I make use of Windows 8.1 and am a big fan of King of Dragons Pass - so when after a long wait Six Ages released on PC I picked it up right away. Sadly, I can't really comment on the game play, although I've heard that its a good successor as I can't launch the game at all due to the Windows 10 check.
Renowned Explorers: International Society is a great game that is relatively unknown. It is a game that is more than the sum of its parts with a lot of interactive and moving parts that do great to add to the game and it has surprising depth. A great theme and presentation is at the start, and both strongly complement the game. Writing for the CYOA parts of the game is very good and it involves a lot of choices and risk/reward - I strongly suggest playing the game in Explorer and not the one that lets you retry and at classic difficulty for the real experience there. Part of the fun is failing as there are sometimes odd and unexpected things that can happen from that or succeeding. Additionally, while there may appear to not be a ton of variety there at first, you'll realize that with the various attitudes, different explorers, and all the new perks there is a HUGE amount of hidden depth here that can be found. After over 80 hours I'm STILL finding new things in the game beyond what they've added in. The risk/reward balancing of exploring and choosing where to go and what chances to take is one of the strongest elements of the game, and it works with all the stuff I mentioned above perfectly in general and it makes the choice of what perks to train your explorers in meaningful. It also ties into combat and what expeditions to do. The perks here are more things like Archaelogy, Engineering, Tactics, Nature, Diplomacy, Beguiling, Rogue, Survival and so forth. A lot of them and they each have a bunch of subcategories that sometimes trigger things. The combat is a bit odd but think of it as more abstract and non-lethal - either representing slicing wit (devious), kind hearted negotiating and talking down (Friendly), or fisticuffs and saps (Aggressive). A ton of variety, a lot to do and more than I can say in 2000 characters, you really should check this game out if you're interested the least in rogue-lites, exploring, tactics, RPGs, or CYOA!
