Indie Archaelund: RPG that combines 1st-person exploration with 3rd-person TB combat - now available on Early Access

[Volourn]

No dwarves? FUKK OFF. A fantasy rpg with no dwarves is pure bullshit. Otherwise, looks really nice.

 

[agris]

Played a bit, and got filtered hard Maybe I should use the healing battery class. Being able to rest would probably make a difference too, but I don't have the Spot or Survival skill. Or maybe I'll have to wait until the game gets inevitably dumbed down balanced.

how far did you get?

to the first dungeon, by then everyone was down to a few HP. I found some rations but no spot to rest

there's a spot to rest out on the shore (green dot)

 

[Tyranicon]

Played a bit, and got filtered hard Maybe I should use the healing battery class. Being able to rest would probably make a difference too, but I don't have the Spot or Survival skill. Or maybe I'll have to wait until the game gets inevitably dumbed down balanced.

how far did you get?

to the first dungeon, by then everyone was down to a few HP. I found some rations but no spot to rest

there's a spot to rest out on the shore (green dot)

View attachment 45472

You'll probably have to clear the fish mob before being able to use that rest spot though. Much less painful once you explored the beach a bit and have a few weapons. Fists = basically useless except on fighter classes.

 

[agris]

There's a good amout of hidden items spread throughout the nooks and crannies of the world, kinda reminiscent of gothic (except no jumping/mantling). instead of gothic's action-oriented style of environmental navigation in pursuit of secrets, Archaelund rewards the perceptive player with a chance to use their party's skills to traverse hard to reach areas. This is a cool little example of PnP-style problem solving in the tutorial area of Archaelund.

Spoiler

there's lots of little items hidden all over the world, and they don't highlight at all unless you're right next to them with the crosshair over it (like the bag above). but, in a nod to a very mechanics-heavy game, your characters' equivalent of "spot secrets" skill is constantly rolled against as you move by them. if you pass a check, these little items will glow a bit, making it much easier to spot them.

this combined with the robust mix of classes, abilities and spells has the makings of a real classic. i'm more than cautiously optimistic. this looks like it could be a modern classic *if* the amount of interactions and quality continues to ramp up.

 

[Abu Antar]

I am currently playing this game. I think the game has solid foundations but just needs more of everything.

Agreed. That's the idea.

Folks, won't be visiting the codex much these weeks, just too many forums, emails, etc. currently buzzing around my head, while I try to be focused on releasing updates. But eventually will read everything posted here.

Make humans barbarians you damned churl.

Play a green skin, fool. Or minotaur master race!

Ride the bull?

 

[mediocrepoet]

Played a bit, and got filtered hard Maybe I should use the healing battery class. Being able to rest would probably make a difference too, but I don't have the Spot or Survival skill. Or maybe I'll have to wait until the game gets inevitably dumbed down balanced.

how far did you get?

to the first dungeon, by then everyone was down to a few HP. I found some rations but no spot to rest

It's okay, I was limping along with a party with no healer mages, figuring we could do other things except no alchemy or anything yet and resting doesn't heal injuries. Was sort of limping along and then fell off the side of a rock into the sea where there was no way back up, so we all drowned.

10/10, would TPK again.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I am currently playing this game. I think the game has solid foundations but just needs more of everything.

Agreed. That's the idea.

Folks, won't be visiting the codex much these weeks, just too many forums, emails, etc. currently buzzing around my head, while I try to be focused on releasing updates. But eventually will read everything posted here.

Make humans barbarians you damned churl.

Play a green skin, fool. Or minotaur master race!

Ride the bull?

In Soviet Russia, the bull rides you!

 

[ProphetSword]

Made it hours into the game, all the way to the first city. Did some missions there, got to 2nd level.

Update today. Save games no longer load.

Guess I'll come back when that stops happening.

 

[Alienman]

I wrote down a quick impressions for my blog. You can read it here, or down below, if interested.

Spoiler

Recently Archaelund came out in Early Access, and being the starved RPG nerd that I am, I decided to buy it with full knowledge that it won’t be completed until at least the year 2025… or was it 2026? Either way, the game is far away from being finished, but even in this early stage, it shows promise and a solid foundation for the future. I also want to point out, that this is being made by a solo developer, which is impressive by itself. Let’s get into it.

Beach party
I won’t go into too much about the story, but the gist of it is – your gang of adventurers gets shipwrecked on a mysterious ancient island after being attacked at sea by pirates. Your pal and employer wizard get kidnapped by the seadogs as well. Beyond survival, your task is also to find and rescue your friend. I have not gotten too far as I want to save the story bits for the future when the game is more complete, but what is presented is fine, and it’s fairly snappy too. The introduction is short, which means you will soon battle for domination over beasts, glorious XP, and loot on the beaches of Archaelund. This is a major plus in my book. Whilst I do like my fantasy stories, some RPGs just take way too long to get going, bombarding you with tutorials and cutscenes for hours on end. Not here though. It’s: Ship destroyed – wake up naked on beach – time to kill.

However, before the slaughtering can begin, you will have to create your little posse of heroes. The creation aspect is pretty extensive, letting you experiment with lots of different races, careers (classes), traits, and skills. What I especially like here, is that the different races come with bonuses, which makes the races stand out from each other. For example, you have the Minotaur race, big strong dudes, but what they gain in strength they lack in intelligence. Yet, there is nothing to restrict you from making a Minotaur apprentice (mage) as a challenge or just having a big cow that can zap foes with his left hand, while bashing them with his right. There are some restrictions, however, but they all seem to play into the world lore. Humans can’t be barbarians, and from what I gather, they are just too civilized for that, so if you want to play a barbarian you will have to go for a less civilized race.

There are a lot of interesting skills to pick too, everything from maps & charts to ancient lore. I recommend picking at least one adventurer with pick-locking and spot secrets for that extra loot. Nothing more frustrating than leaving an unlocked chest behind, but you can bash the chests open as well – if you ever feel you want to be less delicate. All in all, there seem to be many interesting kinds of roles to create here, in combination with the classes.

I do find that only having four companionsin your initial party is way too low, which forces my brain to make the more standard classes – rogue, priest, tank, and mage – to cover the basics. I wish it would be six because then it would let me experiment a bit, and the more, the merrier. I guess I still can experiment a bit, but I’m just too set in my ways, and discovering fifty hours into the game that your basket-weaving specialist is not working out kinda sucks. You get to pick up two hirelings though, so those can fill the more unconventional roles, but it’s not ideal. Come on RPG makers, give me six slots, dammit!

Slaying creatures
What is interesting about the general gameplay, is that exploration is gridless first person. You walk around like in any normal FPS, and I have to say, the environment looks pretty good and does easily invite exploration. It has surprisingly good lighting and design overall. When you encounter a group of enemies that needs to be removed from this world permanently, the game switches to a grid-based top-down turn-based view, right on the spot, where you meet the gnarly bad guys. It’s pretty seamless and fast. The fighting is your standard turn-based fare, and I don’t say that to be negative. It works well, looks good, and is easy to understand when coming from other games. No archaic knowledge of old needed to get into the brutal skirmishing. You need action points to move, and to attack, and depending on skill and weapon, the action point requirements vary. Heavy weapons require more AP than daggers for example. Trying to run away from an enemy gives them a free attack, and the same goes for you. There are also flanking rules that I have not fully grasped yet (I might have skipped that tutorial by accident). It’s very tactical and very deadly, and that makes it a joy to slaughter creatures.

Willpower like health will be an important aspect to maintain and understand. You see, every kind of special action will drain willpower, from magic to melee, and it will not come back until you have rested. And you will be resting a lot! However, you can’t rest wherever you want, only at certain set destinations. These spots seem to be fairly spaced out though, but if you don’t find a spot, you can always hump your ass back to an old resting area. If you rest without using supplies, you don’t gain full willpower and health replenishment. It will only ever reach 50% of what you have, but there are ways around this if you have a healer. When you have rested just heal by using spells to recover beyond the 50% limit, and then take a quick nap again. Health shouldn’t be much of an issue in general to recover. But then you have the willpower problem. Only having 50% of the willpower available in a fight, can and will cripple any mage. Yet, you can let RNG boost your willpower by taking the meditation skill. Every time your party rests, the ones with mediation will mediate, and have an increased chance of getting some willpower back that way. It’s a skill that I think will become a go-to for certain classes, even if it’s a good addition for almost everyone.

There seem to be no penalties for resting, except that time goes by quickly when doing so. I had one quest fail because I took a little too long meandering about in a cave, sniffing on the flowers and such, so resting doesn’t come without dangers it seems. Whilst there are no direct penalties to taking extended naps constantly, I’m sure the designer of the game got more nasty surprises for those that spam the rest button (me included), as noted here. If you have yummy supplies in your pack, you will gain 100% of your health and willpower back. It’s of the utmost importance to remember to stock up on those in town. I like this system since it adds a little preparedness and extra adventuring flair to the whole deal, but it doesn’t demolish your playthrough if you run out of supplies on a big dungeon-diving expedition.

Funky arms
One thing that drags down Archaelund is the poor animations and models of humans and creatures. They are passable, but compared to how the game looks and feels otherwise, it is a disappointing thing. I know it’s a one-man developer show and all, but it does reduce the quality, and it makes the human fighters look very silly. Their combat stance looks absolutely ridiculous, having them waving their shield and clubs around like they have severe Aspergers. Hopefully, it’s something that will be improved in the future. The portraits, art, and exploration graphics look wonderful otherwise, it’s just the models and animations that drag it down a bit.

Another issue I was having, is that there are no quick slots for changing weapons. However, I got a response from the dev that he will add this option in the future. So, that’s great to hear! Archaelund has a long way to go. This means that the game is from being finished, and won’t be for a good while. While I enjoy the game, it’s hard to recommend anyone to buy into unfinished games, regardless of reason, especially at this early stage. Yet, if you feel like supporting this one-man dev team to create a good party-based RPG for the future – go ahead! Just don’t expect it to be finished anytime soon. Once again, what is there is good in the gameplay department, and it shows great potential for the future.

Thanks for reading.

 

[Tyranicon]

How it started: Rolled random party without any regard to combat effectiveness, picked hardest available difficulty, ignored tutorials.

How it's going: Repeatedly TPK'd by first dungeon boss, can't attack with weapons because too injured, charmer skills useless against boss, arrows barely above useless, only 1 lightning resist potion, boss 1-hit KOs my dudes.

This is how we have fun, boys.

 

[lvl 2 Blue Slime]

So the Codex consensus is that's it's good?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So the Codex consensus is that's it's good?

Yes but it's also unplayable for all the humans in the informal association of barbarians. Both of us are pretty pissed about that because the game hits all the right notes otherwise. Apparently.

 

[Tyranicon]

So the Codex consensus is that's it's good?

IMO it has a lot of promise and is a stellar effort by a single dev, but there's lots of Early Access jank, some questionable design and of course, bugs. My biggest personal pet peeve is how RNG the combat can be in the beginning, especially with few ways to mitigate it as you start naked with no gear. And NO BATTLE POSITIONING! <--- Needs to be addressed.

There's also hilarious old-fashioned tricks you can do like camping (which without resources will recover 50% of HP and Mana) so you can spam the heal spell, and then camp more again without any penalty. :D

If you're into a First-person blobber type exploration and iso turn-based combat, this is one to keep an eye on. The dev is also behind Exiled Kingdoms, so it's not like he's a no-name with no history.

Rooting for this one. Sometimes it feels good to be positive for once.

 

[agris]

My biggest personal pet peeve is how RNG the combat can be in the beginning, especially with few ways to mitigate it as you start naked with no gear. And NO BATTLE POSITIONING! <--- Needs to be addressed.

git gud etc etc, but really for any vet the rng isn't bad. look at the character classes and read the tooltips

no battle positioning isn't quite right. go into interactive mode -> edit party. Tanks to the left, squishies to the right. you'll engage in a roughly linear formation with the left-most PM in the front, and right-most in the back (unless you're ambushed).

 

[Dorateen]

There's also hilarious old-fashioned tricks you can do like camping (which without resources will recover 50% of HP and Mana) so you can spam the heal spell, and then camp more again without any penalty. :D

Sounds like could use the GoldBox style FIX command, where clerics would cast and rememorize all their healing spells until the party is patched up.

 

[Tyranicon]

no battle positioning isn't quite right. go into interactive mode -> edit party. Tanks to the left, squishies to the right. you'll engage in a roughly linear formation with the left-most PM in the front, and right-most in the back (unless you're ambushed).

I'm not a fan of how it just dumps your party semi-randomly in a clump. It would make sense if you're trying to run past a mob and get caught, but not if you intentionally initiate combat.

The player should be able to choose the specific squares their characters start on, it's a tremendous advantage (and one that is a genre standard at this point) that is missing.

 

[Desiderius]

There's also hilarious old-fashioned tricks you can do like camping (which without resources will recover 50% of HP and Mana) so you can spam the heal spell, and then camp more again without any penalty. :D

Sounds like could use the GoldBox style FIX command, where clerics would cast and rememorize all their healing spells until the party is patched up.

Timeless in more ways than one

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

I see there is are 4 members in the party. Is this a hard limit or it's possible to have a proper 6 member party?

 

[Deimos]

4 Party members and 2 hired companions I believe. I haven't played it yet, waiting for 1.0

 

[agris]

no battle positioning isn't quite right. go into interactive mode -> edit party. Tanks to the left, squishies to the right. you'll engage in a roughly linear formation with the left-most PM in the front, and right-most in the back (unless you're ambushed).

I'm not a fan of how it just dumps your party semi-randomly in a clump. It would make sense if you're trying to run past a mob and get caught, but not if you intentionally initiate combat.

The player should be able to choose the specific squares their characters start on, it's a tremendous advantage (and one that is a genre standard at this point) that is missing.

it's fair that you aren't a fan of something, but the current lack of a deployment system for the start of combat actually fits this game and its somewhat simulationist approach to mechanics. since exploration is 1st person and real time, why would it be reasonable to assume a team of giant cows are running through the sand in a perfect wedge formation prior to whacking a crab? the game is giving us a mechanism by which to set a rough formation, through the party order function, but it seems like your motivation for wanting a proper deployment phase for every combat encounter is difficulty and genre convention.

regarding difficulty: from your earlier post it seems like you didn't really engage with the character or combat systems, picked the hardest difficulty and just jumped in. but if you're frustrated by the difficulty I don't think you can peg it on this lack of a traditional TBS-style "place your combatants prior to combat" system. try classic difficulty (no weighing for or against the player) after studying the char dev system and building a thoughtful party. if it feels too unfair and difficult then, that's a conversation worth having.

regarding genre convention: is Archaelund even in a genre we have any conventions for? It certainly isn't a traditional TBS game. I never played the SSI Au-box games, but did they give you a deployment phase? I played some of BaK as well, and don't remember a deployment phase. Never played RoA. Given that amnesia and decided lack of pedigree, I approached Archaelund with little preconceived notions of what it should or shouldn't be and the way combat is handled feels perfectly normal and well suited for the rest of the systems. Could I bitch that combat is made more difficult by virtue of not being able to precisely set our characters' starting positions at the start of combat? yeah, but then again I enjoy a game that doesn't pat my bum and tell me that I'm a good boy. it's self consistent and challenging, i don't think those are negatives.

I see there is are 4 members in the party. Is this a hard limit or it's possible to have a proper 6 member party?

up to 4 player-made + 2 companions. You can make less than 4 characters, but idk if that lets you recruit more than 2 companions at a time though. 6 is the limit.

 

[Tyranicon]

it's fair that you aren't a fan of something, but the current lack of a deployment system for the start of combat actually fits this game and its somewhat simulationist approach to mechanics. since exploration is 1st person and real time, why would it be reasonable to assume a team of giant cows are running through the sand in a perfect wedge formation prior to whacking a crab? the game is giving us a mechanism by which to set a rough formation, through the party order function, but it seems like your motivation for wanting a proper deployment phase for every combat encounter is difficulty and genre convention.

I'm actually very much on the simulationist side of RPG dev and I think that will be abundantly clear with my next game. My problem here is actually from a realism perspective rather than difficulty.

Imagine your team of adventurers approaching a group of cave maggots intent on glorious combat. Would you clump up in a group and approach them, having your backline only mere feet away from the enemy?

No, of course not, your mages and archers would be well away from immediate danger.

That's it really. It's not a dealbreaker, but it irks me. I bring genre convention into this because RPGs have grappled with this for a very long time, and the standard is to just allow player manual placement unless ambushed or something.

regarding difficulty: from your earlier post it seems like you didn't really engage with the character or combat systems, picked the hardest difficulty and just jumped in. but if you're frustrated by the difficulty I don't think you can peg it on this lack of a traditional TBS-style "place your combatants prior to combat" system. try classic difficulty (no weighing for or against the player) after studying the char dev system and building a thoughtful party. if it feels too unfair and difficult then, that's a conversation worth having.

I actually think difficulty is fine and attribute my struggle entirely to me YOLO-ing it. I thought it was funny. Did it come across another way?

"Too much RNG" here is basically my way of saying everybody misses too much and I personally don't find it enjoyable to watch 10 consecutive misses.

The dev addresses this by saying the hit chance percentage is trueTM and not rigged like most games to make you feel better. Which I salute but think the majority of players would like hit chance to be set higher.

This topic is especially interesting to me because I am currently grappling with how to set hit chances, and I went the other way, setting them extremely high even for low level characters. To adjust, I made encounters much more deadly. In fact, my stupid parody game is probably going to be ungodly hard.

I'm excited.

 

[agris]

fair enough Tyranicon but I’ll just say, in a game where you can run up to and engage in TB combat and initial enemy positioning is determined by where they were pathing to when you started combat, aside from ambushes and set pieces that’s an advantage players have in determining where enemies are at the start of combat. it’s an advantage the player has and so it feels right that the player is beholden to the same rules. you can set a rough order, yet your party still runs around like a bunch of drunk naked idiots and the start of every combat reminds you of it.

it’s cool and a unique mix between exploration and fighting.

Re: RNG, git gud scrub. Read the char dev tooltips and youll make some killer characters, not some washouts missing 10x in a row.

Best char dev mechanics tooltips I think I’ve ever seen in a game, actually. Even had small tables

 

[Tyranicon]

Re: RNG, git gud scrub. Read the char dev tooltips and youll make some killer characters, not some washouts missing 10x in a row.

Character building makes games too easy. I'll do it again.

But no, I restarted a while ago on an easier difficulty. The drop in enemy health is noticable.

 

[Desiderius]

you didn't really engage with the character or combat systems, picked the hardest difficulty and just jumped in.

"Too much RNG" here is basically my way of saying everybody misses too much and I personally don't find it enjoyable to watch 10 consecutive misses.

The eternal struggle

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

up to 4 player-made + 2 companions. You can make less than 4 characters, but idk if that lets you recruit more than 2 companions at a time though. 6 is the limit.

I prefer to have a 6 player made companions, but it's better than having a hard 4 party members limit. I remember when people were badmouthing Wasteland 2 and the game for all it's faults had6 player created members + npcs companions.

I will give the game a go when it's finished, seems like a fun.