Skald: Against the Black Priory review
Come for the fantastic retro RPG combat and exploration, stay for the utterly gripping cosmic horror.
Before playing Skald: Against the Black Priory, I liked the idea of this throwback roleplaying game, but wasn't sure it was for me. I love old-school RPGs, but pre-1997 is too old-school for me, and Skald's primary source of visual inspiration is an era of DOS and Commodore RPGs I have respect, but not much affection for. Skald's gorgeous VGA-inspired pixel art scared me off as much as it enticed me.
Finally diving into the game, though, I found something decidedly more modern: Skald is crisp and tight, threading the needle with an elegant, modern design sensibility that doesn't sand off the complexity and depth I crave in my RPGs. It's easy to get your arms around, but also challenging and surprising the whole way through. The biggest shock of all was the writing: Skald is one of the most effective, unnerving cosmic horror stories I've seen in a game, and part of that comes from all the effort it puts into fleshing out its fantasy world and characters before tearing it all down.
[...]
Graphics from the '80s with RPG gameplay from the late '90s and writing like nothing else: Skald was 2024's biggest pleasant surprise.
Score: 89/100
