Game News SKALD: Against the Black Priory Released

[Arthandas]

Does it come with any crt filters?

 

[WarHamster]

After 4 hours of gameplay, it's so far so good. I'm liking Skald and don't regret backing it way back when. It might still be a bit rough around the edges, e.g. there's a lot of typos, but those should be easy enough to fix. Haven't run into any major bugs yet. Some report performance issues after 10+ hrs, which seems odd for game like this, but AFAIK the solo dev is already on this and has a patch lined up for the coming Monday.

The game system isn't explained particularly well. Mind you, it isn't a very convoluted system, but the lack of a manual or even a reference sheet for the available spells are big sore spots now. Other than that, Skald is hitting all the right marks for me. Sure the graphics can be a bit of a hit and miss, terrain readability can be particularly poor in places for instance, but as long as you don't actually hate pixel graphics, you should do just fine. The sounds are basic but that was to be expected and the music is charming, but could become irritating after 10+ hrs if there's not more variety (not there yet).

Way too early to say anything about the story, but it seems intriguing and has sparked my interest for sure. The writing itself isn't bad by any means (minus the typos), but the fact that the author isn't a native English speaker does show at times (doesn't bother me, tho').

The only thing that really strikes me as a poor design choice (and unfortunately is something that can't easily be fixed with patches) is the inclusion of Diablo-like loot in the game. Finding clearly random loot table rolled and generated magical Boots of Healing or Minor Gloves of Movement do not fit the theme or the mood of the game at all. I can't fathom why the dev implemented them like this. IMO, the game would've been better off without the random magic loot.

Anyhoo, there are much worse ways to spend your $15 (or the local equivalent) than this little CRPG.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

I am way in the game right now and Iam pleasantly surprised, the writing is great, the combat is fun and tense. I kinda hope the dev makes more after this.

 

[Lyre Mors]

The only thing that really strikes me as a poor design choice (and unfortunately is something that can't easily be fixed with patches) is the inclusion of Diablo-like loot in the game. Finding clearly random loot table rolled and generated magical Boots of Healing or Minor Gloves of Movement do not fit the theme or the mood of the game at all.

I've only found 2-3 magical items so far, so didn't really notice anything amiss. This is terrible if true. What the fuck?

 

[Rincewind]

I think the inspiration was a mix between the C64 and the EGA palettes.

C64 palette was the inspiration, it's very obvious. C64 had pastels that blended well, EGA was by-the-numbers 2-bit RGB (except for the 3-bit RGB mode in 640x350 resulting in a total palette of 64 that very few games used).

Low-res VGA is 256 colours out of 262 thousand (18-bit analog RGB), so yeah, WTF indeed.

 

[Strange Fellow]

The only thing that really strikes me as a poor design choice (and unfortunately is something that can't easily be fixed with patches) is the inclusion of Diablo-like loot in the game. Finding clearly random loot table rolled and generated magical Boots of Healing or Minor Gloves of Movement do not fit the theme or the mood of the game at all.

I've only found 2-3 magical items so far, so didn't really notice anything amiss. This is terrible if true. What the fuck?

Afraid it is true.

Project Update: Feature Highlights 1

[...]
MAGIC ITEMS

I’ve also been giving a lot of love to magic items lately. This one might be a bit divisive: There will be a lot of procedurally created and semi-randomly placed magic items in the game.

I know a lot of you don’t like this and I can certainly sympathize. In an ideal world, every item would be lovingly hand-crafted and placed in the world. The problem with this is that it takes a lot of time. As in A LOT a lot.

The result would be much fewer items to be found and after testing this game for hours on end my conclusion is that the game works better with more items even if that means they are procedurally created and placed.

Just to be clear: The fact that most items are procedural in the game does not mean there isn’t also the occasional hand crafted item to be found. Also, magic items are not dropped from random encounters. Once the game starts a set number of items are placed in the world and these remain static. The game does NOT feature Diablo-style grinding for loot-drops and there is no way to save-scum the system.

I’m going to make every effort to keep a close eye on the system here to make for a balanced and interesting distribution of magic items and I feel pretty certain that it will work out for the best in the end.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Garbage design decision. My enjoyment has sadly been significantly tarnished. Just when a game seems to be hitting all the right notes, you get something like this mixed in. Can't have anything nice these days.

 

[hellbent]

The result would be much fewer items to be found and after testing this game for hours on end my conclusion is that the game works better with more items even if that means they are procedurally created and placed.

OK, then what about just having a table of handcrafted magic items that are placed in areas that make sense according to the container's location (so you don't get a vorpal sword of entropy in the first barrel in the game, but in a major boss container). Doesn't seem necessarily more complex than completely rando loot generation and placement, which will saddle the player with a ton of worthless items that don't stack well together or ones that break the balance of the game by making the PC an unbeatable tank.

I'm enjoying the game thus far very early on and hope that the rando loot generation doesn't rear its ugly head for a while. I haven't messed with crafting at all yet (and usually tend to generally avoid it if possible in favor of collecting drops in-game), but if that's the only way to get magic items that make sense later in the game, that would suck ass.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I would have gladly taken less loot rather than loot from from a randomized table. It's still a good game. Just a stunningly poor decision.

 

[Sacibengala]

I got a magic plate armor from a random chest. I knew it was something wrong as it made no sense for it being there.

 

[AndyS]

It's cool that he appreciates, but whoever wrote this article is seriously confused:

Its VGA-style color palette and pixel art graphics harken back to an earlier age of CRPG history

Huh?

You know, those earlier ages, like how they made CRPGs back in the 60s or something.

 

[Rincewind]

It's cool that he appreciates, but whoever wrote this article is seriously confused:

Its VGA-style color palette and pixel art graphics harken back to an earlier age of CRPG history

Huh?

You know, those earlier ages, like how they made CRPGs back in the 60s or something.

They actually used vector displays; the glorious CRPG Book has a whole chapter dedicated to these:
https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/articles/the-plato-rpgs-the-first-computer-role-playing-games/

 

[Decado]

The writing is genuinely very good, and I mean all of it -- narration, characters, dialog, info screens, and the actual plot.

The interesting thing to me is that this is actually a horror game, in a sense. Or at least the story is a lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

I was up way too late last night playing it, that has not happened in a long time.

 

[Stokowski]

It's cool that he appreciates, but whoever wrote this article is seriously confused:

Its VGA-style color palette and pixel art graphics harken back to an earlier age of CRPG history

Huh?

You know, those earlier ages, like how they made CRPGs back in the 60s or something.

Even though I lived through those technologies, I was always getting them confused anyway. CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA, UXGA? Fuck it, can it play M.U.L.E. and Elite?

 

[Rincewind]

The writing is genuinely very good, and I mean all of it -- narration, characters, dialog, info screens, and the actual plot.

The interesting thing to me is that this is actually a horror game, in a sense. Or at least the story is a lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

I was up way too late last night playing it, that has not happened in a long time.

Yeah, if that's the case, it's hard for me to imagine some random itemisation would "completely ruin it".

The dev's reasoning is understandable too; he doesn't have infinite resources. You gotta make some compromises, and frankly, I don't really see why some random magical items are bad.

 

[cvv]

lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

Well Stygian is a bit more recent.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

Well Stygian is a bit more recent.

Stygian has typical lovecraftian early 20th century-setting.

 

[luj1]

Stygian is as Lovecraftian as a Sunday morning cartoon

 

[Decado]

The itemization just doesn't feel like a problem, so far. I have found several obviously generated items, but they actually fit my party and the ones I couldn't use I sold. I've already found a vendor who sells what are clearly handcrafted items. So, I'm not even worried about it. It has not impacted my enjoyment of the game at all.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

The writing is genuinely very good, and I mean all of it -- narration, characters, dialog, info screens, and the actual plot.

The interesting thing to me is that this is actually a horror game, in a sense. Or at least the story is a lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

I was up way too late last night playing it, that has not happened in a long time.

I agree the music is moody as well. The itemization is no problem at all as well, the game is not really that hard. I just wanted crpgs like this but bigger, you can even keep the old aesthetic or bump it up to early 90s.

 

[Diggfinger]

Got the Deluxe Edition.

Glad I did

https://ibb.co/GPq6FfC][/URL] SAVANT CLASS +10%XP

 

[Berengar]

The writing is genuinely very good, and I mean all of it -- narration, characters, dialog, info screens, and the actual plot.

The interesting thing to me is that this is actually a horror game, in a sense. Or at least the story is a lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

I was up way too late last night playing it, that has not happened in a long time.

Your enthusiasm is making me consider buying this sooner than I planned. This sounds like it's ticking all the right boxes.

 

[Crescent Hawk]

The writing is genuinely very good, and I mean all of it -- narration, characters, dialog, info screens, and the actual plot.

The interesting thing to me is that this is actually a horror game, in a sense. Or at least the story is a lovecraftian horror story. But it is also fantasy. The last time I played anything like this was probably the Ravenloft games.

I was up way too late last night playing it, that has not happened in a long time.

Your enthusiasm is making me consider buying this sooner than I planned. This sounds like it's ticking all the right boxes.

I acknowledge that feeling, but I am kinda fearful of game length, we shall see.

 

[Rincewind]

I acknowledge that feeling, but I am kinda fearful of game length, we shall see.

You're worried it's too long, or that it's too short? If it's a 25-30 hour experience, that's an incline for me as overly long games have just too much padding IMO. I wish there were a lot more sub-40-50 hour RPGs.

The length of Age of Decadence was pretty much perfect for me of the more recent games. I find really hard to stomach playing 100+ hour games... That's a 3 to 6 months of exercise for me these days with all my other hobbies

 

[Contagium]

I've put 8 hours into this so far without even blinking. Even the typos are charming and almost make sense with how the dialogue unfolds. These are rough characters in a rough land, and this game isn't striving to be Planescape: Torment or Disco Elysium. The rough edges are enjoyable here