Fallen Empires: The Age Of Decadence

Age of Decadence belongs to the diminishing group of games currently in development that I first took am interest in because of a post on this 'ere website long before my ugly mug was ever on the 'About Us' page. I spent some time with the demo at the end of last year and my interest levels rose so high that my Wonga alert sounded at full blast. I was expecting something similar to Baldur's Gate but the reality is something else entirely. The game is now available on Steam Early Access, with 60% of the content included and the complete set of features from the finished product.

There are no heroes in Age of Decadence, or at least none that I could control, and even the lightest spot of combat is potentially lethal. In contrast to the many procedurally generated games in the world today, AoD is carefully handcrafted from moment to moment. That means every fight is about more than hitting things and levelling up - there's always something for the player character to learn or collect, and there's an intricacy to individual interactions that most RPGs don't even strive for.

There are over 100 combat encounters in the current version, more than 70 quests with multiple solutions and consequences, and over 350,000 words of dialogue. I'm hoping to spend a full day with it sometime soon so that I can share some thoughts but it's sounding like I might need a full week.