In no uncertain terms, the original Lowlander was a massive success in providing a specific kind of tribute to the CRPGs of old it set out to emulate whilst simultaneously refining their control for a new age. Now, Flat Black Films brings us a sequel in Lowlander II: Lowerlander.
Lowlander is the first game to come out of Flat Black Games, a promising one-man indie developer with a love for old-school CRPGs. What do we mean by old-school? Well whereas most developers tend to use Ultima IV as a yard-stick for the start of their roleplaying experiences, Lowlander pays tribute to the significantly earlier Ultima II, the central part of the original Ultima Trilogy.
When it comes to RogueLikes it’s safe to say that the average player is spoilt for choice on mobile devices as the genre has been going through something of a revival this past few years. Already having thrown his hat into the ring once with ‘Microgue’, Jason Pickering self-publishes that charming Ms Spell.
Erin is a game very much from the mind of one man, Daniel Franka (who kindly provides a video on the making of the title) who has guided much of the game’s content and it’s a master-class in RPG simplicity and old-school computer game beauty. Continue reading
It’s a miracle that we actually managed to review Suikoden IV in time for the ‘Summer of Suikoden’ fan-led event that’s currently pulling together to celebrate the series legacy and to try and convince Konami to release the remaining games onto PlayStation Network (or perhaps reopen the series for new instalments), what with the release of the game on digital services in Europe being plagued with an error that meant that the game wouldn’t load and after being pulled from PSN a complete delete and reload of the reissued game was necessary. Luckily we were able to pull our PlayStation 2 out of retirement and boot up the original disc to get the game going instead.
Released by Goblinz Studios, Dungeon Rushers represents a board-game style approach to roleplaying that fuses the turn based combat of ‘Zodiac: Orcanon Odyssey’ with the trappings of ‘Hero Quest’ to produce a not-quite unique, but very enjoyable hybrid title.
Of all the faux-retro offerings to appear this year, Shadows of Adam has long looked like the most promising. An RPG being developed with obvious care and a love of the genre scheduled for release through Steam. Now that it’s out, MBU takes a look at Something Classic’s first release.
