SKALD: Against the Black Priory Preview
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Introduction
I'm sure at some point we've all imagined that ideal RPG we would totally make, provided we had a little more spare time, a bit more money, and the skill set required to actually make things happen. For me, that top-down or isometric game would have to be party and turn-based and feature deep systems, plenty of areas to explore, secrets to uncover, and quests to undertake.
Imagine my surprise when Scape-IT's upcoming RPG SKALD: Against the Black Priory was revealed, and it was as close to that dream game of mine as you could possibly get. And it was being developed more or less by just one guy.
As such, it's in no way surprising that I followed the project's development with great interest and played its many early builds. And now that the game is about to launch into early access, I figured I should check out its free Prologue and see how it's shaping up and whether or not it can live up to the game I've constructed inside my head.
Putting Love, and Craft, in Lovecraft
First of all, I have to mention that in its current state, SKALD is already a game much greater than originally advertised. You see, it started its journey as just another retro RPG styled after the Ultimas of old. In fact, at some point, it was intended to be just a means of highlighting the toolset used to create it.
That is no longer the case. Right now, SKALD is looking to be a fully-featured RPG that just happens to use the retro aesthetic. Essentially, it's a game from the '90s made to look like a game from the '80s.
As such, you can expect a deep and engaging adventure where you have a grand quest, plenty of side activities, and a merry band of recruitable companions who occasionally interject during conversations. Oh yes, you can also expect to see actual branching dialogues and not some unfathomable keyword-driven monstrosity.
You'll have an overworld map with random encounters, and also expansive locations to explore, dungeons to delve into, and NPC hubs to pilfer for quests and supplies.
On top of it all, you'll get the very much appreciated and easy to parse character and inventory screens, a proper quest log, and even a screen that tracks your faction relations. But it's all stylized to look downright ancient.
And the best part here is that you can navigate all of this with your mouse, like a civilized person and not some savage smashing his keyboard with both hands and insisting that this is the correct way of doing things. Alternatively, you can also go the savage route, since early on, it was the intended way of playing the game.
And this highlights SKALD's evolution from an idea, to a crowdfunded project, and now to a mostly finished product. During its development, pretty much all of the game's systems were adjusted to become more player-friendly, but also more complex.
For example, early on, the game's combat resembled the original Wasteland or The Bard's Tale, where you gave orders to your team and then just waited for things to resolve. Only instead of a purely text-based experience, SKALD offered a visual representation for these battles.
But after a few pivots, the game's combat now is a proper turn-based affair, where you can move your characters across the battlefield, use various combat feats, and cast spells in a fashion similar to the Gold Box games, only with a more reasonable encounter rate and enemy numbers.
Plus, instead of teleporting you to some featureless arena every time you run into some foes, the combat now takes place directly on the game's map, which adds some variety and opens up plenty of new tactical opportunities.
And while a lot of the game is now driven by our modern sensibilities, at its core, it still manages to maintain its old-school charm. There's just something magical about seeing the combat log say, "Bob (22 HP) faces: Rabid Rat (6 HP). Bob is armed with Dagger. Target is out of range! Move forward or equip a ranged weapon!"
Beyond just that, as neat as the game's soundtrack and pixelated visuals are, its world would've felt a bit too barren and lifeless if not for all the descriptions you get while exploring. Step on a tile and you get a few words about some sickly flowers you're passing by or a damp cave you've stumbled into. It's in no way intrusive but it's ever-present and it just makes the world feel that much more alive.
And when you pair that with the game's item descriptions that go a few steps beyond merely functional and tell you just what kind of sword you're looking at, or what the armor you're about to buy is made of, you get that special sense of immersion completely absent from most modern games.
And it's that much more impressive when you remember that it was mostly just one guy doing all the work here. A lot of love and effort clearly went into this project, and it shows.
What Would You Say You Do Here?
So, having gone over what the game is trying to be, let's take a look at how it actually plays in its current, pre-EA state.
The currently available Prologue offers a few hours of gameplay, a tutorial section, and a handful of early areas to explore.
The main quest tasks you with fetching your childhood friend of noble birth from a remote island where she intends to find some answers regarding her burgeoning magical abilities. Upon chartering a ship and hiring a crew of mercenaries, you set sail for the isle of Idra, but right as you're about to reach it, a Kraken-type creature sinks your boat and kills most of your crew in the process.
Once you get your bearings, you discover that the island isn't doing too hot either. Its wildlife has turned vicious and feral, ancient glyphs and songs long-thought of as superstition are suddenly acting very ominous, oh, and the island's main settlement recently got pillaged by a bunch of insane fishermen who keep babbling about various entities as mysterious as they are nefarious.
With no clear way of getting back, you do your best to survive alongside a few of the island's still relatively sane residents, while desperately trying to find some leads for your main quest.
This is pretty much the extent of the Prologue's content, but already, SKALD's story elements are shaping up nicely. The game does a great job of combining a gritty fantasy setting with some very much Lovecraftian elements. It also deftly introduces its worldbuilding without excessive exposition and has a few tricks up its sleeve to make the world feel more real.
Having played through the Prologue, and the earlier demos that featured a different section of the game, I can't wait to find out where it all goes.
If there's one thing to complain about when it comes to the game's story and writing, though, it's some of the dialogue options you're presented with. Basically, at times it can feel like you're playing as a Game of Thrones character who somehow managed to stumble into The Lord of the Rings. When the rest of the game goes for a certain, almost dreamy, atmosphere, your random bouts of swearing really stick out.
Story aside, the game is structured in a way that should be familiar to any RPG enthusiast - you have an overworld map peppered with various settlements, dungeons, and other points of interest. You explore those to move the story along or to find some cool loot. And while the overworld map will be throwing some random encounters at you every once in a while, the actual locations will offer you plenty of hand-placed encounters.
All of this is fueled by a custom roleplaying system with its roots firmly planted in D&D, but with plenty of unique spins to it.
At the moment, you have four classes to choose from, representing the traditional Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard archetypes, but even these aren't quite finished yet. While the more unique classes - the Skald and the Captain - are yet to be introduced.
Each of the classes has access to a total of five attributes and a number of skills then derived from those. Wizards and Clerics also have access to some spells. Since the Prologue is pretty limited in scope, I can't be certain, but to the best of my understanding, the game's spellcasting system resembles that of Dungeons & Dragons Online most, where you have spell slots, but also a "mana" resource you use to cast them between rests.
A little bit of "mana" (and health) is restored after each battle, representing a short rest, but to get it all back, you need a proper long rest, though at present it's impossible to tell just how limited your rations and resting opportunities are going to be.
Upon leveling up, each character gets some points that can be used to buy a new feat. And while everyone gets the same options, depending on your character's class, some feats will cost more points and others less.
The skill system exists in a fairly limited state at the moment, but already it neatly leverages the game's digital nature not constrained by any physical dice. In SKALD, your skill level is used as the ceiling for a roll against some target number. Let's say you want to pick a lock with the difficulty of 10. Your lockpicking skill is 15. This gives you some room to hit the target number. But if your lockpicking is at 9, you're out of luck.
Things get more interesting when you have an opposing roll, like when you're trying to influence some NPC. There, your diplomacy skill is rolled against the NPCs, so theoretically, if you have diplomacy of 11 and the NPC has 15, you can still get lucky. However, right now, skill usage is fairly inconsistent, because, at one point, the game allowed me to try my luck against an NPC in this fashion, but during a different conversation it straight up didn't even let me roll with the same skill discrepancy.
I'm sure this is the kind of thing that will get ironed out during the upcoming early access phase, though. Already, the game can boast some neat features you wouldn't necessarily expect from a pre-EA project, like a working day-night cycle and the very impressive light and shadow system stemming from it.
Overall though, while clearly unfinished, the game is already really fun to play. It has that tough to pin down sense of adventure in spades, and I can't wait for it to get more content and a few extra layers of polish.
Technical Information
For an early build, the Prologue is already very stable. I haven't encountered any major bugs or crashes, and the worst thing about it is the occasional typo.
You can already save and load the game at will, and you get an autosave slot too, but currently, save slots are a bit broken and refuse to get overwritten.
The game also manages to avoid the plight of many a retro project that look like they were made back in the day, but run like a poorly optimized modern mess. In fact, I was quite surprised to see SKALD not only run really well but also be very modest with its resource usage.
One very annoying thing right now is the fact you can't change the game's resolution. You can choose to play in full screen or in a tiny window, and that's all. Other than that, the game looks great and pushes its pixelated visuals to the max. It even has an optional CRT mode that makes it look even more like an artifact of a lost age.
The game's UI still needs a lot of work, however. Right now, it's a bit too minimalistic for my taste, with lots of wasted space, things that look like buttons but aren't, buttons that do something, but I've no idea what, and one contextual button that's very inconsistent.
One last thing I want to mention here is a small pet peeve of mine. At times the game prompts you to press the Return key. Now here, I could feign indignation at the fact there's no such thing as a Return key, but having been stumped by this conundrum in the past, I now know that for some reason, there are those who refer to the Enter key as Return. Which is madness.
And I would've probably just grumbled to myself about this unfortunate naming convention and moved on if the game didn't also refer to the same button as Enter occasionally. And since only one of these prompts can stay, this is me making my voice heard - away with Return and all praise (press) Enter.
Conclusion
So, even though SKALD: Against the Black Priory still has a while to go before it's finished, now is a good time to ask yourself - should I be interested in this game? If you're looking for a nice RPG that can teach a lot of bigger projects a thing or two about presentation, writing, and system design, the answer is a firm yes.
But should you buy it during the early access phase? Ordinarily, the answer to this question is, "only if you want to support the developers."
However, Al, the guy behind this project, has shown time and again that he's very much open to feedback. Already, the game looks little like the humble retro throwback project it originally was. And a lot of these changes can be attributed to Al's cooperation with his backers. And if you'd like to join this merry bunch, you'll be able to do just that when the early access build goes live.
