Cardhalia - Czech dungeon crawler appears from obscurity

[Unkillable Cat]

http://www.say-realm.com/c1/index.html

While browsing the web today, I came upon this. Seems that this is a dungeon crawler made "ten years ago by 16-18 years old guys" and was only released just now in English. For as humble a beginning as that, it's actually looking and playing good.

I had a short playthrough of the game today. The plot is standard fare: Far away in an unnamed land (but seemingly inhabited by Xvarts and has a city called Athkatla far to the west) is an area once forged by the Gods before they got bored and left, and serves as the background to the story. Now an ancient evil returns and is gathering up wooden boxes that combine to form a wooden puzzle that keeps something locked away. You are the apprentice of a sage who is about to head out to do something about this, but is devoured by a fearsome evil right in front of your eyes. It's up to you to try to get something done.

Character creation is a bit odd: First you choose between two named characters to represent the apprentice, but you get to roll the stats for. There's Strength, Wisdom and Dexterity, as well as Fighting, Magic and Thieving skills. All very simple. Then you get to choose 3 more companions from a list, you cannot change anything about them.

The most obvious source of reference for gameplay and mechanics is Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos. All four characters can fight at any time, and inventory, weapon usage and interaction with the game world is almost identical to LoL. All the graphics look hand-drawn, but a bit cartoonish at times.

The magic system is nice. There are four schools (Life, Death, Nature and one other IIRC. Chaos?) and you must find the spells on scrolls and then scribe them. But the thing is, all four characters have the same book, and can prepare one spell each. Changing spells is as easy as opening up the spellbook and selecting the character and spell. Scribing the spells into the spellbook is a simple right-click, and scribing the same spell several times levels up the spell.

Unfortunately I didn't get very far, as I only managed to reach the first village and the game crashed when I clicked on a barrel there. Also, the English is pretty broken at times. I think this game is in need of a patch or two before being actually playable. Sadly their forum is Czech only.

They're also working on a sequel which looks very Grimrock-esque in appearance.

 

[Broseph]

Looks quite interesting, will check it out. Portraits look kind of weird and amateurish but otherwise the art style doesn't look too bad.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

http://www.say-realm.com/c1/data/downs/cardhalia/cardhalia_v16_full_en.exe
404 not found

 

[MisterStone]

Yeah, link is 404, but can you put us up some screenies bro?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Correct link:
http://www.say-realm.com/c1/index.html

I'm downloading it now.

 

[Broseph]

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It makes me nostalgic for mid-90s.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Update: Seems I botched up the installation of the game. Make sure to run run_me.bat before playing as it needs to register some .DLL's. After that it's smooth sailing.

One gigantic LoL reference spotted: The healer in the village looks almost identical to the healer in Gladstone Keep.

And one of my characters died in the sewers beneath the village. Raising him requires either the top-level Life spell or force-feeding the corpse a certain kind of plant. I'm pretty sure I won't find that just lying around somewhere. This game is brutal on a scale close to the 80's RPGs. Fighting a single Xvart can take a while, and none of my party has gained a level yet. Two of my party have only 6 HP, and those Giant Rats in the sewers pack a punch. Equipment is scarce, I could barely afford a short sword at the blacksmith's. Oh, and the game includes an automap.

This is gonna be fun.

 

[ShlongMaster]

Screenshots of the second one look really pretty. So is the first one worth playing?

 

[joeydohn]

That last screenshot looks an awful lot like the game that the Legend of Grimrock team were developing a few years back.

 

[octavius]

I can't help it, but I find this artwork far more charming than anime and the current crop of "cute" artwork.

 

[Cosmo]

Screenshots of the second one look really pretty. So is the first one worth playing?

It's fucking gorgeous you mean !

Looks like those illustrated fairy tales books that some parents buy for their kids (when in truth they really buy it for themselves)...

 

[Wolfus]

If you like this, try Undercroft.

 

[General Maxson]

Is it available in english?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Seems that this is a dungeon crawler made "ten years ago by 16-18 years old guys" and was only released just now in English.

 

[Broseph]

I can't help it, but I find this artwork far more charming than anime and the current crop of "cute" artwork.

Yeah, I agree. The faces seem a little odd to me but it definitely has a certain charm to it.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

The Barman looks great but the out of shape poorly drawn orc, not so much.

 

[Mother Russia]

If you like this, try Undercroft.

That's for ifone...

 

[Wolfus]

So what? It's also for Windows Mobile. I used to play it on my PDA (at the toilet).

 

[bminorkey]

I love the visual style.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Well, I used the Christmas holidays to get a better playthrough of this game. While I haven't finished it yet, I've gotten pretty far to be to tell you a few things:

This is almost a fan-made rendition of LoL: Throne of Chaos. The resemblances are uncanny. Besides the aforementioned resemblances (see first post) the levels themselves mimic the game. Check this out:

# Starting area has a small forest, a small cave and then a "safe haven" where all the basic services are available and is used to advance the story in the opening steps of the game. Just like LoL.
# This starting area will soon become unreachable as the game advances, so

Spoiler

make sure you've done everything you can before going through the exit of the map known as "Passage".

# Then there is a large forest area (spread over several maps) featuring Orcs and powerful four-handed beasts. Just like LoL.
# Speaking of said forest, there is a river running through it that must be crossed. Sound familiar?
# There's an Orc "boss" that must be killed in a area with a tileset almost identical to Roland's Manor in LoL.
# There's a prison area which has an "alternate" exit path, much like the Draracle's cave in LoL.
# There are (Dwarven) mines in the game, and they remind me too much of the Urbish Mines in LoL. Fortunately no Larkhan monster has been spotted... yet.
# There are rock monsters in the Dwarven mines. You'll need hammers to hurt them in any serious manner.
# Teleporters are identical to LoL: A giant floating sphere.
# Monsters can disarm your party like in LoL, and also destroy your weapons and armor.
# While I haven't reached it yet, I know that there's a graveyard level ahead, and some Undead to deal with. Probably going to be the White Tower all over again...
# Spells have "levels", based on your magic skill. Fireball, for example, acts like the Spark spell on the first level, but at a higher level it actually launches a Fireball missile that travels away from you.
# The automap is pretty much copy-pasted from LoL, right down to the graphics and legends used on it.

But how does it compare? To be honest, not that favourably. It can't do all the fancy tricks that LoL can (like freezing the swamp to cross the bogs) and enemies are always one per square, they never group up. Can't operate doors either, fortunately. The graphics are also so rough, that sometimes you're not even sure what you're fighting. The monsters in the prison level, for example. Since when do Orcs have access to plate armour in large amounts? And are those guys with the surgical masks torturers? It makes me wonder. But Cardhalia fails on two things in particular:

# Because of the broken English, all the conversations and written texts in the game feel uninteresting and dull. Which is a shame, as a lot of effort has been put into the lore and background of the game world, and there are some long-ass books to be found and read.
# Combat is boring boring BORING. It feels like level-scaling is involved. Killing one enemy takes way too much effort. So many missed attacks, so many hitpoints. It was only once my party reached about Level 10 or so that I could start smiting bats and worms with impunity (I'm about Level 14 now). The Giant Rats in the first real dungeon are outright lethal at that point in the game. Even though I'm kitted out in ring mail and some "decent" armour now, I'm being hit consistently for 15-20 points of damage by mad dwarfs carrying shurikens and knifes.

Because of the slow-paced and dull combat, once you do go up against some tough opponents, the game gets quite hard. The bottom prison level is a great example of this. There are these plate-armor wearing mofos that hit well and hard, have a boatlod of HP and are hard to hit. But here's the thing: Almost the entire level is made up of snaking passages (no room to tango in) and they RESPAWN constantly. You WILL get flanked, reared and surrounded by them, even when you think that your back is clear. And if that isn't enough, just you wait 'till you meet the first Boss Monster later on in the level. It took me a whole evening just to finish this one level, and it isn't even that big.

Right now I'm on the third level of the Dwarven Mines, and I've had enough for a while. Even deranged Dwarves take forever to kill (though a fully-charged fireball one-shots them) and the "puzzles" have devolved into looking into every nook and cranny for the keys to all the locked doors.

Overall, I only recommend this game to the dungeon crawler fans. It isn't as snazzy and appealing as LoL, and sadly not as fun either. Still better than EOB3, though.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I remember playing the Czech version a few years back. As far as i remember, the story was quite dull (so you are not losing much), but the overall experience was enjoyable. Didn't finish it though. And yes, the influence of Lands of Lore is impossible to overlook.

I was pleasantly surprised by the magic system. They actually improved something over the game they were copying.


Cardhalia 2 is still not dead and has some new promising screenshots:

The spell description:

Protection of Death
Only death can protect from death
Death Cover
Increase resistance to death and hostile magic
Dead Tissue
Bleeds only a little and doesn't get poisoned

EDIT: The original newspost - http://www.say-realm.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40


Gates of Skeldal was overall much better game than C1. Older, but not indie freeware. I quite liked its turn-based combat, not that many blobbers had it. It also came with complete editor and several fan adventures of rather high quality were made. I think it's free now. Unfortunately no real English translation makes it unplayable for people not speaking such a magnificent and widespread language as Czech. And it's a bitch to learn.

 

[Severian Silk]

Oh, it's one of those oldskool first-person RPGs? Yech...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I remember playing the Czech version a few years back. As far as i remember, the story was quite dull (so you are not losing much), but the overall experience was enjoyable. Didn't finish it though. And yes, the influence of Lands of Lore is impossible to overlook.

I was pleasantly surprised by the magic system. They actually improved something over the game they were copying.

The magic system is interesting, but sadly the same cannot be said about the spells. I've given up on playing further in Cardhalia, having finally cleared the Dwarven Mines and reached the... uh... forest area beyond.

The bottom level of the mines is plagued by Dwarven ghosts. Like in LoL, spells work and some weapons do some damage, but you'll need special ghost-slaying equipment (or spells) to really fight them properly. In Cardhalia, this means that only the magical modifier of a weapon will actually do any damage, unless you enchant the wielder of the weapon with one of the "X Strike" spells, one for each category of spells. Only two problems with this: The spell takes a LOT of mana to cast, and only works for about a minute. It does NOTHING to improve your odds of hitting a monster (which is pretty bad to begin with), so far too often the casting of the spell is wasted. What's worse, any and all missile attacks do not work on ghosts... that includes spells as well. A full-powered fireball cannot hit ghosts because it is a missile, but a lowest-level fireball will hit them because it targets the square itself. And no, you have no control over the "power" of a spell, it is always at its most powerful (which is based on the caster level).

So yeah, fighting the ghosts is about as boring and annoying as fighting them in the White Tower in LoL... except the game decides to throw in a rematch with the Boss Monster first encountered at the bottom of the prison level. At least this time he dies for good, and drops good loot at well... until I discovered that his armor makes the wearer immune to ALL spells cast upon him, even friendly ones!

Then there's the thing with all the ore: There are several puzzles in the mines that require putting gold, silver and iron ore into certain niches to progress. IIRC, there are next to NO CLUES in-game about these things, trial-and-error would probably have uncovered this in about a couple of weeks worth of gametime, but that would only get you down to the bottom level of the mines. Then there's the puzzle with the furnaces and the Treasure Vault, which requires even more trial-and-erroring to get working.

As for the forest area I mentioned... Imagine a map that doesn't have a single passage stretching longer than 2 squares, that the whole map is a series of turns. That's what that forest area looks like, and it's HUGE. Good luck finding your way through that without an automap. And the enemies are giant spiders that poison you. Wee.

Hopefully Cardhalia 2 will be a bit more... friendly towards the player than the original.

 

[evdk]

Gates of Skeldal was overall much better game than C1. Older, but not indie freeware. I quite liked its turn-based combat, not that many blobbers had it. It also came with complete editor and several fan adventures of rather high quality were made. I think it's free now. Unfortunately no real English translation makes it unplayable for people not speaking such a magnificent and widespread language as Czech. And it's a bitch to learn.

There should be an english translation somewhere, but I can't find it. I still distinctly remember seeing it somewhere though. I may have been even sober. Possibly.

Also it should be "Protection by Death" IMHO.