Remembering Ultima 1

An FYI announcement for your anticipatory pleasure: a crack team of of hard working individuals is putting together a piece of freeware, a game that’s actually a remake of Richard Garriot’s Ultima 1! Trying out the engine demo myself I was pleasantly suprised at the smoothness this early. For more info, read RPGDot’s interview with the programmer detailing what the game is about, what’s different from the original and their plans for the future. Also, check out their Ultima Site for the latest news and to download a playable test build. A frag from the interview:

Q: What kind of game play are you planning for Ultima I? A true hard core RPG with lots of statistics or a RPG light a la Ultima 9 – Ascension?

A: We will try to make the game as RPG-like as possible and avoid having arcade battle sequences. Still the original Ultima was heavily based on fighting and character developing so there will be quite alot of combat in the game. We will probably look for a way to achieve a fun fighting system where the outcome of the fight is quite heavily dependant on the characters stats. To force the player into exploring the world rather than sticking to one particular dungeon allthrough the game (as it was often the case in the original) we’ll spread out the monsters based on their levels giving each dungeon a distinct feel based on their inhabitants.