bsd.network/@cev/114905853590963295

114905853590963295
Tags:
2020s,
collection,
fantasy,
horror,
review,
video games.
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.