On the 30th anniversary of the original Bard's Tale, what better time than now to go on an adventure worthy of song?

The Bard's Tale IV will feature labyrinths and dungeons chock-full of dangerous traps, puzzles, and challenges, as well as the winding streets of the city of Skara Brae and its outlying environments. Exploration will take place in the first-person dungeon crawler style of the original trilogy. With full rights to everything from the original games, the story of The Bard's Tale IV will center on a new Skara Brae built upon the ruins of the old, returning familiar gameplay concepts such as No-Magic Zones and Magic Mouths.

Utilizing the Unreal 4 engine, The Bard's Tale IV will also represent a graphical leap forward in the genre, immersing you in a highly detailed and lush world you'll want to map to its farthest reaches. The Bard's Tale IV enriches the setting from the original trilogy with Scottish culture, including a soundtrack inspired by Gaelic music.

The original The Bard’s Tale, The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight and The Bard’s Tale III: Thief of Fate will be given FREE to all backers of the currently ongoing The Bard’s Tale IV Kickstarter for any pledges to tier $20 or higher.

The original trilogy will be released to backers after the Kickstarter has successfully funded as emulated versions of the classic games. However, inXile Entertainment also has an agreement in place with the original The Bard’s Tale III programmer Rebecca “Burger” Heineman to work on updated versions of the three games based on their Apple IIGS versions, to run natively on modern Windows and Mac PCs. Once she delivers on the enhanced versions, they too will be given free to backers.

“It’s pretty amazing to see how far the graphics have come since these first games and it’s fun to think that people will still be playing these classics decades after release. These games made my career so it’s only fitting that we are doing another game.” said Brian Fargo, CEO. “Of course playing them will not be necessary to understand the new title, but we wanted to give our backers the opportunity to and are always happy to give our supporters some free extra value!”

inXile plans to use photogrammetry to create in-game 3D objects from photos of architecture, taken right in Scotland. With such detailed assets, The Bard's Tale IV will have intricate interactions, allowing for detailed physical puzzles in the game world, or while inspecting your own items in your inventory to find hidden compartments, latches, and more.

Of course, Skara Brae is not always a friendly place. The Bard's Tale IV will update the classic gameplay of the originals, featuring a dynamic phase based combat system. Combat will utilize the complex decision-making opportunities of traditional phase based combat, but with a constantly evolving enemy strategy and a pacing that keeps you on your toes.