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Classic dungeon crawling awesomeness!

Anvil of Dawn, a classic DOS-era dungeon crawler with first-person perspective, sprite graphics, a vast and rich world to explore, and dozens of hours of great and motivating gameplay, is available on GOG.com for only $5.99

Every fantasy land needs a hero, it seems. There's always an evil entity of some sort that menaces the realm and its people. Surprisingly, the people never stand up to it. They prefer to wait for a group of adventurers, or even just one champion who knows the importance of wearing leg armor around archers. Inevitably someone comes to the rescue and saves the realm one spider-infested cellar at a time. Schematic as it may sound, we love to relive those adventures over and over again. Even if one dungeon looks pretty much the same as any other, you still get this rush of excitement when making your first steps on its dusty floor. It's not about originality of the concept. It's about the involving gameplay, that lets you forget about the world around you. Here's a perfect game to do just that!

Anvil of Dawn has everything you ever loved about 1990s role-playing games. It presents you with a large and diverse gameworld, full of monsters and enemies to slay, riches and powerful items to loot, quests to carry out, weapons to wield, spells to cast, and an evil overlord to challenge. It was praised for its great pacing allowing to keep the gamer entertained and intrigued, always presenting him with something new to do and achieve. The imaginative sprite-based graphics, solid gameplay mechanics, and many classic gameplay ideas make this title a shining example of well executed cRPG design that makes us call its period "the good old times". Highly recommended!

If a true old-school cRPG experience is what you're looking for, you simply can't afford to miss Anvil of Dawn, for only $5.99 on GOG.com!
Oh and, yep, just watched most of a Let's Play video from Kikoskia on Anvil of Dawn. Yep.... a MUST buy :)
This game is teh awesome and I hate everyone who's going into it spoiler-free.

You lucky bastards.
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Bloodygoodgames: Oh and, yep, just watched most of a Let's Play video from Kikoskia on Anvil of Dawn. Yep.... a MUST buy :)
I'm watching one right now... ;p
I posted my review:

Anvil of Dawn is a real-time grid-based RPG. It's closest relatives are games like Lands of Lore and Stonekeep, the most streamlined games of the genre. Anvil is definitely not an RPG for min-maxers, looters, or role-players. Instead it offers puzzles and dungeon exploration for both newbies and experienced players alike.

Anvil is a bit of a mixed bag and doesn't quite reach the level of Lands of Lore. Anvil is good-looking, it has the best auto-map I've probably seen in any RPG, it has a very nice variety of environments, it's very easy to get into, and it has a very effective, oppressive atmosphere. On the other hand, it is poor at prompting (expect some aimless wondering), the music is mediocre, the puzzles and fighting somewhat repetitive, the inventory management is poor and some spinner puzzles are the most aggrevating I've ever seen. Probably the most annoying aspect for me personally was that you can't rest in the game, and your health and magic points regenerate reeeeaaally slooowly. You'll get a healing spell at the beginning of the game, but it's ridiculously ineffective until very late in the game. Especially in the beginning dungeons I had to leave the game running alone once in a while to regenerate my character. Needless to say this really killed the pacing of the game.

Anvil of Dawn was, for me at least, a reasonably fun but a little underwhelming distraction. I did like it better that Stonekeep, but Lands of Lore is better by far despite being older.
Remember playing this one, good atmosphere, lots of creepy monsters indeed.
I did not complete it though, maybe this time I will ;)
Instabuy! I'll be picking this up when I get paid again. I used to have the CD-ROM, but I lent it to a friend and he lost it, we're still friends, but to this day I haven't lent him anything else. I bought this a few years ago off of E-Bay but I will gladly pick this up on GOG asap. It always nice to see yet see another New World Computing title on this site. Revenant next please. Fucking brilliant!!
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RaggieRags:
hmm... I can see a LOT of healing potions on a video.. is that really a problem?
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oldschool: Instabuy! I'll be picking this up when I get paid again. I used to have the CD-ROM, but I lent it to a friend and he lost it, we're still friends, but to this day I haven't lent him anything else. I bought this a few years ago off of E-Bay but I will gladly pick this up on GOG asap. It always nice to see yet see another New World Computing title on this site. Revenant next please. Fucking brilliant!!
LOL, I'm a book freak and once lent a couple of books to a friend. She returned them with many of the corners of the pages turned down, as she'd done that to 'save her place in the book' as she was reading. Nope. Never lent her another book, as she'd obviously never heard of a BOOKMARK :)
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Starmaker: This game is teh awesome and I hate everyone who's going into it spoiler-free.

You lucky bastards.
God, you must really hate me, then... ;-)

I've read on wikipedia this game "was released on CD and features fully spoken dialogue and several pre-rendered cutscenes." Is the game really fully voiced? What about the version available here on GOG, does it have voices?
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RaggieRags:
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Stooner: hmm... I can see a LOT of healing potions on a video.. is that really a problem?
The problem with the healing potions is that they are also really ineffective. You need to chuck down like five of them to get a character fully healed. At the beginning, just about any battle will get your health low, so you'd have to pop them like no tomorrow to avoid spending downtime on recharging.. And I bet most will hoard potions anyways.

For anyone starting the game now: feel free to use all potions and herbs as soon as you get them. It's no use hoarding them since they are not that much of a help to you anyway.
Hmmm another one ive never heard of
I seem to remember that at one point somebody mentioned that May's releases are going to be mind blowing. I'm certain nobody noticed that.

Anvil of Dawn and Chaos Overlords in one week... DAMN!!!
Always happy to see old games showing up gOg...

...but, having recently replayed Anvil of Dawn, I cannot recommend it. The combat is unexciting, repetitive, and simplistic. The puzzles are completely uninteresting, consisting almost entirely of pressure plate manipulation - over, and over, and over. The magic system, while varied, isn't very useful, especially considering that the overly slow casting speed makes using spells in combat more trouble than it is worth. Finally, and most importantly, the game just isn't very much fun - it is a very lonely, grim game world, and with a minimalist story and few NPCs, you easily lose track of why you're bothering with your quest at all.

And, yes, the game has speech for the handful of characters you bump into. The voice acting is pretty bad though, so you may wish it didn't =)

Even so, very glad to see GOG's old game catalog continue to grow!
Post edited May 14, 2013 by jdgremmer
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Crosmando: As I understand, Anvil was just a side-project DreamForge did for NWC, which is why it reused the 3D engine they were using for Ravenloft, which had a Middle-Eastern/Egyptian theme:
Only the second Ravenloft game (Stone Prophet) played in an Egyptian-like plane. First one was vampire / gothic horror stuff. Good times.
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RaggieRags:
Thanks! and ha! That was exactly what he was doing (admittedly)... hoarding the damn potions.... :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GRSISNODzAY#t=642s
Post edited May 14, 2013 by Stooner