SKALD: Against the Black Priory on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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SKALD:Against the Black Priory is a retro-style party-based RPG set in a grim-dark fantasy world of tragic heroes, violent deaths and Lovecraftian horror. Take a chance and roll the dice as you embark on a compelling story filled with deadly creatures, branching story and tactical, turn-based combat
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is a strategy, singleplayer and minimalist game
developed by High North Studios AS
and published by Raw Fury.
Released on May 30th 2024 is available in English on Windows and MacOS.
It has received 2,958 reviews of which 2,785 were positive and 173 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.0 out of 10. 😍
The game is currently priced at 14.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 2.61€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified SKALD: Against the Black Priory into these genres:
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel i5 or AMD equivalent
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: Intel Iris / AMD Vega or equivalent
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 500 MB available space
MacOS
- OS: macOS 14
- Processor: M1
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Storage: 500 MB available space
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Nice game. I admit I find myself coming back, despite some frustrating issues. *** PROS: -Very reminiscent of the old gold-box SSI rpgs, and definitely scratches that itch, -Incorporates some elements from other adventure/rpg games. (fog of war, stealth, lite cooking&crafting, resource collecting, party camping and management). Definitely borrows elements nicely from BG3. -Interesting positioning phase prior to combat to deploy your dudes tactically. - Cool hidden quests and areas that really make you feel rewarded for exploring just a little farther. There are some creative side mini-quests that really add some nice flavor and variety, (diving into an underwater cave for example, riddles to solve that don't involve combat) -Great cinematic art panels and world building. Definitely has a vibe. - *EDIT* After 50ish hours, I really like the variety of gameplay. Combat is honestly the weak point, IMO. Everything else is pretty solid. -Music is cool and C64 ish. -Very nice price considering the effort and breadth of the game. *** CONS: - Combat is frustrating because of a couple small design decisions. You can only attack in the four cardinal NESW directions--no diagonal like the old SSI games. That means if you want to go around an adjacent enemy, it disengages you from combat, and wastes your turn. Also, you automatically move forward when killing an enemy, ruining your carefully constructed line. - *Edit* Combat can be difficult to follow. The text fades much to quickly to read, and there is no persistent combat log to see what just happened. Roll-over tool tips on enemy/character statuses would be helpful so you're not constantly clicking on everyone. - The enviro art needs a balancing pass . Many background textures are SO noisy and busy, you can't tell grass from tree. Way too much black dithering everywhere. It is VERY easy to lose your characters in combat, and the UI doesn't help much. - Because of the above, it is very frustrating to navigate. You can't tell what is traversable and what is not half the time. You are blocked by a rock one step, then pass over an identical rock right next to it. No consistency or visual language to tell me how to navigate. You're constantly slamming into collision that is not obvious. Very frustrating. -Again, because of the art^ you end up picking up tons of objects you don't intend simply because you didn't see them (especially at night). This becomes a problem when every item counts towards encumbrance, and you're picking up tons of flowers and mushrooms by accidentally running over them. - Combat could use a FLEE option during the set-up stage. Since none exists, you resort to being in constant stealth mode to avoid unwanted fights. That said, it's a neat game at the price point. I keep coming back to play, despite the frustrating issues, which speaks to how good the rest of the game is. Hopefully I can find a mod to fix the above issues.
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A little rough around the edges, but a great game. Worth its base price and definitely on sale. I'll start with the praise, because overall I recommend grabbing this one. Music: I love the soundtrack and my only gripe is there aren't *more* tracks. Story: Pretty traditional Lovecraftian horror story, but well executed. World building is light and vague, but it absolutely is ripe for expansion. Gameplay: QoL improvements over classic games in this genre eliminate a ton of the time-wasting present in such titles. Combat mechanics are fun, visuals and sound effects are gratifying (critical hits come with a lot of pageantry for which I'm a total sucker) Art: I LOVE the retro art and imagery that is generously placed at different story beats and encounters. Even if the combat or adventure aspects didn't exist, I'd suggest this game solely for the story and art presentation. It doesn't go too deeply into companion relationships or backstories or their dynamics with one another; it's a fairly linear tale that revolves around you, "Protagonist", but it doesn't forget what it is throughout the game, and you meet interesting characters with dark Cthulhu-centric tropes and references. As for the light criticisms: The best way I can describe it is it has a strong foundation; good bones for an RPG, but it feels like some parts of it could have done with more testing or polish. Playing on the standard difficulty, I found myself flush with food and reagents for crafting and never had to concern myself with injuries or resource management when I could easily go a brief distance to rest and fully recover. There are a good number of skills but many of the skill checks in the game sorta feel like they were wedged in to ensure players *felt* like their feat investments for bonuses to said skills mattered. Many outcomes for skills are binary; pass/fail doesn't have a lot of variance aside from things like 'less efficient solution/spend more resources/take damage'. Combat encounters are fun, the mechanics and rules - to me - are plenty enjoyable but there are a few things that aren't fully realized; debuffs/status effects: -On enemies, it's mostly just about stunning them, and unless I'm mistaken, there's no initial save for stun - I've never seen it - just an end of turn saving throw, but that still means spells like Thunderclap stun the entire array of enemies who thus become unable to act for at least one turn *AND* flat-footed for backstab (sneak attack) bonuses. So once you get to Air magic mastery with a caster, you trivialize most fights. -On the player-party, it starts out being significant. Poison is dangerous and diseases' attribute penalty hurts, so as a Champion (sorta like paladin) I invested in the ailment curing spells... but the volume of potions you can craft and buy and the fact that resting purges ailments means I've used those spells only a handful of times throughout my playthrough. Buff spells are lackluster and provide marginal differences that don't seem to make a meaningful difference. There are more, but those are what really stood out to me. Again, though, the framework for the combat system and character progression is great, and I can easily see a mod community flourishing if this game gains enough momentum.
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This is the unusual example of a game that I absolutely loved, but I don't know anyone who I can recommend it to. So this recommendation goes out into the ether for folks who share my tastes more than my friends do. This game isn't well served by its comparison to its algorithmic relative. There's strategy and exploration and resource management and tactics, yes. But if you're expecting an open-world, or a Baldurs Gate 3 level tactical nuance then you're going to be disappointed. What this game has is VIBES. From the art, music, tone, music, and even limited scope of tactical expression; this game feels like the better-than-reality memory of the best dark fantasy computer RPGs of the 90s. Worth the purchase, in my opinion, whether you're interested in this as a nostalgia-inducer or as an exploration into a design space that has become more and more niche over time.
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(Follow [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/42150626-Jarl%2527s-Game-Treasury/]my curator for more reviews like this) Skald is a solid CRPG inspired by 1980s to early 90s classics. It features turn based combat on a tactical grid, overworld exploration ala Ultima, and a handful of quests that can be approached in different ways. What it does, it does well, but my only disappointment was with its length. It's very short for a game of this type, and I finished it after only 16 hours. When you think you finished the first major area of the game and expect the world to open up, you've actually passed the halfway point already and the game becomes far more linear and sparsely populated afterwards. Apart from the disappointing second half, the game was quite excellent though. And really, any game whose biggest flaw is that there wasn't enough of it should be recommended. The highlight is definitely the city occupied by sinister cultists, which offers several approaches to solve its main quest. Exploring the island is highly enjoyable too - at some point you get a ship to explore other islands, but sadly there's not too much to discover there apart from one or two locations. The combat is solid, rewarding tactical maneuvers on a grid like the classic Gold Box games. Skald has a few interesting systems, like two health bars: the first represents a character's endurance and when it's depleted, every hit inflicts a wound which can only be healed by resting (or leveling up, which fully heals up the character). This makes protecting characters with low health a priority, to prevent them from getting hit on their second health bar, while also encouraging focusing on wounded enemies to further reduce their combat effectiveness by inflicting debuffing wounds. While there are a couple of useful magic spells, I found myself using them rarely. Buffs and debuffs were the ones I used the most, as well as healing, while damage spells felt underwhelming compared to the damage output of fighters and thieves. Oh, the thieves - this game has the most overpowered thief class I've ever seen in an RPG. Thanks to the backstab feat, they can do insane amounts of damage that almost insta-kill every enemy up to the late game. Flanking an enemy usually adds a bonus to hit and damage, but thieves do additional backstab damage to any flanked enemy, which is ridiculously high. For comparison, when my strongest fighter would do 20-40 damage per hit, the thief's backstab did 130. No other source of damage compares. For most of the game, my tactics revolved around pinning enemies with my defensive melee characters, and then moving the thief in to finish them off with a single hit. Despite the lack of balance, the fights were fun and engaging. Especially early on the combat is challenging and requires good tactics to survive. You can only rest where it's safe to do so, and healing potions are rare in the early game, so there's quite some resource management and attrition to consider. While the combat is solid, the game's real strength is in the writing. Skald combines a traditional medieval fantasy setting with a plot of Lovecraftian horror. There are weird tentacle creatures, sentient fungi, dreaming gods, characters losing their sanity, all the classic tropes. There's even one quest in a particular town which essentially retells a particular classic cosmic horror tale... if you know your mythos, you will be able to predict 90% of that quest's events from the moment you hear a certain woman sing a few lines of a song while gazing out across the shore. The plot doesn't do anything new, many of its elements feel very familiar if you've read Lovecraft and other authors around him. But the sheer quality of the writing is impressive, genuinely one of the most well-written RPGs I've played in years. The prose is excellent, far far above what you'd usually expect from a computer game. If game awards had any meaning, this would have won best writing of 2024, but we all know these awards aren't really about quality. Another high point is the soundtrack, from the catchy menu theme to the more somber atmospheric pieces playing deep down in the crypts. I may be a little biased since I'm friends with the composer, but he did put out a couple of bangers for this one. The music and visuals work together to create a dense atmosphere, and the game is very immersive despite its low-resolution graphics. The artstyle fits very well to the Lovecraftian themes of the game, reinforcing the vibe of dread it establishes. Overall, a very enjoyable traditional RPG with excellent writing and great atmosphere, although its second half feels a little rushed and I was disappointed at how quickly it was over. Can't help but feel like there's a bit of wasted potential in here - just a few more locations, a few more quests towards the endgame, and it would have felt more well-rounded. Even so, I can fully recommend it to any fans of oldschool RPGs, to enjoyers of Lovecraftian cosmic horror, or simply to people who want some actual good writing in their computer games.
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I enjoyed the game. Very dismal story, much to its strength. I've seen some people say that it's too depressing, which seems a little strange given that Lovecraftian narratives tend to have very dreary atmospheres. Don't come into this game thinking you're going to fight god or something. That being said, the combat itself could be a bit more fleshed out. Once you figure out the thief's backstabbing ability, it can clear pretty much any encounter that doesn't have resistances to critical hits. Full disclosure, I played on Normal the whole time, but the game allows you to tweak your difficulty and change it throughout the game whenever you feel like it. Additionally, as the game progresses some of the exploration elements and such begin to fall away. It becomes a bit more of a linear journey with no real means of finding hidden secrets. Sprinkling in some other elements that feel a little undercooked (like crafting and cooking) and it ultimately kinda drops off at the end. However, it seems like one guy made it, so I can't fault the developer that much. All in all, an enjoyable experience that was worth the money. -As an edit, it was most likely made by a small team.
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Frequently Asked Questions
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is currently priced at 14.99€ on Steam.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 14.99€ on Steam.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory received 2,785 positive votes out of a total of 2,958 achieving an impressive rating of 9.02.
😍
SKALD: Against the Black Priory was developed by High North Studios AS and published by Raw Fury.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is playable and fully supported on Windows.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is not playable on Linux.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is a single-player game.
There are 3 DLCs available for SKALD: Against the Black Priory. Explore additional content available for SKALD: Against the Black Priory on Steam.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory does not support Steam Remote Play.
SKALD: Against the Black Priory is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for SKALD: Against the Black Priory.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 05 March 2026 19:23 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 12 March 2026 17:23 |
| Steam price | 15 March 2026 04:27 |
| Steam reviews | 12 March 2026 23:55 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about SKALD: Against the Black Priory, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about SKALD: Against the Black Priory
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- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck SKALD: Against the Black Priory compatibility
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Game modes
Features
Online players
20
Developer
High North Studios AS
Publisher
Raw Fury
Release
30 May 2024
Platforms
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