Digital Deluxe Edition
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 t...
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
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is inspired by roleplaying games of yesteryear, combining modern design and compelling storytelling with authentic 8-bit looks and charms.
Delve into a dark fantasy world, full of deadly creatures, tragic heroes, and lovecraftian horror for an epic retro-style adventure rich in exploration and tactical, turn-based combat.
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?
Gather your party
Lead a band of broken heroes through challenging turn-based combat scenarios as you cleave, blast or stealth your way through deadly enemies of all definitions. Equip your heroes using a modern inventory system, fulfil objectives through quest logs, read journals to discover hidden secrets. And if the action is still a bit too hot to handle, auto-resolve to bypass conflict entirely.
Prepare thyself
Set yourself up for the journey ahead by crafting and cooking from a slew of distinct recipes Choose your character, select their stats and build out a party from a series of diverse allies, each with their own skill-set, agenda and personality. Decide between a dozen classes and varied backgrounds, levelling up to 20 while customising your spells and equipment to suit your style.
Venture Forth
Set in an unforgiving world with lovecraftian horrors and choice-based dialogue, your story will take many unexpected twists and turns. Living life as a mercenary, you’ll need to roll the dice to determine whether you fall prey to certain peril or escape grave danger.
Celebrate Yesteryear
Uncover the grand schemes of the Gallian Empire and explore the vast expanse of Freymark and the Outer Isles. In SKALD: Against the Black Priory, you’ll experience this richly illustrated world of authentic pixel art, built from thousands of hand-drawn tiles and images using a palette inspired by the legendary Commodore 64 computer. Optional CRT filter for true retro aficionados also included.
Mod Support
Looking for more SKALD content to play? Players now have access to the SKALD Data Editing Tool (SKaDE) to create their own adventures and play all new ones at no extra cost. This custom-made modding tool is powered by Mod.io and gives you access to all of the assets in SKALD: Against The Black Priory. Where will your imagination take you?
The story, the dialogues, and the choices all carry this little gem of a game. There is also plenty of character customization, crafting and what not.
If you play your CRPGs for the story and the choices, then this game is for you. If you are in it for high definition cinematics and childish party members, then go play BG3.
Skald is one of the few CRPGs that tries and succeeds in maintaining essential elements of table-top RPGs. It's all here:
1. Quick turn-based combat where you can only do one thing a turn (besides moving).
2. Many stat-altering conditions that occur often.
3. Constant (2d6!) skill checks.
4. Encumbrance-based inventory and excellent resource management.
5. Solid character customization.
6. Time-keeping (EVERYTHING is turn-based).
7. A functional stealth system in an isometric RPG.
Skald manages to maintain all of the essentials of tabletop RPGs while modernizing and improving many traditional and modern CRPG issues. For instance, you can move around with WASD, and since everyting is turn-based, this becomes a blessing when stealthing.
What's more, every part of the diffiuclty is completely adjustable, so you can turn off the things you don't like.
I REALLY hope we get more games like this. Strong recommend.
It's an entertaining game that purposely thumbs its nose at good graphics. It has a good story line and balance. You feel challenged and can die, but it isn't overwhelming. Overall, a good game.
Reminenscent of a tactical game from the NES era, SKALD lures you in with DnD like classes and attributes, tempts you with loot and exploration, and soothes you with a decent story all tying it together.
It may be hard to put your finger on where, exactly, you've played this game before, but you never quite shake that feeling throughout the campaign.
SKALD evokes the feeling of seeing an old friend who's gone through a transformation into something new and better.
This game has a steep learning curve, not due to the difficulty or mechanics, but strictly because of the control scheme. I'm 20+ hours in and it still trips me up sometimes. As an example, let's say you start a new game, you choose your difficulty, class, background, and upon reaching the third screen with your stats, you change your mind and want to switch backgrounds. There is no intuitive way to simply go back one screen, instead your option is to restart the process all over again. In your inventory, click once and you select the item, click again and you use it. But the game will keep an item selected, so you click twice to equip an armor, then click on it in your equipped slot to double check its stat, you unequip it. Because even though the game isn't showing the item's stats anymore, it is still "selected" in your equipped slot. Plenty of things like that.
Once you're used to that, there are still a couple issues with the systems here and there. The feature to click on green text for an explanation usually works great, with a couple exceptions. For example, using the "defend" action adds your "defending bonus" to your dodge. What's your defending bonus? The bonus added to your dodge when you defend. That's all the explanation you get. Likewise, the magical aptitude stat is hidden away in the spells tab, unlike all your other stats, as the "spells" tab is really a "everything magical tab".
But otherwise, for most systems if you played older versions of D&D, your intuition will probably be correct. I don't think the game ever mentions that moving cancels all but one of your attacks, but that's how older D&D editions did it, and that's how Skald works. And the systems are very intuitive.
The ambience is top notch, with only a few minor gripes here and there, and all in all the game is extremely enjoyable once you stop fighting the controls.
Even with its kinks the game is very much worth it. Sure the story is good, but the gameplay also stands on its own.
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