Remember the fun of playing pen and paper role-playing games with chums? Have you ever wanted to recreate that feeling with a single player game? Then you should go play Tunnels and Trolls. However, if you happen to want to get that experience on a computer, you might want to try playing this.
You play as a GM and a couple of players, enjoying a text-based game over the 'net, while the background changes to represent what's going on in the minds of the players. Which lets it be delightfully meta, with family members popping in, and third person commentary.
The meta-ness extends to fun references across the whole universe of science fiction and fantasy. Your characters can be silly stereotypes, through shippers, rules lawyers and Leeroy Jenkins(es)(?) all set to a rather nostalgic chiptune-y soundtrack.
The gameplay is a combination of JRPG battles, exploration of a 3D map and universe and PC/NPC interactions. The battles can occasionally get a little repetitive, but there is great fun in additional skills, gadgets and enemies. There's also quite an interesting little mechanic in which you can set your own difficulty of battles by adding additional enemies, for the usual reward of additional dosh, XP or loot. Fair warning though, you need to be rather over-leveled to survive these. They killed me a lot.
Graphics are neat little sprite characters for the PCs and monsters, and polygon for the map exploring. Quite fun. The fun extends to the dialogue, which is all very silly. For instance, I rather enjoyed the cries of "Holy Deus Ex Machina".
It's great fun in general, and is going to keep me busy for quite a long time, given how much of a universe there is to explore.
Highly recommended.
Tagged: Game Turn-based RPG Isometric Easy difficulty PC