James Kelly posted news about this project to the Ultima Dragons Facebook group with a call for playtesters, which is noteworthy in and of itself. Typically, we don’t see people drop news of near-complete projects out of the blue, but that appears to be the case here.

The project itself is called Serpent Isle Restored, and aims to be as complete a restoration as possible of cut content into Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle…using the Exult engine, of course.

For those who weren’t aware, Serpent Isle was shipped by Origin Systems to meet a hard deadline in 1993, and much of its second half was left behind. Each of the Isle’s three cities were meant to have expanded storylines chronicling their respective falls after the release of the Banes, among other things. What players got instead, James writes, was “a massacre that happened off-screen.”

Serpent Isle Restored aims to bring that missing half back. According to the post, it’s rebuilt from Origin’s design documents, from unused code in the shipped game and its beta, and from what members of the original team have said since. As James puts it: “Where the record ends, we wrote the rest in the game’s own voice.” As noted above, the restoration is described as complete, and what it needs now is people to play it through to the end.

When the Banes break loose, Moonshade, Monitor and Fawn are still full of people, each ruled by a familiar face who isn’t quite themselves. Deaths happen in front of you, for a reason, and the people left behind remember. Some older threads from earlier games are finally picked up, though James is careful to say they don’t change where the Avatar goes next. The Silver Seed is more evenly woven into the story, as well. The project estimates fifteen to thirty hours of additional gameplay, or about seventy to a hundred hours for a full run of the game.

You’ll need your own copy of Serpent Isle with The Silver Seed, and Exult 1.12 or later. There’s no public download yet, but the first build has gone out to an initial group of testers, along with a spoiler-light companion guide in the spirit of Origin’s Balancing the Scales. To sign up, reply on this Facebook post with your preferred platform, whether you’ve played Serpent Isle before (first-timers are welcome), and how much time you can give it.