Arxel Tribe

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French publishers Arxel Tribe, whose past adventures have been published in the US by DreamCatcher (for example, Faust aka Seven Games of the Soul) and UbiSoft (Hitchcock) had a single adventure to show at E3 this year -- the sequel to Ring. Like the original, Ring II: Twilight of the Gods is based on Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen opera, although this game appears to focus on a single character, Siegfried.

Arxel is continuing their recent trend of developing their adventures for casual gamers. They describe the game more as "easy entertainment" than a puzzle-heavy game, and they estimate the game will only take 10-12 hours or so to finish. The pre-rendered graphics are well drawn, as one would expect from this developer, and many of the environments should have an epic feel -- the character is often just a few pixels against a much larger background.

Ring II is due out in Europe in September. No North American publisher has been announced as of yet, although one might expect to DreamCatcher or perhaps UbiSoft to pick up those rights at a slightly later date.

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