Nox Archaist is billed as “a new RPG for the classic Apple II platform, playable on Apple II hardware and PC and Mac via emulator”. It features a very Ultima-like tiled world, and aims to be an evolution of classic Apple II-era RPGs, such as Ultima, The Bard’s Tale, and Wizardry.

The target system for Nox Archaist is the 128k Apple IIe (or better), and it will also run in AppleWin. The game engine was coded from scratch, evidently.

And as of this week, the developers are previewing the combat module for the game; the were even kind enough to send a press release via email:

6502 Workshop announces the release of Part 2 of the short short narrative video Cow-A-Pult using the game engine of their 8-bit tile-based RPG. This video shows new combat features. And, Mark Lemmert has informed us that “Part 2 really does have cows in it. The people who omitted the cows from Part 1 have been sacked.”.

In the previous episode, the band of heroes found a village that was attacked by marauding orcs. Now the adventure continues into the wilds to find the orcs’ lair and confront the guardian of the ruins.

New game play elements to look for in this video include:

*New Spells
*New combat tactics
*New tile graphic animations

Look for more details about Nox Archaist’s combat in the June 2017 issue of Juiced.GS magazine prior to the game’s release later this year.

I’ve set up a project entry for Nox Archaist here at the Codex; you can also follow progress on the game at its website.