Since it was being euologised by Demiath on the forum, I decided to download the demo of this highly-retro turn-based RPG. It uses the D20 Open Gaming Licence to accurately translate something that’s worryingly close to the real D&D experience. It’s combat driven with splashes of dialogue, but the fact the rules are sophisticated enough to allow tactics means I found it compelling – if somewhat hard, even once you’ve battled past the interface. Certainly the sort of thing which works best if you’re a veteran of all things polyhedral. The full thing’s fifteen dollars, but you can get the demo here. More beneath the cut…
There’s a lot to like here. It’s the sort of thing which makes me think back to the days before I actually got my Amiga. In my head, the main reason I wanted to have one wasn’t to play Speedball or whatever – it was so I could finally catch up with some of those lovely D&D Gold Box games. In practice, I played one and headed off into my glorious Amiga adventure (which included RPGs, of course – just generally a little more obviously glamourous). The demo itself is a robust little thing – apparently a section not from the whole game, with a pre-generated level 3 party, you’re immediately going in, put into interesting combat situations and trying to work out how to pick stuff up.
(The game alternates between right-click-to-change-icon-purpose and drag and drop pretty much randomly. Hover and drag to a character to pick up.)
I also like how its enlarge spell works:
In other words, there’s much to like here. Like many Indie RPGs, Heroic Fantasy games are the sort who like showing through their thinking of What Makes An Interesting RPG in their Design notes. And here’s a video of the demo in action.
Demo and full purchase available here.
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Clerics were a wizard in full plate properly made, with a practical use for charisma. Not just this but with the different worship focuses you could radically customise the cleric. This was 3/3.5 though. No idea about 4.
Personally? Neutral or evil priest focusing negative energy could turn stumbling into the undead from a fight into some reinforcements. Skellies are great for “finding” traps too. villagers will give you grief if you show up back in town with your zombies though :(
Balance is overrated, I’ve always thought… and I’m less than convinced the whole thing is “horribly” unbalanced in the first place.
Thanks for the resting help, everyone. I gotta say, I dug the Knights of the Chalice demo. The AI is really smarter in it’s casting and movement than I’m used to: The Troll in the big fight pushed my Knight into a burning brazier with Bullrush. That’s brilliant!
On the 4.0 discussion, the biggest change with 4.0 is that every character is actually important in combat. Everyone has something to do and contribute.
Maybe the out-of-combat side of 4.0’s official scenarios isn’t good but come on – that’s the part the DM makes up anyway. The Roleplaying someone else comes up with will never be as good as the things YOU come up with.
And for people on the fence about 4.0, I recommend listening to the Podcasts Wizards of the Coast released with the Penny Arcade crew – it’s really a lot of fun listening to people who’ve played 3.5, never played 3.5 and never played any DnD at all have a go at 4.0.
Vinraith: “As a general rule of gaming, I find that if balance requires homogeneity, I’d rather have things unbalanced.”
Agreed. I really don’t want any particular class or combination or whatever to dominate in a game, but they should vary greatly based on the situation they find themselves in. Like, a Dwarven Cleric in Full Plate with Tower Shield Proficiency, invincible you say? Not so when he’s Webbed or Greased and has to roll extremely well to break out. Of course that just makes Wizards sound even more overpowered.
Personally I thought Fighters, Rogues, Rangers, etcetera could benefit much more greatly from Feats and other customization options than a Wizard or Sorceror could. Metamagic rarely seemed worth it. I think Wizard was the most interesting class to play, but also a lot more work with figuring out what you had memorized, but heavily armored fighters were also fun for me and also Clerics, which are yes, awesome. The main benefit of a fighter over a cleric is just that you can focus purely on combat stats and combat feats. If you’re rolling stats and you have many high rolls, you’d be a bit foolish not to play a Cleric or Paladin or somesuch thing, but if you using point-buy, well, you simply cannot be a great front-line fighter AND a great healer, you have to choose.
For casters vs melee, I think this can be balanced if your DM just doesn’t let you rest as much as you’d like, and throws a variety of critters at you. A magic sword of sufficient enhancement can kill damn near anything, yeah? Or a combination of blunt and slashing and piercing weapons– a wise fighter carries all three. But an Illusionist is pretty useless against undead, and a pyromaniacal Evoker generally useless against fire elementals.
It’s kind of weird how things are balanced in 4th edition though, it’s not quite how you’d expect. I’m playing a Cleric right now, and really the best he can do for a heal is to give somebody a Healing Surge + 1d6 Hitpoints, and only twice per encounter. That’s kind of nice because then they don’t have to use an action to have a healing surge, and it’s only a minor action so I can attack too, but it’s only one target. It says Burst 5, but then only one target within that burst. Confusing. I think it might’ve changed in PHB2.
vinraith: sorcerors are wizards for dummies. No quickened spells really shoots them down in flames, never mind the slower spell progression. (Issues that have been addressed in the recent Pathfinder Beta stuff…)
“Postman: 4.0 is the pen and paper version of WoW.”
No it’s not, it’s got thousands of times more depth; and just as much depth as 3.5. Just, without the horribly exploitable multiclassing system, quadratic wizards, and linear warriors.Taking some cues from WoW isn’t an bad thing.
Then again, I hated every edition until 4th, and pretty much stuck with Shadowrun and Call of Cthulu.
“No idea about 4.”
Yes, there is, no matter what anyone tells you. Divine Power just opened them up even more, as well.
All those forming up on Incursion, while that is nice, now is not the best time to do so. If you can wait until Oct 31st, if all goes well, THAT mega-revision/rewrite should be the thing to base a first opinion off of. Current version has some massively crash happy/corruption dealies to it.
KoTC and Incursion can coexist just fine same as ToEE—-these kinda things aren’t exactly the talk of the town in the industry or indiescape even in terms of robust activity.
and pretty much stuck with Shadowrun
*shakes head* Pretty much beyond hope… ;-)
Well, if we’re going to talk about non-D&D pen and paper games, I’ll throw in my two obscure favorites: Millenium’s End and Sun and Storm beat the tar out of other systems as far as variety and providing interesting settings.
Feh. These games are nothing compared to Cyberpunk 2020.
I allways preferred Macho Women with Guns to d&d. You play women. With guns. Who might be a bit macho. As far as I know it’s the only pen & paper system that has the perk “top heavy”.
Stromko: You can have a complex story in a roguelike, they just dont bother as its generally not the focus of the games for whatever reason. The closest to a story is probably ADOM.
@ Psychopomp:
Divine Power is out?!
Be right back, heading to Borders.
Also, on the subject of Incursion, I love it quite a lot. I’ve known about it for quite some time now, and I wasn’t aware that many knew about it, too. It’s very excellent, but my biggest problem with it is that it takes quite some time to create a character, which is something you’ll need to do often considering the multitude of deaths.
Did anyone save the dwarf?
It is possible to save that Dwarf…and oh so nice a feeling.
“Did anyone save the dwarf?”
If you mean the very first one at the top right, I didn’t even know you could not save him.
He’s a trader! Playing without that….ugh.
Ok, I’ve played the demo now. I add my voice to those who think the UI and especially the fonts makes this all but unplayable. Fun otherwise.
@Mort
>Amen to that. I wish RPGs would evolve into something much richer and dynamic than D&D or the perennial core of the JRPG format.
You are not the only one. Games that I think have been important landmarks on that road are Fallout 1&2, Arcanum, System Shock 1&2, Deus Ex 1, Vampire: Bloodlines, the Witcher. I have high hopes for Alpha Protocol. Dragon Age, not so much anymore unfortunately.
Nick: I think the concept of the Rogue-like involves a procedurally generated dungeon or environment, which makes it difficult to create a cohesive story. They could, and I think some developers are.
Personally my attraction to Rogue-likes is you just skip to the dungeoneering. To me, a Rogue-like is the Unreal Tournament, to a story-based RPG’s Half-Life 2 campaign. One is strictly about moment to moment survival, while the other is less about reflexes and more about chugging through the story.
I suppose though there has been a Rogue-like that’s tried pretty hard to have a story. Diablo I and II, they both have you interacting with NPCs now and again through a constantly progressing storyline, yet much of the gameplay happens on randomized maps.
ADOM also tried to inject more of a story into things, getting quests from the first town et al. The fast turn-based nature of it means that I don’t have to spend any time going through cutscenes or reading exposition though, it’s still much faster and less story-bound than a traditional RPG.
I find this particularly awful. Why is it that, even in indie games, we have to choose between “artist visuals” and “good gameplay”? Why couldn’t we end up with the fine old school gameplay seen here but the nifty-for-an-indie-RPG visuals of the Eschalon games?
As for this game, I think I would preffer some static board-game like look over the horrible perspective and even more horrible attampts at animations… I don’t mind funtional visuals like that would include, I do mind jarringly ugly visuals like these though…
Hire an artist for the sequel please… Or go all rogue-like for the visuals. Or ASCII. Or vector graphics. Anything but a continuation of this abomination.
I like it and will download the demo… The Gold Box Adventures (Curse of The Azure Bonds was my fave) are high points in my gaming history.
Why does it use that awful old Ultima perspective that makes absolutely no sense
What a deal breaker.
I bought the game yesterday, and I haven’t been able to stop playing. The font is TERRIBLE – almost illegible, especially on a wide screen. I almost quit the demo right at the start.
But I’m glad I kept with it, because the game really is a lot of fun. And apparently, you can get used to anything, because the font is only a minor annoyance now.
Give this one a good, long try. Don’t let the text keep you from finding out what a fun game it really is. (Remember Dwarf Fortress!)
I agree with the chorus — love the idea, but the font makes this unplayable. It’s sad that something like a poor choice of font could become a deal breaker.
For similar games (and with better fontage), try Incursion, EUO, or Jeff Vogel’s stuff.
The demo was actually pretty awesome, but what, no thieves, no traps, no locks, no backstabbery?! I’m afraid I can’t deal with that :’(
It would be an easy buy were it not for this limitation. I love the whole of it, even the font.
That lich battle in the demo is too much for me though, heh
It goes to show that a good amount of polish will make even a low-budget engine play like a dream.
@David:
I absolutely love Jeff Vogel’s games, but I don’t own a single one. I’ve played the demos to half-to-death, but he charges near 30 dollars for every one! I wish Spiderweb would either:
a. Charge a slightly more fair price for their games, say 15-20 dollars, or
b. Actually include animations. That might make the game worth 30 dollars.
David: Within the forums, there is active consideration about remedying the font situation…matter of contact the artist and seeing how things pan out—most issues folk are raising here that have also been raised to him are under consideration for upcoming patches same as any bugs/glitches bearing feasibility in mind.
In short: The game is far from DOA and I would imagine a fair number of UI improvements and such to have good odds manifesting as these next days/weeks/months roll on.
I’d be all over this game at 10, MAYBE 15 bucks, but at 25, no way.
I enjoyed the demo, went to purchase and stopped in my tracks. 25 bucks? really?
@ScaryMike: Well, KotC is at least 25 hours long, and also has quite some replayability due to slightly different quest solutions and (above all) different more or less crazy party combinations to experiment with. But even with the minimum time spent with the game, 1$ per hour doesn’t seem like such an outrageous proposition to me. I’ve now played 15 hours of the game and thus far it’s the best combat-oriented RPG to have come out in years, so I would gladly have payed more for it than I did (but don’t tell the developer, or he might get crazy ideas ;).
Even more importantly, as indie developers like Jeff Vogel (of Spiderweb Software) has pointed out recently, although there has been a definite push downwards recently as far as pricing of indie games goes, the scene simply can’t survive if every game is going to cost less than $10. As much as I liked paying next to nothing for Zombie Cow’s brilliant “Time Gentlemen, Please”, there’s just no conceivable way for most indie developers to survive with such a price scheme (I’m excluding special arrangements like XBLA and PSN here and talking primarily about the PC market); especially when we’re talking about games (like KotC) which take a year or more to produce. If gamers truly want great and substantial indie games (i.e. not just Bejeweled clones on the casual gaming sites or on their iPhone), they’re just going to have to be ready to put their money where their mouth is and actually support the people who are making these games.
Demiath: I appreciate that take on it. I’m not economist, but I can’t help but think they would sell more copies if the price was lower. I think $25 is going to be a barrier to entry for a lot of people when they see the graphics.
So if they sell 1000 copies at $25 wouldn’t it make sense that they would sell 5000 at $10?
(this was taken from another site talking about the price of games:)
“Valve did an interesting study recently; during their last holiday sale on Steam, they followed the trends on profitability made by the games in their store. There was one particular trend that was interesting — the higher the discount on the game, the more PROFIT that game made. Small discounts saw games selling for a little jump in profits, but the big discounts (the cheapest games, then) saw the largest boost in profits.”
Unfortunately, I can’t find a link for this study right now…. I’ll keep looking.
Here is a link: http://www.edge-online.com/features/valve-are-games-too-expensive
Scary: It depends. The idea that all games are the same is risky. Hardcore Wargames are totally the thing which sell for highest, longest. They’re also very niche. If you reduce them to a fiver, will you see a proportionate lift?
In other words, not all games are limited by price. The question becomes, what category does this one fall into?
KG
I played through the demo and I have to say that I really enjoyed it, there are so many interesting things to be done with spells and abilities. I have really missed the tactical RPG games of the past, it seems like so many games now (even BG) was just about loading up on purely offensive spells, but there is a good reason to mix it up here.
Also, as for the text being unreadable, as soon as I put the game into windowed mode (and what sort of person are you who wouldn’t!), the text is pretty easy to view.
Graphics… come on. This is old school brilliance, who needs graphics :)
@ Demiath:
I personally think Jeff Vogel is the last person who should be saying that the scene won’t survive with cheaper-than-larger-production titles. He’s been using the same engine for years, with minimal changes, not to mention that he still hasn’t improved the cryptic UI or the laughably poor-quality character portraits. In-game characters barely animate, and really what he’s doing with each game is creating a new script for the same core game. Albeit, very long and involved scripts… but the point still stands.
Indie developers should not and can not expect to create games with 1/30 the production values of a larger title and charge 1/2 the price. It doesn’t quite work that way.
Felt like I should add that I really do like the gameplay in Avernum. I think it’s great fun, and strategic. It’s just that I’m thoroughly annoyed at the minimal change in each one, especially considering the premium price.
@postmanX3: Since when did production values become such an important part of the reason we play old school, turn-based RPGs like Avernum and Knights of the Chalice? For the record, I absolutely love both the graphics, overall art design and outstanding MID tunes in KotC, but that’s just a personal preference. Are you suggesting developers should be paid per pixel shader included in the final product or something?
Now, there are as many indidividual positions on game pricing as there are gamers in the universe (I for one almost never buy new retail games when they are still at full price since I don’t think any 10-15 hour game is really worth $60, but would gladly pay $30 for a lengthy indie title with gameplay that I thoroughly enjoy), but to seriously suggest that something as potentially superficial as production values should be the sole determinant of pricing (which is precisely what you’re arguing in your last paragraph) is a pretty extreme idea…
@ Demiath:
I’m talking in relation to Avernum. KotC is probably priced just right, and I, too, love the sprites and MIDI music.
And I’m not saying games’ pricing should be based entirely around production values. (Well, actually, it kinda sounds like it, but I don’t mean it! Really!) What I’m saying is that it is exceptionally annoying to me that Jeff Vogel, of all people, is saying indie games can’t survive on 5 dollar games alone. While it is entirely true that budget pricing is not an option all the time, he continually releases games that all run on the same engine (which he’s been using for damn near a decade, at this point) with minimal graphical, UI, or gameplay improvements.
Certainly, I understand the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra, but with ten years with this engine, is it impossible to add something as common as walking animations? But to top it off, he charges nearly 30 dollars for every game when it is released. Again, I know one can’t assume a price should be lowered just because it is an indie title, but having not needed to make a new engine in a decade, I question how much work is put into Avernum II, for example, versus Avernum I, which needed an entirely new engine.
Maybe I’m not one to question such things, as I’ve certainly never made such a complex game, but in comparison to other indie RPGs, like, say, Eschalon or KotC (both of which are cheaper than Avernum V, use entirely new engines, and are graphically more impressive than Avernum), it seems slightly ridiculous for his games to cost so much.
I am, in part, suggesting that a game’s pricing should be partially based on something like production values. Clearly, gameplay should be the most important part in pricing, but certainly, if a game, for example, were to utilize ASCII characters versus a game using animated sprites, one would expect the former to cost less than the latter, correct?
Alright, I just found out that apparently, Avernum IV and V run on the newer Genoforge engine. I suppose that renders my argument a slight bit crippled.
Then again, since a I couldn’t tell the difference between the Avernum engine and the Genoforge engine, it makes me wonder how separate they are…
@postmanX3 – first of all, if you buy the CD bundles of Vogel’s games, you get the games involved for around your $15-20 price point. Nethergate: Resurrection isn’t bundled, per se, but if you buy another game you’ll be offered the CD version at $15. I myself won’t pay $25 ($30 on CD) either, but once they start getting bundled, it’s an easier sell.
Secondly, Valve was seeing dramatically higher profits when *temporarily* discounting a title steeply. That’s quite different than simply setting the default price lower.
Thirdly, Vogel’s games (and most non-wargame indie titles) *are* priced lower than the big budget commercial titles – those retail for $50-60.
Vogel’s newer games aren’t available in CD bundles. Either way, it’s not a very good way to get a better price point, if I just want, say, Avernum. And consider that a 10-year-old game (Avernum, in this case) has not dropped in price.
I’m not sure why you mentioned Valve. It’s common sense more people buy during a sale.
Yes, his games are less expensive initially than a big-name title, but 10 years later they’re more expensive! Not to mention they’re more expensive that a large majority of the indie RPGs available.
Within the flurry of patching the last week or so, the game is now sporting a new/improved FONT as of version 1.10. So, probably a good idea to give it another shot to see if they’ve struck a good one…or if not…to help illuminate.