Tales of Maj’Eyal (also known as TOME 4) is a relative unknown, but we wrote a bit about it earlier this year. Despite seemingly emerging from the shadows, it won a major ‘roguelike of the year’ audience award at the end of 2011 – beating out even Steam-borne favorite Dungeons of Dredmor, and back-to-basics masterpiece Brogue – by offering a more story-driven and consistently tactical experience than most games in the genre. It didn’t hurt that the presentation in general is among the best out there. Not resting on it’s laurels, a major new version was released just yesterday, bringing a raft of bug-fixes and a sexy new UI.
The full change-log for this new version is enormous, so here’s the official highlights:
Release highlights:
- A whole new UI!
- Shortened some long zones
- New artifacts/npcs/lore
- A slew of bugfixes & improvements to many parts of the game
- Addons configuration screen
- Reworked ammo
The new UI in particular is the biggest and most obvious change. A major improvement over previous builds, allowing you to see more of the gameplay at any given time, and filling up less of the screen with excess clutter. Between solid spritework, a remarkably catchy soundtrack and a remarkably accessible learning curve (complete with more advanced races and classes only becoming unlocked through completion of special quests and objectives), it all adds up to make this a very good place for more traditional RPG players to turn when looking for something a little more roguelike-ish.
Tales of Maj’Eyal is freeware (although the developer does accept donations) and available for Windows and Linux. It’s also highly moddable, and actively being refined and expanded on. The engine it runs on (T-Engine 4) is also freely available for use, allowing more ambitious modders the option of creating a whole new game upon the foundation set by TOME. Given the wealth of content and replay value here (unlike many roguelikes, the classes in TOME play very differently from one another), it seems like it would be something of a fool’s errand to start from scratch like that.