Scape-IT, the one-man Norwegian IT company is working on something special. Skald: Against the Black Priory is a classic, turn-based RPG with a modern design, but with the look and feel of 8-bit era games. Skald needs your help to become a reality and what better place than Kickstarter for that? Skald: Against the Black Priory’s crowdfunding campaign is now live on Kickstarter. The campaign requires funding of $8K to succeed and at the time of writing, is rapidly being funded by the minute.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is described as “a classic, turn-based RPG, set in a dark and gritty fantasy universe: full of tragic heroes, violent deaths and eldritch horror, with a dark, immersive plot and inspired by legendary titles such as Ultima and the gold box series“.
Key Features:
- Vintage graphics using the glorious Commodore 64 color palette
- Complex level-based character development with abilities, skills and features
- Grindless tactical combat
- “Choose-your-own-adventure” system and dynamic, tree based dialog.
As a party based RPG, SKALD puts heavy emphasis on both roleplaying- and mechanical interaction between party members.
The current leader of the party can be swapped by the push of a button and the skills and abilities of the current leader will influence interactions with the game world. But be warned: Managing the party can be challenging with memSkald: Against the Black Priorybers having private agendas and motivations.
Combat in SKALD is turn- and menu-based. This leads to fast and grind-less combat (that can be automated). The design emphasis is on having interactions between abilities, tactics and situational circumstances create unique and challenging combat every time.
The game will feature a rich and highly interactive world with both scripted and systemic ways of interacting with the hundreds of NPCs, items, objects and plot points. The game will allow for, and encourage, a large range of player expression and roleplaying.
Interacting with the world takes place through tree-based dialog, “choose-you-own-adventure sequences”, combat, tile-based exploration and interaction with in-game systems.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory will feature level-based character development with both numerical stats and special abilities. I also intend for roleplaying choices to affect character development by taking a leaf from classics such as Fallout 1 and 2.
As a game of dark, gritty fantasy, magic is a huge part of the world building. It will play a huge part of the game and designing a system that is both mechanically and narratively appealing is a challenge I can’t wait to dig into! More on that down the line.
The game will release on PC (Windows) first with releases for Mac and handheld devices down the line. NOTE: Backer rewards are PC only.
Estimated release date is June 2020.
Matt Barton will have a video up where he hangs out with the developer in two days
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4E2Bu3vHik
Interested parties can check out the Kickstarter page for more information about the project as well as to back it!