I've just noticed this arrive on steam, and based on the screenshots and trailer it looks really cool, I love the art style and the gameplay looks pretty solid, but I wanted to see if anyone had played it to get some opinions on it before I bought it.

I haven't heard of it until just now when I saw it on Steam.
If you say it looks cool, maybe I'll do some research into it...

"I haven't heard of it until just now when I saw it on Steam.
If you say it looks cool, maybe I'll do some research into it..."

I haven't even heard of any of those media outlets...
Any idea if there's a demo floating around somewhere?

Yeah, there's a demo here, which I'll probably download tomorrow.

Matty I'm downloading it right now. Supposedly it's pretty good and the production values seem a little higher then your normal indie fair. I'll give you some quick impressions later tonight.

Ha, that took all of 3 mins to download. :)

"Yeah, there's a demo here, which I'll probably download tomorrow."

Quick notes after an hour in...

• It's 800x600. Book II supposedly supports 1024x800, but as it is now I'm squinting terribly in windowed mode on my 24 inch widescreen. When I tried fullscreen it actually kept my display in 800 after I exited the game... grr. I'm pretty sure I can't play more then an hour at a time without getting a headache at such low rez on a nice big monitor.
• The interface, char creation and combat all seem solid. Combat is turn based, but without the need for "end turn" progressions. If you see are in range of an enemy it goes into TBS mode. You can hotkey your spells and just about everything. I was able to zap a bunch of scorpians with no problem.
• It looks pretty great for an indie game. Dunno if anyone has ever played the geneforge games or any other indie RPGs but this one definitely looks the best that I've seen. Spell effects are nice and the tiles are decent. It's very close to Ultima Online in terms of look.
• The interface doesn't look great, but is perfectly functional. Standard RPG conventions here, so anyone with a passing reference to the genre should be able to pick up and play without too much bother.
• Story is delivered through lots of text dialogue, mostly through notes and the like. I feel like I have a decent idea of where to go and the cartography skill, which dynamically draws out your map based on your skill level, is a badass idea. Plot uses the usual "You awaken from sleep but don't know where you are" gimmicks. Given the audience, that's perfectly acceptable and nastalgic.
• The music is surprisingly pro. It would not be out of place in an Infinity era game. Sound effects on the other hand are very old school nastalgic. Nothing that detracts from the game.

Thanks for that Snide, the 800x600 thing sort of turned me off there a little too. I'm not on a big monitor but that resolution would still bother me. Sounds pretty interesting and for an indie game its surprisingly "old-school" sounding, not something I was expecting.

Is the text dialogue an issue on the small resolution? Just wondering will I be mere inches from my monitor as I try to read it?

Got the demo downloaded, not sure would starting it up at 5am be a wise decision. Think I'll leave it until tomorrow.

Would you say it's worth buying for 20 bucks? I mean the metacritic rating is average, but Mount and Blade had an average rating too but that game was kickass. The only thing that might turn me off from buying this game is if it's a Diablo clone. I mean, I already have Titan Quest.