Serpent in the Staglands

Whalenought Studios / May 27, 2015 / Rated Unrated

Data last updated July 24, 2026

Buy on Amazon Search on eBay

As an affiliate, PixelScry may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through these links.

1 playing now on Steam $13.99 on Steam View on Steam →

Released

2015

Publisher

Whalenought Studios

Time to beat

~1 hrs

Community

A campaign within the world of Vol, a fully realized setting inspired by the late bronze age in a Transylvanian landscape, with unique politics, races and gods steeped in history. Featuring a chosen party of five, you role-play Necholai, a minor god of a celestial body who descends to the Staglands for a moonlit festival only to find the way home blocked and immortality slipping away. Seeking answers and aid, you take on a mortal body and the guise of a traveling Spicer. This isn't a story of good and evil, saving the world or being a hero, it's about intrigue and your adventure of survival in a harsh land.

While the game rolls the dice for you, you'll traverse the Staglands on a path narrated by your own wits and choices. A tabletop inspired experience with adventure-game like navigation, Serpent in the Staglands offers no auto-populating map markers, checklist quest grinding and rigid story exposition.

Examine hand-drawn maps in your inventory for secret locations, diagrams of foreign languages, note encounters of interest in your in-game journal and figure out on your own how best to smuggle Spices. Roleplay, investigate, and pray to the RNG god when combat begins.Serpent in the Staglands features:

Party-based, real time with pause combat focused on macro tactical decisions and creative party skill combinations
Classless role-playing system: create builds via any combination of the over 100 magic, combat and aptitude skills available to create or find up to 5 unique characters
Non-linear storyline to explore as your adventure allows
No level scaling or story-blocked map barriers impede your adventure
Dynamic item use, including an incantation book, hand-drawn maps, and a herbology kit for brewing potions
Combat designed for minimal pause spamming and without cooldowns, instead focusing on pre-buffing, positioning and auto-triggering skills
An unmarked map filled with wilderness, cities, towers, temples, dungeons and caverns to explore.
Write your own journal notes for quests, puzzles and leads as you investigate. The game won't hold your hand or tell you what to do.
Huge variety of enemies and challenges, including monsters, rogue mages and mutilated outlaws, which all can have the same spells and skills you do

You'll never pay for updates, patches, or DLC of any kind for Serpent in the Staglands.
For more gameplay information and official forums, please visit: http://serpentinthestaglands.com

Serpent in the Staglands is an old-school isometric computer role-playing game developed by independent game developer Whalenought Studios for Microsoft Windows, OS X and Linux. Using the tagline "a 90s CRPG in every way but the release date", The game resembles several classic games such as Fallout, Baldur's Gate, and Darklands. The game is notable for being "old-school", lacking several features seen in modern RPGs such as introductory or tutorial levels, automatically updated journals and quest-markers. It also has a distinct pixelated graphics style. The game uses the Unity Technologies' Unity engine.