currently and for which you have optimized your attributes, skills and runes.

The Rune System – A tinkerer’s and tweaker’s dream

What are runes? Significantly, your character is called “Rune Hunter” and that describes individuals who are in search of just those mystical signs. If you own runes, you don’t just have colorful stones with pretty markings on them. Rather, the Lore-master can draw great power from the runes. These include devastating combat techniques, magic from elements such as ice and fire, and the ability to summon sinister creatures.

In the game, the runes that you gradually accumulate give you powerful skills and supporting effects. With special upgrade materials, you can further improve the runes depending on your level and attributes and thus become more and more powerful.

Where do you get them? You can find runes in treasure chests or with powerful bosses in the game world. Important quests also reliably grant you new runes. Finally, from Act II you can also create runes yourself at the alchemy table.

This is how the rune puzzle works: In order to use your runes optimally, you can lay them out in a kind of “rune puzzle” and further upgrade them with so-called “link runes”. So lay out the runes wisely and “attach” the appropriate link runes. Each rune has between one and six intersections of a specific color.

You can then “attach” Link Runes of the same color to it, and those Runes will then boost the Rune they’re attached to. Depending on the type of link rune, this can mean more damage per second, more damage of a certain type, or faster casting times. The link runes can also be upgraded, further increasing the bonuses awarded.

You just have to make sure that the runes have correctly aligned interfaces in the right colors, because space on the rune puzzle is limited and you cannot rotate runes. So if a rune has a slot on the bottom left, then a compatible rune must have a matching slot on the top right.

Also cool: if an interface is misaligned or the color doesn’t match, then there are upgrades that change the position of the interface or its color. More powerful upgrades even add more slots to runes, allowing you to attach even more links. In this way, the game gives you better and better opportunities to optimize your build over the course of the game.

Here you can download Undecember for free!

What can you play? Since each rune represents a skill, you can put together your own build in the rune puzzle. The game gives you complete freedom and you can use a myriad of combinations. Here some examples:

• The “classic” warriors, hunters or magicians, each decimating the opponent with melee weapons, bows or magic. Here you rely purely on skills of the appropriate suitability.
• A hero who primarily uses a thick ax to chop down enemies, but also fights enemies with magic from a distance
• An archer who still summons minions and rushes them into battle while blasting enemies with poison arrows from afar
• A mage, but geared toward heavy armor, using fire and ice to dissect enemies in melee combat

You have countless opportunities to develop and expand en masse different types of heroes by cleverly stringing together runes. And if you don’t like your current build anymore, simply pick up other runes and build up a whole new skillset and move on. And without starting over and losing your progress.
So much for the playful freedom that Undember offers. The game was released on October 12, 2022 for PC on Steam and mobile devices. Here you can Download December.