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KickStarter StarCrawlers - indie sci-fi dungeon crawling RPG

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aweigh

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depends, Excidium. i admit i exaggerated about unity's inability to be easily modded but it's just a lot of bad taste left over from all of my attempts at modding PoE.

i downloaded all the required tools and a i did actually get my edited items in-game and working along with a few other things (talents, etc), but it all has to be done on an item-by-item basis and using a never-ending, slow-as-fuck process of "export-this-now-edit-this-in-that-and-now-import-those-here-first-edit-in-that-other-thing..." finishing with "sigh-still-need-to-import-that-one-armor-and-then-check-if-it-works-bleh".

not a process that is unique, mind you, it's just that the amount of tools involved combined with the overhead unity software causes, blech. and that was with PoE, and me following extremely detailed step-by-step instructions from nexus forumites.

so i really do think it is not an easily-modded enviroment. but it's not the worst thing ever, i'll admit that.

(for me 40% of the fun is editing items/enemies/classes/abilities, etc, just because i enjoy it and because i am also constantly learing new stuff. for me it is equally as interesting to open up a new game's executable and spend 2 hours poring over it and then 1 more hour going over it using IDA pro and seeing where everything is "located"; as it is to play the game).

anywya that has nothing to do with starcrawlers quality, i'll stop here.

WAIt, one last comment: same shit happened to me with I AM SETSUNA. Setsuna is another game that could've been easily salvaged and made 10x a better experience (such as by making encounters better/more tactical, giving enemies more abilities, etc), but i also ran into the same "unity wall".
 

bataille

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So I've just started, and all of it seems pretty neat. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the characters have more than one possible role to fill, although, I can see how by the end of the game they can become a person and a half. The UI is a nice change of pace; for the time being, giving commands (by clicking directly on enemies and picking from a radial menu) feels much more personal than just choosing options a la wizardry, probably it'll get old after some time; lighthearted story offers a bit of pulp reading to have a break from crawling and gives some quiet time.
Everything seems very simple and casual, nothing blatantly pandering to hardcore players anywhere (except for some difficulty options, heh).

Playing on the third difficulty setting; the party is:
Malware hacker
Summoner void psyker
Specialist soldier
and sentinel force psyker.

I hope it's possible to avoid random missions and just focus on the handcrafted ones, which seem to be carefully constructed, with some subplots here and there and optional stuff to explore (I'm playing the second real mission, probably missed one since I decided to skip tutorial).
Anyway, the first 30 minutes made me want to continue playing, and that is a somewhat rare feat to achieve. Going to go get that black box for chimera corp, will share my experiences after some more playtime. :salute:

Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-23_23-38-20-98.jpg
 

bataille

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Okay, this game's got so much personality and charm that every flaw is now officially irrelevant. I'd recommend to see it in motion, it transits from moment to moment marvelously.
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-30-59-21.jpg

Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-39-38-70.jpg
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-40-36-69.jpg
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-40-40-93.jpg
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-40-44-51.jpg
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-41-04-99.jpg

Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-41-08-44.jpg

Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_00-41-12-30.jpg
 

bataille

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Now that's an interesting outcome of what seemed to be the usual 'choose who to side with from 3 options'.
I reaaaaally hope they can keep this level of quality throughout. Because it they do, I'll probably play it till the end.
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_01-05-23-18.jpg
 
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aweigh

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it definitely looks waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than that beta. and not just graphics-wise. feel free to blog-post about your playthrough! i love that shit.

btw, is the hacker class the only class who can "unlock" or "disarm" locked/and-or-also/trapped objects inside dungeons? like say, that keypad in the locker room of the mission right after the tutorial.

you do get an option to punch it open but ofc items might break.

i was browsing the info on the site/other forums and i saw something that has made me think much better of the game and the devs: the summoner class' final skill tree has two talents called:

- cthulloid horrors: tentacles attack your opponent etc (it's more wordy in the description)

- cosmic being of eldritch power: basically a summon like from final fantasy, heh.

that kind of flavor stuff really can help round out the experience. when i play it definitely gonna start it on heardest-mode-iron-man, just because. heh.

only thing i wish they would have added to this final version is option to simply "target" the enemy during combat by pressing a keyboard key instead of always having to mouse over them and hold down LMB and mouse over to the thing. oh well.

EDIT: btw, this game although it takes place in space and is sci-fi, is very evocative of an almost IDENTICAL blobber style of gaming experience; the game is called Paper Sorcerer.

it controls/moves EXACTLY the same as Starcrawlers, and it features gorgeous monochrome graphics that aim to represent a world made from a book's pages / drawings. combat, obviously is turn based, and it is about a dude who mysteriously gets sucked into another world and you begin in your prison cell where a mouse comes up to you and begins talking to you about how you're in deep shit.

the mouse tells you how to escape the cell and the first fight is with the guard patrolling outside. after you beat that guard, you gain the ability to summon a monster of the vampire/succubus/mummy/minotaur/etc style of bestiary. as you progress through the "levels" you continually gain more to summon.

they may seem so opposed in themes and presentation, but having played both of these they're amazingly similar in gaming experience. youtube "Paper Sorcerer" and you'll see what i mean by it being "so similar" to SC.

two amazing examples of modern blobbers both of them made by 1-3 person teams working indie, heh.
 
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bataille

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Yeah, now that you mention it, it reminds me of paper sorcerer too. And you start without a party as well, although you have to fight alone for some more time in starcrawlers. And the save system protects your from various item-related temptations, heh.

And yes, hacker is the only one. They also can use their knowledge in dialogue, open doors, hack terminals, maybe something else. The descriptions of every talent tree mention how that particular tree can be used while exploring. Maybe the sum of the points spent affects the chances of successfully performing the corresponding tasks (there is definitely a chance of failure involved)? This needs to be tested and/or inquired about from the developers.
 

Sacibengala

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Bought it! I hope that the WOW itemization don't turn me off. I hate with all my heart wow's styled mmorpgs.
 
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too simplicistic, too barebone, bad interface, retarded mouse movement (why even add it if it's square based?), annoying secrets (worse than the good old "spam interact" doom's), only 4 men per squad, uninteresting skill trees.
it's really not a good game, but i've played worse.
 

Metro

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Dunno why people are up in arms about procedural generation. It's not as if the old Bard's Tale games had memorable 'levels.' You just dicked around corridors and got pissed off at spinner traps.
 
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aweigh

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i do agree that there is no reason to ever include mouse controls in a grid-based blobber, but... dude, chill out amirite? it's not like it makes the game worse or affects the gameplay negatively.

you know what? i'd go so far as to say SC (and, once again.. Paper Sorcerer); but more so SC: are the two recently-developed (less than 2 years old, each one) and both utilize the mouse-look in ways Wizardry 8 struggled with. SC retains the grid-based movement but the option (because it's toggable) to mouse-look not only makes it feel like a "modern 3D game", since i'm sure some peeps here actually care about that stuff, but it they also hid items/"treasures"/etc in nooks and crannys of a "tile" that sometimes you can only find by mouse-looking.

(such as a grate in the roof inside of a small bedroom in tutorial dungeon. it is easily missed if you're not craning your neck around looking at shit with mouse-look).

I would totes play a grid-based blobber with mouse-look incorporated from low level systems design of the game and even possiblity of adding EO/Elminage style "floor masters" who wander around in a set pattern; perfect opportunity to use dat new-fangled mouse look to avoid them, etc.

anyway i've just begun larping my own blobber instead of contributing anything on-topic, heh, so i'm'a just go back to playing dragon quest 6.

edit: i am concerned that the procedural dungeons will be worse than atrocious, they'l be nonsensical. This was a very small team w/ a small budget and I have played before a blobber claled Wizardry XTH: Frontier Academy (which was later re-released in a completely re-done art-style and re-ttiled Class of Heroes 1 due to licensicng issues at the time of the remake) and this blobber is 100% procedural dungeons.

i have no words to describe how god awful of an experience it was/is playing those silly, silly sad procedural dungeons. One random hallway leading to a room shaped like a checkers board and filled with random slide-tiles which then deposit you back to 17 hallways each one with 1 empty room connecting each; so on and so forth.

brought tears to my eyes, it did. Gotta remember always, Metro, that a blobber be it real time or turn based lives or dies by its area/level design. Procedural is not the word we want to hear. An expertly designed dungeon-cum-area in a blobber is equivalent to...

...falling in love w/ a new Fighting Game because you adore how complex the mechanics are for the characters and the variety and ingenuity present in a genre so old and same-old same-old as FG's.

THAT'S how important the areas you explore are to a blobber. Make or break. in the case of Clas of heroes 1 / wizardry xth: frontier academy, i gave up on both versions of the game after the first 4 dungeons or so as they were simply literal wastes of time. Obviously Starcrawlers devs have newer technology, etc, all that; possibility of half the game's dungeons being hallway -> room -> hallway ad nauseum .... .... ... very high.
 
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Metro

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Gotta remember always, Metro, that a blobber be it real time or turn based lives or dies by its area/level design.
Can't agree. As I said, I played through all of Bard's Tale 1, 2, and 3 back in 't3h day' and I can't remember any memorable level design in any of them.

IMO, order of importance for a blobber is going to be something like:

1) Combat-system
2) Character/itemization system
3) Atmosphere

I'd make the same argument for the Gold-Box games, too. There's nothing about the original Pool of Radiance that would make the game 'worse' if the maps were randomized each time you played it (assuming you kept the same general locations). And a blobber is much more contained (assuming you aren't trying to pull off a pseudo open world thing). If the 'ecology' of the dungeon/ship/whatever location looks nice and is complimented with appropriate art and encounters I can't say it matters much to me how the maps are laid out.

It's a blobber... what else can there be other than hallways and rooms? Other than bigger 'rooms' that give the illusion of outdoor areas. But this game is set aboard a space ship so that doesn't come into play.

This game is more akin to Invisible Inc. which certainly doesn't suffer from procedural levels.
 
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aweigh

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i do agree 100% with you that #1 is always the combat system (and every single other element that feeds off the combat system and also simultaenously nourshies it).

i apologize for the hyperbole, heh. but i do think right after the combat (which, as i just said, doesn't mean "simple turn based battles a la jrpgs")-- sorry, that's the one thing that pisses me off most, the people who have never played a blobber and think its combat systems are primitive or whatever other term is in vogue.

--right after that shit, i mean, you gotta go somewhere with your blob man! nigh-entirety of the experience is the rewarding satisfaction of continously progressing through the game's systems growing your party overall power as its individual party members each continue their own character advancement route(s) and always juggling who will use what where and with what thanks to the delicious itemization biomap.

unlike more mainstream RPGs, a blobber can't really just shove the player into some random town with nothing to do except maybe some fetch quests and the eventual trigger-NPC that will either tell you what to do, or where to go and/or simply serve as a key for the game's gate-keeping; a blobber needs to provide areas for the blob to explore and conquer, and this may comprise a mixture of combats, looting, puzzles of the logic/parallel thinking variety and (my personal favorites) navigational puzzles which are designed right along with the given dungeon hand-in-hand, as unlike "normal" puzzles which require simply either trial-and-error or making sure you do what the game wants you to do at point A before unlocking point B; the navigational puzzle is instead almost the actual dungeon becoming the blob's enemy more so than ever before, no longer just in metaphor, but now with actual physical walls that disappear and holes in the floor you can't avoid.

etc, etc.

what i would argue regarding the games you specifically cite, i.e. BTs and gold box games, is that they were never designed as pure blobbers. ever! those games were very, very ambitious especially for the time they were made in and their designers (although I realize GB games became basically a factory product, but bear with me) were always intended to be exactly what they promised on the tin:

the ultimate and most thrilling adventures in a fantasy world complete with exploring strange and alien lands, casting spells, meeting NPCs from dungeons and dragons (heh), saving an entire city from itself ! ! etc, etc. mind you i am in no way knocking them, quite the opposite i am complimenting them.

my point is that "extremely focused and well designed dungeons (areas) for the party to explore and conquer" never, ever were main game play elements of those games we're talking about. They were in the games to be sure, but mostly out of tradition as their contemporaries were also first-person view blobber et al games; and obviously it was easier to make something first person than to have to make tons of tiles and sprites when working with limited amounts of memory.

their strengths were in the other areas, not the "dungeons". i would actually never relaly recommend a GB game to someone asking me for a dungeon crawler recommendation, and i would recommend Bard's Tale but with the caveat that i would then explain to them that it may possibly not be what they're looking for if what they want is a legit dungeon crawl; BT is instead a hbyird, like 99% of all RPGs we play in the codex, with adventure games and MUDs and puzzle games of the "type GET CHAIR" text-parsing variety combined with the "tropes" of their times.

I mean, to finish tihs post... it is very telling that the most historically successful (arguably) series of that era, Ultima, dumped the first person view andalso dumped even bothering to make "dungeons" or "instanced areas" to explore by the time ultima 3 rolled out, if i remember correctly? maybe it was starting with 4?

that right there says it all, imo.

EDIT: one blobber that does not feature first-person view combat (but does feature some of the very best first-person view dungeon crawls ever made, superior even to the map layouts from Wizardry 4 the return of Werdna is none other than the Dark Heart of Urkul.

it's for DOS, and it features top-down view TB combat, same as GB games, but the game is VERY heavy on emphasizing management of resources (such as everything down from the amount of torches you have left or ropes you can craft in order to reach a higher place all the ay to the management of your party as they begin to become weak due to hunger and thirst and then going further with an integration of a rune-based magic system where spell casting is always game-changing and not a mere blunted tool to be used without care)--

-- you move thru the dungeons using WASD for movement, the game does not have a soundtrack (sadly; not even a simple bleep or bloop), and on top of the shit i mentioned above it also features things no other blobber (that i've ever seen) attempt such as allowing you to listen at the door of a closed enemy room by placing your ear at the wood and hoping luck goes your way

-- or finding mysterious texts and messages that are in a language you can "optionally" (it's not requried obviously to beat the game) learn by yourself by finding the source materials and then deciphering the languages; which also allows a few, albeit brief, scenarios of engaging in communication with enemy forces.

it's all of course rudimentary, but it is geniusly designed. the actual writing itself in the game is fantastic. Right from the word go the narrative script that details what just happened to you and why you're where you are is gripping and well written, and it doesn't falter.

the only thing i disliked about Urkul was the overly heavy "balancing" concerning rationing food/water and more importantly where one could go get some. I was always worried about that and i always kept thinking: this game would be exactly and equally as good if that was removed.

hell, just look at the copy-protection code wheel of UUKRUL:
copy_protection_code_1.png


uses the game's made up language, consisting mostly of runes (i.e. pictographic)... just the sort of thing to get the autism revving to full speed!
 
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Metro

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I think you're expecting too much of an average blobber. Are there ones that push the envelope? Sure. But from a $20ish indie game you're going to get a fairly basic one that focuses more on the combat and less on the world building aspect. And I think that's perfectly fine especially for a small indie development studio. It's certainly better than the possible alternative of getting bogged down in feature/depth-creep and never finishing.
 

bataille

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No, not mr. fixit deluxe!
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_11-21-24-80.jpg

Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_11-21-31-95.jpg

Anyway, I'm somewhat concerned about difficulty and overall balance. Malware skills just obliterate everything: the first virus crits for 150 (with a chance of around 40%, yeah), has 60% chance (with high crit weapons) to affect other enemies. The other virus last 10 turns, damages the affected enemy and hits everyone else if the target is hit by a crit. The result is utterly insane, my hacker does maybe four to six times the damage my force psyker manages.
And I'm still figuring out if the enemy damage balance is passable. Seeing how the game lacks healing classes, the enemies seem to whittle you down slowly but steadily, without total wipes with strong attacks. Maybe it'll change and disabling skills will play a major role, we'll see.

An example of what an enemy looks like after two or three attacks from a hacker (she didn't use the logic bomb virus, otherwise it'd look more impressive) and a void psyker:
Star_Crawlers_x86_2017-05-24_10-53-11-31.jpg

If you're still to start the game, I'd say go for the last difficulty setting.
 

Metro

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And to add -- from watching some Codexers play this game on Steam -- the atmosphere that is there (lackluster character art aside) works. It works the same way the atmosphere works in Invisible, Inc. or Rebel Galaxy. Both of which are fairly barebones games but have polished mechanics and depict believable/interesting worlds that give a bit of meaning to the combat that is the focal point of the games.

There's something to be said for an indie developer that keeps things fairly simple in an effort to make a 'complete' a product as they can and delivering it within a reasonable time frame.
 
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SC retains the grid-based movement but the option (because it's toggable) to mouse-look not only makes it feel like a "modern 3D game"
if you turn less than 75-80° and try to move it won't, feeling like a bug intil you figure out why it behaves like that. and it's retarded. also spamming the left mouse button dragging your face on every wall is not really an interesting system for secrets.
 

bataille

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Geez, there are secret walls?
Welp, I'm not doing it in another game. Grimrock experience still keeps me awake at night.

On the side note, it seems that I was too quick to judge the difficulty, the very next story mission (the fourth one? the one with the brave robostaff you need to kill for their cores) kicks my crawlers' asses. It appears to be balanced around killing enemies at this lightning-fast pace, nothing overpowered about malware hackers (eh, maybe a little, heh). You hesitate a bit and whoosh, -10% hp (that can be replenished by medkits that cost as much as a mission's wage, or with some vampiric skills which only force psykers seem to possess).

Anyway, I enjoy the game immensely, there are so many signs that the devs really cared about it. A product of love.
 

bataille

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Apparently, the game didn't want to acknowledge that I'd killed the mission's target because of... some reason, I guess.
I'd appreciate if those who're playing posted here how their game reacted to them killing
the culinary overseer.
I'm pretty sure it's a bug.
 

Sykar

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Turn right after Alpha Centauri
edit: is it worth it?

It pales in comparison to any Japanese crawler. There's a bit of snarky humor that falls in to the obnoxious category. But for western crawlers it's probably the best since M&MX

Care to give an example?

Edit: I just noticed the name of the monestary, Geduld, Force Psykers come from and had to chuckle a bit. The German word "Geduld" translates to "Patience" in English.
 
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duanth123

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This island earth
Eliminage Gothic
Eliminage Original
Dungeon Travelers 2
Operation Babel
Strangers of Sword City
Class of Heroes 2
Wizardry: labyrinth of lost souls
Wizardry: tale of the forsaken land


These are but some examples. There's no continuing interest or pedigree among Western Devs with respect to the Wizardry style of gameplay, save for amateur efforts like Starcrawlers, which are more reliant on graphics and ironic, stupid humor than gameplay

And for the exception that proves the rule, an amazing underrated gem: Paper Sorcerer
 
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Bruma Hobo

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These are but some examples. There's no continuing interest or pedigree among Western Devs with respect to the Wizardry style of gameplay, save for amateur efforts like Starcrawlers, which are more reliant on graphics and ironic, stupid humor than gameplay

And for the exception that proves the rule, an amazing underrated gem: Paper Sorcerer
That's because we westerners do not like to play the same game over and over again, unlike glorious Nippon we're not used to that kind of repetition.

I do concede that Wizardry 6 has nothing to do with Wizardry and that Sir-Tech screwed it up, but that's the unfortunate consequence of getting extremely stale.
 

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