Beamdog Entertainment is a team of ex-Bioware and Black Isle developers who specialize on taking classic Infinity Engine RPGs and updating them for modern devices, like the Mac or iPad. First, they did it for Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II. Now they’re doing it for Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition, which has just been released on the PC and Mac.
First released back in the year 2000, Icewind Dale was a snowbound RPG meant, at the time, to take the Infinity Engine and Dungeons and Dragons ruleset and apply it to a more Diablo like hack-and-slash game. As a fully-fleshed out game, it sits somewhere in between Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II: it’s a satisfying game to pick up and hack-and-slash your way through some goblins, but less plot-heavy than many D&D RPGs.
As they have done with previous Infininty Engine games, Beamdog has tweaked and added content to Icewind Dale, including new kits and character classes (some plucked from Baldur’s Gate II), dozens of new items and spells, and restored quest material cut from the original game. The redesigned user interface features Zoom capabilities and a Quickloot Bar, among numerous other improvements. Up to six players can simultaneously enjoy Icewind Dale with the new cross-platform multiplayer mode.
Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition is now available on the Mac for $19.99 through Steam, Beamdog, or Good Old Games, with the Mac App Store coming soon. And don’t worry if you’re not a Mac gamer: for both of Beamdog’s previous releases, Baldur’s Gate and Baldur’s Gate II, an iPad version of the game came out imminently, and Icewind Dale is promised to get its own iOS port soon enough.
Personally, I love Icewind Dale, but what really makes me excited here is what this might mean for Icewind Dale II: Enhanced Edition. Fingers crossed!
Source: Icewind Dale
