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Just finished Skald: Against The Black Priory and loved it. Some thoughts:

The writing in this game reminded me an awful lot of what you'd find at a good tabletop RPG campaign. The writing of a good DM with a homebrew campaign setting. The scene descriptions & lore / world background info in particular brought that to mind. Also the writing seemed brief - short sentences, well-paced, easy to read out loud. (Been wondering if that was intentional, like the writers were reading their prose aloud while working).

The graphics, music, and sound of Skald were all highly stylized throwbacks to older PC RPGs. FM synth chip music, C64 / DOS / Ultima style graphics (but tuned way up with modern technology), high-fidelity (by '90s standards) sound effects. It's closer to an idealized memory of the past than to the actual past if that makes sense.

Visually it was... earthy. A lot of green and brown and cold grey stone. (If I have one complaint it's that the earlier areas could've used more variation in the world graphics, in the tileset used). The Quake player in me was pleased with the amount of brown.

Gameplay was satisfyingly crunchy in that CRPG way. Combat took a few hours to get used to and then was a joy to pilot after that. Outside of combat crafting (cooking, potion-making) & dice-roll skill-checks were both present and welcome mechanics. The whole thing felt cohesive, interlocking. The parts made sense together.

Skald is a "Lovecraftian" story complete with the requisite sea creatures, madness, horrors from beyond, deep ones, et cetera. It delivered on my expectations there (up to and including how such stories end). The descriptive prose and pixel graphics did a lot to sell the horror of it. Lovecraft melded with fantasy RPG (and by the end it made me think of Gene Wolfe's Book Of The New Sun though I'll admit that's a stretch).

Skald turned out to be a way better game than I expected. I hope its developer (High North Studios) is working on something new & I look forward to playing Skald again some day.

#streaming Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) again today at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. This session: chapter 4, Adler's Helm & Gradla, possibly the end of the game.

#streaming Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) today at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Going into chapter 4 this session; might be near the end of the game.

putting together a mod list for Morrowind right now. It's a bit different than the last time I did this (back in 2016). Still complicated but in new ways.

#streaming Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) again today at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. I'm in chapter 3 now, about to go into the catacombs under the temple in Horryn.

Edited to add: there was a power outage mid-broadcast so unfortunately the stream is in two pieces (hence two links below).

#streaming more Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) today at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Chapter 2, exploring the city of Horryn.

#streaming Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) tonight over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. This session: exploring the island, doing chapter 1 quests.

Ah dang. I had a stream announcement message all typed up and forgot to click "toot" earlier.

Anyway I played some more Skald tonight, that game is turning out to be really fun. It has a surprisingly good RPG system at its core and the writing thus far has been great. Like a tabletop game told thru DOS-ish graphics.

Edited to add: if you want to watch the VOD it's linked below.

I'm starting a game of Skald: Against The Black Priory (PC, 2024) tonight over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen.

This appears to be an "Ultima-like" computer RPG, DOS-era pixel art and all. Excited to play this one (and worried about how challenging it may be).

Thoughts on Dredge after finishing it: was a really good fishing game! Less complicated (and hectic) than a lot of what I normally play. Made for a good breather between more demanding stuff.

Loved the art direction, music, sound design. The environmental sound was especially nice - sea waves, rain, wind, marine life in the distance.

The story was mostly told through short conversations and messages in bottles (IIRC). It was slow-paced, indirect, sometimes without a clear picture of how things connected. The end did bring it all together, though, and was satisfyingly Lovecraftian.

I had a fun time with it. I'd recommend it to anyone who enjoys finding increasingly weird fish.

#streaming (and maybe finishing) Dredge (PC, 2023) tonight over at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Working on The Iron Rig DLC and then back to the main story in the Devil's Spine region.

#streaming some Quake tonight at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Gonna play through Shadesmaster's mod Sacrilege (which I did about half of earlier this year but never finished).

And I'm just now realizing that I'm slowly recreating my computing environment from the late '00s (when I last had a regular job). Mate desktop, Firefox, Thunderbird. If I install Netbeans it's all over.

Installed and hooked up Thunderbird again today (for mail/calendar/tasks etc). It's nice that the calendar is now included in the main program and isn't an extension (last time I used Thunderbird the calendar was called "Lightning").

I'm back to #streaming Dredge (PC, 2023) today at https://twitch.tv/andreaen. Maybe doing the "Iron Rig" DLC today and continuing the main story in the Twisted Strand area.