King of Dragon Pass

King of Dragon Pass is an experience unlike most I've encountered. It has a tremendous amount of narrative content and you never know exactly what your choices will lead to. This is however also one of its issues, as it can feel disorenting and like you're just running in circles. It also suffers from pure clarity issues that more modern UI/UX would easily fix. But the enjoyment I get out of its varied events, and how quirky a lot of them are, more than outweigh its flaws. It is also refreshing to play a game where you really need to get into the spirit of its world and where its lore is legitimately relevant to both your enjoyment and to succeeding in various things. I heartily recommend it to anyone with an interest in dynamic narratives in games. Or even just anyone who likes quirky stories.

What a game. I haven't felt this engrossed in a game in a long time. The best thing about this game is that it's like reading a story; there is no time wasted traversing, grinding for experience, or finding collectibles, and instead every moment is meaningful. People say that Fallout: New Vegas is a prime example of a choices matter RPG done right, but this game (and other old-school ones like it, no doubt) have choices that matter far more often. I have just played this game for 10 hours, and I've found it to have a steep learning curve. During this time I've been able to engage heavily with the religion/magic, raiding, and now trade/diplomacy systems, and I'm only just starting to realize how much the composition of your leadership team affects how you fare in your endeavors. This management aspect is intriguing in the variety of systems it lets you engage with and becomes challenging. In fact, this experience is fun and frustrating at the same time. But this isn't just a management game where you balance different systems, it has fully fleshed out lore and presents you with a story with narrative choices that makes it super engrossing while affecting the management part of the game as well. You'll also have to pay close attention to the lore in order to advance your clan, and that might get frustrating if you don't have a good attention span for that. A minor annoyance in the game is there are times where you have to send one of your clan members on a task but the clan members' names aren't written next to their portraits, so you'll have trouble if knowing which is the right person you should send. With the wealth of choices this game presents you with, I can easily see this game having lots of replay value, provided that the story choices don't converge to a single possibility. 1 star is deducted for frustrations about the seeming opacity of the economy early on in a first play-through.

This is interesting game who likes text event, storytelling, lore, pretty illustrations. I reduce 1 start because : some mechanics are not obvious and you have to read manual or guides, for certain events or quests it is very hard to "guess" right answer and picking the wrong one can dramatically affect your playthrough. For Mac users: unfortunately Gog version for Mac is 32-bit only, so on newer Macs it will not launch directly. I managed to launch it via Wine - but there was no sound and game hangs after 5 mins. But the solution was found! I have managed to launch it through VMWare Fusion software which spins up windows on the Mac, check instruction on youtube how to setup this soft, for personal use it is free. Hope this helps someone.

Unusual fun game that is a sort of hybrid strategy and interactive fiction game - set in fictional world but daily life and challenges are modeled on early iron age Scandinavian tribal life. The art is all hand drawn paintings in its own style. This is a game where your strategic decisions for the tribe change the outcome of the game. You need to not mind reading (like in Planescape) and to enjoy a thoughtful, strategic decision kind of story. Involves people, neighbors and alliances, trade, raids, war, resources, luck, etc. This is not a D&D tale; it's unique. People find it very immersive. There is a choice of easy or harder mode. I recommend reading the gog support page http://www.gog.com/forum/king_of_dragon_pass/some_general_questions_about_what_kind_of_game_this_is where the game is described (besides these gog reviews), and also there is a very descriptively apt review in RockPaperShotgun - "Remembering King of Dragon Pass", Oct 2014, at http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/17/king-of-dragon-pass-retro/ When you play it on a windows pc, check the installed shortcut's properties to make sure your <username> has admin rights under the security tab, and that "play in 640x480" is checked, and the other boxes below it... this should allow it to play fullscreen without problems. To save, iuse Alt+S, and to quit, use Alt+Q.

Set in the unique world of Glorantha (a very different world to your usual fantasy fare), this game has you at the helm of a clan of Orlanthi a proud and hardy folk (if backwards and feuding). You guide them through a vast range of events both mundane and fantastical with your decisions deciding the ultimate success of your clan (from unifying all of Dragon Pass and being crowned King to starvation and enslavement). Graphics are a beautiful hand drawn affair in a very nice. On the music front, if you enjoy bagpipes and Celtic tunes then you'll be in heaven! Overall a very novel and quite brilliant game that everyone should give a try. The game could take a while to get the hang off so I'd recommend reading the manual and online guides if your wondering what the heck the difference is if rye or wheat is sown or why you never seem to succeed that hero quest.