Skald: Against the Black Priory – Review

Skald: Against the Black Priory is a 2024 game from High North Studios and Raw Fury Games but it looks and feels straight out of the 1980’s. A top-down, pixel art, computer role-playing game (CRPG) Skald is a love letter to the grand-daddies of gaming invoking the nostalgia of titles like Ultima and SSI’s Dungeons and Dragons series. Although we do get modern-day conveniences like adjustable difficulty, quest logs and auto saves.

Skald launched with mixed reception with some players citing that the text was unreadable, quests obscure and that the retro aesthetic was more style over substance as the art made things difficult to see. Thankfully, the developers stuck with the title. They have cleaned up the text, added accessibility options, polished the visuals and quests, and have continued to add support. Most recently, they even added a game editor.

Summoned by your local lord, their daughter, a childhood friend of yours, has gone missing in the Outer Isles and it’s your duty to find them and bring them home. Upon reaching the Isles you wake up on the shores, shipwrecked by a giant sea creature trapping you there. It’s now up to you to gather your party, find allies and discover the horrifying secrets the Outer Isles hold.

The character creation is quite robust with ten classes, a history that can affect your stats and various skill trees to customise your playthrough. To add to your six-member party, along the journey, you will meet named characters with preset classes but also you can hire mercenaries who you can fully customise to your heart’s desire. Want a party of six bards? You can do that!

The named characters do have an impact on the story though and will butt in with their own opinions or will add any information they know on the current situation so it is worthwhile to keep them around. Skill checks can also occur during conversations or attempting feats and you can easily switch between your party to get the member with the best stats.

Skald’s gameplay is exclusively all from the top-down perspective with an overworld displaying the full outer isles, local maps for towns and areas of interest and battle arenas which display a snapshot of the current location for combat. A day-night cycle also occurs which can bring down an oppressive fog of war, although there are equipment and spells to negate this.

The sprite work is simple and detailed at the same time. I could easily tell between my party members but they also changed depending on the armour or weapons equipped. Enemies likewise displayed enough visual information to differentiate between different classes while also keeping room for little animations. During major conversations and cut scenes we are treated to some beautiful pixel artwork which helps flesh out the story.

The controls were totally mouse-driven, with toolbars for abilities at the bottom of the screen and context menus popping up when needed. I did manage to play on a Steam Deck as well, with the controls mapped as well as they could be. Although a lot of reliance was put on the right analogue for cursor control, an admiral effort was made for this to play comfortably in handheld.

With no dialogue or voice acting, you will be doing a lot of reading. Luckily, the writing is excellent and pulled me into the story while drawing inspiration mostly from horror, with the main influence being Lovecraft. There are only a handful of tracks to the musical accompaniment unfortunately, but they are all gloriously rendered in 8-bit. They are excellent and, to be honest, still rattling around in my head.

Skald’s combat works via a D&D ruleset with turn order, and players getting a bonus action, a move action and a final attack. Positioning is important as you can only attack in the cardinal directions, party members cannot pass through each other (without a skill), backstabbing can occur and some spells can hit your party members. You get a health and an injury bar with your health acting like a shield with you only taking real damage via your injury bar. Potions and spells only heal health, while injury needs a rest at a camp. There’s no permadeath either, except a full party wipe, fallen members will get back up with one health after battle.

At camp you can cook food, brew potions and each party member can be assigned a task depending on their class and how badly injured they are. A ranger can fletch arrows for example or a bard can entertain everyone giving the party a stat boost. Party members can also be swapped out in the camp as you can recruit more than the party max of six.

A feeling of dread and existential horror permeates the land of the Outer Isles during your adventure. You will come across ransacked villages and towns, crazed bandits will ambush you in the wilds and a cult-like fervour has embraced the weak-willed.

You are initially stranded on the southern isle but as the story progresses you will gain access to a ship. You will be unable to venture into deep water, however, as the beast lies there. The further North you travel the worse the situation becomes as bandits become cult members and wildlife turns more monstrous.

There are side quests as well as multiple ways to approach main quests. One particularly memorable one was a town with three gangs fighting for control. I could take each gang down one by one in combat but I had the stats to ingratiate myself into each one and spread enough misinformation to incite a gang war in which they wiped each other out.

This open-endedness can lead to many sessions feeling different enough to warrant multiple playthroughs. Some quest solutions are simple logic puzzles as well, requiring you to actually use your deductive reasoning rather than make the right dialogue choice or win at battle.

The game is a stripped-down experience though, and a lot of the fat of modern RPGs is just not present. There are no party member backstories or loyalty/ romance subplots to be found here but, in my opinion, that’s not a bad thing. Too often nowadays I’ve wanted to play an RPG where I didn’t have to babysit my companions so their feelings weren’t hurt, or have to set aside a decent chunk of the day for character development.

I found myself going back to Skald because it was easy to pick up and play and I enjoyed my time with it, even when the combat became difficult towards the back end. And, I still managed to clock in a time of under twenty hours with all but two achievements awarded.

Skald: Against the Black Priory was a breath of fresh air in a sea of “AAA” failures and stagnating titles. If you are like me and remember the PC games of yore I wholeheartedly recommend picking it up.

Publisher: Raw Fury

Developer: High North Studios

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Mac operating systems