New release: The Age of Decadence

Iron Tower Studio has at long last released The Age of Decadence, one of the most highly (and lengthily!) anticipated indie wRPGs to come down the pike in quite some time.

The premise:

The Age of Decadence is not a game about killing monsters or exploring mystical lands, but rather, surviving amid the greed and brutality of your fellow humans and carving out a name for yourself. Good and bad are purely relative. It’s a world of scheming and backstabbing in which your words and actions have the potential to forge alliances and sow discord, and your path is never certain.

You get to play with seven different factions: three Noble Houses and four ‘professional’ guilds: merchants, assassins, thieves, and the army, all fighting for power or influence; over 100 named characters, over 750 ‘generic’ characters with unique IDs taking part in violent take-overs, assassinations, and power grabs, and over 600,000 words of dialogue: a well-developed and thought through world, believable characters, realistic motivations, but no elves, dwarves, magic, and wizards in fashionable, pointy hats.

As you may recall, I checked out a beta version of the game almost a year ago–this should give you a pretty good sense of what to expect. Or, if you want something quicker and less in-depth, this release trailer should do:

The Age of Decadence is $29.99; you can snag it direct from the developers, from Steam, or from GamersGate. Windows only.