Mysterious Castle 1.8 for Mac and Windows

[eclectocrat]

Hey!

The game has drifted from it's RPG roots and has now become a party based roguelike. You can try it if you've got an intel mac at http://www.mysteriouscastle.com. Yes windows version in the works.

Not rpg. Just kill things... for now.

 

[spectre]

A roguelike is fine too.
If you can slap some rpg elements on top, more power to you.

I really dig the style, just finish the windows port already, dammit.
So how does it work, you control all 3 chars directly, indirectly is it multiplayer, or what?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The game has drifted from it's RPG roots and has now become a party based roguelike.

What does it even mean?

 

[spectre]

It means there won't be any collar grabbing and shapeshifting dragon romance rape, obviously.

 

[eclectocrat]

The game has drifted from it's RPG roots and has now become a party based roguelike.

What does it even mean?

It means:
- Procedurally generated levels.
- Random items.
- Randomly distributed enemies.
- Death comes swiftly
- You control a party of characters.

The last part merits an explanation. You have up to 3 party members (for now). You can switch between them at any point. Where one goes the others follow, unless you tell them to wait. When combat starts you control them each individually until combat ends. Done.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

The game has drifted from it's RPG roots and has now become a party based roguelike.

What does it even mean?

It means:
- Procedurally generated levels.
- Random items.
- Randomly distributed enemies.
- Death comes swiftly
- You control a party of characters.

The last part merits an explanation. You have up to 3 party members (for now). You can switch between them at any point. Where one goes the others follow, unless you tell them to wait. When combat starts you control them each individually until combat ends. Done.

Sounds like it didn't leave the RPG roots . Anyway, I have never played any party-based roguelikes. It sounds pretty interesting.

 

[eclectocrat]

Hey!

I've released an experimental build for 32 bit windows. It's got no sound and a flaky fullscreen mode, but it's a start.

www.mysteriouscastle.com

 

[Zed]

I really liked what I played.
The ground level bonus/penalty was nice. The graphics were nice. Pathfinding was good.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Hmm...not bad. A little simplistic, but not bad. Let me know when the final build is ready for trial.

 

[betamin]

Honestly, I LOVE what you did with the graphics.

 

[Zdzisiu]

I played it a bit and I must say I like it.

But there where plenty of confusing things:
- Inventory by pressing an arrow on the keybord? I had to restore to the oldschool method of pressing every key on my keybord to finally find it.
- Was it normal that when my party died I was given the command of one elf mothefucker who was kicking some mayor ass? And for some time he was being hit by monsters but no damage was taken by him, his health was always full?
-When I was fighting some demons suddenly my character dissapeared but I was still able to attack the demon and when I did so the game crashed to desktop.
-What with the spellbooks? How can I use them? I found 2, heal and push but couldn't equip them on my character or cast any spell from them.

And now some questions and suggestions:
- Will there be experience and levels in the full game? You know, like in every roguelike, you kill some monsters and you gain enough exp to level up, upgrade your stats and stuff.
- Maybe some traits, special combat moves and stuff unique for every race? Like power strike for the big halfogres, some kind of defense move for dwarves etc?
- Some quests would be nice, nothing fancy, may be randomly generated. Just talk to this npc, he tells you go kill that guy and I will give you this or that.
- Any plans for party bigger than 3?
- Maybe some classes to choose at the beginning of the game? The typical cRPG tropes of warriors, barbarians, mages etc?
- Some way of showing how much HP has the enemy.

All in all, I like the beta, the graphic are really nice, combat is intuitive and there is much potential for a fun game.

 

[eclectocrat]

I played it a bit and I must say I like it.

Thanks, that means a lot to me. I'm not just making games for myself!

But there where plenty of confusing things:
- Inventory by pressing an arrow on the keybord? I had to restore to the oldschool method of pressing every key on my keybord to finally find it.

You can now press F1 for a keyguide. The keys are not standard, but a rough translation from touchscreen gestures.

- Was it normal that when my party died I was given the command of one elf mothefucker who was kicking some mayor ass? And for some time he was being hit by monsters but no damage was taken by him, his health was always full?

You now have the choice to 'reincarnate' when you die, and the not taking damage bug has been fixed.

-What with the spellbooks? How can I use them? I found 2, heal and push but couldn't equip them on my character or cast any spell from them.

Spells can only be learned by characters with a high enough intelligence. Put an elf or gnome in your party and they'll be able to learn every spell in the game.

- Will there be experience and levels in the full game? You know, like in every roguelike, you kill some monsters and you gain enough exp to level up, upgrade your stats and stuff.

Powering up is only done through books and items.

- Maybe some traits, special combat moves and stuff unique for every race? Like power strike for the big halfogres, some kind of defense move for dwarves etc?

Good idea, the game is only just getting started and will evolve a lot over the next few months.

- Any plans for party bigger than 3?

Yep.

- Maybe some classes to choose at the beginning of the game? The typical cRPG tropes of warriors, barbarians, mages etc?

No classes, you can choose the character progression through the use of books and items only.

- Some way of showing how much HP has the enemy.

There are certain items that show enemy HP, and the first level spell "vision" reveals enemy HP too.

All in all, I like the beta, the graphic are really nice, combat is intuitive and there is much potential for a fun game.

Thanks! The game is just starting out and it's going to get much much better over the course of the next few months. When I get enough sales/donations to buy a copy of Windows 7, I'll port the latest version and make it free to download.

Check out the latest trailer!

http://www.mysteriouscastle.com

 

[Excommunicator]

There is a lot of clarity in those visuals, well done

 

[eclectocrat]

Hey, I've finally released an updated Windows version, as well as new Mac and iOS versions.

Download them at http://www.mysteriouscastle.com.

Here are some elementals.

 

[kaizoku]

you should make a trailer/gameplay video and put it on youtube

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Looks nice. I played for a while and liked how there's an ability to pick different types of attacks and spending one turn on aiming for sniping.
Taking high ground into account is nice too.
And the way the tiles are arranged looks pretty cool too.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Any idea why it would look like this?

The game isn't locked up or anything, I can still click around in the blackness and move to different screens which show up a bit differently. I can open the help (blue square, no text) and switch between full screen and windowed.

 

[eclectocrat]

Hmm... Looks like it failed to get a renderer. The default renderer for the game is OpenGL, not DirectX, so it may be a driver issue. I'll patch the next release to allow you to switch between OpenGL and DirectX, so you choose whichever works for you.

In the meantime, you could try to get the latest OpenGL drivers for your system. Sorry

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

I actually enjoy this game...what there is of it anyway.

Good work. Colour me interested for the final release.

 

[Nattvardsvin]

I found it enjoyable. I really like the tile graphical style,

Is there a way to get info on the equipment? So you can see beforehand what stat changes the equip will give you? Of course you can use common sense, knowing that a flail gives more damage than a club, but still.

Also, I found the way to access the menus with the arrow keys really interesting, and it worked pretty good IMO. Kind of like it, kind of fluid.


I will follow this with interest. Everything looks good so far I think, just needs to get more advanced obviously.

 

[Johnny the Mule]

well its pretty but completely unfinished...

 

[asper]

See this, major developers? Do you see this?

This is how you make an RPG.

 

[quasimodo]

I wish Vogel's games looked like this.

 

[Berekän]

It really looks gorgeous! Will have to try it on my iPod

Keep up the good work!

 

[SCO]

Finally! A party roguelike.


Fucking nethack.