Chaos Awakens

Borin Duskmere left Embervein a travelling merchant. He came back with something in his hands that answers when he opens them. He doesn't speak a word to it. He doesn't wave a staff. He looks at a thing, and it happens. Then his mother is poisoned. The only cure grows at the bottom of the old mine, and the one man who knows what waits down there is pouring ale behind the bar of the Tusk & Pick. Chaos Awakens is a party RPG about a dwarf, his friends, and the cost of the things they choose. This free demo is the first stretch of the road: a tavern full of people with stories, a forest valley full of things with teeth, and a mountain pass where someone has been waiting for Borin. What's in the demo • A party of dwarfs. Borin, a sorcerer who casts without a word. Fargrim, an exiled barbarian with a greataxe, who complains about everything and follows you anyway. Brennor, a ranger who tracks, translates, and says the quiet part out loud. • Fight your way. Real-time with pause, or turn-based with a full action economy. Choose at New Game and switch in Options between fights. • Talk your way. Skill checks roll in the open, and the party lends its best hand. Magic opens doors in conversation, but there is always another way through. • Companions who keep score. Fargrim notices what you do and remembers it. Romance is part of the story, slow and warm and entirely optional. • Voiced. Dialogue and narration are voiced throughout. • A world to poke at. Traps to find and disarm, locks to pick, letters to read, side quests in the woods, a map that fills in as you walk, and a Chronicle of the people and places you meet. • Story and Normal difficulty. Each one tells you plainly what it changes before you pick. Windows and Mac, free. An early demo of a game still being made: everything is subject to change. Tell me how you liked the characters, whether the first fight felt fair, and which combat mode you ended up in.