Talisman Prologue: The Demo

 

Many moons ago Games Workshop released the fourth edition of their eighties board game Talisman under their Black Library brand. The game have since transferred to those blinged up game peddlers Fantasy Flight but included in the original Black Library version was a small advert for a video game version of Talisman for Xbox and PC by Capcom. Sadly the Capcom version was never heard of again. Capcom eventually blamed the project’s cancellation on the difficulties of replicating the social experience of playing Talisman in a virtual environment and that a typical game of Talisman can last 5 hours and that was the end of that.

Well the brave souls at Nomad Games have ignored Capcom’s issues and taken it upon themselves to transfer Games Workshop’s tale of epic heroes and sneaky backstabber into Talisman Prologue HD a PC and iOS game that you can actually play now (well, the demo at least). Nomad games are a new company that has risen from the ashes of THQ Warrington, creators of another Games Worksop licence Warhammer 40,000 Kill Team.

Those are some fancy character graphics.

Talisman Prologue isn’t a quite the same as the board game but instead turns Talisman into a series of single player challenges. The game is an exact copy of the current version’s mechanics and style. From the artwork right down to the plastic miniatures and dice, this a carbon copy of the board game’s components.  In this digital age of CGI movies and eye bleeding graphics it seems a bit weird for your epic hero to be represented on screen by a photograph of a piece of grey plastic. The game also includes Fantasy Flight’s fate mechanic which gives you a few handy re-rolls for when the dice are against you.

As per the board game, encounters are handled by a random card draw.

It all plays rather nicely and if you’re familiar with the board game this will be second nature. It’s also very functional in that you can zoom in easily to check out the locations and then get zoomed back out for a full look at the board. I’m not sure why Nomad has tried to turn the Talisman experience into a single player game; Talisman’s chaos is best when everyone has to suffer from it, taking it on yourself gets to feel a little soulless.  A full version of Talisman is due further down the line as well as versions for tablets 

Combat is handled by the roll of a dice.

You can pre-order prologue now for the measly sum of £6 or $10. If you’re one of those crowd funding nuts who like help to kick start projects into reality you can also buy a super-duper £60 version that’s exactly the same as the £6 version but your name will go on the credits.  Quite why a project with Games Workshop’s name plastered all over it needs you to donate to its cause is anyone’s guess.

I strongly recommend downloading the demo and giving it a try, you can also support Nomad’s bid for world domination by supporting the project on Steam Greenlight.