In the name “Source of Mana” we already tell much of our story, as simple as it may seem.

The Soul Menhir, an ancient conduit of Mana

Mana, Source & the Tree

In this post I'll share some of the background themes of SoM and the origins in which they're rooted.

Mana is that special element that allows us to delve into magical themes and gives life to our fantasy world. It’s a concept that has been used a lot in many games, books or films. Mana is always used as some sort of device to give the magical power of any given world a name. In games, it’s traditionally used as the name of a mage’s primary resource and can be found as a blue status bar or potion. The blue colour itself also seems to be a recurring theme that has been picked up as part of the idea of Mana in fantasy games.  However, a lot of the games fail to really explore the idea of Mana beyond its use as a blue resource bar.

The Mana World was given a very simple name entirely based on that one word: Mana. Many years later, however, Mana was once again forgotten, unexplained and taken for granted. We believe that Source of Mana as a project is about going back to the source and telling old stories in new and better ways, so we intend to make Mana one of the central themes of the game, to give it a story and a purpose. Mana will inspire all the magical elements of the game’s storytelling. To understand and discover more about Mana will be one of the objectives of the player character. As such, Mana will be a life force that powers everything and everyone, including all traditional RPG game classes (not only mages) which will learn to manipulate Mana to use special abilities. All living things will be powered by this mysterious life force.

The theme of Mana also meets the theme of trees in our story. Evol Online had always used a tree as its emblem: a symbol of life, evolution and growth.  The Mana World meanwhile had this well-known quest involving a mysterious “Mana Seed”, which suffered the same fate as all Mana-themed things: it was never explained further. Source of Mana will tell the story of the Mana Tree, a world-tree with roots that reach every corner of the planet and act as conductors for Mana to flow through. The Tree is in fact the source of all Mana, which is in turn the source of all life.

Other updates:

Version 0.0.3 is currently being worked on. Updates on that and 0.0.2 will come soon!