Initial Scouting Report: Eschalon Book 1
I spent about an hour or so playing Eschalon: Book 1 last night. It is way too early for me to render any kind of judgment on the game, but I will say so far, it's looking pretty good.

With indie games, I tend to ignore the fact that the graphics may be somewhat less than state-of-the-art. And Eschalon: Book 1's graphics would definitely have been much more at home in a mainstream RPG about a decade ago. That being said, they seem to be nicely polished, filled with neat special effects, and nicely animated. A step up from the "Spiderweb" standard.

The turn-based gameplay is handled very nicely. Each move takes up a turn, but the smooth animation and movement controls disguises the turn-based nature rather nicely until you find yourself in combat. Once combat starts, its a straightforward I-go / You-go affair. Unfortunately, this early into the game, I haven't found much to do by way of tactics beyond trying to maneuver yourself to get the first hit in, or choosing when to use potions. But that's hardly a surprise - most RPGs start you out with few combat choices in the beginning, and ramp up as you go.

There is no autosave as you move between zones that I have noticed, so you need to be pretty careful about maintaining your own saved games. I don't know if I relish this particular aspect of old-school gaming, but it's simply one of those things you need to remember... the game won't automatically bail you out when things go wrong.

The storyline involves the overused "amnesia" device, though it does reveal a nice twist early on that makes it more interesting.

Character creation involves dice-rolling! Talk about old-school! The game rolls values between 7 and 14 for all of your stats, but then it also gives you 15 points to spend on increasing these beyond their starting value. I chose to play a rogue, which should come as little surprise to regular readers here. The rogue skill list is fairly extensive, though the only real "rogue-like" activities I engaged in were moving silently, hiding in shadows (both taking place automatically), and lock-picking. Lock-picking uses the painfully old-school limitation of sometimes destroying your lockpicks when you fail.

While some people who fear numbers may not be so impressed, one thing I really like is that the game shows you the chance of success for all your actions. So before you even risk your lock-picks, you will know you have only a 29% chance of success. Oh, and you do get experience points for non-combat actions, such as picking locks.

Downsides - well, a lot is being said about it's 800 x 600 resolution. That seems to be a real issue, though the game handles quite well in windowed mode. Though it's pretty tiny in a window on my 19" monitor at the resolution I run my desktop. There are some help screens for various menus in the game, but really nothing by way of a tutorial other than initial instructions and an in-game letter you receive from a mysterious benefactor to get you pointed in the right direction. And there are times where your character (or enemies) may be hidden behind a wall and hard to see.

Yeah, not exactly scathing criticism, but the game has put its best foot forward I guess. Again, it's far too early for me to tell, but so far nothing is making me regret my purchase.

But find out for yourself and download the game here (but be warned, it is pretty big...) Oh, and another warning - SLIMES CAN SPIT!!!!

Eschalon: Book 1 Demo


(Vaguely) related old-school pontificationingliness:
* Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions
* RPG Preview - Eschalon: Book 1
* Indie RPG Roundtable

Played It Yet? What Did You Think? Let Us Know In The Forums!

Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games

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