Funny things can happen when your schedule gets messed up in the morning. I needed to hang around the house for an extra half-hour this morning, and as I waited I did a bit of work I needed to complete and while doing that a Facebook friend request came into my email. After confirming an old colleague from a former job, I just checked my feed, and at the top saw that the Mac & Linux versions of Eschalon Book 2 were available to download now!

Of course I headed straight to the site and hit up the single mirror (through GamersHell) to download … and then left the download running as I headed off to work. For whatever reason the connection is quite slow (~100k/sec), something noted on the Basilisk forums and unaffected when I simultaneously downloaded the new 1.03 Windows release.

Here is the announcement:

Eschalon: Book II has just been released for Macintosh and Linux computers!

Read the full press release here: Press Release

Grab a copy of the demo from the downloads link on your left. More mirrors will be posted throughout the day as they come online. Also notice that the Windows version has been officially updated to 1.03 to match the Mac and Linux release versions, so grab a copy of that while you’re there!

Get yourself a Registration Code through the Purchase Games link to unlock the full version

As I said in my First Impressions article,

One subtle thing I noticed was the incredible polish and sense of maturity in the overall development. Things look, feel and play a bit smoother, I haven’t run into a single bug, mistake, typo or other issue as I’ve been playing. The pacing of the story is much more evenly handled and really grabs you from the start.

As I said, I’m only a few hours into the game (though I noted my save from last night was at 1:20AM!) … but I really can’t wait to get back into it and pursue the story further!

Eschalon Book 2 is available to buy now as a digital download direct from Basilisk Games for $24.95. Yet another cool thing is that the game is DRM-free, using only a single unlock code for your purchase. So once you buy the game, you simply download the demo (which is the full game but content-locked) and enter your serial number. That way you can buy the PC version now, and then play the Mac or Linux version when they arrive at the end of the month.

The coolest things bear repeating: once you buy a code you can use it to unlock any version of the game, and the save games are universal across platforms. So I can use the code from my Windows purchase to unlock my Mac version, and simply by transferring files can pick up my Windows game on the Mac. One note – the 1.03 version uses a new save format, so once you save in a 1.03 release you can’t use the file on an earlier game version.

As a reminder, the download serves as a demo as well as the unlockable full game, so if you aren’t sure yet, go grab the 280MB demo and give it a shot. I’m pretty confident you’ll see that it is worth buying!

Source: Basilisk Games on Facebook