Forge of Legends announced

Jeff Sullins of Empire Forge Software writes in to tell me about the upcoming RPG Forge of Legends. He describes it as a turn-based first-person dungeon crawler similar in kind to Wizardry 7:

the player will form a party of six characters, crafted by the player by combining races, classes, and other options. The player will then lead this party through dungeons, towns, and other places to battle monsters, solve quests, and earn rewards.

The game features a map editor, though Sullins hasn’t yet decided whether he wants to release it along with the game. Since we’ve been seeing quite a few releases in the first-person dungeon crawler subgenre recently, I put the question to Sullins: what makes Forge of Legends stand out? He had this to say:

1) It will incorporate a new gameplay element — guilds.  In order to
win the game, the player must compete against other groups of
adventurers, almost like sports teams.  The player’s characters will
make up a guild, and the player will have several ways to compete with
other guilds.  This will include standard fare like dungeon quests,
but also head-to-head “arena” combat against other guilds.  (Note: I
am not implying multiplayer here — opposing guilds are computer
controlled).

2) It combines some of the best tactical elements of games like
Wizardry 7 and rogue-like games.  Namely, each of your 6 party members
will be able to move about independently in combat.  So, your party
isn’t always “in one square” on the map, even though the main view of
the game is in 1st-person reminiscent of other dungeon-crawlers.

3) Part of dungeon exploration includes a descriptive text panel that
displays running commentary on what you are exploring.  This was
inspired by years playing MUDs before the dawn of graphical RPGs.   I
hope that this feature can bring some real detail to the dungeon in
the players’ imaginations.

Pretty interesting stuff, I think you’ll agree (the first two in particular). Forge of Legends is scheduled for release on PC, Mac, and Android tablets sometime in 2013.