Frayed Knights - Released and Available For Download

Here's what you've all been waiting for, Frayed Knights:The Skull of S'makh-Daon has been officially Released. Here's the Official Press-Release:

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon
An indie role-playing game draws inspiration from the classics, with a humorous twist.

Salt Lake City, UT - Indie computer game developer Rampant Games has announced the release of its long-anticipated role-playing game, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.

Embracing the style and mechanics for role-playing games that have been largely abandoned by major publishers, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon features a first-person perspective, turn-based combat, a statistics-heavy game system, a party of four characters, and thousands of lines of unvoiced dialog presented in comic-book style word balloons. The Skull of S’makh-Daon also adds new innovations to the genre, including a “drama star” system that encourages players to accept setbacks in the game rather than reloading and trying again, and a mini-game where players must disarm traps one component at a time using their character skills and available tools.

On top of the serious, ‘hard-core’ engine, The Skull of S’makh-Daon layers a world and story with a decidedly more tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre. Spells and skills have names like “Power Word: Defenestrate” and “Size Doesn’t Matter.” In a world of jaded heroes and veteran adventurers, the player’s party is a team of misfits: Arianna, a dainty warrior with an attitude problem; Dirk, an adrenaline-junky rogue who doesn’t seem to understand the word ‘subtle;’ Benjamin, a nature-priest and newcomer to the adventuring lifestyle, and Chloe, a ditsy sorceress with a love of cute, fuzzy animals and setting her enemies on fire.

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is now available as a digital download at http://frayedknights.com. It is unrated, but should be content-appropriate for most teens and adults.

Features include:

30+ hours of gameplay
Challenging, turn-based combat in a game
A spell named, "Power Word: Defenestrate."
Over a hundred base spells, most with several upgraded variants
Over 80 feats to customize the party as they progress through the game.
Nearly 200 different items to be used and abused by your characters.
A "Quarterstaff of Nad-Whacking."
Sixteen "dungeons" (interior adventuring areas), five outdoor areas, one village, an alternate dimension, and some green dude's one-room hovel.
A 69-page (PDF) manual


About Rampant Games: Rampant Games is a mainly one-person game development studio in Riverton, Utah. Owner Jay Barnson is a veteran game programmer from the “mainstream” industry, involved in the development of numerous hit and not-such-hit titles for consoles and the PC since 1994.

BMT Micro is "reviewing" orders if you have an anonymous email address, so it might be awhile before some of us get to play. Looking forward to it.

Not sure why there are two newsbit comment threads on this. Dang gremlins again.

Anyway, Congratulations Jay and happy Frayed Knighting everyone.

I had the theory when implementing the comments system that if two persons at exactly the same time would add a first comment to a news bit through the front page it might create two. But what are the odds of that?

Removed the other one.

Congratulations, Jay!

Give BMT a kick, would you? 45 mins and counting is an eternity in the internet era.

Jay has been made aware of this via Skype.

Originally Posted by Myrthos
I had the theory when implementing the comments system that if two persons at exactly the same time would add a first comment to a news bit through the front page it might create two. But what are the odds of that?

Removed the other one.

It's Frayed Knights! Everyone wants to comment.

Glad I could confirm your theory that it makes two and as usual the rat gets shoved aside.

I'm sending BMT a message. As this is a brand-new vender account (I've been an affiliate for years), I guess they are suspicious of the very first activity. I apologize… that's a lousy way to reward the first people buying the game.

Update: Anybody who has the sale pending, did you get an email stating that they'd have to do manual verification?

Yes, it suggests that. Here's an excerpt:

"Your order has been received and will be reviewed by a BMT Micro representative shortly.

This is simply an email confirming that your order was received properly and is in the first stages of being filled.

This does not mean that your payment has been processed or that your order has been approved.

If you placed your order using an anonymous email account such as hotmail.com your order will be reviewed by a customer service representative prior to being completed."

These days, I use a gmail account for most things. I understand the caution but Paypal should guarantee the payment regardless of my email status.

It's not that big a deal but people hate delays.

Yeah, I hate 'em too. It's a U.S. company, so they may only have a skeleton crew (if that) handling things at this hour. I apologize. This is probably my bad for releasing in the wee hours in U.S. time with a new vendor account. Newb mistake. But nobody gets charged until they get the order fulfilled, and once they've verified that I'm not some kind of drug dealer or anything things should go a lot faster. But there may be a few hours' delay for this first batch.

Sorry 'bout that.

Np, have to support old school games regardless

In the meantime, read the reviews and grab the demo. You can finish that section of the game while waiting!!

Congratulations on release! Sorry to hear about the payment problems not a good start.. but things can only go better from here on.

Yeah, Murphy loves to strike right at the beginning of a launch. I'm sure if it wasn't this, it would have been something else. I appreciate the folks who are willing to put up with some of the first-day rockiness. Everything should be squared away in a few hours.

I'm … stunned by the reviews. I cannot wait to share these with the other folks who contributed to the game. But it's like 1:30 AM here, and they probably wouldn't appreciate me calling them up to tell them about 'em. Or maybe they would…

i purchased the game. i'm at work right now. The time is at 11 am here. So i have to wait 8 hours to go home. i hope my confirmation mail will come by then. i can't wait to play it. By the way FN uses a similar offline serial authentication system like Spiderweb or is it online?

You will not need to be online for it to activate. It's very much the low-stress, just-help-the-honest-people-stay-honest kind of system. Mainly because I really HATE the more draconian forms of DRM that treat customers like criminals.

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
You will not need to be online for it to activate. It's very much the low-stress, just-help-the-honest-people-stay-honest kind of system. Mainly because I really HATE the more draconian forms of DRM that treat customers like criminals.

Thank you for the answer. Best DRM is a man's conscience. This is my motto.

Not to be negative, just wondering: why did you use fairly low-polygon models and low-resoultion textures? Engine limitations, system requirements, artistic direction or limited resources? I'm not sure how much extra work it would be to make higher-polygon models and hi-res textures.

I played the demo a while ago and thought it was funny. I must check this out when I'm not drowning in games.

Downloading the demo, and will buy the game the coming weekend. Congrats to Jay! And thanks to the crew for the detailed reviews - can't wait to play now…

I hate it when BMT puts a 19% VAT (from germany) on my order, no other payment service does this!

BTW: What do i get when i order the CD? Is there a special packaging or some extras on the CD?