Albion

About Albion

Albion (1995) is Blue Byte's science-fantasy RPG in which a stranded space pilot discovers that the planet his corporation plans to mine is home to the feline Iskai and the descendants of ancient Celts.

Albion in Depth

In 2227 the DDT corporation sends the colony ship Toronto to a distant system for raw materials. Pilot Tom Driscoll and junior government agent Rainer Hofstedt survey a desert planet that the ship's AI, Ned, says is rich in ore, but their readings disagree with Ned's moments before their shuttle crashes. The planet, Albion, teems with life: the Iskai, a feline people who use plants for homes and transfer spirits between bodies, and Celts brought from Earth two thousand years earlier. Joined by the warrior Drirr, the mage Sira and the mute druid Mellthas, Tom learns that Ned has suppressed the truth and must stop the mining before it destroys the world.

The player leads a party of up to six, earning experience by fighting and solving puzzles and spending training points with trainers to raise skills. Most interiors use a 2D overhead view, with a smaller-scale map for the wider world, while dungeons, caves and the outsides of large cities switch to real-time first-person 3D with an automap. Combat is turn-based on a five-by-six grid: each turn the player picks attack, move, magic, item or flee for each character, actions resolve in order of speed, and because attacks target squares rather than enemies, a foe that moves first is simply missed. The party can only move in the bottom two rows, but an Advance Party option drags every enemy a row closer.

Making Albion

Blue Byte developed and published it for MS-DOS, with the core team of Thalion Software's Amberstar and Ambermoon, after Commodore's bankruptcy ended plans for an Amiga release. Reviews praised the originality of its combat, story and puzzles. PC Gamer US called it "a fun, engrossing, and involved roleplaying experience", Computer Gaming World recommended it to lovers of role-playing games "when another dry spell hits", and Next Generation called it a "bright spot in the desert" of computer RPGs at the time. Arcane rated it seven out of ten, praising its graphics and size, and Computer Games Strategy Plus called it "a breath of fresh air for the RPG crowd".