This looks quite promising: http://www.grimrock.net/. A game in the style of Eye of the Beholder, Dungeon Master and Lands of Lore with 90 degree turns, realtime combat and focused on dungeoneering. There is even a trailer, featuring a giant snail, giant spiders, a classical secret door puzzle and rune-based spellcasting.
This may be a nostalgia-influenced opinion, but I like what I am seeing. I wish there were more games like this in the non-AAA category. Hell, I wish there were more games like Wizardry VI-VII.
Sample image:
Awesome! But suddenly:
Unawesome! Let me tackle any situation however I like, don't take the precious xp from me just because I did something unorthodox, like killed a rat with a club-wielding mage. I really hope they reconsider this.Originally Posted by official site
At the risk of being a complete threadshitter infirstsecond post, but how many generic dungeon crawler copypastas do people need to play before they get bored of them? I'm a big RPG nerd but even so, at the age of 23, I'm already completely unenthusiastic about playing the "new and shiny" games like Dragon Age or (to a degree) the witcher because "oh look another game about mountain-hiding gnomes, tree-loving elves and dragons where I'll get to explore dungeons with giant spiders and zombies. Also, magic fucking missle."
Or is it the influx of new generation every year that keeps these projects going?
That being said, the game does look hella purty, so the designers/artists/programmers definitely got good talent at their disposal.
EDIT: saved from a first post threadshit by Pemptus. YAAAAY PEMPTUSSSS
I'd be less enthusiastic if I spent the last decade playing similar games. As it stands, the last one I played was Legacy (by Redshift), which was kinda third-rate; and before that, I replayed Lands of Lore in 2002 or something like that.
I am still naively hopeful Cleve Blakemore's Grimoire will get released some day.
The gameplay video was painful to watch, the player did everything with slow mouse strokes. I really do hope that there's keyboard shortcuts and bindable hot slots.
Last edited by EvaUnit02; 30th Aug 2011 at 12:34.
As far as I know there's no oversaturation of EOB style rpg's, in fact, such a game with this kind of polish is a sight for sore eyes.
Oh and Notch tweeted about this (he has a fetish for dungeon master) so they're pretty much set.
What the fuck? I though the entire reason we left behind EotB, Lands of Lore, SSI RPGs and their ilk was because hardware forged ahead, gaining the muscle to obliterate the restrictions of the past.
Dungeon crawlers like EotB were direct descendants of the corridor crawlers from the 80s; it was an entire lineage that sprung up from trying to emulate 3D graphics on hardware that wasn't remotely capable of doing it except with sprites. The reason your camera perspective was fixed, and that your entire party moved together three paces at a time, was because there wasn't enough horsepower available to create a first person real-time 3D dungeon crawler that wasn't populated with stick figures.
Nostalgia or whatever, this is fucking stupid.
That's a bit like saying we should stop enjoying books now that we have invented computers, since computers can store sooo much more data.
That's not the point, and you know it. Books weren't inherently limited as a means of communicating the written word. EotB/whatever were crude efforts at approximating a 3D dungeon crawler on systems not powerful enough to simulate it to any real degree of verisimilitude. They were crude given the limitations of the time and were the best anyone could do at the time. We've forged ahead since then. This is a step backwards. And for what? Nostalgia? We left behind the ridiculousness of moving forward only in fixed unchangeable increments, invisible party members, and spinning around 90 degrees at a time only to lose your bearings because each wall looks exactly the same even when you're in a town, for very good reasons. It was stupid back then, and it's stupid right now. We only accepted it then because we didn't have much of a choice.
The part of my brain that loved Eye Of The Beholder is jumping for joy. The part that's played RPG's made after 1990 is wondering why the hell this would have an audience.
With the endless parade of side scrolling platformers and shoot -em ups, people complaining there aren't enough isometric turn based tactical games and other such stuff, I'm surprised this particular well of nostalgia has been plumbed long before now.
(not too long, or it wouldn't be as nostalgic I guess)
A better analogy would be like saying we should stop playing boardgames, because computers can do all kinds of crazy stuff like games with thousands of little soldiers being rendered in realtime 3D graphics and stuff. Boardgames are just pewter bullshit.
And the proper response would be yeah, that's true. But some people like the way boardgames play. Which kind of applies to Grimrock here. It's true that those oldschool dungeon crawlers were just a small step along the road to the realtime 3D RPGs we have today. But they have a certain style of gameplay that hasn't quite been replicated in these newer, fancier games, and is still enjoyable even now. As such, remaking one with modern graphics isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Man. My posts are starting to sound like something straight out of a logic textbook. I think I'm turning into a robot.
Yeah, what Renzatic wrote. These are games. Games employ different levels of abstraction. You don't move around freely in Civilization, you move around on a square (now hex) grid, although you could easily make the game vector-based. The grid works for that particular experience, while 90 degree turns work for the kind of puzzly dungeon-crawling game this one is supposed to be.
There are also other concerns. As technology advances, older innovations are largely phased out and replaced. But vintage technology lives on because it has more to offer than a strictly utilitarian value - there is beauty, comfort, and maybe even advantages which were lost with newer products. I use a pocketwatch because it looks damn good, and wristwatches make me uncomfortable. I write with a fountain pen because it is very comfortable to use, does not tire my hand as fast, and my writing is neater with it. These are legitimate reasons to like "old" stuff.
Not to mention that, on our technological level, we cannot just imitate old technology - we can often take the best it has to offer and package it as highly efficient, highly polished products. I mean, this Grimrock game is not in VGA, has a lot higher res than EOB ever did, and it has a lighting engine, normalmapped textures and all that. Assuming the same expenditure of effort and talent, it should not be the equivalent of EOB, it should be EOB+++ - without straying from the basic formula.
I know this can be hard to accept for some gearheads, but you will just have to deal with it, folks.
^^ What they said.
This reminds me so much of Dungeon Master - a game that I always found fascinating but never managed to be very good at, most likely because 1) my English wasn't that great at the time and, more importantly, 2) I was playing a not-entirely-legal version on the Amiga that didn't come with a manual.
With many of these games, I wonder: will my nostalgia be enough to make them enjoyable? I remember many an afternoon frittered away playing The Bard's Tale III, drawing maps etc., but when I tried that Devil's Whiskey (is that what it's called?) demo I played it for ~10 minutes before quitting and deinstalling it.
The Witcher is anything BUT a game like that. There's no mountain-hiding gnomes, the elves are anything but peaceful and tree-hugging, and the only Dragon in the games shows up in game 2 and plays a role in the plot which is far more interesting than your typical fantasy fare.I'm a big RPG nerd but even so, at the age of 23, I'm already completely unenthusiastic about playing the "new and shiny" games like Dragon Age or (to a degree) the witcher because "oh look another game about mountain-hiding gnomes, tree-loving elves and dragons where I'll get to explore dungeons with giant spiders and zombies. Also, magic fucking missle."
Pfft. Personally, I choose to write on parchment using a quill.I write with a fountain pen because it is very comfortable to use, does not tire my hand as fast, and my writing is neater with it. These are legitimate reasons to like "old" stuff.
When it comes to fantasy games though, there's always been one huge, glaring gap as far as gameplay goes: the magic system. Its typically no more complex than just memorizing pre-given spells each of which has a single effect. I'd like to something thats much more dynamic and involved, one that will make me feel like I actually AM a wizard. Oblivion and Two Worlds 2 were a step in the right direction by allowing the player to combine effects to make their own spells but there's still a lot to be done.
A poster on another forum summed up the problem well:Typically, my ability to play a mage character in any first person fantasy games comes down to how quickly I can spam "magic missile" or "fireball" instead of my skill with the magic system and level of preparation. From the sound of things the only games to actually do it right were the Ultima series(haven't played them). Sorcery seems like a step in the right direction, but the limited number of spells it uses limits its promise.in universe mages are typically supposed to be sages and scholars, who spend a lot of time researching spells and uncovering secrets beyond comprehension of ordinary mortals, in game they throw fireballs at stuff.
It would also be good to see games that do more to reward players who are creative in their use of it. For example, how about having items hidden underwater in areas that can't be reached without a water breathing spell? Or an area guarded by enemies who can't be destroyed by conventional means, but only be repelled by light magic?
Last edited by CCCToad; 30th Aug 2011 at 07:54.
I still lament that Legend / Four Crystals of Trazere's runic magic system wasn't taken up and refined by later games.
So in others words, Trine.
No, for gameplay. That old tile-based fixed-perspective gameplay, which complete freedom of movement doesn't touch. It's a bit like the recent-ish rebirth in sidescrollers despite 3D games supposedly doing them in fifteen years ago.
Don't get me wrong, I'd also love a thoroughly 3-D full freedom dungeon crawler as that would scratch a completely different itch, but the guy whose childhood was cast deep in Dungeon Master's shadow just got a new game to hotly anticipate.
I saw this game thanks to a notch tweet. All I can say is I'm not really interested, because it just seems like an iphone type of game. Not that there is anything wrong with that if you like playing iphone games. For me, I don't have an iphone (yes I'm aware it's on PC as well as iOS), and the style they are going for doesn't seem that appealing to me. Plus I have other RPGs to take up my time.
I started reading your post, got the the middle, and then, sure enough, I eventually reached the end.
I'm not sure if I feel old or young when old pc rpg's could easily be taken for an iphone game.
As for the style of game just being a limitations of the tech back then, it's not purely that, it was the fact that they were limited to not being able to do realtime 3d environments, but then tailored their gameplay around it.
It was just like when games were not able to handle advanced landscapes and arbitrary positions with ease when civ came out, yet civ stuck with 'tile' based for ages because the gameplay designed around the limitation was so well done.
I yay almost every time he postsYAAAAY PEMPTUSSSS
:brofist:
Word. Never had DM but Bloodwych filled the 3D-Tile based RPG void for me back in 90/91. (And it was split screen two-player!)
Not really; this "rebirth in sidescrollers" (as if they ever died) is not caused by nostalgia or fantastic gameplay (seriously, 90% of them play exactly the same), but simply the fact anything more complex is out of the reach for an indie team / garage programmer these days. And platforms like Steam and XNA made indie development far more possible than it used to be, hence why such a sudden influx of copypasta platformers and puzzle games.
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