About this bundle

Greymarsh and Bloodwood Dungeon are text-based adventure games. Simple, gamebook-style battle and inventory management are combined with branching stories. Atmosphere and dialog are important aspects. Greymarsh is a city in the clutches of a ruthless tyrant, while Bloodwood is a forest of legend shunned by most.

Is this bundle for you?
Give these games a go if the following statements ring true when you play RPGs or adventure games:
* You like to read, as opposed to just skimming the text
* You like your fantasy to be dark, mature and gritty rather than a funhouse of goblins, elves, knights and trolls
* You put large emphasis on story, coherent world building and atmosphere
* You like an epic dungeon crawl now and then
* When you spend lots of time optimizing your stats or tinkering with your inventory, it feels like a necessary evil that you could do without

You should probably skip this game if your gaming persona is better described by this list:
* You love stats tinkering and finding optimal combos
* You love replayability and "finding all the endings"
* You have an attention span not suited to long swaths of text

Gameplay mechanics
The main game loop is exceedingly simple, and purposely so: the player reads what happens, and then gets to choose from a small number of actions to progress the story. Most locations can be revisited and fast travel is available through a map.

There are just four stats parameters to consider: hit points, strength, armor and fighting prowess. That's it. In addition, the protagonist keeps an amount of gold and some items, including weapons.

The fighting system is turn-based, like everything else in the game. Despite the rudimentary battle loop using RGN in the style of old gamebooks, there is sometimes room for tactics.

A started session is associated with just one save slot, meaning permadeath in theory. In practice, this is circumvented through an in-world mechanism that is akin to the bonfires of the Souls games.

Inspired by gamebooks
These games are heavily inspired by the gamebooks that were so popular in the eighties. One of the most appealing features of this form of solo adventuring was the small scope: rarely did these books consist of more than 500 situations in which to choose from a small number of actions so as to further the story. The battle system and inventory management were rudimentary and designed to be mastered immediately. That way, the action could start right away.

The meticulous tinkering with inventory items and stats optimization so popular in games these days... there was rarely much of that.

And even though the interactivity was low with today's standards, the reader/player still had the illusion of agency, of having the power to affect the miniature world conjured up within the gamebook's pages.

Greymarsh and Bloodwood Dungeon strive to recreate that feeling.