Independent Games Festival 2008

Depths of Peril

Developer: Soldak Entertainment
Genre: Randomly Generated Role-Playing Strategy Game
License: $29.99 for Windows

Lastly, we have a little something for all you strategy and role-playing fans. Depths of Peril is a game which combines both of these genres to create a colourful fusion which feels like a game of Warlords, albeit played with a single hero and drastically zoomed in.

Players design themselves a character, choosing from one of the four classical archetypes; Warrior, Rogue, Mage and Priest (does anybody ever choose priest?) The game then casts you as the leader of the barbarian city of Jorvik. As leader of the village, it’s up to players to work out the best way to defend the inhabitants and to help the village grow.

There’s a number of different routes open to the player, including diplomatic and merchant paths as well as the obvious brute force tactics and players are encouraged to react depending on the situation rather than sticking to one single tactic. That said, you can still expect a lot of hack and slash action thanks to regular “Kill X, Y and Z” type side-quests.


A large part of the game is also built around the idea of rival factions, a number of whom operate in and around the village and who will occasionally rear their ugly heads so you can chop them off.

Graphically the game is a mixed bag, but it leans to the positive. For an indie game Depths of Peril is good looking and well presented, but there are a few problems and the areas occasionally feel a little bit too cluttered. It’s far, far better looking than 90 percent of the other indie games but it still has that budget feel to it that hints at the gameplay-on-a-shoestring origins.

The game is quite detailed and reactive too and there are plenty of consequences to player actions. Attacking the various other barbarian factions or annoying them through trading problems will often provoke them into attacking, which can be used as a deliberate ploy by careful tacticians who don’t want to appear openly aggressive.

Alliances can be formed with other nearby factions too and coming to the aid of those in need is a great way to secure a few extra fighters when you need them.


Like almost every indie game, Depths of Peril has fairly modest system requirements and need nothing more than 128MB of RAM, but it oddly asks a full retail price. Whether or not the game is worth the dosh is something best left to personal tastes, but we would suggest at least taking the demo for a spin before you make any rash decisions.

There’s a surprising amount of depth in the game though and Depths of Peril is probably one of the most replayable games that we’ve seen in this year's IGF line-up.

Will it win any of the big awards? Well, probably not because the game isn’t particularly exciting in any specific category, but it is a solid enough experience and if tactical RPGs are your kind of bag then you could definitely do a lot, lot worse than supporting an indie developer by bagging yourself a copy.