Platform played: PC
Dungeons of Aledorn (DoA) is an RPG game developed by Team21 who were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and Realms of Arcania: Shadows over Riva. DoA gives you those old-school RPG vibes contoured with modern graphics and is mixed with a tactical turn-based combat, branched dialogues, and first person exploration.
First order of business, the graphics. Since this game is still under development, we can’t expect outstanding quality of graphics because this is just the preview build I got from their Kickstarter Page. The graphics are quite similar to an old-school RPG known as Runescape. But hopefully, this game will get better by early 2017. It uses the Unity 4 game engine but once they are fully funded, they will push the limits and set all changes, optimizations, and developments to Unity 5. The game has only one soundtrack playing in loop with a theme of medieval music which is quite similar to Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. The music seems to fit with the game since it’s set on the middle ages. There will be more tracks in their musical score when the game releases.
For the gameplay we start with four men exploring the areas of the ship with pirates and through the caves with skeletons. You encounter battles when you get close to the enemies. The enemy and your forces are arranged on the battlefield in a form of hexagons. The movement and attacks will be based on the amount of mana you have on the bottom-left of your screen. Getting a turn is quite difficult since the cards on the top-left of your screen is purely random and it is also well arranged. The A.I. is quite complex and difficult to predict before your next turn. A good example would be if a skeleton mage has minions, then the arrangement of the next move will have the minions first then the skeleton mage is next. You need make some decent amount of combat decisions before you go up against your enemies or it will be suicide. You only lose the battle once your forces are all defeated.
Putting them all together, Dungeons of Aledorn is really great and is worth your time. For now, the game doesn’t have a tutorial stage and it may take a while for you to understand how the game will go. The developers promised us that they will deliver a good storytelling ability and confident style in their level designs. It’s enough to give a good balance of old-school gameplay and contoured modern graphics goodness.
You can download Dungeons of Aledorn at the Kickstarter Page and give it a whirl.
This preview was based off a Technical Demo from the Dungeons of Aledorn by Team21.
