SKALD: Against the Black Priory
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1609100/Skald_Against_the_Black_Priory__the_Prologue
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712620/SKALD_Against_the_Black_Priory_Original_Soundtrack_Vol_I/
You drag yourself from the black tides, across the corpses of drowned men, and onto the unwelcoming, craggy shoreline. Gulls cry overhead and the stink of seaweed fills your nose. By some miracle you have made it to Idra. It will take all your skill to survive and unravel the eldritch mysteries of the Black Priory. Pray your sanity holds.
About the Game
‘Skald: Against the Black Priory’ is an old-school roleplaying game that combines modern design and a fully realised narrative with authentic 8-bit looks and charms.
Delve into a dark fantasy world, full of tragic heroes, violent deaths and Lovecraftian, cosmic horror. Explore an engaging, branching story mixed with rich exploration and crunchy, tactical, turn-based combat that will seem familiar yet innovative to RPG fans, old and new.
Do you have what it takes to lead a company of broken heroes from the tainted shores of Idra to the gates of the Black Priory - and beyond?
Features
Lovingly crafted retro-style art:
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Experience a richly illustrated world of authentic pixel art using thousands of hand-drawn tiles and images
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A palette inspired by the legendary Commodore 64 computer.
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Optional CRT filter for that authentic old-school experience.
Deep character creation:
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Build your main character and recruit a party from among a dozen diverse characters, each with their own skill-set, agenda and personality.
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Choose from a dozen classes and backgrounds as well as heaps of feats, spells and equipment as you take your party from level 1 to 20.
Crunchy tactical combat:
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Engage in challenging, fast-paced, turn- and grid-based combat.
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Play it your way, with fully customizable difficulty and feedback settings. Or hit ‘auto-resolve’, lean back, and (hopefully) watch your party cleave a bloody path through their foes.
A richly detailed, living world:
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Explore the vast expanse of Freymark and the Outer Isles and watch your actions spell doom or salvation for the region.
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Focus on the rich, branching narrative… Or live the life of a mercenary and explore varied sidequests and encounters - the plot will wait for you.
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Manage your party as you make camp, recruit hirelings, travel by land and sea, and interact with powerful factions and their visions for the world.
Become part of a fantastic community:
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Skald was made possible by crowdfunding and already has a large, passionate and welcoming community that can’t wait to meet you.
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By joining Skald’s Early Access you’ll have a direct line to the developer, get sneak peaks and give feedback on forthcoming plans and help shape the game into a modern classic.
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We will publish the powerful tools used to create the game in an effort to support and encourage modding and content creation once the game has fully launched.
The Story of Skald: A Dream Come True
Skald is the dream-project of a lone Norwegian developer, AL.
AL missed the thrill of delving into grand, immersive games such as ‘Ultima’, ‘Magic Candle’, ‘Wasteland’ and the Gold Box series. When he noticed the lack of newer roleplaying games that combined the classic (early 90s) charm with more modern game design he decided to take matters into his own hands.
AL set to work crafting the game of his dreams.
A highly successful Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaign with 700 backers, and a fast-growing community of passionate fans proves he made the right call.
Collaborators
Despite being a one-man company, Scape-IT has been able to collaborate with some amazingly talented people in creating SKALD:
Danny Salfield Wadeson is a UK-based writer & narrative designer who has worked on BAFTA and TGA nominated narrative games such as Roki, Backbone and Duelyst
Twitter: @MadQuills
John Henderson is an experienced fine artist and illustrator and is also a teacher of Art. Whether using dip pen, oil paint or pixels, John’s work is easily recognizable as being highly atmospheric as well as lovingly created. Having worked on many publications and indie gaming projects he is also currently busy with his own project, Wild Wood for the C64.
Twitter: @JohnHen65953721
Scott Hartill UK based artist and game designer. More interested in pixels than anything else. Currently busy developing a PS1 style survival horror in his spare time.
Twitter : @cluly
Torgeir Fjereide is a Norwegian artist and illustrator. He loves painting mythological and medieval scenes and he’ll take any excuse to paint a bearded man.
Twitter: @TheBrushOfThor
Post Horn Public Relations is a pro-bono initiative created to support talented developers.
Twitter: @horn_pr
Rachael A Edwards hails from England and spends most of her days writing fantasy novels about morally grey characters in worlds filled with mythology, corruption and magic. An avid gamer, Rachael’s love for storytelling began at a young age. She is currently working on a YA fantasy novel and is represented by Rena Rossner of The Deborah Harris Agency.
Twitter: @RachaelAWrites
MementoMoree (formerly known as Paolo Pomes) has been creating art since his late teenage years. Proficient in most types of art, from pencil & paper to highly detailed 4k textures, he’s found solace and pleasure in the retro pixel art!
Twitter: @MementoMoree
Marco Pedrana is a digital and traditional art vagrant. He started as draftsman in advertising and comics, went on in illustration, then painting, then conceptual art. He doubled back on videogame design with Aeon of Sands, creating its graphic, story, and sfx. Lately he freelances as a 3D generalist for indie game and cinema productions.
He focuses on narrative art, regardless of the medium or scope.
Twitter: @marcopedrana
Romanus Surt is the main guy at Graverobber Foundation, the developer behind Das Geisterschiff and Der Geisterturm. He does music for SKALD.
Twitter: @surt_r
Edwin Montgomery is a composer and sound designer for games, films and performance. A long-time RPG obsessive, he wrote the soundtrack for inXile’s remastered 30th anniversary version of “Wasteland”. He has created music and sounds for a variety of fantasy game worlds, including Warhammer 40,000, Game of Thrones and Neverwinter. Edwin does sound design for SKALD.
Twitter: @edwinmyshkin
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Siege of Avalon: Anthology
Really fun CRPG, as others have stated. Setting/Atmosphere is pretty on-point for representing a desperate band of defenders in an elongated siege, which only appears to be going further downhill. There are a lot of characters to speak with, most providing backstory or supplementary lore, with a few providing quests/offering to join your party after a certain point
IMO, you really have a good feel on your characters growth. Starting out as a complete amateur you have to take on what is essentially a suicide mission, which would have ended quickly had I not acquired the heal spell & prepared in advance, that sees your character fairly rapidly gain in proficiency in order to survive the coming perils. The AI companions have quirks (looking at you mage NPC that ran into a corner :P) but they do generally provide valuable assistance in engagements which would otherwise be extremely complicated, if not impossible
– Real player with 136.6 hrs in game
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Imagine my emotion when i found this jewel in the Steam Store. Let me tell you it was a wonderful surprise. Even if the game has some issues about the combat pathfinding, let me remember to you all that this game has been released in the early 2000’s. I recomend this game to everyone who loves long epic adventures with a lot of interesting characters, and days and hours of fun. This game can be played with three different styles to choose, either you can be a warrior mastering the combat skills, or a scout and specialize in stealth and archer skills or a magician dominating all kind of spells. You will also find companions along the story that you can also equip and provide with items and armor and weapons and all sort of gadgets, they will be valuable partners in your adventure. Im very happy that i found this game again 20 years later after trying it’s demo version in the early 2000’s. I was starting to loose hope about finding it again. But now that i found it here, remastered and reforged i just cant’t stop playing it. it’s very similar to Diablo II, but let me tell you, this game is a masterpiece of is time, More dialogues, more stories, the characters and merchants you will find in this game are so numerous and complex, with stories to tell, gossips, and stuff. It’s very rich in every aspect. Please allow yourselves to play this game. It’s a rare wander.
– Real player with 61.3 hrs in game
The Throne of Bernicia
This was a wonderful game (and it was totally free). The characters changed expressions that coincided with the dialogue (like smiles, closed eyes, wide-eyed looks) and you could see them immediately, just like they were real people. It had a good amount of side quests. You had choices on what your responses could be and most of the time your responses would result in different outcomes. The story was well written and the dungeons were not all the same. It was not predictable so several times I was surprised with what happened. The battles had different backgrounds. There was comedy as well as drama.
– Real player with 17.2 hrs in game
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I was looking for a random Indie JRPG to play, and happened to find this one yesterday. It’s absolutely free, without ads or in game purchases!
I’ve already beaten this game. While I wish a screen with controls would have been useful, it wasn’t too difficult to figure out. Use Z to select, X for back (or menu), arrow keys to move. There are some other buttons, that are repetitive to these, but this felt the most natural. It has some typo errors, but nothing over the top. The biggest bug I encountered is that Ghosts do not give experience or gold. There is end game gold exploit, but honestly at that point it didn’t matter for me. There are also 2-4 chat screens with an error for the speaker portrait and naming.
– Real player with 13.1 hrs in game