MythForce, the ’80s cartoon video game, comes to Steam and eyes a console launch

polygon.com:

After a year synthesizing the awesome, 12-frames-per-second, primary color, cel-shaded glory days of Thundercats, Masters of the Universe, Silverhawks, and the like into a video game, Trent Oster, Beamdog’s chief executive, admits he’s thought about how much fun it would be, making the studio’s action-RPG MythForce into a real cartoon at some point.

But that will have to wait. The roguelite adventure, which burst into early access on the Epic Games Store in April 2022 (with a kick-ass theme song, to boot) is now available on Steam, spotlighted in its Steam Next Fest, with versions planned for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox later this fall.

Still, Oster grins at the idea that MythForce, the homage to syndicated, latchkey-children afternoon cartoons, might actually get made into one. “We’ve seen people who are literally pitching us on, hey, this needs to be a real thing; it needs to happen,” Oster told Polygon.

“We’ve had discussions with companies out there about MythForce becoming a full fledged cartoon,” Oster told Polygon. “It’s something I would love to see happen, because I think there’s a lot of fun here.”

MythForce, the first original work from Beamdog (to now known mainly as a port shop for RPGs) launched with an out-there premise that the studio wasn’t really sure would work. Happily, they discovered dressing a first-person, procedurally generated dungeon crawler as an ’80s cartoon works really well as far as streaming and watchability. MythForce not only developed a cult following worth a console launch, it also has a merch shop.

The newest release of the game, available today, will lean more into character and player progression, Oster says (and therefore place MythForce squarely in the “roguelite”