I’ve been making a point to talk to absolutely everyone in the game, because absolutely everyone is such fun to talk to! What’s more, as much as I enjoy the combat, most of the game seems to be about exploration, simple puzzle-solving, and stat-based dialogue options. All of the characters are interesting, funny, and seem like credible people, rather than tired video game cliches. In my head-cannon, she was a college professor before becoming a Shadowrunner, so I always choose the super-polite, well-spoken dialogue options.Īnd such dialogue options! The leveling mechanics are simple and streamlined, the combat is fun, fast-paced, and deadly, but the excellent writing is what really shines in Shadowrun Returns. Meet Nousagi Rabbitstorm, the rifle-shooting, spirit-conjuring, Elvish hacker shaman. You can immediately spend these Karma points on any skill or stat, allowing for infinite variety. Every time you do something important in-game, whether it’s defeating bad guys, hacking a computer, discovering an important fact in your investigations, or conversing with a potential ally, you earn Karma points. I love building myself a character from scratch, and the leveling system is incredibly customizable and beautifully streamlined. This game is really amazing, with lots of RPG fiddly bits to keep me entertained. Instead, I played Shadowrun Returns until four in the morning. And then, typically, it languished unplayed in my Steam game queue for several months until last night when I should have been working on a syllabus for a class I’m supposed to start teaching next week. I slapped that game right on my Steam wishlist the minute it became available, and bought it the first time I noticed it on sale. I remembered the success of Harebrained Schemes’ Shadowrun Kickstarter campaign, and was quite pleased that the game was funded, although I was too broke at the time to contribute to the game. Cyberpunk elves? Troll hackers? Seems right up my alley.

I’ve never played in a campaign, but it sounds pretty awesome. I was aware of Shadowrun the tabletop game – my husband owns most of the books and has oft-regaled me with tales of his past campaigns.

Download armello kickstarter