Last week, the well known epitome of charisma Tycho Brahe of the ever amazing Penny Arcade (did I also say that he is a dazzling stallion of brilliance and I totally love the guy and dream of the possibility of harboring his babies) announced on the blog section of the penny arcade website, the addition of the second title to grace the promising house of lush greenery. Previously used as the distribution medium for their recent foray into the dark abyss of video game making, the guys at Penny Arcade have decided to expand it at a bit with the introduction of 'Eschalon Book 1'. I should point out that the game certainly isn't exclusive to the Greenhouse service and can also be downloaded through other means such as the games official website. Made by the guys at independent games studio consisting of just one full time employee - Basilisk Games aims to bring about the revival of the old school computer RPG formula. Eschalon Book 1 will be their starting point and they hope to expand the series with Book 2 which will appear sometime next year if their official site is to be believed. They're name certainly befits their mantra - a basilisk being a creature that many hardcore roleplayers swear their undying love/hate for - but can they deliver on the game?

Now I'm definitely not the best consultant for western computer RPG's. Probably due to the lack of characters with eyes the size of saucers and breasts the size of small airships regardless of gender. Therefore I went into the free demo of the game with an extremely vague idea of what to expect. Upon starting a new adventure you are asked to create your character - no surprises there. They basically have the standard choice of races with obvious stat boosts for each, you are then asked to pick a name, choose a picture to represent your character, pick some abilities for your character and most interesting of all - roll a dice to decide your statistics. Very retro. Very Trendy. You start off in a hut in the middle of nowhere and a stream of text in the form of a letter describes your characters situation. You just woke up and you don't remember a thing. Golly, I didn't see that one coming! However the triteness can be excused because the introductory letter is adressed to whatever name you select - simple maybe, but it definitely makes you feel important.



The entire game as a whole runs on a turn system. Nothing will happen in the world until you make a move. Moves are counted as basically anything you do like walking somewhere or attacking something. The visual style of the game is the isometric world that so many games in this space love to employ. The lore of the game world is the medieval fantasy that the dice juggling roleplayers of days long past revelled in. There were certainly a lot of games like this back in the day but it's something that is severely lacking in the current day and age. If you are one of those faithfuls that clutch their dice ever so close to their chest reminescing of the 'good old days' then I definitely recommend downloading the demo for this game to see if it works for you. Credit should be given when credit is due and these guys should be applauded for replicating that nostalgic dungeons and dragons feel that is painfully absent these days.