Fabled Lands - Early Access Version released

The Early Access version of Fabled Lands has been released:

Fabled Lands

The original Fabled Lands gamebooks, written by Dave Morris and Jamie Thomson, and beloved by many, have been transformed into an epic, digital adventure of interactive fiction with a massive game world. Be anyone you want: explorer, merchant, priest, scholar, thief, wizard, or soldier of fortune. Buy ships, goods, and townhouses, join a temple, risk desperate adventures in the wilderness, or embroil yourself in court intrigues and the sudden violence of city backstreets. Undertake missions that will earn you allies and enemies, or remain a free agent and choose your own objectives. With hundreds of quests and locations to explore, the choices are all yours.

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EXPLORE THE FABLED LANDS

• Open World
  War always leaves its mark: villages lie in ruins, dungeons are infested with monsters and old roads are abandoned. Travel across the continent of Harkuna and learn more about its past.
• Economy
  The economy is ruthless, but it also presents many opportunities: fulfill contracts and quests, hunt for treasure, buy a ship and trade goods, or travel the land to earn your fortune.

CHOOSE YOUR PATH

• An old-school RPG
  A solitaire role playing game in a pick your own adventure style like no other. Explore a giant open-ended world, where you can truly travel, investigate, and meddle with things, when and as you see fit to do so.
• Character Development
  Experiment with different professions, abilities and spells, items, and quests. Create your very own playstyle!
• Enemy Variety
  Take part in intense battles against numerous enemies. Brigands, trolls, golems, flying heads, assassins, vampires, kelpies, demons, abominable cults, the undead, and many more - all of them will vanquish the unsuspecting adventurer.
• Tactical Battles
  There is no handholding. Only the thoughtful ones shall prevail - plan your turns ahead, adapt to your surroundings and fully utilize your character's strengths.

SURVIVE AGAINST THE ODDS

• Permadeath
  Do you like risk? Then try out the Ironman mode, where every decision is irreversible and your character dies once and for all.
• Temples
  Devote yourself to an enigmatic deity and obtain its blessing. But remember: some blessings have their price. Are you ready to make a pact?
• Ships
  Buy your own ship: upgrade it, find new routes and recruit a crew - their abilities might prove the difference when surviving a storm or vicious buccaneers. Fill your ship with valuable cargo and find where to sell it for profit.

More information.

This actually looks kinda cool and Steam reviews are pretty positive. Though I'm not familiar with the books it is based on, it seems worth keeping an eye on it.

I vaguely recall some of the books, I believe they might have come out in the mid to late nineties? Some of them were pretty good, others I didn't care much for at all. They did manage to cater to several different styles, so they had that going for them. It'll be intriguing to see a game based on these, or at least to see what people think about it.

I haven't played the Fabled Lands gamebook series, but I have played others by Dave Morris (with Oliver Johnson):

Golden Dragon series - excellent Fighting Fantasy-likes (with their own system).

Blood Sword series - set in the same world as the above, but more length, depth, i.e. even betterer! They had the interesting idea of being able to play it as a group, i.e. one reader, consensus decisions, everyone involved in the combat. I did part of one of the books like that, with my cousin.

Dragon Warriors - not FF-style gamebooks, but a proper RPG system released serially in paperback format. Set in the same world as the aforementioned gamebooks. Played it a bit back in the day, and the only ones I still own.
I understand there's revised books now, released in "proper" RPG tome size.

Anyway, I'll be keen to get the digital versions of the Fabled Lands ones

That Techno music of that trailer is absolutely horrible !! Doesn't fit at all ! What were they thinking ???



Edit : I just found out that they were translated and printed in 2016 as well.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
That Techno music of that trailer is absolutely horrible !! Doesn't fit at all ! What were they thinking ???.

Techno music? I don't hear no "techno" music

Well, to me, it's sounding all the same. It's my personal prejudice.

It's synthesized orchestral music like found in a thousand other trailer scores.

Edit: bought it to see how well it's adapted. Will report back.

I played the demo back when they had it up during a virtual convention thing. I am unfamiliar with the books but it seemed pretty cool.

This looks interesting, I'm all about the game-book-come-to-life thing, after loving the Warlock of Firetop Mountain game, based on the Fighting Fantasy book.

Miniatures represented onscreen, in turn based combat? One of my other fetishes.

Sign me up