An Earthly Inheritance is a short adventure-ish game made for the Golden Age of Game Mak jam here on RMN. In it you play a lowly farmer boy who ends up in the party of the current chosen hero. It has at least two endings, and I think there might be a third, but I haven't gone back to check yet. Despite the summary's claims to the contrary, this is really a story-based game, so let's leave that for last and move on to

The Presentation:
Like it says in the summary, it's all RTP graphics and sounds. It's not going to turn any heads, but it's all used very well. The only problem I had was that it was possible to walk on the roofs in the beginning. Other than that, everything does what it's supposed to do, presentation-wise.

The Gameplay:
There's not much gameplay in the traditional sense (only a few battles, and no walking about after the first few minutes) and it's very linear in the early going, but there are many different choice points, a la The Walking Dead, which can affect which ending you get. It isn't obvious what kind of influence the earlier choices have, but I do know I wasn't given a choice in one playthrough that I did in the previous one, so some of them must change your current state. I had serious problems with the text speed, but that can wait until we discuss

The Story:
An Earthly Inheritance is, at heart, a parody/satire of cliched RPGs. (The theme of the Golden Age of Gam Make event was cliches, you see.) It's about the quest of Faraday the chosen hero, Alyssa the archmage, Elena the Fateguide, and you, Matt the farmer, who is only tagging along because you're Faraday's friend. Together you travel the world to defeat the dark lord... hopefully. Some of the jokes fall a bit flat (the middle section in particular is full of jokes about RPG cliches that are a little cliched themselves), but by the end the game manages pull out some good jokes, and even achieve some genuine pathos.

Unfortunately, the story is brought down by a slow text speed (pause) full of (pause) seemingly random (pause) pauses (pause). It was exacerbated on my end by the fact that the shift key function, which was supposed to speed up dialogue, didn't seem to work. It's a shame, because aside from this issue, the game is pretty good, and it would be pretty easy to fix (just take out all those damn pauses). As it is, the text speed issues caused me to knock about a star from the final rating.

Final Verdict:
Worth a shot if you like story games, and especially if you don't mind a slow text speed.