The original Knights of Pen & Paper ($4.99) from Behold Studios was a quirky spin on the RPG genre, as it had you playing as a group of friends who were themselves playing some good old-fashioned tabletop RPG. This game-within-a-game style allowed for a ton of humorous references and tugs on the nostalgia strings, and despite being a bit grindy and imbalanced Knights of Pen & Paper was an enjoyable experience. In 2013 Behold teamed up with Paradox to flesh out the content and balance the game with a massive expansion. In 2015, with Behold busy on another project, Paradox tapped KYY Games to create Knights of Pen & Paper 2 (Free), which upped the graphical style from 8-bit inspired to 16-bit inspired and hoped to add in some new features. Unfortunately, upon release, Knights of Pen & Paper 2 failed to live up to its predecessor, though to its credit since then it’s been dutifully updated and expanded upon quite a bit.
This leads to this past December, when Behold Studios announced that they were back behind the helm of the Pen & Paper series and were working on a new entry called Galaxy of Pen & Paper, which looked to take the series from fantasy to sci-fi while expanding on the mechanics that made the original so good. At the time of the announcement, Galaxy of Pen & Paper was only slated for Mac, Linux, and PC and the only release window was a vague announcement for sometime in 2017. Well, today we have learned that Galaxy of Pen & Paper will also be arriving on iOS and Android just as we had hoped, and that the game is set to release this coming July. In case you missed the teaser from December here it is again, followed by some screens.
As much as I liked many of the additions in Knights of Pen & Paper 2, it definitely felt like it was missing the soul of the first game, and I kind of think that had to do with Behold Studios not being involved in the production. I’m very happy to see them back behind the wheel for Galaxy of Pen & Paper, and I’m also thrilled to see a sci-fi theme instead of the woefully overdone fantasy one. Look for more information to drop in the months leading up to the game’s release in July and if you want an especially deep look at the original Knights of Pen & Paper to see more of what it’s all about, check out Shaun’s lengthy RPG Reload feature about the game.
