The Scent of War I. - Damn Those Demons

In this role playing game set in a traditional fantasy world (like Lord of the Rings or D&D), you play as heroes trying to save the world from a war fueled by racial hatred, mistrust, and an unknown force steering the whole situation. You can create your party of up to five characters by choosing from 10 playable races and 10 classes.

This was my original delve into the Shareware world back in 1995/1996. I developed it with my good friend Michael Toth back when we were in high school.

By today's standards, it's not a very good game, but for a couple of high schoolers with no budget and no experience, it was a good effort. It received mostly positive reviews, was included on quite a few "best of" shareware compilations, and sold a few hundred copies to users in 8 or 10 countries around the world. This earned us enough beer money to get us through college, and also earned me an A+ as my high school senior project.

The game is unique in the RPG world in that it doesn't take itself very seriously. It is littered with jokes and references to other RPGs. Toward the end it gets decidedly weird with a character based on my high school guidance counselor, and a castle made from a digitized photo of Mike's head.

"Where is Scent of War II?" you might ask. Well, it was never completed. School and life got in the way, unfortunately. There was a mostly finished engine and a rough outline of a story, but that was where it died. I did find the source code for it, but it relies on an old 3d engine that doesn't run on anything above DirectX 3.0 or so.