They offer the following blurb to describe what they’re shooting for, though mostly it just kind of makes a vague appeal to nostalgia:

You can get the latest public alpha for free on this page of the Fabula Divina website and test drive the game yourself. Be warned: it’s still in that early stage of development where core systems are still being added and refined, so there isn’t too much to see yet content-wise. The developer accepts Paypal donations, which you may contribute if you feel the urge to see this project come to fruition.

Hack, Slash, Loot(HSL) is a single-player turn-based dungeon crawler for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. Take control of a lone hero and explore sprawling dungeons, fight dangerous monsters, and most importantly, plunder valuable treasures.

It isn’t at all clear from that bare-bones description exactly what it is that sets HSL apart from the roughly gagillion-and-a-half other roguelikes coming out right now. Luckily, Adam Smith of Rock Paper Shotgun has taken care of that for us. According to him, the thing that makes HSL unique is the game’s simplicity:

It may well be the simplest roguelike I’ve ever played, with actual visual approximations of the things you’re looting, hacking and slashing, a point and click interface, and no inventory to manage. There’s equipment in abundance, but it’s a case of choosing what you want and leaving the rest on a dank floor somewhere.

Oh, and there’s no leveling up; you can only improve by getting better equipment. Which probably makes this not-an-RPG. But my guess is that most people will still think of it as a proper roguelike, so I’ll allow it.

Have a computer that runs Windows, MacOS or Linux? (I certainly hope so.) Have $10? (I hope that’s so, too.) Want to buy this game? (Oddball probably hopes so.) It can be yours for the price of $10. Buy it here, or grab the demo (W/M/L) for a substantially cheaper $0. Finally, as is our custom, we present you with a trailer so you can see what you’re getting yourself into:

Peace, justice, honor. Society is at a pinnacle undreamt of by mankind of old. The king reigns over dozens of tribes peacefully, justly, honorably. Grievances are few, and dealt with swiftly and openly. Everyone is content, the people love their king, the nobles serve the people, and society advances…

Such is the tale told to naive children, the illusion that keeps the poor common folk from seeing the horrible reality. Their world is crumbling. A corrupt nobility props up a vain and cruel king, who in turn sends young soldiers to vicious pointless wars. Every corner of the kingdom is aflame, the great royal army streched thin, facing enemies that fight like ghosts. The tribes of the kobolds, elves and orcs see the kingdom tottering, failing under it’s own weight, and sieze their chance at vengeance.

Amidst the chaos, people whisper rumors. Rumors of conspiring cabals, of a great ‘plan’, of a foreign invasion. Some say that a war is coming, some say that a revolution is arising. But the wise know better. Sages and holy seers look at the wheeling stars in their slow precession and see that the great cosmic clock will soon strike midnight. The artifacts of the ancient ones hum and resonate in anticipation of… of something.

In this desperate landscape, there is a place, a forgotten forest with it’s forgotten people. From this lost corner of the world, strange broken rumors have drifted out, hardened scholars have returned changed into blathering prophets. They speak of ancient stones, magic beyond the comprehension of mortals, and of a mysterious castle.

Jeremy is currently developing the game for iOS, OSX, Windows and Linux, with an iPad port planned for the future. The game is $2.99 in the Apple App Store and free for other platforms. Jeremy has stated that he plans to move the free version to a pay-what-you-want model with a minimum payment of $0. Here’s a trailer showing off the game:

The developers give me this description of ToM:

Basically Tomes of Mephistopheles takes place in a fantasy world, where player is set to search for the ancient books written by the Devil himself. The Tomes grant enormous power to its beholder and have been searched for by various characters. Player has to find those Tomes and destroy them.

So, in short, it’s an adventure with a lot of magic, spell casting, cold steel combat, hordes of demons to fight against in virtually endless randomly generated multi-floor dungeons. We are still experimenting with outdoor areas, but most likely we will have virtually endless (but for practicality sake just vast) outdoor areas with towns and villages, where player can trade his(her) loot and gear.

Single-player / Co-op is what we are aiming for.

Well! That certainly sounds ambitious, doesn’t it? Below, you can check out an early teaser trailer, as well as a video showing off a neat bomb-based tunneling mechanic:

Valor Seed is an NES retro-clone made to feel, look, and sound like an RPG made for that system.  It uses the NES’s color palette for graphics, and sound chip for music and effects.  Unlike actual NES-era RPG’s, Valor Seed will sport modern game play elements such as dialog, item creation, multiple endings, and a very flexible battle system.

The setting of Valor Seed places Pharamonde in a Dark Age following its repulsion of a foreign Crusade. The Crusade ended with the deaths of all of its heroic personalities. There was no victory for anyone involved, there was simply a return to the state of being before it all began with one significant difference: there was nobody to believe in, anymore. No King, no Roland the Hero. This is how The Calm snuck in. The Crusade was the product of men reaching too far for what they did not need. Therefore, if no men reach, no more Crusades will come. Blacksmiths quenched their forges, coopers left their barrels half-assembled, and everywhere the people cast away their gold and silver coins for their then pointlessness. Each town became an island in the wilderness, surviving all on their own. In the capital, the Heart of Pharamonde, the addle-minded Prince ignored the duties of the Royal Throne, Siege Pharamonde. With no strong Will guiding the Heart of Pharamonde, the land and its people stagnated.

Wes reports that they’ve just jumped the last hurdle in creating the battle system, and are now focused on designing windows (of the GUI variety, I gather) and the item crafting system. A free version of the game, made in RPG Maker XP, is due for release sometime late this year; a commercial version created with XNA is planned for the future release this fall.

There is no official trailer for Valor Seed yet, but you can have a look at some in-progress screenshots of the game below:

The devs describe it as “an open-source, single-player, tactical role-playing roguelike and action game set in the world of Eyal.” Check out this gameplay video to get a taste for how it works:

Here’s the best part: the game is free, and in the best traditions of the roguelike genre, its development is open source. Which means that it technically isn’t “done,” and never will be, so long as people want to go in and add more stuff. But it’s currently at version 1.00 Beta 37, which I gather means you can play through the game and have a very complete experience doing so. Nab the game here.

Fortune Summoners is due for release on Steam and GamersGate on January 17, 2012 at a price point of $25.00. Until then, get the demo and see how you like it.

Blood Rune is a new roleplaying game. It uses a first person style of gaming unlike most computer roleplaying games of the day, harking back to older classics such as the SSI Gold Box series. Just like those, the game switches out to an isometric battle engine to resolve fights, but unlike them, this battle engine is much more fully resolved as a tactical simulation. There are movement points to worry about; you can be attacked back if an opponent has movement points remaining, your units can tire

In Blood Rune, you play a single character in a realistic fantasy setting who is soon joined by additional companions to form a party. There are many character classes to choose from including five different types of magic users. There are over 400 items in the game so far. The game begins just before the land of Dragonia is about to be plunged into war… what will your role in the unfolding story be?

Okay, so the not-particularly-creative name “Dragonia” suggests that maybe this game isn’t going to have the world’s greatest writing. However, if it plays like Pool of Radiance, I suspect I may be able to overcome my feelings about that. I’ll be watching this one.

What this all means is: YES, Book III is coming!! We really blew our development schedule in 2011, missing almost every deadline we set for ourselves. But 2012 will be a productive year for us, and we are working hard right now to get everything together to make the formal announcement. This requires a press release, logos and artwork, screenshots, and we need to be able to answer questions when requests for info and interviews come our way. We certainly think that a 2012 release for Book III is possible, but we can’t make any promises to anyone right now.

For more about the Eschalon series, check out my review of Book II here.