Making a game entails a thousand little bits and bobs that hold it all together: loading screens, settings and credits menus, a tutorial, pop-up gameplay tips, a quest log, dice systems, achievements and scoreboards, difficulty levels... it never ends! #ScreenshotSaturday

The old world and its wonders are fading, but not yet gone. #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiegames

There is nothing quite like Darklands; no surprise, since there was no developer quite like Arnold Hendrick. Darklands does brilliant things with scope, scale, and depth that bring to life a folkloric dark-age Germany that never was. You can see Barbarian Prince and Pirates! in its DNA, but it takes those games' loops in a far more ambitious direction. Daring, daunting, and haunting, it's a game that has stuck with me since childhood, having a great influence of Fallen Gods. Its 100+ page manual alone is amazing, especially for its bibliography ("The single best source of medieval German map information is the Grosser Historischer Weltaltlas..."). I know I'm not the only one to get lost in this world!

In most cRPGs, the journey is trivial, but not Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny. That's why no one who's played it forgets it. In The Lord of the Rings and other great fantasy novels, the journey gives substance to the work, space for character growth, and context for the "encounters," whether deadly battles, tests of wits, or forgotten ruins. ROA understood that. Jokingly but aptly described as The Oregon Trail's spiritual successor, it uses hardship, logistics, beauty, and even emptiness to make every encounter more meaningful and the quest more real. The land's breadth is both an invitation and a challenge, something we tried to capture in Fallen Gods. Assembling a map is key to finding the titular Blade of Destiny... but after all these years, it's not those scraps of parchment or the magic sword that I remember. It's the world between them.

Hi #pitchyagame! Shape your own saga in Fallen Gods, where every choice, every item, every stat, and every follower opens new possibilities and challenges. Meticulously handcrafted content, gorgeous pixels and paintings, fantastic VO and music... the product of 12 years' work.

From a tester who finally achieved a homecoming! #screenshotsaturday "... getting saddled with cursed gold, throwing it to bandits, slaughtering every wrongdoer and most others as well, and then burying the riches in the mountain to leave everything in this world behind - is my only 'successful' run in many, many attempts..." The spirit of Fallen Gods, indeed!