When is the magical turning point in time that something considered old becomes cool again?

Distortedly curved edges:phwoar -who knew?

I didn’t think then that I’d ever go back.

A retro-styled screenshot showing - in a lot of detail - a person sinking under a large boat, with tentacle like reeds around them. We look up as if from the bottom of the sea.

And yet now:squeal!So old it’s cool again.

Really, the whole thing is dressed to evoke exactly that feeling, specifically for the C64 crowd.

If you played an RPG there, or thereabouts, you’ll know this.

Cover image for YouTube video

But there’s a cleverness underneath.

That’s what these retro games have to be: smoothed memories.

Despite the overt stylings of it, then, Skald doesn’t actually feel old.

A screenshot of C64 inspired RPG Skald, during a dice-roll moment to decide what happens next. We see a box in the middle of the screen with two d6 dice in it, which will determine whether our diplomacy will stop the mutiny that we see - behind the dice roll box, in a still image - happening.

Actually, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a good example for another reason: dice-rolls.

And it doesn’t feel old, it feels familiar.

Yet style alone wouldn’t make Skald worth writing about.

A screenshot of C64 inspired RPG Skald showing the top-down - but slightly side-on - exploration mode. Here, our pixelated hero ventures to a kitchen area of an old castle they knew well.

After all, this is an adventure hoping to last dozens of hours or more, I expect.

But from what I’ve seen in the short demo, it’s all there.

So old it’s cool, then.

A screenshot of C64 inspired RPG Skald. The screen is chopped into three parts. An image window, a text window, and a party window (an a small combat log). In the image window, we see a man obscured by shadow.

But it’s the feelings that Skald: Against the Black Priory stirs that makes this RPG stand out.

you could read all the other pieces from the series at ourWishlisted hub.