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KickStarter Balrum

Filthy Sauce

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 26, 2016
Messages
613
Tried this since it resembles Eschalon.
Crafting aspects seemed nice.
Was getting into it.
Took a starter quest to feed some pigs, clicked on a pile of dirt in the pen.
Suddenly fighting a giant larva that casts "Mirror" to create 4 duplicates of itself.
Larva then casts poison cloud that takes 33% of my health in one turn.
Eats my pet, then me.

Damn it, son. This makes me want to play the game even more.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
Reports like these are the only thing that makes me want to play Balrum. I was firmly resolved not to buy it just yet, then I read that post, and now...
 

V_K

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2013
Messages
7,714
Location
at a Nowhere near you
Sadistic enemies are a highlight, yes. But the game will try your patience, one way or another (i.e. farming or grinding), and generally demands a very slow and methodical approach. I liked it, more or less, but it still wore me off before second chapter.
 
Self-Ejected

Bubbles

I'm forever blowing
Joined
Aug 7, 2013
Messages
7,817
The CRPG Revisited blog has just published an in-depth review. The rating speaks for itself:

UJCJ2Dx.png
 
Last edited:

Heretic

Cipher
Joined
Dec 1, 2015
Messages
844
New update
http://steamcommunity.com/games/424250/announcements/detail/646658987726981764
1.21 and Achievements!
11 November - Balcony Team
Hello there everyone!

Update 1.21 has been released bringing a decent amount of fixes and new features. 1.21 also introduces Achievements.

Thank you for everyone who sent us bug reports and suggestions! Thankfully there were no major bugs reported in the last couple months but if you think you found a bug please contact us.

As you know save game compatibility is a very important element for us and we are glad to say that this patch (like every patch before) is compatible with old saves!

Just as a reminder you can find community made translations for the game here:
Translations forum.
(Please note that you need to put every translation mod inside its proper folder. Do not overwrite the “en” folder. Some mods use the “en” folder so you need to manually fix this!)

Some of the more noteworthy new features:
Achievements! (There are a total of 42 achievements to acquire.)
a6dbd23e93d8c6bd49119f3a0c81235422ee2bdc.jpg

Added comparative tooltips for equipments.
02ca58c46105d1d5a843530adf4a9a6605f40bc2.jpg

You are now able to delete custom made recipes.
7cf8fae9f1ab5ff78d3b316b212678b94c363d07.jpg

Grandmaster difficulty! We added an even more challenging difficulty mode to Balrum for those who seek an even greater challenge.
e06581231cfecdec520b11786ab37825ae7b0cdb.jpg

By pressing Shift + F2 you can disable/enable the interface.
26447577b8917c6bcdb23ff571b3d655c47d2303.jpg

Reworked a part of the GUI. (panel focus and responsiveness improvements)

Small additions:
-ALT + click now puts materials inside crafting tables intelligently.
-Autosaves won't happen when the player is below 10% health.
-Cheat death now gives back more health.
-Fields no longer get diseased if they are properly tended too.
-Enabled numpad walk commands.
-Tutorial popup when your pet dies or gets automatically dismissed.
-Reduce Gore option is available in the options panel.
-Game saves now show the chosen difficulty.

Issues fixed by this patch:
-Fixed a rare issue when some sound effects could stuck in a loop.
-Sometimes certain bosses did not use some of their abilities as frequently as intended.
-Damage absorbed text now shows the proper amount of absorbed damage.
-Deep wounds ability cooldown now properly activates.
-Mirrored monsters cannot cause a 0 damage critical bleed effect any more.
-Disabled green cursor (usable) indicator on some unusable objects.
-Fixed a graphical glitch when some late game NPCs did not render their staffs.
-Mannequins now properly render their inventory outside of the safe place.
-Fixed the ambient sounds of the island map.
-Fixed the ambient sounds of the desert maps.
-The GUI scale slider sometimes had problems setting the value.
-Various small visual map changes.
-Removing weapons while chopping down trees sometimes caused a visual glitch.
-Fixed a rare player and pet collision problem.
-Fixed a visual glitch in the last cutscene.
-Fixed a color issue with the repair panel's equipped items list.
-Fixed a rare issue with cleaning dust from ancient lore papers.
-Fixed a few typos.
-Fixed a number of other small things. (text/button positions adjusted..etc)


For translators:
-Tent tooltips are now editable via the after_release.xml.
-Nightfall level “1” (dialogs/en/gui/spells.xml)
-There are numerous new lines in the after_release.xml.
-Changes were made in the gui_texts.xml. (difficulty texts, level up text, tutorialpet)


Just a friendly reminder to everyone! If you installed translation mods inside the "en" folder you might experience problems (because the "files/dialogs/en" folder is the main text folder of the game and should not be overwritten). Supported translations should always install inside their own folder! (example: ru, de, ..etc)
If you are experiencing issues with translation mods delete the "en" folder and run Verify Integrity of Game Cache from Steam!

Thank you all for your support and have a nice day!

Yours,
Balcony Team
 

Aenra

Guest
This one was a major disappointment for me. It is an autistic paradise and no more.

1) It's a faux sandbox, ie the worst of both worlds. Artificial and full of arbitrary barriers, bloated, not expanded.
2) There's the kind of difficulty that an organised, thoughtful individual can overcome and the kind of difficulty addressing the retards pushing coin after coin in the slot, only to die at the exact same spot. While the rest of us dated women. Balrum's difficulty is of the second variety. If you're ugly and have pimples, you've found your home, congrats.
3) the RPG flavour was added on top and as the third step. It's not what they intended and if you pay attention, it shows. But it's what Balrum amounted to after all these crafting-centric iterations; the price of paying too close attention to your 'fans'; who apparently, as all RPG lovers do, have a great fondness for knitting in RPGs; who'd have thought.
4) caster's are impossible to play, unfairly underpowered when compared to the other two archetypes. Non-aspies beware.

Looks awesome, had all the potential it needed and then some. And yet, look at what they did with it. As i said, major disappointment. Autistic heaven.. It's no wonder Roqua enjoyed it :)
 

Soph

Educated
Joined
Apr 12, 2015
Messages
62
Finished act 1, was hoping the game would open up more afterwards. It reminds me a lot of Runescape, especially the tedium involved with the crafting system.

Played on hard obviously, being ugly and full of pimples, so was going through health and mana potions very fast. Since I'm an autistic aspie lunatic as Aenra so eloquently put it, I tried to figure the game out. Brewing potions is shit, it takes too long, if I made a batch of 10, I could go grab a coffee while my character was busy. There's too many ingredients per potion for you to gather (8 ingredients for one minor potion), they don't heal enough(200 hp = 1/6th of starting health), as a caster you are doubly fucked due to needing twice the amount of potions.

So what do you do? Well you start running in circles around enemies waiting for your mana to replenish for that killing blow. Enemy a ranged character? You're dead. Enemy a mana sucker? You're dead. Enemy unkiteable? You're dead. I'm probably exaggerating a bit, but you get the gist. There's also boss creatures, and for some reason these are far too easy, as most focus melee dps, while being fully kiteable. Sometimes they stun you for a few turns and you run away again. I have got problems fighting lowly wolfs / maggots and mantisses while slaughtering the Ancient One Boss through a bunch of fireballs and kiting. Really?

The characters have a nice introduction, but noone really seems to have any personality whatsoever. The quests are mostly fetch quests with nothing really changing for the better. There's some cool moments with lost pigs and larvae jumping out of wells to explode into your face. The world looks nice albeit samey.. it's all forest with some houses here and there. It does look nice at times though.

I think it's fairly mediocre, although I had some fun here and there

5/10
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
:necro:

They're alive: https://steamcommunity.com/games/424250/announcements/detail/1657763209751521982

Patch 1.5

Hello everyone! The 1.5 update is now available!

8aa213a2d8f4987605700a5f345761eae0acd106.jpg


The patch will reset your config file! (new config file name: “config_new.xml”)
Game file caches will regenerate so be patient on your first boot! :)

As we promised a few years ago, we are going to support Balrum for a long time. This update will introduce a completely new windowing system that will help keep Balrum compatible with modern and legacy systems. So this update is a technical update rather than a gameplay update.

If for whatever reason the new version does not work on your system. We added a legacy branchcalled "legacy". The legacy branch is version 1.31 with the old windowing system.

Since changing the windowing system affects everything (input, sound, rendering) we took the opportunity to update pretty much all of our systems.

List of changes:
-The game now uses a more modern windowing system.
-Much better fullscreen support.
-Much better HiDPI support.
-Better high refresh rate support. (120Hz+)
-Rewrote parts of the renderer (both modern and legacy):
  • fewer draw calls
  • smarter buffer handling
  • optimized shaders
  • fixed legacy warnings
-Rewrote the audio system.
  • better handling of multiple sound effects
  • optimized buffer handling
-Better support for special keyboards.
-Auto sharpen when zooming in. (both gameworld and GUI)
-Improved the sharpen shader (sharpening is crisper).
-Smoother framerate pacing.
-Changed resource management systems for better compatibility and speed.
-Updated libraries to latest versions.

Fixes:
-Fixed a rare lighting bug that affected certain light effects when drinking potions.
-Picking up player placed pet traps now have a sound effect.
-Fixed a bug that made the fireplace sound play twice.

Gameplay change:
-A certain green magical flame trap now does significantly more damage when activated.

Thank you for testing and for your support everyone!

Yours,
Balcony Team
 

Ignatius Reilly

Scholar
Joined
Jan 26, 2011
Messages
131
Location
Detroit
Move speed still slow as shit. All I do is craft Speed/Health/Mana potions, everything else isn't worth the time. Later in the game you get an item that gives you a massive speed boost for 30 turns, but with an 80 turn CD, so not terribly exciting... but still p.good! Also you get a ton of teleport options later on. So if you have a quest in one quadrant, you can port back to your base, then port to another area of the map. Overall, you will find yourself crawling across maps less and less as you progress, and that's somewhat satisfying. Also the game rains Speed Potions on you for the most part. Overcoming the horrible walk speed is a sort of game within itself.

I don't think this game is as hard/broken as people say, just tedious. I mean, running away while your mana regens or whatever isn't challenging, but very dumb and boring. I've played both melee and caster, and both styles manage to drain your health/mana, depending on which resource is more valuable. And then you have to eat food to get your health regen up so you can take on the next enemy at full health before you die of old age, or drink potions.

Balrum is a perfectly mediocre game that I find myself enjoying in spite of its flaws.
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
I killed the bad guy, but there are still some quests left (like becoming the king), but i think I'd rather wait for their new game.
Balrum is definitely virtuous game and deserves success, but I think I already spend all the time I am willing to give to it.
 

Elex

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 17, 2017
Messages
2,043
I killed the bad guy, but there are still some quests left (like becoming the king), but i think I'd rather wait for their new game.
Balrum is definitely virtuous game and deserves success, but I think I already spend all the time I am willing to give to it.
they are making another game? nice
 

PrettyDeadman

Guest
I killed the bad guy, but there are still some quests left (like becoming the king), but i think I'd rather wait for their new game.
Balrum is definitely virtuous game and deserves success, but I think I already spend all the time I am willing to give to it.
they are making another game? nice
Dev said they are working on something new.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://steamcommunity.com/games/424250/announcements/detail/1656643072591991912

Patch 1.55

Hello everyone! Patch 1.55 is now live with new features and a couple of fixes.

82afe31ef49fcdf6146db95946f2e8bd6677a525.jpg


Features:
-New walls: We added a new type of wall to the building tab. These are brick walls and to build them you need to create bricks from clay.
-New material: Now you are able to dig up clay at the waterside.
-Bricks: Bricks can be made at a furnace from raw clay.
-New plantable foliage: We added a few new flowers to the building panel.
-New buildable furnitures: We added a few new buildable furnitures.
-Jones now teaches a few new buildable items.

df03bcd384413c094a4ac1f67df68539a6bb7d3f.jpg

9fc18b1051b765bfaaff4c84dbf97a3226632cac.jpg


Gameplay:
-Skillbooks now grant learning points if you already know the skill the book teaches. (the book will be removed on usage)
-Wizard spells do more average damage. The maximum damage of offensive spells are not changed, but the minimum damage has been increased.
-Easy difficulty: The enemy health reduction on easy difficulty has been increased. So enemies have slightly less health on easy difficulty.
-Durability: Durability decreases slower on easy difficulty.
-Pet recall is now enabled during combat.
-Young animals now stack in a single inventory slot.
-The fire damage reduction while it is raining has been reduced.
-Osric now sells more chickens.

GUI:
-The save/load panel now asks you if you really want to load a saved game. So accidental double clicking a save slot when wanting to save won’t load that slot.
-Some basic UI text has been altered to make things clearer.
-Some NPC world dialogs are now colored.
-Picklocking floating texts stay longer on the screen.

Fixes:
-Fixed the orientation logic for a few buildable furnitures.
-The Close Shot ability now properly indicates usability when there are no arrows left.
-Fixed a crash that could happen when teleporting to the safeplace during an item craft.
-In certain situations your pet did not autoattack. This should be fixed now.
-Sometimes when loading in a new map the system would dismiss your pet even when there was space around the player.

Engine:
-Updated the engine libraries.
-Initialization of the sound system has been changed to increase compatibility.

For translators:
-The after_release.xml has been changed.
-The gui_texts.xml has been changed.

We hope everyone is having a nice summer!

Thank you for your support!

Yours,
Balcony Team
 

Mortmal

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
Messages
9,158
Let it die ..its a worthy contender for the "Obscure indies that deserve more attention " list to tell of that game quality. Really almost nothing worth salvaging , although 2D pixel art tileset is rather good.
 
Joined
May 4, 2017
Messages
629
Tried this since it resembles Eschalon.
Eschalon Book 1 and Book 2, despite their flaws, are worth playing. Book 3 is not, and this is worse than Book 3. This isn't even Eschalon: The Fan Fiction-quality.

heya,
can you share your opinions about these games in the topic I've made into this very same section? I would appreciate it very much.
 

LESS T_T

Arcane
Joined
Oct 5, 2012
Messages
13,582
Codex 2014
https://steamcommunity.com/games/424250/announcements/detail/1696062831236549522

Patch 1.6

Hi there! Balrum has just been updated to version 1.6!

07c4c6ccde31089d48ee13f1c0d84f08ff694f33.png


First of all, a big thank you for everyone who submitted bug reports and feature suggestions!
Here are the changes for patch 1.6:

GUI:
-The buildable objects inside the Building panel are now sorted for ease of use.
-Right clicking on an Inventory tab now sorts the items in that tab based on name and value.

c01ee5bccb678877774890558f5064ae4d8422a4.png


-UI elements won’t reposition themselves when minimising/alt-tabbing the game.

Engine:
-The renderer now supports water reflections and bloom effects. The bloom effect is disabled by default. You can enable it via the video options menu.

1fc6eaae1affc11e9a80e8119722b40b7c4ac5a3.png


-The config.xml subsystem has been rewritten to be more compatible and efficient.
-Improved performance on 4K systems.
-Third party libraries have been updated to the latest versions.

Fixes:
-The marble hearth now costs the proper amount to build.
-Some buildable objects have been moved to a different Building tab for ease of use.
-All crafting tables have been renamed inside the Building panel to be more recognisable.
-The Leader of the Pack boss now properly triggers the rewards dialog. (this was a regression)

Typos:
Basic text errors and logical errors have been fixed:
-files/dialogs/en/gui/afterrelease.xml
-files/dialogs/en/osric/packsandfires
-files/dialogs/en/neil/history
-files/dialogs/en/elestterr/elestterwelcome
-files/dialogs/en/orran/orranwelcome
-files/dialogs/en/bolt/boltifmage
-files/dialogs/en/barnabas/youoweleonard
-files/dialogs/en/helperdialogs/howtotaimanimals
-files/dialogs/en/fox/golems
-files/dialogs/en/walker/a_cape_of_a_warlock
-files/dialogs/en/rod/rodimlookingforwork
-files/dialogs/en/tina/tinamissingfriends
-files/dialogs/en/kotf/reddragonwelcome

Thank you for your support everyone and have a nice day!

Yours,
Balcony Team
 

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