Holy shit, Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar is available now

When pigs fly

Eat crow, everyone. Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar is here.

A couple of days ago, I posted about the game in production for over twenty years, its constant broken promises and delays. Since then I have feverishly been checking Steam to see if it was going to pop up out of the ether and surprise us all, and this morning, I was shocked to see a hefty price tag of around forty bucks, early “reviews” of the game, and a ton of discussion on the Steam discussion board.

Cleve Blakemore’s magnum opus has finally been released after a long and troubled development time.

Early impressions are that the game is mostly functional apart from a few bugs people are discovering, but it’s really early. I’ve been watching muted Twitch streams this morning to get a feel for how it feels, and I will say this much; it looks fucking hard.

That’s to be expected. It is a spiritual continuation of the Wizardry games of old. People have been ripping into it in the chat for sound issues, saying “it’s like Cleve recorded himself stumbling around drunk in the kitchen and made that the soundtrack” and that the UI is a confusing mess, but for better or worse the game is now available.

I really hope more than anything it makes the people who have been following it, some of whom have likely literally died waiting for it, happy. The passion these folks have is truly unprecedented. I hope Cleve continues to polish it up as time goes on as well.

I’m fucking shocked. Really.