Last Chance to Get Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon On Sale!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on May 31, 2012

The big “Because We May” sale on Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon ends in a few hours. Hopefully, all of you reading this have already picked up your copy. If not, and if you are reading this early enough, there’s still time. Grab it!

You can also get the game at Desura, if you prefer.

This sale has been a good experience for me. It seems like the game has gotten a lot of additional exposure through the sale that it would not have gotten otherwise, and a lot of people are encountering the game for the first time. Which basically means: I suck at marketing. Or something. I’ve received some fantastic, enthusiastic feedback from new players. If I needed some additional motivation while working on the sequel, that would do the trick.

There were two things that motivated me to make the game in the first place:

#1 – There was a dearth of these first-person, party-based, turn-based RPGs that I remembered so fondly from my childhood. These were the games that inspired me. They motivated me to learn to program. So yes, in many ways, in spite of several games that I’ve shipped over the years, this one is my biggest endeavor and the fulfillment of  a childhood fantasy. Being a game developer means never having to totally grow up. I’m okay with that.

#2 – I thought there was more that could be done with the game style. Everything kinda ground to a halt after the final Might & Magic and (western) Wizardry games, and it seemed to me that there were a whole lot of wilderness adjacent to these classic games still left to be explored. For starters, there was the idea of making the characters in your party actual characters, not just stats with a voice-over. And I went from there. And now, having kicked over a couple of low fences in exploring what I thought was a wide-open field of unexplored potential for this particular subgenre of role-playing games, I have discovered that it’s far more territory left to explore than I believed when I started. I look forward to poking around a bit more out there.

While the success of Frayed Knights hasn’t been enough for me to, say, quit the day job and go full time yet or anything, it’s been a positive experience for me. I am glad to see that a lot of people are finding the game itself a good experience as well. This is the biggest thrill of all as a game developer. A game unplayed is a failure. Having people share their stories, their enthusiasm, and enjoy the game – that’s an amazing experience all by itself. It makes all the long hours worthwhile.

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