Monday, February 14, 2011

Enter The Catacombs!

Dare you enter the catacombs of Orlandes City?

They're testing the beta version of Catacombs of the Undercity over at Tin Man Games! It's my contribution to their excellent line of Gamebook Adventures for the iPad and iPhone, with wonderfully grotesque cover art by Dan Maxwell and atmospheric internal illustrations by Pirkka Harvala. The screenshots look amazing and I'm seriously thinking about counting up my savings and seeing if I can spend money to buy an iPad, just so I can play this, the Fabled Lands game, and all the other Gamebook Adventure titles. For the record, the previous releases by Tin Man Games are:

  • GA1: An Assassin in Orlandes by S. P. Osborne. "Set within Orlandes City, nobles are being systematically murdered by a ruthless assassin no-one seems able to catch. Finding yourself thrust in the middle of a large conspiracy, you must make decisions that may put yourself and one other most precious to you in great danger. Can you locate the Assassin in Orlandes before it is too late?"
  • GA2: The Siege of the Necromancer by Neil Rennison. "Set in the coastal town of Myr, you have returned home after a long Summer in the mines of Durath Tor to find your hometown besieged by strange creatures. A dark presence has taken over the town and you are the only one who can rid the stronghold of Erid Buul, the mysterious new Lord and his ghastly cohorts."
  • GA3: Slaves of Rema by Gaetano Abbondanza. "Cruelly taken from your homeland of Orlandes, you find yourself in a far off land at the mercy of a gladiatorial arena. Somehow trying to find a way to escape overseas, can you also unravel a potentially dangerous mystery that puts two nations on the brink of war?"
  • GA4: Revenant Rising by Kieran Coghlan. "The mighty city of Falavia, the military backbone of Orlandes, is under attack from an army led by a man claiming to be a God. How did this come to pass you ask yourself? You're sure it all started as some innocent adventure in search of treasure but somehow it turned into a nightmare. Also, why are people staring at you strangely? It’s not as if you look like you've recently been brought back from the dead or something. Oh yes, that's right. You remember now... "

    
    Gamebook Adventures are also
    available for the iPhone!
    
It's great to see these gamebooks go digital, in a format where they both look amazing, and take care of all your book-keeping and stat-tracking. No more pencils, erasers, and scraps of paper! Now, I just have to convince my better half that I really need an iPad tablet device...

Below is the promo video for Catacombs of the Undercity, featuring evocative music by Adrian Watkins. I can't wait until it comes out!

4 comments:

  1. I haven't got an iPhone or iPad, but I've just realised that my wife has an iPod Touch, which I presume would do the job!

    ReplyDelete
  2. According to the GA1 page @ iTunes:

    "Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Requires iOS 3.1.3 or later"

    So it should work, but I'm guessing screen views will be small!

    cheers

    Andy

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm getting ever closer to buying one of those fine gadgets, especailly as more gamebooks are being released on them. Congratulations on getting your own Gamebook Adventures gamebook.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks Stu! I was looking at prices yesterday and the cheapest 16GB model costs 15,900 baht here in Bangkok, or 320 quid. That's so tempting but I've got to pay for a semester's worth of study first, plus get the LPG system taken out the back of my SUV, so not yet. Soon, but not yet...

    ReplyDelete