SKALD: Against the Black Priory

Worth purchasing at full price. Its pixel art style dark cosmic horror rpg with a well executed atmosphere via visuals and soundtrack. The story treads a middle line between lovecraftian horror/world beyond our own and a hero driven journey replete with a small but well designed cast of characters and locations. It's a small tight game and can be full played through in 20ish hours but also has some replayability (though not a huge deal of it I think).

This is the definition of a niche game. Imitating graphics from the 80s and gameplay from early 90s, with modern quality-of-life improvements! I really enjoyed this one. It gave me 100% the feeling of playing a pen and paper rpg with a great GM, an interesting world to explore and simple mechanics that do not get in the way. I will set aside the graphics and soundtrack first, which I personally enjoyed. But they are definitely not for everyone. They might even be the first thing to drive potential players away. A more modern pixel-based aesthetic would be a better choice to attract a larger player-base, but it is clear that this was not the intention. The game leans towards a very specific demographic and nails it for those players. If you can tolerate the old-school look, you are in for an awesome party-based role playing adventure. You start off by creating your character from a very typical list of classes and its related stats. During your exploration you will meet or hire more members to your party, to a maximum of 6, which you can switch while resting. Since the resting mechanic was mentioned, I should highlight that the game follows a classic feed-your-party-to-fully-rest variant. I generally find this type of mechanics cumbersome and not interesting, but the abundance of food scattered around the world along with the plentiful recipes you can find, steal or buy, never actually constituted a problem. I generally was able to rest whenever I wanted, given that the location permitted it. I should note that almost all mechanics and dice rolls of the game can be tweaked using the difficulty archetypes or even completely be customised to your specific preferences, like food-free resting, always or slightly more successful dice checks or even the option to become invincible. This is amazing a very user friendly, and something that is almost never available. I really appreciated that, even though I did not really use it, except for removing the encumberment mechanic since that would lead me towards fighting my hoarding problem! As quickly mentioned earlier, the biggest plus of the game is the world building. It is very clear it has been created by a seasoned GM. From the descriptions of places and characters, to the dialogues and the map layout. I constantly could not wait to find out what the GM has hidden for me to uncover! The mix of Lovecraftian horror with medieval archetypes and locations was very interesting and really well done. Closing off with some minor drawbacks, I encountered some bugs that were not game-breaking but could be avoided with some more care since the game is so simple mechanically. A more serious issue, were the performance problems which I constantly had to put up with. More specifically, the framerate always dipped when I clicked to location for which path-planning had to run for more that some milliseconds. Also, crowded areas combined with environmental effects, cut the framerate almost in half. Nothing too serious, of course, since the game does not include any action that requires constant framerate. It is just bizarre that such simple concept could be programmatically solved. Finally, a small setback was a bit of the game at about 3/4 of my playthrough, which the game felt like it was dragging on, with boring dungeon crawling and cumbersome fights. So, after about 20-25 hours, I finished this awesome little gem. I can safely say that if the graphics do not immediately repel you, if you are into CRPGs, you will 110% enjoy this. If you are on the fence, give it a try. Even its full price is very fair, and a discount is just a steal. Great, great game, can't wait to play more from the team! An easy 8/10.