Sure, Elden Ring is tearing up the charts right now, but if you’re more a fan of old-school RPG games like the original Baldur’s Gate, it might not really hold the same adventuring appeal. Fortunately, Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness launched this week, and it’s sure to scratch that Infinity Engine itch old-school cRPG fans developed many years ago.
Black Geyser is set in the war-torn world of Yerengal, which has been tormented for centuries by an evil god named Rothgor. Developer GrapeOcean says your task is to work out the secrets of your own legacy, while exploring a world full of pestilence, mysterious abductions, and a strange curse of greed.
In the classic tradition of RPGs, you can go about this any way you see fit. There are companions to recruit, skills to learn, and plenty of screen-filling giants to slay along the way. Of course, you can approach things more stealthily or diplomatically if you prefer, and it’s your choice as to whether your character is a paragon of virtue or an evil manipulator whose only motivation is power.
Here’s the trailer:
The character you create can be based on five different races and take one of the 13 different class types, and combat encounters are handled in pausable real-time, just like the classics of the genre.
You’ve got two countries to explore in the open-world map, with “dozens of districts, settlements, villages, and towns” to poke around in on your journeys. All of your actions feed into Black Geyser’s unique greed mechanic, and that will have an impact on how the story – which includes more than 300,000 words of narrative – unfolds.
Black Geyser is available now on Steam and GOG. Gather your party, and venture on forth.