Blood Rune announced

Now this is interesting: Pete King of Third Impression writes in to announce the development of Blood Rune, a game intentionally modeled on the old SSI Gold Box series. Blood Rune seems to be fairly early in development, but it’s hard not to get a little excited reading what Mr. King has planned for 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.