''Siege of Avalon'' (''SoA'') is a

fantasy Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction involving Magic (supernatural), magical elements, typically set in a fictional universe and sometimes inspired by mythology and folklore. Its roots are in oral traditions, which then became fantasy ...

action role-playing An action role-playing game (often abbreviated action RPG or ARPG) is a subgenre of video games that combines core elements from both the action game and role-playing genre. Definition The games emphasize real-time combat where the player h ...

PC game A personal computer game, also known as a PC game or computer game, is a type of video game played on a personal computer (PC) rather than a video game console or arcade machine. Its defining characteristics include: more diverse and user-deter ...

developed by Digital Tome and published on July 19, 2000. The game follows the player's attempts to lift the

siege A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition warfare, attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from la, sedere, lit=to sit. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity con ...

of Avalon, a castle in the fictional land of Eurale. SoA was initially released in six separate installments, before being released in a combined "Anthology" edition.

History

''Siege of Avalon'' was originally released as six individual "chapters." Each chapter expanded on the game's story, and included other new content. The game's first chapter was free for download, but the remaining five chapters had to be purchased. In 2001,

Global Star Software Global Star Software was a Canadian video game publisher based in Mississauga. It was founded in 1995 by Craig McGauley and Damian Cristiani and operated alongside their Triad Distributors, which had been founded in 1993. Both companies were acqu ...

released all six chapters of the game as "''Siege of Avalon - Anthology''". The anthology CD made minor changes to the game but was primarily identical to the downloadable chapters. The chapters are no longer available for download online. There was initially a sequel to ''Siege of Avalon,'' titled ''Pillars of Avalon'', planned, but Digital Tome went out of business prior to completing development of the second game. In approximately 2003, Digital Tome granted permission for modification of the first chapter of ''Siege of Avalon''. The intent was for the game to be developed to run on other platforms, have continued support available, and for the game to be distributed as

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

under a Lesser General Public License (LGPL). As a result, the source code of the game was made available on Source Forge. In 2011 the project was moved to

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

. In 2014, Blackfly Studios announced that a digital re-release of ''Siege of Avalon'' was planned, but the developer went out of business prior to any release. In March 2016, a community developer from Germany started to work on the Delphi 4 source code from GitHub, but got many errors at first. So the work lasted until January 2017 when he finally fixed everything in order to play the game with that new application (Siege.exe). In August 2017, he released a newer version including better resolution like HD (1280x720p) and Full-HD (1920x1080p). In June 2019, another community developer tried to port the source code to a newer version of Delphi. Since January 2021 his released version works without any errors. Now his aim is to get rid of the DirectX stuff and .dll-files. Meanwhile, in January 2020 the developer mentioned before enhanced his version in order to support some SoA-Mods. Since March 2021 there's also an English localization integrated. In April 2021, an updated version of the game was released on

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

and GOG by SNEG (publisher).Siege of Avalon: Anthology on GOG
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Plot

''Siege of Avalon'' takes place in the fictional land of Eurale. Within Eurale are seven kingdoms: Nisos, Aratoy, Oriam, Fornax, Elythria, Cathea, and Taberland. The seven kingdoms united to the

citadel A citadel is the core fortified area of a town or city. It may be a castle, fortress, or fortified center. The term is a diminutive of "city", meaning "little city", because it is a smaller part of the city of which it is the defensive core. In ...

of Avalon as a central capital of the alliance. Within Eurale is a

nomad A nomad is a member of a community without fixed habitation who regularly moves to and from the same areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the popu ...

ic race called the Sha'ahoul. The Sha'ahoul, led by the leader Mithras, declared war on the seven kingdoms, ultimately besieging the city of Avalon. The

protagonist A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a st ...

of the game is the

playable character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

, which the user can customize and name. The protagonist arrives in Avalon by boat, several years into the siege. The protagonist's brother, Corvus, is already present within the castle when the player begins the game. The course of the gameplay follows the player through various quests related to maintaining Avalon's defenses and foiling plots to overtake the castle. The game climaxes in a battle between the player and Mithras, the leader of the Sha'ahoul, after the invading force breaks through the outer wall of Avalon.

Reception

References

External links

* {{moby game, id=/siege-of-avalon, name=''Siege of Avalon''
''Siege of Avalon'' Website
on

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Siege of Avalon: Open SourceSiege-of-Avalon-Open-Source
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Siege of Avalon Continued Development
at Blackfly Studios 2000 video games Action role-playing video games Commercial video games with freely available source code Episodic video games Fantasy video games Role-playing video games Video games developed in the United States Video games scored by Bjørn Lynne Windows games Windows-only games Single-player video games Global Star Software games Take-Two Interactive games