The year 2014 is upon us. The Year of RPG Incline, in which the Kickstarter trees planted in 2012 will finally bear fruit - along with some non-Kickstarted titles that happened to have begun development at around the same time. This month alone, we have a number of promising titles scheduled for release. The first one of them was released today: The Banner Saga.



Originally Kickstarted back in March 2012, The Banner Saga is a Norse-themed turn-based tactical RPG with a distinctive Don Bluth-esque classically animated art style. The game's developer is Stoic, an indie studio founded by a trio of ex-BioWare developers. Perhaps because of that, some on the Codex originally feared that the game would end up being some kind of casual romance-centric experience. Others expressed their doubt in the project's viability when Stoic released a free-to-play multiplayer spin-off called The Banner Saga: Factions to help fund the game's further development. Yet as more information about it was revealed, including a certain hilarious preview, it became evident that The Banner Saga was turning out to be pretty damned hardcore.

As such, although news coverage of The Banner Saga is usually the domain of our sister site, Tacticular Cancer, I'm happy to announce it here as the first release of the January of Incline. It's available on Steam and GamersGate now, for the low price of $25.