Depths of Peril is, above all else, an action-RPG (think Diablo). However, it is not your typical action-RPG. It incorporates elements of MMORPGs and, more notably, strategy games. The basic gameplay consists of accepting quests, buying equipment, fighting monsters, finding treasure, and exploring the land. Sounds about par for the course for an action-RPG, right? Well, this is where the similarities between Depths of Peril and other action RPGs stop.

Let me start at the beginning. You start off by choosing one of four classes for your character, naming them and your covenant, and choosing a difficulty level. Then you’re off to the barbarian town of Jorvik which serves as your starting point and hometown as well as the main place to get quests and buy items. It is also home to rival covenants.

But what are covenants?

The main goal in Depths of Peril is to become the leader of Jorvik, and the covenants are the many houses in town vying for control. You are the head of one house, and there are several rival houses each with their own leader. This is where the strategy elements come in. You have some different options for winning whether you want to join with rival covenants or destroy them all. The choice is yours. You can form alliances, form trade routes, trade items, declare war and more. That is the key to being successful in Depths of Peril. You are not always the most powerful house, and you need to appease the more powerful covenants by trading items and money with them so your relationship doesn’t deteriorate too much. Stay on their good side until you’re powerful enough to raid their house and defeat them. Otherwise, if your relationship does deteriorate too much, you will face their wrath, often unexpectedly.

You can make it hard on them, though. You have the ability to recruit up to five additional covenant members — you can even take one around with you while questing—as well as buy up to four house guards. You can also find relics around the world or at vendors which will increase certain stats for your entire covenant.

There are more ways to affect your relationship with rival houses, and some of them are a bit subtle. For example, simply becoming more powerful will make rivals fear you more and be more likely to form an alliance with you; or trading with another house will cause the enemies of that house to like you less. Those are just a couple examples of the game’s mechanic of having consequences to most actions you take (or ignore). However, this system of “consequences” is more pronounced in the regular quests and in the lands outside of Jorvik.

For example, other than the boring old “go gather 10 rat tails for me” type of quests that we’re all used to, many quests involve killing a certain number of monsters that are forming an uprising or finding and killing unique “named” monsters. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Hey, those are also the same boring quests we’re all used to. The difference in Depths of Peril is that if you leave that uprising of skeletons unchecked, you will likely find your town being raided and your covenant being destroyed. Or if you leave that unique monster alone he will start to form a group with other unique monsters and be much harder to take down.

The best part is that Depths of Peril is never predictable due to how dynamic the game world is. Every time you start a new game (which could be quite often) the areas outside of Jorvik are randomly generated as are the rival covenants. Also, there is never any real pattern to when and what quests become available, which means monster uprising can happen pretty much at any time, for example. Or maybe a vendor in town will become petrified, and you have to cure them so you can buy stuff from them. Or maybe your house will suffer a locust infestation, and you have to cure the accompanying status ailment to continue to fight at full capacity. The list goes on.

One neat thing about Depths of Peril is that it has considerable replay value. Each game can last as long as you want, depending on how long you want to keep your allies. This isn’t like other games where you finish the story once and put it down as a finished game. In Depths of Peril your character’s stats, items and recruits all carry over when you start a new game. You can also choose the starting level and aggressiveness of enemy covenants along with the overall difficulty of the world. This effectively combines the character building and item collection of an MMO with the gameplay of a single-player game. There is a story in the game, mostly told in tomes found around the world, but you can gather and read them at any pace you want.

It should be noted that the graphics of this game aren’t impressive by today’s standards, though they have their own particular charm. Environments are detailed and colorful, and you won’t need a super powerful PC to run the game effectively.

Depths of Peril isn’t quite finished yet, but it is shaping up to be a nice game. It may not appeal much to the masses to due its dated visuals, but if you like action-RPGs, you might want to keep an eye on this one, especially if you are looking for a change of pace in the genre.

Depths of Peril is scheduled to be released sometime later this year.