Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Huge Indie Sale. Frayed Knights Over Half Off!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 24, 2012

“Because We May.”  It’s now live. For one week (the last week of May) – a whole slew of indie games are at deep discounts.

This is quite possibly the largest indie game sale ever. Nearly 400 games are participating, though in many cases these aren’t all unique games, but games on multiple platforms and multiple sales channels. Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, for example, is on sale both through this website and on Desura.

But yeah – the sale thing! This week! $9.95 if you buy direct, only a few pennies more on Desura (because their sale price tool only allows a whole-number percentage discount…). The sale ends on the first of June.

So what is this sale? Well, you can check out at the above link, but it’s basically indies promoting those sales channels that let us set our own price, and set our own sales. So some bright minds decided to go ahead and just make it a big deal, make a splash, and have a huge sale. This is the first time Frayed Knights has had a real sale (I’m not including the very limited October coupons), so I’m interested in seeing how it does.

Okay – so those of you who are new here, I’ve probably not been beating on the Frayed Knights drum as much as I should be as a ‘real’ indie guy in charge of my own marketing, so I’ll refer you to the above links. And all these blog posts about it.  Here’s the short form:

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon is an indie computer role-playing game that draws heavy inspiration from “old-school” RPGs, especially the first-person variety, as well as dice-and-paper gaming. However, it takes things in its own direction. It’s character-heavy, story-heavy, and refuses to take the genre all that seriously. The dialog can get silly, the story can be quirky, the items and spells can get downright goofy, but underneath it’s a hard-core RPG with lots of character development options, stats, challenging combat, puzzles, and choices. But first and foremost, it’s about fun.  It won the Indie RPG of the Year award from both Game Banshee and RPGWatch, against some really excellent competition.

Give it a try!

Now, a lot of you already have Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, so there are a couple other computer RPGs I could recommend that are also on sale via direct sales. Telepath RPG: Servants of God is a tactical-combat-heavy RPG with a flavorful, unusual setting.  Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is a pretty cool RPG / Tower Defense hybrid that’s worth checking out (and is ridiculously cheap through this sale, too). Jeff Vogel’s premier game in his newest RPG series, Avadon: The Black Fortress, is also available for peanuts. Well, okay, a big bag of peanuts, but still.

Some other RPG/Adventure games that I’m not so familiar with are also involved in this sale. Shepherd Slaughter is a twisted-looking roguelike.  Curse of Rock-Slate Manor is more of an “Visual Novel” adventure game, but looks cool. Speaking of which, Winter Wolves’ Spirited Heart – another “visual novel” game is also discounted – including the expansion and deluxe edition. Dark Scavenger is an RPG that has been mentioned here before. Squids is an “action strategy RPG” – parse that one! (Or better yet, play it). The arcade-style dungeon-crawler Cardinal Quest is also on sale directly.

Through Steam, there are some other indie RPG / RPG-likes on sale, like DeathSpank: The Baconing, Dungeons of Dredmor, the Cthulhu Saves the World / Breath of Death VII bundle, both Penny Arcade: The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness episodes currently available, and Dungeon Defenders. Plus there are a bunch of Mac, iOS, and Android games besides those listed here. And Kudos to Steam for coordinating with the devs to make this happen.

GOOD TIMES! That’s just focusing on the Visual Novels and RPG-like games. There are tons more in plenty of genres. I’ll be buying a bunch during this sale, myself. I won’t get bored on my upcoming business trip, that’s for sure. Be sure and check ’em out, and tell your friends about it. The biggest problem indies have isn’t publishers (or lack thereof), it isn’t budget, it isn’t experience, it isn’t access (anymore) to most platforms: It’s quite simply a lack of exposure. This is a great chance see what’s out there and enjoy some great games on the cheap.


Filed Under: Deals, Frayed Knights - Comments: 10 Comments to Read



  • eedok said,

    Lol @ Super Office Stretch upping their price to $99 “because we may”

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    LOL! I didn’t notice that! That’s hilarious! Well, that’s the thing about indies… they all march to the beat of a different bagpiper.

  • getter77 said,

    Well, nice to see my purchasing backlog representing in force alongside a Roguelike I had no idea existed with an uncannily catchy trailer. Yep, this is the best sort of time to be tapped out on funds by and large, yes indeedy~…..

  • Attila said,

    Thanks for pointing out some of the other games too, I’m a HUGE fan of spiderweb software (with the exception of the Avernum series, I’m an Exile fan).

    Jeff’s site does NOTHING to advertise that Avadon is on sale…not until I got to the ordering page did it come up as 5 bucks. Maybe send him a quick email advising him to highlight his sale.

    I’ve already played the full Avadon, but for 5 bucks I’m totally down to buy the game properly.

    I’ll give your game a buy as well, 10 bucks is affordable. Plus I really like your site so I figure it’s extra worth it.

    As much as I enjoy digital distribution…how awesome would it be to have a beautiful old school game box. I know that Jeff offers a CD…but that’s still no game box. You wouldn’t be able to make and offer a game box would you?

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    I was considering it for the sequel, but I had some sales targets I felt I needed to hit in order to get serious about it. I haven’t hit the number of sales for FK1 that made me feel safe doing that for the sequel, yet. For the most part, the profits from FK1 are financing the sequel, and the sequel’s still on a shoestring. A somewhat thicker shoestring than the first, but still a shoestring.

    But hey, at least I don’t need to sell 3 million copies in order to break even.

  • Mike said,

    If we buy direct can we get the mac version when it comes out later? (yeah I keep bringing up the mac version… hopefully I’m not annoying anyone ; ) )

  • Rampant Coyote said,

    The Mac version is making me grumpy right now. 🙂 I cannot make promises about when, BUT I’ve always maintained that your key entitles you to all versions (which I’d hoped would include Mac and Linux), so long as it’s not something like a “Deluxe” upgrade or anything like that.

  • Mike said,

    Hey, either way I already bought it. ; )

    CHEERS!

  • keyboardcowboy said,

    Just got done playing the demo. Fun game. I really liked the banter between the players sitting there at the menu screen when the demo was over. Another sale coming your way

  • Modran said,

    Yeesh… Bought Cardinal Quest as a bundle. Found it really bland after Dungeons of Dredmor. Didn’t really find it anything special after trying for almost 2 hours. Did I miss someting? :/

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