Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon Demo

Role-playing games have not changed an awful lot over the years, except from a technical point of view. The graphics engines may be more powerful and able to render breathtaking worlds, but the genre never really needed CryEngine 3 to make people feel like they are in a different dimension. In fact, with a good story and some charismatic characters by your side, you could lose yourself for days in a text-based adventure.

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon is a first-person RPG with a focus on combat and humor, which features a Wizardry/Might & Magic approach to the genre. Hence, you have an entire party at your disposal, and you must use their skills to the best of your abilities in order to succeed. The combat is turn-based and the mechanics are generally a lot simpler than in the games mentioned earlier, but it’s quite clearly the same formula.

Story-wise, it needs to be mentioned that you cannot create a party from scratch, given the fact that the characters are set in stone from the start. Hence, four adventurers go on a quest to gain fame and gold, while battling the evil forces trying to stop them. Humor is an important piece of the puzzle, because it makes for some entertaining dialog sequences, although you do not have any control over them in most cases.

The gameplay is pretty straightforward, even if it requires a bit of experience with the genre. Hence, you can wander freely from a first-person perspective, but the game switches to a turn-based mode once you enter combat. When this happens, every character gets his or her turn to make a move, whether it’s attacking the foes with a melee weapon, cast a spell, or consume a potion by opening the inventory screen.

There are some annoyances as well, such as the fact that it is a tad uncomfortable to explore the environments, given the demanding camera controls. The humor may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that is a matter of personal opinions anyway. However, although the visual aspect is supposedly designed to look old and sketchy, the blocky enemies have the potential to turn players off.

In the end, when you take every strong point and flaw into consideration, Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon seems to come out in a positive light. Some of its more annoying characteristics are mostly subjective, so the game is really as good as you experience it yourself.