Sometime today, the second chapter of Siege of Avalon will be released. Current subscribers can download the new chapter directly; with luck the new chapter will also be made available for download today from the game's website, Siege-of-Avalon.com.

Developed by Digital Tome, Siege of Avalon is a traditional RPG for Windows 95 that, in a revolutionary new method of distribution, is being released gradually as a series of episodes, or Chapters. The first chapter is available now as a free download; subsequent chapters will be made available at a cost of $9.95 per chapter. To learn more about how this works, click here.

The story follows the adventure of a young man who arrives at the city of Avalon, a Citadel formed as a fortress by seven kingdoms to defend against the Sha'ahoul, raiders from distant steppes. Avalon had been locked in a war against the Sha'ahoul for twelve years and this is the point at which our young hero enters the picture. In short, the Citadel has been recently devastated by the disappearance of General Ovun, the commander of the Citadel's field forces, and a third of the Citadel's men. With the Citadel so vulnerable, an attack by the Sha'ahoul is inevitable. Enter the hero.

The game is billed as a "traditional" medieval-fantasy RPG. Utilizing an isometric perspective, the players view in a similar fashion as Diablo or Baldur's Gate. The player will be able to determine their character's skills and decide how they evolve over time instead of choosing a race or class from the beginning and being restricted by that choice. Siege is a single-player game with no multiplayer capabilities. Players will be able to have NPCs join their party and can have up to five NPCs in the party at a time. NPCs can be added or dropped at will and players can issue prioritized orders to them. This is a 2D game, although it will support dynamic shadow casting, flickering lighting, X-Ray vision through walls, true point-to-point projectiles and spells, and something called "real-time CharacterLAB rendering" of sprites. To be brief, CharacterLAB stands for "Character Layered Animation Building," which is a techie way of saying that Siege can support several hundred characters. There are 140 supporting characters and hundreds of unique "extras" that make up the cast.

To order or learn more about Siege of Avalon, or other episodic games in development by Digital Tome, visit Siege-of-Avalon.com.