Indie RPG News Roundup, January 16th
Indie Computer Role-Playing Games (CRPGs) - great taste, fewer calories!

Things were a little quiet over the holidays - unsurprisingly - on the indie RPG front. But with the new year we're starting to get some exciting news, and hopefully some new releases in the not-too-distant future. Not that I'm done playing last year's flood of indie RPGs. But here are some tidbits from the usual (and some unusual) suspects:

Depths of Peril
As previously mentioned, Depths of Peril was the winner of GameTunnel's Indie RPG of the Year award, as well as earning a second-place victory in GameTunnel's Top 10 Indie Games of the Year.

Soldak continues to work furiously to make a great game even better, and has two new patches available for this innovative action-RPG. The latest official patch is 1.006, and a beta patch 1.007 is now available as well. The list of fixes is surprisingly extensive, as I never noticed many of these issues with the original release. You can download both the official and the beta patch at Soldak's Patch Page.

2D Indie MMORPGs Ahoy!
Jerrath Online is a free indie MMORPG has apparently been kicking around for a couple of years, but it was news to me. It's a 2D game using the XTremeWorlds gaming engine, and includes quests and PVP action (if that floats your boat).

Kingdom of Auspiex is another 2D MMO currently in "late alpha" stages, and in its current incarnation boasts over 300 NPCs and fifteen quests.

Source: rpgdx.net forums

Eschalon News
Eschalon: Book 1 has done an impressive job of making waves and getting itself noticed even amongst the more mainstream RPG community. Kudos to Basilisk Games for making both a great RPG and seriously shaking things up. Apparently, things have gone well enough that they are not only beginning design for the second game of the series, but they are tossing around ideas for another game series as well, in the style of Eye of the Beholder and Wizardry 8. Maybe after Book 3? The current thought is that Eschalon: Book 2 will remain a single-character game, allow female avatars this time around, and use a modified version of the Book 1 engine.

Basilisk is also holding fast to its design philosophy, stating, "We are staying old-school. Book II is going to be even more stat-heavy than the first game... We are not going to change our design philosophy or style; there are too many game companies who have tried to give everything to everyone and they destroyed their game(s) in the process."

RPGWatch has the complete scoop.

Scars of War
Gareth has a post up on the 3D character customization available in Scars of War. It's a lot of programmer shop-talk with other programmers, but the end results are pretty exciting. The player (and modders) should have a lot of fun opportunities tweaking their character's looks. Maybe it won't be as extensive as what you find in Oblivion or some other games, but it's still pretty impressive. As you can see in the screenshot, you can give Geraldo Rivera facial scars, without even throwing a chair at him!

Check out the complete article post (with many more screenshots) :
SoW - Character Customization

Deathspank
Ron Gilbert is interviewed at Rock, Paper, Shotgun. There's not too much about this upcoming (and "sounds indie to me!") RPG / Adventure, but a lot about his journey getting there.

Frayed Knights
Hey, if nobody will give me any news, I'll make my own! More details will be forthcoming on Friday, but after all the grousing on Monday about the difficulty of creating / buying enough 3D content for an RPG, the alpha version of the Pus Golem was delivered, as well as the final (read: Release Candidate) version of the Temple of Pokmor Xang. Expect awe-inspiring (or at least "ewwww!"-inducing) screen shots. But in case you missed them, here are discussions on the village of Ardin, and how a bug in the code made locks explode harmlessly when discovered.

Indie RPG Developers Speak! Or At Least Type.
Also, as a reminder, Amanda Fitch and Yours Truly will be panelists on Friday, January 25th, in the XFire Debate Club discussion at 2PM. The topic is "The State of Independent Games." Amanda is the principle designer / developer of Aveyond, Aveyond 2, and Grimm's Hatchery. You will need to download and use XFire to participate in the live discussion, but transcripts will be made available afterwards.


Aaaaand... that all for now. Got News? Please send it to me and I'll be happy to post it. Unless it makes me unhappy. But I might post it even then, because misery loves company and stuff.


(Vaguely) related news you might have missed:
* Indie RPG News Roundup, December 26th
* Indie RPG News Roundup, December 12th
* Indie RPG News Roundup, December 5th

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Labels: Indie RPG News

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