![]() But things were already changing as Ravensword: Shadowlands hit, and the market would soon swing in a major way. The market enthusiastically supported games like these, and thus publishers were able to justify sinking greater and greater costs into them. When this game hit, things looked really hopeful for premium, relatively high-end RPGs on iOS. ![]() Playing Ravensword: Shadowlands makes me a little sad. The game currently runs quite well on modern devices and iOS versions. Since then, there have only been a couple of other updates, typically to ensure compatibility with new iOS versions. Over the course of the next year, the game received two fairly large updates that added new content and fixed issues reported by players. The game was a massive improvement over the original game, and a solid upgrade in most ways over Aralon. Ravensword: Shadowlands finally released on December 20th, 2012, receiving rave reviews from critics and fans alike. It didn’t quite make that date, either, but the release of a trailer in October seemed to indicate that the long wait would soon be over. In March of 2012, our own Jared Nelson got to put hands on the game at that year’s GDC, where a tentative mid-2012 release date was set. The game resurfaced as 2011 came to a close, with some impressive but unfinished rendered artwork showing off, if nothing else, that the game was still alive. At the same time, Crescent Moon’s publishing business started to grow, and dealing with the business matters behind all of that probably kept at least a few people away from active development work. It appears that Crescent Moon took a more active role in helping Aralon be the best game it could be, and Ravensword‘s sequel had to get put on the backburner. In March of 2010, Crescent Moon posted a bunch of art and some details on the game in the TouchArcade forums, and expressed a desire to have the game out sometime later that year. Interestingly, the first whispers of Ravensword Shadowlands ($6.99) came mere months after the release of the first game. RPG fans anxiously awaited the next internally-developed Crescent Moon RPG, but they’d have to wait a couple of years for it. Joined by other standout titles across a variety of genres, these popular RPGs helped earn Crescent Moon a rather lofty reputation among iOS gamers. In spite of the rather large jump in scope from Ravensword to Aralon, the two games released just over a year apart. Crescent Moon followed up that game with Aralon: Sword And Shadow (Free), which took just about every element to a whole new level for mobile RPGs. It’s a little rudimentary by modern standards, but at the time, it was a pretty big hit. One of the earlier articles covered Ravensword: The Fallen King ($2.99), one of the first big 3D RPGs released on the iOS platform. We’ve looked at a few games from publisher Crescent Moon Games in the RPG Reload already. You can do that by posting in the comments below, dropping by the Official RPG Reload Club thread, or by tweeting me at Since the schedule is planned quite far in advance, your suggestion might not appear soon, but it will go on the master list. As per the prophecy, I try to choose a balanced variety of RPGs from week to week, but if you feel like I’m missing something cool, please let me know. It’s a chance to revisit old favorites, reflect on their position in the overall iOS RPG spectrum, or simply to take a deeper dive than our reviews typically allow for. Each week, we take a look at an RPG from the App Store’s past to see how it holds up in the here and now. Hello, gentle readers, and welcome to the RPG Reload, the weekly feature where we respect giant dino-cows.
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