New release: Tales of Maj’Eyal: Age of Ascendancy

I found out about Tales of Maj’Eyal by virtue of DIY Gamer featuring it as roguelike of the year, eking out a win over the much better-known Dungeons of Dredmor. Tales of Maj’Eyal is a bit like Dredmor in that it eschews ASCII graphics in favor of representational ones, and it tacks on a nice, mouse-driven interface and a really splendid soundtrack. DIY Gamer seems to think that ToME is even more accessible than Dredmor, however; and what’s more, the game evidently features a legit story with multiple dungeons and an overworld to boot.

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.