SKALD: Against the Black Priory – Patch 3.0 and Release Date Update

The free Prologue for Scape-IT’s retro PRG SKALD: Against the Black Priory has received a new update that makes the game’s inventory system more player-friendly and adds a number of other quality of life improvements on top of that. This developer blog shares the actual patch notes and also lets us know that the game’s early access release had to be pushed back a bit.

More on that:

This one focuses on the inventory system and adds a lot of requested features like displaying items by categories and showing equipped items by characters.

There’s also a bunch of other features as well so here is a full list:

• Pressing a quick button to open a screen (M to open Map) can also be used to close the same screen
• You can toggle between fullscreen and window from Options -> Graphical
• Game starts in fullscreen mode.
• You can now see the loot after combat before deciding to take it
• The game settings are saved from save to save
• You can now toggle the “text crawl” on/off
• You can now view and sort the inventory by category
• You can hide or show equipped items from the main inventory
• You now see the player model and all equipped items in a separate field in the inventory screens
• The inventory can be fully operated by using the keyboard
• You can now sell stacks of items with a single click
• You can now hold your action until the end of turn
• The active character now has a flashing outline in combat
• Added the “Knock Back” feat which allows characters to push opponents in combat
• You can access options from the intro menu

Bug fixes:

• Weapons now show damage-type in the description
• Right-clicking while in the inventory screen no longer activates an item if you’re not mousing over it
• Using non-useable items no longer plays a use sound effect

For the next patch, I’m probably going to look into making combat smoother. I want to allow for more ations by the player and I need to look into a way to make that work that doesn’t rely on multi-layer, text-based menus.

Under the hood I’m currently also working on my editor tools. I’ve been adding in a search function and some tools to help spell checking (about time). For my map editor I’m currently creating maps tile by tile and I need to add the possibility of adding prefab segments into the map. It will make creating areas with a lot of repeating patterns (such as dungeons) a lot easier so I think that is going to provide quite the boost in productivity.

The Release Date

On the Steam page, the release date has been set to August 2nd 2021 for the Early Access version of the game.

That date is now coming up and I’m not ready for the EA yet. Part of the reason is that I’ve been prioritizing working on feedback from the demo. As you know, I got a lot more of it than I had expected and using it to make the game as good as possible is proving very worth-while.

So when is the new release date? I don’t know yet. Setting a date is hard it turns out. But rest assured that development is currently moving forwards at a very steady pace and the game keeps improving by the day.

There is also a question of how much of the game to have in the EA at release. My original plan has been to do pretty much 80-90% of the game before launching but I really need to think this through.

Experience from the demo shows me that a lot of players will prefer a shorter but more polished product that gets expanded as we go over a larger but more buggy experience.

What I’ll do is that I’ll finish implementing the first chapter (Idra) and see how that plays. If it feels substantial enough, I might consider doing a chapter-by-chapter launch (a bit like Larian is doing with BG 3).

Hope you’re not too disappointed with the postponement of the release date. The game is coming and you’re all helping make it great!

To support the game, keep playing the updates and offering feedback!

As always, get in touch via the Discord or Twitter for all things Skald-related (I guess now you can also use the Steam and GOG forums).

AL