Unknown Realm - Death and Sailing

The latest update for Unknown Realm focuses on death and sailing.

Today we're highlighting two game features you'll find in Unknown Realm: Death and Sailing.

Death in Unknown Realm is a bit different than other games. Instead of dying and having to start over each time, we wanted death to be an exciting, unpredictable adventure and part of the story itself. So in Unknown Realm, when you "die," you never know what might happen or where you might wake up!

Instead of killing you outright, most of the monsters in Unknown Realm will leave you for dead, even though you're actually just unconscious. Where you die in the world, will affect what happens to you. If you die in a relatively safe place, you might get lucky and no one will come and loot your body or steal any of your supplies before you awake.

If beasts happen to attack you while you're unconscious, they will most likely eat your food. If bandits come across your body, they will probably steal your gold. There are also traveling healers who are sworn to aid people on the road, so you might find yourself in the care of the local healers upon waking. If you "die" in a hostile territory (where you may be considered a wanted outlaw), you could awake to find yourself in a prison.

There might be some instances where you can "really" die, but we'll let those be a surprise.

The main point is this: instead of harshly penalizing someone for dying in the game and having them start over, we want to roll that event into your story as you play. We think its more interesting this way and allows us to incorporate your death into the story. Although there are some penalties for dying (such as loss of gold, supplies or food), we've made sure those penalties aren't too steep (such as losing important quest items or weapons). There will also be ways to protect your gold stash by depositing it in banks or personal chests on your very own ship.

More information.

Uh… you want $19 for a Commodore-64 game? For the Kickstarter? Meaning you're going to charge *more* than $19 on final release? I'm not one to bitch about $20 being too much for a game, but I don't know about this one.

The death mechanic is pretty cool

Having read their entire KS pitch, I pledged in spite of what I said above. I'd encourage any fans of the old skool to read up on it, though I found it pretty irritating that they think turn-based combat is slow, boring, and needs to be streamlined so you can spend your time doing all the more "fun" stuff.