OK, another case of me being late to the party, but even so, here’s another RPG you’ll probably fall head over heels for. Knights of the Chalice comes highly recommended if you’re a fan of old-school top-down RPG bliss, anything Dungeons & Dragons related and well crafted, severely challenging games in general. While it’s not a free game, you can download the wickedly cool (and hard) demo and decide if it’s worth the £14.95 (approximately $24.15 US) – I’d say it is and then some, but I’m still playing the demo! Actually, I’ll probably pick this up once I whittle down the pile of games I have to review. I don’t want to buy it now and be tempted to start up another game that’s going to eat up what’s left of my free time…

Loosely based upon the Open Game License 3.5 (OGL),which is an editable version of the Dungeons & Dragons Edition 3.5 ruleset, KotC plays like a pen & paper RPG, but with a CRPG heart merrily thumping along. The game’s creator, Pierre Begue along with a small team of eight artists, musicians and testers have put a ton of work into the “retro” look here and even the typeface used looks a bit hand-lettered. Combat will be familiar to and D & D fan, but the game seems quite inspired by the late Troika games’ Temple of Elemental Evil “remake” from 2003. While that game was quite flawed upon its release, it’s still played today thanks to a number of fans who fixed what was broken and made some grand improvements. Based on the demo, KotC has that same tone that balances dramatic moments with bits of wry humor and yes, death lurks in a few choice spots with ambushes, a few well-placed traps and some nice tactical battles guaranteed to test your mettle, not your mouse-clicking speed.

OK, let me shut up now so you can give this a shot. Don’t look for this to show up on anything but the KotC site, as I think Begue wants to keep the game’s pedigree as intact as possible.