Morning's Wrath Now Available From Rampant Games
This one has been out for a while - but if you've never played Morning's Wrath, now's your chance! We've now (finally!) added it to the Rampant Games store.

Morning's Wrath is a great indie RPG that combines the best of Diablo's action-RPG style with an actual compelling storyline (woah!) and some great adventure-game style puzzles.

In Morning's Wrath, you get to play ... the princess, Morning. Yes, the beautiful, sweet, innocent princess of a shining kingdom with wonderful parents and a handsome prince as a suitor. Get over it, guys.

As usually happens in these kinds of stories, our heroine's perfect life is about to get utterly and completely shattered. Sorry if I'm entering spoiler territory here, but come on! You knew it was gonna happen, right? What I really love about Morning's Wrath is how well the storytelling takes things go from almost idyllic to desperate within the first fifteen minutes. They did a good job, here.

So Morning dons her ancestor's armor and sword, and starts hacking and slashing with the best of 'em on a desperate quest to save her kingdom. One can only assume that in her princess lessons for being a good hostess and snappy dresser, they slipped in some combat training. Her quest takes her to the ghosts of her ancestral family (both good and evil), an ancient pool of magic that must be restored from the taint of corruption, and a dozen different maps.

Morning's Wrath uses an isometric view. You don't see so many of those these day. As you walk behind walls, they become translucent. It's a presentation style that seems to be making a comeback with indie RPGs (see Eschalon: Book 1), as there's still plenty of life and possibility left in it. (I actually think that in a lot of ways, true 3D is actually easier to do than isometric viws these days, which might account for some of it's scarcity).

The spell system in Morning's Wrath uses a series of runes which can be combined in different combinations to create spells. There are 24 different runes in all which you can find over the course of your adventuring which you can use for spell construction.

The game isn't perfect, of course. But what game is? The controls need a bit more feedback so they don't feel as unresponsive sometimes (very bad in a game with action-based combat), and the animations could use at least twice as many frames. I could nitpick all day. But that's quibbling. I found Morning's Wrath to have polish in spades, and an outstanding storytelling quality. And the soundtrack is amazing. I think it's a fantastic example of the potential indie game makers can fulfill.

And it is also dirt-cheap at $9.95, which is very easy on the gaming budget - a welcome surprise these days. But hey, give it a try for free, first. It is well worth the download!

Download Morning's Wrath here!

Labels: Game Announcements, Roleplaying Games

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