Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar IndieGoGo Drive Launched

Could it be? Is Cleveland Blakemore's first-person "old skool" RPG finally going to see the light of day after 17 years of development? That appears to be the case, as the notorious developer has launched an IndieGoGo campaign that seeks to raise $250,000 over the next 4 months to make Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar a reality by May 2013. Have a look at the pitch video:



And here's the full description, nearly two decades in the making:
Grimoire is a turn-based, 3D, first person perspective roleplaying adventure in 1024x768 256 Color graphics. The 3D step-based engine is pixel perfect and smooth scrolling with zero distortion handcrafted images.

The style of play is very similar to that of CRPGS during the golden age of computer roleplaying before 1992 like Eye of the Beholder, Bane of the Cosmic Forge, Crusaders of the Dark Savant, Might & Magic, The Bard's Tale, Stonekeep and other classic games.

The emphasis in the game is on the story, exploration, discovery, character advancement, puzzle solving, strategic phased combat, treasure hunting, inventory management and interaction with the non-player characters encountered during play.

Features:

'¢ 600 hours of play possible in a single game
'¢ 244+ Maps in the game to explore!
'¢ Turn-Based strategic combat
'¢ 144 context sensitive magic spells
'¢ 14 races, 15 professions, 50 skills
'¢ 64 intelligent NPCs with 8000+ Words in Vocabulary
'¢ Full Sentence Communication with NPCs
'¢ 240+ monsters each with special powers and defenses
'¢ 1000+ items, Carry Containers, Global Party Inventory
'¢ 30 conditions, from Confusion to Disease & Lycanthropy
'¢ Automapping, Autowalking, Autohealing
'¢ Global Map Atlas With Position Marker
'¢ Quest Journal, Hint Prompting, Help Facility, Mini-Quests
'¢ Complex LockPicking Interfaces for Doors & Chests
'¢ Challenging Puzzles and Rich Interactive Dungeons
'¢ Browsable Character Library for up to 100 characters
'¢ Up to 12 Commented Postage Stamped Savegames
'¢ Multi-themed GUI and customizable screen layouts