Indie RPG of the Year @ GameTunnel

[Dhruin]

I decided to give this its own newsbit. GameTunnel has announced their Indie RPG of the Year results (http://www.gametunnel.com/articles.php?id=658), with Soldak's Depths of Peril taking out a deserved first place.
Nethergate: Resurrection found a home at #4, with Moonpod's quirky platformer RPG Mr. Robot, Aveyond II and Loonyland II filling out the places.
More information. (http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/newsbit?newsbit=7595)

[magerette]

Congratulations to Stephen Peeler and Soldak for a well-deserved win. Looks like they had some reasonable competition, too. All of those entries looked worth checking out.

Was Eschalon released too late for this, I wonder? I would think it would rate a place in the top 5.

[Dhruin]

We all puzzled over that.

[rune_74]

How aveyond got in and eschalon did nt speaks volumes...

[RampantCoyote]

Yeah, the absence of Eschalon: Book 1 kinda surprised me, too. It came out a couple of weeks ahead of Aveyond 2.

I wouldn't want to knock Aveyond 2. While it speaks to a different audience than the one here at RPGWatch, it's still a very well-done game that I hope sells a grundle. But I'd still have expected Eschalon to be a finalist.

And I agree 100% with Depths of Peril being the RPG of the year. It's an excellent game.

[Shagnak]

Sells a "grundle"??

I really must start using that word :D

[Benedict]

Is depths of peril that good once you get into it then? I had a brief flutter but found it really dull to start with, but I probably didn't get much beyond the diablo like elements.

[RampantCoyote]

You may not notice the dynamic-world (I hesitate to call it "strategic") elements at first, because you'll be too busy playing it like Diablo. But before you hit the level cap in the demo (level 7, unless the demo has changed), you'll notice that as certain quests expire - new, more critical quests take their place that progress from the previous one. You fail to stop an uprising, and then the next thing you know there's a boss monster amongst the uprising. Fail to stop the boss, and it assembles a posse of boss monsters (which is VERY hard to take down without a few deaths, in my experience at higher levels). Fail to stop THEM, and after a while they'll launch an assault on the city.

Of course, you don't personally have to stop them, as there are other adventuring groups (covenants) that may take care of the job for you. And win the appropriate influence as a result. Which may be a good thing or a bad thing. You can negotiate with them or war with them to try to "encourage" them to participate in such a way that benefits you. And they'll do the same to you.

I thought it was an extremely fresh set of game elements to throw on the otherwise tired Diablo-esque action-RPG sub-genre. It hooked me more than any other RPG this year... mainstream or indie.

[Oriz0r]

Interesting...I'm giving that robot game a whirl, at the very least, it is slick. :)