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Enjoy a retro-style RPG set in a grim-dark fantasy world of tragic heroes, violent passings, and pulpy, Lovecraftian horror. SKALD: Against the Black Priory - The Prologue is now available to play for free on GOG.COM!

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Ruldra: The atmosphere of Skald is amazing. It truly feels like you're in this terrible world where you or anyone can die an awful death at any moment. Few games nail this oppressive feeling, but Skald get it right.

Looking forward to release date!
I agree. Plus some of the oldschool-esqueness of these titles from our past "dark ages" must have been pretty much levelled or something of sorts. I hope!
New Gameplay Teaser
https://www.skaldrpg.com/2022/12/project-update-have-some-class-december-2022/

"Project Update: Have Some Class (December 2022)

Greetings all! It’s update time!

I try to get one update out per month and this one was slated for November but the weeks are just flying by. You’ll have to forgive me and rest assured the time not spent writing this was well spent elsewhere!

—News—

Rawcember DEMO

We’re doing a major update to the demo around the 20th of December as part of Raw Fury’s Rawcember promotions.

This means a bunch of new demo content including a character creator, a new recruitable NPC, several new map areas and… *drum roll*… a special Rawcember contest:

The Hunt for The Santa Fury

Uncover cryptic clues and mysterious leads as you embark on a quest for the mysterious missing vessel the “Santa Fury”.

If you uncover the secret at the end of the puzzle, you are eligible to enter into the Skald Rawcember lottery and compete for three Steam gift cards!

We’ll be dropping another devlog update when the demo goes live and you’ll find all the details in there!

—Development—

In preparation for the upcoming Rawcember demo I’ve been doing a lot of work on the character creator. It was noticeably absent in the latest demo builds but it’s coming home for Christmas.

Even though only a few of the character options (classes and backgrounds) are playable at the moment, we’ll be showing them off in the demo to at least give you an impression of what we’re aiming for in the final game!

Classes in Skald are each tied to one of five archetypes which, in turn, are tied to on of the five primary attributes. Behind the curtain, each archetype conforms somewhat to the classic tank / DPS / support trinity.

Archetype-----Attribute------Associated Class------------------------------Role
Warrior--------Strength------Officer, Veteran, Armsmaster---------------A resilient combat workhorse and tank.
Rogue---------Agility----------Thief, Duelist, Assassin---------------------Uses the backstab ability to deal large amounts of damage. Also brings important adventuring skills to the party (traps and locks).
Magos---------Intellect-------Battle Magos, Inquisitor, Guild Magos---Ranged damage dealers and crowd controllers.
Wanderer-----Fortitude-----Skald, Ranger, Augur-------------------------Varied support class that bring a variation of support spellcasting and important adventuring skills to the party.
Cleric----------Presence----Champion, Hierophant, Hospitaller------Healers and buffers.

Note that the archetype role is a rough guideline. The different classes may vary greatly in how they actually play. I’ll say more about the individual classes as we go so stay posted for this in the upcoming devlogs.

Backgrounds are much lighter than classes and help flesh out the character in the context of the world. They will add bonuses to skills and may affect starting condition (such as starting gold and equipment). I also intend to use these to provide world interactivity as certain NPCs may react to your background in dialogue etc.

As for attributes you’ll of course be able to edit these as well in the character creator. I’m doing my best to keep the rules as transparent as possible and visualizing the interrelationship between the attributes helps a bit. Note how updating a primary attribute causes the rest of the sheet to update etc.

Some players might be a bit off-put by the wall of numbers but we’ll try to add options for them as well (maybe an “auto complete” function?).

In general however, I think RPG fans enjoy a bit of rules crunch and I intend to deliver that.

Finally, here is a peek at the character editor. Nothing revolutionary here but I am proud of how modular the character models are. You can pretty much edit any aspect of them and this carries over to any outfit you might equip etc. It’s a small thing, but I think customization is a pretty big deal to a lot of players.

—In Closing—

Be sure to check out the updated demo as it drops December 20th! I’m excited to see if any of you manage to learn the fate of the Santa Fury!"
Post edited December 20, 2022 by Swedrami
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GOG.com: Enjoy a retro-style RPG set in a grim-dark fantasy world of tragic heroes, violent passings, and pulpy, Lovecraftian horror. SKALD: Against the Black Priory - The Prologue is now available to play for free on GOG.COM!
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Swedrami: Be sure to check out the updated demo as it drops December 20th!
Hi Swedrami, the link in the pinned message of this thread is broken. It just goes to the list of all games, it doesn't even go to your wishlist-it-on-GOG page.
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Swedrami: Be sure to check out the updated demo as it drops December 20th! I’m excited to see if any of you manage to learn the fate of the Santa Fury!"
Well it appears the new demo did drop, though the file name still contains the word prologue.

The prologue/demo has been renamed in our library from Prologue to Demo, but the link to the demo/prologue page is now missing. And only the full game comes up in a search.

P.S. It also no longer appears on the free list, at least for me.
Post edited December 21, 2022 by Timboli
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Swedrami: Be sure to check out the updated demo as it drops December 20th! I’m excited to see if any of you manage to learn the fate of the Santa Fury!"
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Timboli: Well it appears the new demo did drop, though the file name still contains the word prologue.

The prologue/demo has been renamed in our library from Prologue to Demo, but the link to the demo/prologue page is now missing. And only the full game comes up in a search.

P.S. It also no longer appears on the free list, at least for me.
Yep, the demo seems to be not available to claim currently, probably just by accident?
Kind of beats the purpose of a new updated demo build to take it offline with no chance for people that hadn't claimed it previously to have a go at it.
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Swedrami: Yep, the demo seems to be not available to claim currently, probably just by accident?
The only working link to the demo seems to be the one available on Steam.
Attachments:
It's on GoG too, just needs to be "switched back on":
https://www.gogdb.org/product/1830130181
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Swedrami: It's on GoG too, just needs to be "switched back on":
https://www.gogdb.org/product/1830130181
I mean, it's only semantics (or rather a technicality), of course, but...for as long as it is not "switched back on", it's not on GOG. ;)
Demo's available again:
https://www.gog.com/game/skald_against_the_black_priory_the_prologue
Release Window Announcement Trailer

"The launch of SKALD: Against the Black Priory is now officially set for Spring 2024!"
Just tried the demo. Played through character creation (which, IMO, took longer than it should have).

Some crit8icisms:
* I first tried it on my small laptop. (Has specs similar to a Chromebook, except that I'm running desktop Linux (debian) on it.) It was not playable; frame time was about a second, and I couldn't switch tabs in the settings. This laptop does meet the stated system requirements. (For a game like this to be playabke, I'd need a framerate at least comparable to that of old Sierra adventure games on period hardware, and for the game to respond to input without noticeable lag.)
* In the settings, you can create a custom difficulty level. This option is not available when starting a new game, for whatever reason.
* Feat selection: Feats have multiple ranks. What the game doesn't tell you, however, is that you need to buy all ranks of a feat for it to have any effect. What should have been done, instead, is to make the feat cost more feat points in the first place, and allow progressing past that screen without spending them all; this would be easier for the player to understand.
* At the end, you have to name your character (minimum 3 letters, which is more strict than what I see in other games). There is no auto-name feature, which makes this annoying for players who can't, or simply don't want to, think of a good name for their character, and just want to get into the actual game.