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Vapourware Frayed Knights 2 - sequel to the comedic blobber from Jay Barnson

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
First screenshot was also last year: http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7763

FK2_Vault1_ss6.jpg


Yeah, I kinda neglected this game until now. :M
 

Deuce Traveler

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Grab the Codex by the pussy Divinity: Original Sin Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
I played the original and liked it well enough. I thought the developer was going with a party member increase, to six PCs total instead of the original games four. I wonder if you find the other two later in the game or if he dropped the idea.

http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=5792

Q: Why don’t you just use the UI layout from [enter favorite game where you play a single character]?

A: Because in that game, you play a single character. The needs of an interface where you control a group of up to six characters – especially one doing some of the unusual things Frayed Knights is doing – are pretty different. We’ll try to borrow what good idea we have, but it’s not quite that simple.

Q: Wait, did you say six characters?

A: Yes, yes I did.

Q: Who else do you play in the game, besides Arianna, Benjamin, Chloe, and Dirk?

A: Someone who’s name begins with an E. And someone who’s name begins with an F. And one with a G. And one with an H. Possibly others, but we’re not promising anything beyond that.
 

TigerKnee

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Was pretty meh about the first one but more TB blobbers is more TB blobbers.
 

PhantasmaNL

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PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015 Grab the Codex by the pussy Codex USB, 2014 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria
Yeah first one was ok. I didnt care much for the engine though plus the ui was a bit ugly.
 

Baxander

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I liked the first one pretty well. I just wish you had more control over how your party was structured, but pretty decent nonetheless.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Jay has a question: http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=9275

Plan: Finishing Up August, and a Frayed Knights Question



Now that the two conventions are done (WHEW), the remainder of August… well, remains busy, but a little less so. Here’s what’s going on…

This week, my daughter gets home from South Carolina, where she’s been serving as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for the last 18 months. We’re excited to get her back home, although she’ll only be here less than two days before we take her off to college again. That’s going to make the latter part of this week pretty busy.

Until then (and all the following week), I’m working on my demo for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath for Utah Game Wars. The submission deadline is the end of the month (Monday the 31st). While it’ll be a little crazy, it won’t be as crazy as preparing for the ToshoCON and Salt Lake Gaming Con demos. Mainly what needs to be done – aside from fixing some embarrassing glitches – is to get everything back to its keyboard & mouse driven default (for conventions, handing people a game controller is easier), providing instructions since I’m not there to manually explain things, and fixing issues where I needed to guide people around in the live demos.

I’ve got an aggressive development schedule between then and the new year. Plus writing projects. And I came to the realization that if my planned schedule is anything to be believed (HAH! HAH, hahahahahah!), I have to start ramping up the marketing stuff for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath.

Which brings up a question I wanted to ask before the principal audience – you guys. Do I keep the “2” or drop it? I have worked hard to make the story in the sequel stand on its own, and it’s such a major improvement over the original – and will be available on more platforms – so that I don’t want people to feel they can’t play it until / unless they’ve played the original. As much as I’d love for this game to help drive sales of the first game, I don’t want it to be restricted by the sales of the first game, either.

So what say you folks? Should I keep the “2”, or just call it “Frayed Knights: The Khan of Wrath?” And why?

 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Combat info and new screenshots and stuff:

Frayed Knights 2 Combat, Actions, and Readiness

The last time I talked about the combat system in Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath (for now, I’m keeping the “2”), I was still a little bit abstract, because it was still in development. I’ve been living with the more-or-less complete system for about a year now, and it’s pretty integral to the rest of the systems. In the upcoming weeks, I want to talk about some of the other systems, but with so much based on how combat works, it’s important that I explain that one first.

In testing, it’s proven pretty easy once players figure it out, but it’s a bit of a leap. I think that’s mainly because it is so different from most other RPGs. I may need to change some of how it’s presented, but the system underneath may only change by a few details. But while the UI artwork is not final, I included pictures of the game in progress as examples to help explain things. Here are the key points about combat in Frayed Knights 2:

  • It’s a turn based system. Still.
  • There is no strict initiative order. Once a character is “ready” enough to act, you can choose an action for them at any time. But…
  • Characters have three levels of readiness, which increase as they are left idle.
  • The game alternates turns between the player party and the enemy party in phases. However, that’s all “under the hood.” You may end up with one party having characters go two (or more) times in a row, if nobody is ready to act on the other side.
  • Higher levels of readiness grant access to more complex (often not always more powerful or more preferred) actions
  • A character’s fatigue, and “slow” and “haste” effects determine how quickly they increase in readiness
  • Nobody can act twice in a single turn unless they have a haste effect
  • The turn ends when everyone who can act that turn in both groups have acted.
So why do it this way? The biggest reason is that it allows more tactical play. For example, a “buff” or “debuff” is a lot more useful if cast at the very beginning of combat than at the end. You may want to try and cast ‘silence’ on an enemy caster BEFORE they have a chance to hit you with their most powerful spell. Or you may want to use than wand of fireballs to clear out the low-level “riff raff” before they get a chance to attack. It puts the flexibility for combat more in the hands of the player.

And… muhahah… the AI.

So here are some examples to show combat in action. A fight begins! In this picture, Dirk has just taken an action. He doesn’t have a number by his portrait now, because he’s both not ready yet, and can’t take another action until next turn. But Chloe and Arianna are at readiness tier 1… ready to take basic actions. Benjamin, who was ready previously, is now up to readiness 2 – able to take more complicated actions at tier 2 (or the basic ones, too).


That slime should look familiar for players of the first game.

Benjamin is the default character the game auto-selects, since he has the highest readiness level. That’s why his border is gold and there’s a little gold arrow pointing at his name (those indicators may not be final, and are in fact probably not). However, you can change which character acts just by clicking on their portrait.

Okay, we have Benjamin and Arianna attack, which leaves the swamp slime nearly dead. Now, at each tier there’s a different attack and defend (brilliantly named Attack 1, Attack 2, and Attack 3, and so forth). At low level, the higher-tier versions of the actions are only marginally better than their lower-tier counterparts, but use more endurance. However, when we talk about skills in a future installment, we’ll talk about how they can become much, much more powerful as you level up.

Anyway, everyone has gone this turn but Chloe. When Benjamin attacked, her readiness went up to 2, and then after Arianna attacked, she went up to readiness 3. By saving her for last, she’s got access to all of her combat abilities. However, in this case, she’s using a tier 2 Action instead of a tier 3 (which you can see she has access to, on the blue menu). You can use a wand at readiness 2. In FK2, wands cast offensive spells. Scrolls cast defensive and utility spells, and can be used as a tier 1 action.


I should note here that since Dirk has been effectively idling this turn for the last three actions, if this combat was going to go to a second turn, he’d probably start the turn at readiness 3. However, Chloe’s wand sizzled the slime down to nothing, and so the combat only lasted a single turn.

After that, well, it’s time to loot. Somehow the slime left behind a bag of loot. I should probably prevent slimes and other unintelligent monsters from dropping bags of general loot, but that’s polish & balance. This is totally non-combat / action / readiness related, but I just wanted to post a loot screenshot. As a gamer, it’s one of my favorite parts of the game.


We’ll talk more about this stuff in a future post, but one of the loot items is a spellbook. Spellbooks are the main way you learn new spells in Frayed Knights 2. Since spells are mostly dynamically generated, there’s a potentially infinite number to learn. This particular one is a divine spell that makes an entire group of enemies go blind for 3 turns. I’m gonna suggest that’s probably overpowered for a level 4 spell. Again, polish & balance. However, at this level, none of the Frayed Knights can cast divine spells. As they level up, one of them might learn. Or they may have someone else in the party in the future who can use it. Or they can sell it.

Okay, so a few questions you might have:

How about non-combat? Outside of combat, you have access to all of your non-combat abilities all at once. There are no readiness levels.

Which side goes first? Depends on the encounter. In a surprise encounter, the surprised group all starts at 0 readiness and the group that did the surprise attack goes first. In standard encounters, everyone starts out at a level of readiness dependent on their Reflexes score (so Dirk usually goes first at this stage of the game), and it’s random with a bonus to the side with the character with the highest reflexes.

If a character is at readiness 3 and only uses a tier 1 action, do they recover more quickly next turn?Nope, the unused potential is wasted. Choose wisely.

How does fatigue figure into things? It slows the speed that a character progresses through readiness. Just like the Slow effect.

How do I change equipment in combat? Ah, the only equipment you can swap out in combat is hand-held items… weapons and shields. You do that by going to the inventory screen. It won’t even show you anything except weapons and shields (assuming you have any) in your party inventory in combat when you go there directly.

Have more questions? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll try my best to answer.
 
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Doesn't seem to sell very well.
Didn't even move 10,000 copies despite the cheap price. Remember that the government and Steam get their cut as well.
I hope the devs live in a cheap place because there's no way they can afford living with this kind of money in Kwan cities.
 

Metro

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Low budget cartoony blobbers with awful webcomic humour aren't exactly in high demand.
This. Uninstalled the first after about thirty minutes. It simply wasn't that good. Felt far too amateurish compared to other indie titles available.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Doesn't seem to sell very well.
Didn't even move 10,000 copies despite the cheap price. Remember that the government and Steam get their cut as well.
I hope the devs live in a cheap place because there's no way they can afford living with this kind of money in Kwan cities.
He has a day job, Frayed Knights is a spare time thing.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Frayed Knights 2: Drama Stars and You

One of the areas of “streamlining” for Frayed Knights 2 was the drama star abilities. To explain further, I’d like to recap a little bit for those who haven’t played Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon.

Like most people, I tend to save the game frequently when things are getting dangerous. When I suffer a setback, I’m tempted to reload. This is exacerbated by the games that provide encounters that all but demand that you do this – if you don’t enter a combat with with full health and spells, it is going to be far too challenging to complete. Because, you know, they want a challenging encounter. Then you have the next level of simplification of this… games that automatically restore you between encounters, so they can max out the challenge without worrying about frustrating players.

Which in my mind has ruined one of the critical gameplay elements of RPGs – resource management. Which has been a major gameplay element in tabletop roleplaying and computer RPGs since… ummm… pedit5?

My effort with Frayed Knights has been to return to a bit more of the flavor of old-school dice & paper gaming. One of these is the immediacy of having to play through bad luck or bad decisions. Now, I didn’t want to go so far as to add permadeath or anything like that, or even to limit the player’s ability to save the game. But I did want to encourage players to play through setbacks in the game rather than replay from a saved spot over and over again. The latter is boring, anyway, even if it does pad the hours.


To this end, I borrowed an idea from some dice & paper games – the ability to manipulate the game outside of character abilities. This is what I call Drama Stars. The idea is that as you play, you accumulate points which can be spent to have a major impact on the game… basically giving you the same advantage you’d have had if you replayed a tough section a couple of times (including bringing dead – or in FK’s case, incapacitated – characters back to life). In fact, you get some major “drama points” for doing something dangerous or having a character become incapacitated. While these drama points persist if you save & exit and then later continue, if you simply re-load from a saved point, the counter resets to zero.

So, in theory, the player who “plays through” a rough patch of the game (but survives) isn’t at much of a disadvantage over another player who reloads and re-plays several times to optimize results. But the player who didn’t save and reload probably had a more fun and exciting game.

That’s the theory. In execution, it wasn’t a legendary breakthrough in game mechanics or anything like that, but it worked okay. In Frayed Knights 2, I’ve tried to streamline and simplify things a little bit more so that Drama Stars are easier to understand and use.

In the first game, you had three stars that filled in from empty to bronze, then silver, then gold. It looked and sounded cool, but it was unnecessarily complex, and made it hard to understand the relative costs of the special abilities. Now you still have drama points that slowly complete a star, but you either have a star or you don’t. To make up for that, we need more stars. You can fill in up to ten stars. At that point, you are maxed out, and any more drama points you earn will be lost. But at that point you are able to use all of the drama abilities – which includes resurrecting (well, “recapacitating”) the entire party so long as one member is still up.

That’s the other thing I cleaned up: the drama abilities menu. There are a total of ten abilities, in ascending cost of 1-10 drama points:


The effects have changed somewhat from similarly-named abilities in FK1, but the basics (and the Holy Grail references) are the same. Fool’s Luck, which costs only a single drama star, guarantees a maximum result on the character’s next roll. The idea here is that you could just save and reload constantly until you succeeded, so why not let the player guarantee success on something that really matters? Problem solved. Bigger Fool’s Luck (I leave it as an exercise to the reader as to whether this refers to bigger luck or a bigger fool) adds a bonus on top of this, allowing a character to succeed in something that might otherwise be a little bit beyond their ability. Second Wind removes short-term fatigue and reduces long-term exhaustion. Only a Flesh Wound eliminates all damage to a living character. I Got Better removes all negative status effects. And I Feel Happy! means that a character (or the group) is not dead yet… they are no longer incapacitated and have a portion of their health restored.

So that is how the new and improved drama star system works. As in the previous game, current drama star status is retained if you save and exit and then continue at a later time (for those of us who may only have gaming sessions measured in minutes, not hours). But if you save anywhere and then reload, you’ll have things reset back to zero. (Clever players know to spend their drama points right before saving, if need be).

I hope it will prove an even more useful tool exploring the new dungeons!
 

Zed Duke of Banville

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Doesn't seem to sell very well.
Didn't even move 10,000 copies despite the cheap price. Remember that the government and Steam get their cut as well.
The developer should have invested in better, cleaner interface and graphics similar to Legend of Grimrock which released the following year. Then again, it would have been his own money spent on the game, and the sales increase might not have been enough to recoup costs. The actual gameplay is passable but not notable.
 

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Frayed Knights: Building Dungeons
Posted by Rampant Coyote on November 24, 2015


I’m in the middle of building dungeons for Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath. I stress over this. A lot. Way more than I should. You’d think that after decades of being a dice & paper game master making adventures, playing lots of CRPGs, decades of game design and development, and a full-fledged award-winning RPG under my belt that it’d be a snap. That’s what I keep thinking it should be. But it’s not, and it’s a mental thing. Or a pride thing. A lack-of-confidence thing?

Running my friends through a published adventure module the other night, I looked at the map and thought, “You know, what I make is much better than this. This is fun, and this is the kind of experience I’m going for, right? What’s the problem? Why should I stress out about it?”

Well, yeah. Compared to maps which are only a tool for the game master, or to the old gridded maps of the games that were my inspirations for the game (like the one from Secret of the Silver Blades, above), sure. But actually being able to see these areas and play them in a game that wasn’t made before Bill Clinton was in office means I have to do something more with them, even on an indie budget. I’m still competing with stuff like this, and better:



(The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim)

Yeah, on my budget, that ain’t happening. Even some of the semi-recent lower-budget stuff that’s limited to an axis-aligned grid looks pretty amazing:



(Might & Magic X: Legacy)



(Legend of Grimrock 2)

Yeah. Not gonna get there, as much as I would like to. Visually, we can make the dungeons look nice, but we have to compete on other fronts. We can do some very interesting things with them, which I’m very excited about. Navigating each dungeon in Frayed Knights 2 is like a story unto itself, with lots of interactions and different types of encounters.

But… it’s intimidating. I find myself under a lot of self-inflicted pressure. I shouldn’t. I should just have fun with it. I keep telling myself that.

Fortunately, I do. When I’m cutting loose and no longer worrying about how I’m stacking up with everybody else out there, I really am having fun. Working out the storylines, the flow, and trying to make each dungeon be a stand-alone, self-contained adventure in it’s own right isn’t easy. I want them to be a unique experience not found in other CRPGs. I can’t just throw some rooms in there and stock them with random encounters. I find myself agonizing over seemingly minor details.

But I’m having fun. This is the part I look forward to, the part I imagine when I think about “making RPGs.” Building the world… the playgrounds. It is fun. Having fun means I’m being more productive, and I think players will have more fun too.

So… onward. More dungeons. More interactivity. More puzzles. More interesting combats. More traps. More amusing dialog. More secrets. More story. More fun. That’s the goal.

 

gaussgunner

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When I saw this I had to give FK1 another chance... and I made it through the first scenario without it glitching out on me like the Steam version I tried before. If the rest of the game proves to be deeper than it looked at first, I'll be looking forward to FK2. I hope it has better dialogue writing, better UI, and faster map loading.. but the shit graphics don't bother me and I can live with blobber combat.. at least it's not a jrpg. It actually has some innovative crpg mechanics... nothing spectactular, but I mean, holy shit, I don't hate the combat system yet. First map wasn't too easy, wasn't a slog either, didn't require save-scumming. There's also the potential for some decent character development and decisions with real consequences. Cautiously optimistic.
 

LESS T_T

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Codex 2014
RC's New Year's resolution: complete and ship the game: http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=9869

Happy New Year!
Posted by Rampant Coyote on December 31, 2015

It’s New Year’s Eve here, and I will be taking tomorrow off of blogging. I’d say that I’ll be sleeping off my revelry from the night before, but ya’ll know me. We’re having friends over, and we may be having some wild, wild … board gaming and competitive Tetris playing until only about an hour before my usual bed time.

2015 was a pretty decent year for me overall. The demo version of Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath had a pretty successful showing at some conventions. At least as successful as slower-paced, deep RPG can have at a show where people have tiny attention spans as they pass by the booths. Two of my short stories saw publication in anthologies, and I just received notification that another is a finalist in another contest. Just as important, I feel my writing chops have grown significantly over the last two years. Hopefully, if you haven’t read my stories yet, you’ll be able to see the difference in the next game.

Which brings us to 2016. There’s really only one big goal that you’d be interested in: Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath needs to be completed and shipped. At this point, the job is about 80% content, and there’s a lot left to do. The light at the end of the tunnel feels like only a pinprick of a glow, but at least now it’s visible. But assuming the day job doesn’t get TOO psycho, and the art guys have some time to devote to the game, there’s no reason it can’t happen.

On the writing front, I suspect the bulk of my writing will be for FK2 for at least the first half of the year. The last game was somewhere on the order of 30k words of text, and the new one looks like it will be at least as much.



As a reminder, there’s still a weekend left on the big Steam Sale for the first game:

Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon on Steam – Holiday Sale!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Frayed Knights 2: January WIP Stuff

How about an eye-searing jumble of work-in-progress images from Frayed Knights 2? Sure! I should have had an artist work on this, but it was late and I thought I’d show once again why I should stick with design and programming. Anyway, I was really trying to show some of the maps without actually, you know, showing the maps. But honestly the screenshots are generally cooler, even if some are kind of embarrassingly blemished with work-in-progress unfinished-ness.



While I don’t really have a milestone to announce, in a way, this image dump represents the end of a lot of the early-phase, ‘pre-alpha’ stuff. Which is kinda funny, since I thought the demo we showed during the late-summer and fall was pretty polished and a good representation of the game. But it was still just a “vertical slice.” Since then we’ve been transitioning into making it a full (and probably too large) role-playing game.

Over the last several weeks, I’ve focused on getting all of the levels in Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath complete enough to pass them off to the art guys. That means designed, whiteboxed, and navigable. The latter is a little tricky because I really like to make my levels impossible to just walk through from beginning to end, even before they are filled with locks, traps, and monsters. I like to have parts of the dungeon move, and these cool vertical areas that there’s a trick to navigating. That’s required some scripting. Anyway, I had a goal to get that done by the end of the year, and I fell a little short, although progress has accelerated and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

There are more, and significantly bigger, dungeons in Frayed Knights 2. In part, this is because I’m compensating for eliminating the outdoor areas. In the first game, those were fun to explore once, but then took a long time to walk through and became a little tedious. They also consumed a lot of art resources for places that weren’t really a focal point of the game. So instead, the dungeon crawling is bigger and (I believe and hope) better.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t led to a lot for me to talk about here on the blog. I don’t mind dropping a few teasers here and there, but I don’t want to go into too much detail. That’s the stuff that you’ll want to explore. It gets a little exhausting coming up with all the puzzles, tricks, stories, and and unusual situations in each dungeon. Just like the first game, I avoid having levels just be a sequence of fights (or fights and traps). For me, exploration means finding new, interesting stuff. So while every room might not be a cornucopia of fascinating delight and wonder, I don’t want to just drop a few orcs behind every door.

I also approach the design of each level more like I would a dice & paper RPG. That’s not to say I don’t borrow “bits” from classic CRPGs. Those are in there too. But I find that thinking about the design in terms of a human-moderated game and then try to see how I’d translate it into the computer. Sometimes it doesn’t work, but other times it does. Worst-case, when I really love something but it doesn’t translate well, I keep it and use text and dialog to explain what’s going on. As always, if you hate reading text, this game might not be for you.

We’ve still got a lot to do, but the pace is accelerating, and as I hope this dumb little image represents, we’ve come a long way. Over the next few weeks, I expect the screenshots will start appearing more regularly as I have stuff actually worthy of showing off.

This is where things start really getting fun. And crazy.
 

Metro

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'The Quest' blows this away and it started as an iOS game.
 

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