14 DAY TRIAL // Portalarium announced the first release of the Shroud of the Avatar role-playing game, arriving as promised on December 12.
Portalarium is led by acclaimed video game designer Richard Garriot, and Shroud of the Avatar is intended as a spiritual successor to the Ultima series.
The game's more than 25K backers can now log in and download the Shroud of the Avatar Release 1 client and start exploring the streets of Owl's Head, the game's first available town.
For now, Release 1 only supports Windows, as the team was unable to get good enough releases for other operating systems, but the team stated that their goal is to try again with Linux and OSX support for Release 2.
The project was first announced by Portalarium earlier this year in March, and only nine months after, backers can already get a glimpse of what the game looks like and experience some of its gameplay.
“Player feedback at this stage will be utilized in helping us understand any changes we need to make and to possibly reaffirm that we are on the right track,” said Garriot regarding the game's first release to the public.
In Release 1, players will be able to converse with NPCs and try out the game's dialogue system. Players will be able to equip clothing, armor and weapons and even select a house from the available list of player houses, and furnish it with the decorations available all over Owl's Head for them to beautify their homes with.
Momentarily, the release only supports online single-player, with plans for future releases to also incorporate online multiplayer modes.
“Throughout 2014, we'll be rolling out even more features and systems on a monthly basis for players to try out including crafting, combat, questing, multiplayer and of course many other towns, dungeons and lands to explore,” added Executive Producer Starr Long, former project director for Ultima Online.
Instructions for the download and install of the client, as well as additional information, can be found in the official announcement on the game's forums.