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Indie Lurking - Inspired by Ultima 3 (released)

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
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3,548
https://oklabsoft.itch.io/lurking

Lurking is a classic RPG inspired by Ultima III.

  • Classless character creation with modifiable skills.
  • Build a party of up to five characters.
  • Huge (300x300 tile) open world to be explored with nonlinear story progression.
  • Beautiful retro pixel scenery that changes with the seasons.
  • Additional gigantic multi-level underworld with separate town and battle maps.
  • Turn-based combat in the early Ultima style.
  • Hundreds of weapons, armor, and special items.
  • Dozens of magical spells and songs.
  • 40+ hours of game play.
  • A fantasy role playing experience reminiscent of the 2D tile based RPGs of the 1980s.
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Classless system and full party creation.

I just started, collected some information, killed some skeletons. My entire party was also killed by a wraith.
So far the game is promising.

On the bad side the game seems to run slowly and I had to switch my Windows language to English in order to make the game run (I dialogued with the developers and they were very cool), nothing serious considering it's a beta. EDIT : OLD
 
Last edited:

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
Messages
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That's a funny question, since you have to install the font to play the game but if you don't it uses some classic font instead, but I'm not sure it will work properly.
 

Bumvelcrow

Somewhat interesting
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Codex 2013 Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Strap Yourselves In
Looks a bit more than 'inspired' by U3. The world area is loverly tile-based (ripped from U5?) but I agree the fonts are dreadful and the whole smooth, untextured interface clashes horribly with the mid-80s tiles. But it's still in development (beta seems awfully optimistic) so could be interesting. I couldn't find any plot details on the web page other than 'kill the evil X', or any info on combat, so this is currently going in my things that may be interesting but are probably just finger-twiddling vanity projects category.
 

Snorkack

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Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Ok, at least it's readable now. Still - Hi-res interface with low-res viewport should be a punishable crime. Also,
On the bad side the game seems to run slowly and I had to switch my Windows language to English in order to make the game run
tells me that I probably should wait a good amount of time before I try it.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
You probably should wait a good amount of time before you try it.

I'm enjoying the game despite the bugs but it is bugged.
 

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
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I got a little further into the game, it really delivers some very good exploration and is fun overall.

- The world is fully open and so far I'm mostly wandering into towns looking for new spells, songs, tools and key information (hints and keywords). The few parts of dungeons I reached were decent, rather big with a lot of paths and not oversaturated with monsters.

- The plot is classic but serviceable and chatting with characters is very engaging since a lot of them have some relevant information to share when they have not some new song to teach you, and triggering some key dialog by typing the good keyword is very satisfying as always. This kind of dialog system never gets old, very well adapted to this kind of exploration-focused game. I have got some pages of notes, a good indicator that the game is good.

- The combat system is a little weak (they didn't improve the Ultima formula), but character development and customization compensate this to some extent. At each level you get one point that you can allocate to a skill, you'll also eventually be able to allocate it to a stat. You need to find the spells and songs, they're learned by your full team but the characters need a minimum score in magic/music score to use them.

Besides there's a lot of other good stuff, for example :
- Seasons change over time and the scenery appropriately changes, for example during winter the shallow water turns into ice and it's much more easy to distinguish it (it's always crossable).
- You can hear the songs your characters are playing (and the music is generally good), which is always cool.

I have only met a few annoying reccuring bugs, I mentioned them to the developpers who seem to work very fast, the game could quickly be in a fairly playable state.
 

CryptRat

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Sep 10, 2014
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I'm much closer to the beginning rather than the end for sure, the game is big.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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Mar 22, 2013
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how is the variety - monsters, levels, environments?
 

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
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Towns and dungeons have their dose of key stuff, unique characters and secrets. Monsters on the other hand are not really varied, you mostly fight packs of melee monsters.
 

CryptRat

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Developer
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Sep 10, 2014
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I completed the game, took me about 50 hours I guess. It's great, just don't stop to the repetitive combat and play it. The journey is fantastic, the world is big, almost every character is involved in your quest one way or another and most dungeons are pretty decent too, the big ones contain a lot of stuff. Prepare to take notes and to draw at least rudimentary map of some dungeons. The game isn't overly hard but you need to pay attention to what people say.

Besides the developpers are very cool bros, they're still improving the UI or correcting some minor bugs (I reported a few bugs and they always corrected them very fast) but the game is fully playable as is, it's definitely not a bugged game anymore.
 

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
I'm really sad that nobody in the net cares about this game and that it dosen't get any comment on itch.io nor gamejolt. Sure it's not the first Ultima-inspired project to be launched, but actually released ones of decent size are not legion.
 

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