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Indie CRPGs - post 'em if you find 'em

Saint_Proverbius

Administrator
Staff Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2002
Messages
11,476
Location
Behind you.
Re: The Chronicles of Ny

THE_Dave said:
Some of you guys already know about this one but for the ones that don't:

The Chronicles of Ny - ClownKeep

It's actually good you posted this. I'd completely forgotten about it since I also forgot to bookmark it.
 

Severian Silk

Guest
xJEDx said:
Are you still working on the project? The site doesn't seem to have been updated in over a year. Skip The Jungle and make the space exploration cRPG! Please! The graphics look great, by the way.
I agree!
 

crakkie

Arcane
Joined
Nov 20, 2004
Messages
1,608
Location
Louisiana
I glanced throught the posts and didn't notice this one mentioned:

Anito : Defend a Land Enraged

from the site:
Anito is a Single-Player Isometric Adventure RPG game set in 16th century Asia, in the land of Maroka. Maroka is an island besieged both by internal conflict and armored invaders from a faraway land who are slowly turning Maroka into their monarch's colony. When Datu Maktan, leader of the Mangatiwala tribe and the land's most influential peacemaker, mysteriously disappears, it is up to his children Agila and Maya to find him and restore the delicate peace that their father has kept in balance, before conlicting forces tear the land apart.

I've only played the demo, but it seems pretty good. Only $20, too.
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
crakkie said:
I glanced throught the posts and didn't notice this one mentioned:

Anito : Defend a Land Enraged

from the site:
Anito is a Single-Player Isometric Adventure RPG game set in 16th century Asia, in the land of Maroka. Maroka is an island besieged both by internal conflict and armored invaders from a faraway land who are slowly turning Maroka into their monarch's colony. When Datu Maktan, leader of the Mangatiwala tribe and the land's most influential peacemaker, mysteriously disappears, it is up to his children Agila and Maya to find him and restore the delicate peace that their father has kept in balance, before conlicting forces tear the land apart.

I've only played the demo, but it seems pretty good. Only $20, too.

Anito has great music. Its more of an adventure game with stats than an rpg though.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Saw these three today, in-between arguing with everyone. :twisted:

Fenix Blade, a console style game, influenced by the FF and Chronotrigger style SNES games:

fb_sc_a.gif




There is currently a demo (the second one made so far) to download, it's just over 3Mb.

The second game is Cry Havoc, the combat seems more influenced by Final Fantasy Tactics than FF or CT. As there is no demo yet I cannot say too much, but if you liked FFT it might be worth watching, the screen shots and reports sound interesting:

ch_sc_05.gif
ch_sc_01.gif


The last of the bunch, called Frenetic Plus, reminds me greatly of the Armored Core series. Hard to claim it is a RPG, but it has some char and plot development that make it rise above the simple shooter I thought it was. Includes a nice tutorial, fake news and emails, weapon buy/production, and robot suit customisation. It's a 2D/3D hybrid, again following the kind you'd expect on a SNES. The combat is all action, real-time. Think of this as an advanced shooter and you'll not be disappointed. Worth a try and he has Frenetic plus for download (with a patch). Download is about 8Mb.

fp_sc_11.gif


All of these are available at this site www.fenixblade.allegronetwork.com , just use the links at the bottom of the page.

It is worth pointing out that all three are supposed to be linked plot-wise once they are finished, so you may want to try them all if you enjoy one.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
"Yeah, let's ignore the console style ones. There's millions of those out there, and they all suck. In fact, I hate scouring the internet looking for indie CRPGs only to run across a few dozen Final Fantasy clones written in QBASIC."

I just remembered this line from Saint, oops! :oops:

I hope these are a bit different from the usual. The guy seems to be considering a GBA release of at least one of his games, part of the motivation for why they look as they do. They are written in C++ and not QBASIC though. :wink:
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
A roguelike, Realms of Guerremont

A quote from the homepage for the lazy:

"Realms of Guerremont is a roguelike game, with the goal of becoming the most powerful person in the world. This can be achieved in multiple ways, like becoming the *only* person in the world, or finding the Amulet of Yendor, and in some other ways that you have to explore yourself..."

I haven't tried it yet, it sounded worryingly familiar, but I did a search and I can't find a mention of it here. It's made in Java. I've not had a play through it yet. In my first go I was surrounded by giant ants and killed in seconds, so that doesn't really let me tell you much about the game.



Another roguelike, Tyrant. Another snippet from the home pages:

"Tyrant is a game of heroic adventure, where you pit your wits and cunning against a fearsome array of monsters and fiendish puzzle in your attempt to gain fame and fortune.

Tyrant is a Roguelike Game in the tradition of many other great games such as the original Rogue, Nethack, Angband and ADOM. These games emphasize addictive gameplay and randomly generated universes to create an immersive and imaginative game that looks deceptively simple yet contains a great deal of detail and strategic depth.

Tyrant is also Open Source software, which means that the code can be freely copied and distributed by anyone. Contributors to Tyrant are welcome."

"Tyrant is a graphical roguelike fantasy adventure game. It features intricate randomly generated landscapes, towns and dungeons. It is written in Java with a highly extensible game engine."

I have had a very brief go of this one, just a couople of random encounters, one helping villagers against attacking dogs and another against weedy goblins, I won so that made up for the giant ants gang-raping me before.

Tyrant sourceforge page. You can go there for the forums and bug reports, etc.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Silmar - a graphical rougelike with per pixel movement (similar to Geneforge), rather than set squares (ADOM).

Blurb on site:

"Battle your way through the dungeon levels underneath the razed tower of the evil archmage Syrilboltus, questing for riches with which to rebuild your devastated homelands. Use the powers you acquire as you gain experience to avoid or defeat the foes you encounter along the way. With randomly generated levels (accompanied by occasional fixed levels), no two games are the same!"

Got beaten to death by skeletons. I think the ants told them about me.
 

NeverwinterKnight

Liturgist
Joined
Feb 4, 2005
Messages
154
Re: The Chronicles of Ny

Saint_Proverbius said:
THE_Dave said:
Some of you guys already know about this one but for the ones that don't:

The Chronicles of Ny - ClownKeep

It's actually good you posted this. I'd completely forgotten about it since I also forgot to bookmark it.

ive been keeping my eye on this one as well. last i saw on a different site, there was still no definite release time table.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Iter Vehemens ad Necem - a graphical roguelike. Seems good, with a sense of humor too.

Blurb:

"Fellow adventurer, turn back while you can! For here begins the roguelike Iter Vehemens ad Necem, a Violent Road to Death. If you choose to travel along it, you will dive into countless exciting adventures to gain items of great magic, attain powerful equipment made of mysterious materials, bathe in the blessings of mighty gods and recruit loyal allies of various shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, along the way you will also often be dangerously injured, poisoned, catch numerous diseases, lose several limbs and transform into manifold different kinds of pitiful creatures in the darkest depths of hostile dungeons. And, at the end of the road, you are bound to perish in a most gruesome and painful way. Don't say we didn't warn you"

"Iter Vehemens ad Necem (IVAN) is a graphical roguelike game, which currently runs in Windows, DOS and Linux. It features advanced body part and material handling, multi-colored lighting and, above all, deep gameplay."

Holyscreen39-thumb.jpg


I died after a guard got annoyed about a minor crime...well, I murdered a child. He was rude, he deserved it. So there.

Happily the game keeps track of scores and murder sprees, giving you details of how they died and who did it.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Hero Quest - a remake of the old turn based CRPG, which in turn was based on the old board game. Includes the original campaign, additional quests, a "self generating magic dungeon" and a quest editor to make your own campaigns. Also listed on the site is a number of campaigns sent in by players. Uses overhead tile graphics, which are quite well drawn. Current version is v2.07F.

I was killed by a barrel of all things on my first go. :(

Distance Vison Studios - I've never heard of them but they do have a nice looking early demo of Shadows of Gurmanyala II. As it is you can just wander round and interact with a few doors and objects, no combat or proper game there yet. But worth downloading out of interest, and keeping a watch on it in future. Inlcudes a nice demo of the different sounds you get in the game from walking on wood, carpet, stone, etc. and makes pretty fireworks when you press space. They are also looking for help on teh project right now, details on the site. You may have to install this to get it working if it complains about a missing DLL.

NOTHING KILLED ME IN MY FIRST GO. Ok, there is no combat at all, but I am still feeling pretty good now.

Note 1: Now I know why Saint gets annoyed about the endless number of shitty FF clones out there, I keep forgetting how bad it is until I have to look through them all and try out each one. I tried the worst RPG I have played in years today. Urgh.

Note 2: If this is all crap I am posting up, tell me, I can't be sure if anyone likes these games or not and this is just spam.
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
Freedroid - For the veteran gamers here I can sum it up as Paradroid, isometric RPG. Give it a try and get some flashback retro goodness. Download links are given at the end.

For those who missed out on Paradroid, it was an old game on the C64, which was actually very good. It involved you boarding a ship that had a robot crew gone rogue. You started off weak and poorly defended with a simple laser, but your real weapon was a transfer device that let you take control over any robots you came in contact with, provided you could hack into it (via a hectic and fun little puzzle).

Takeover_Game_Screenshot_1_thumb.jpg
legacy3_thumb.jpg


Each of the robots had different abilites depending on their role on board. The simple garbage disposal droids were unarmed and slow, messenger droids fast and unarmed, security droids were fast and had good weapons and the military droids were slower but heavily armed and armoured. Some droids were extremely agressive and other types couldn't care less about an intruder. As you defeted robots and completed transfers successfully you gained points. These points could be spent at recharging stations to replace lost energy, but all the droids suffered a rate of decay which was dependant on how well you defeted the droid in the transfer and how high a rank it was. A near draw on a military bot wouild mean you'd be on a sinking ship and would have to either use it straight away or take over another robot, while a landslide victory on a low or medium droid would practically mean it was yours for as long as you needed. Each time you took over a robot of a higher rank you were given a better chance to win in the hacking game by providing you with more pieces to play, so it would be extremely difficult, though not impossible, to take over a high ranking robot straight away, instead a gradual increase in strength and abilities was the natural path and the layout of the ship lends itself to this as each deck tended to have only certain types and levels of droids.

Once you had cleared the ship of all robots (by either taking them over and dumping their robot bodies or by blowing them up with ramming or weapon damage) and taken out the leader of the rebellion, the dreaded "999", you moved onto another ship, and so on. It was all overhead, with simple colours and little animation, but it had me hooked for a long time back then - the horror of the 999's mocking laughter still rings in my ears today. The remake of this simple action game is worth downloading, and is a piece of classic gaming history. This has had a few improvements added over the original. The game is controlled with keyboard for movement and mouse to aim, rather than the old 8-way aim with the joystick. There is also an optional graphics pack to change the look of it to suit your own tastes. The sound effects are better than the old C64 could handle and the game now has a background music throughout, rather than the old throbbing noise of the ship (which caused headaches in some people I know), though the main screen 'music' has been left as it was in the original, allowing new gamers to hear the unique and bizarre music. Probably for a very short time, I'd imagine.

The following is a preview as I have not completed the game, it seems good and I'd rather you hear about it than wait until I am bored with it first.

The Freedroid RPG has taken the main parts of Paradroid (the transfer device, the robot types, "the robots gone rogue" plotline) and put it into a more traditional RPG body. Part of this transition means a change in perspective to an isometric format. Gone are the basic white sprites and in with animated rendered characters, which for a freeware title are very well done. Equpiment appears on the avatar and matches what you equip them with, similar to BG. The protagonist begins now in a science lab where you learn the basic outlines of the plot and game functions, and from there you wander into an open world, with wandering hostile (and non hostile) robots. You have equipment, stats, trade, experience and dialogue as you might expect in a title claiming to be a RPG. Also comes with free anti-MS propganda for the Mac and Linux user to enjoy (yes, both of them, lewl).

The inventory and the stats screens:

TuxWithInventory_thumb.jpg
TuxWithCharacterScreen_thumb.jpg


My character in the first town he encountered:

fezthumbnail7bi.png


See more and full size screenshots here.

The new plot sets you in an Earth like world where a monopoly (MS) has gained control of the world and used robots to enforce that control. and then promptly turned to infighting, taking the world down with it. I guess if bad guys were constantly good then it wouldn't be much of an adventure for us players. Oh well. You awaken, with a special case of RPG amnesia, are filled in on some of the plot, told where to get your starting gear and sent packing.

Once you leave the starting area you can come across various towns and outposts as you travel. My first encounter was some small messenger droids which I tried to talk to. Bad move (you do have to be careful about encountering enemies you are not strong enough to battle). After running from the insane floating mailboxes of doom I came across a human party who swiftly dispatched my aggressors. Although wary from before I decided to talk to my saviours, who turned out to be hunting the robots for parts and equipment that they could scavenge and sell. During the conversation they offered to teach me how to scavenge parts from dead robots to sell at the markets, at the cost of money and a training point, which are gained upon levelling up (a system very similar to Gothic).

The combat is realtime* and is comparable to the Diablo games. Left clicking to move and right clicking to use an ability or weapon and each click triggers another use of this, if you click on a hostile character the PC will begin attacking with the selected weapon and keep attacking until you move him away or the enemy is dead. The PC will also move forward with the prey to save you repositioning. Don't expect the non stop clicking of Diablo or the numbers of enemies of that game. The game includes melee and ranged weapons and a "magic" system. Abilities can be learned using books, again, the same as Diablo.

While you may have already imagined this to be a poor Diablo clone wearing the stolen corpse skin of a C64 classic, it is more.

In one of my earlier abortive attempts to play through I travelled to an outpost owned by a seemingly good scientist who owned a kind of prison and rehabilitation centre for Robots. He offered my PC some help and advice on the quest, and at the time I decided that I was going to play it as a melee combat PC and my character was evil (a psychotic butcher). Avoiding the guard I followed the scientist until his bodyguard was gone, whereupon I quickly killed him. In the process I alerted the guards and ended up in combat with both the insane prisoners and angry guards. I died. But I was glad to see that I had the choice of whether I wanted to listen to the waffling scientist or butcher him.

In my more recent attempt (one where I decided to follow the slightly more obvious path as intended by the designer, rather than wander aimlessly looking for things to "pwn" and came across the hunters) I manager to make it to a walled town. Upon entering the gate guard warned me against causing trouble and allowed me to pass. The rest of the guards near the entrance were even less inclined to talk and simply told me not to cause trouble. After meeting a citizen and gaining some history on the town and its purpose I was able to ask about joining the town guard, "Go see the Chief of the town guard", I was informed. A short distance away, a few minutes and the helpfully labelled Chief was answering my employment questions. He was interested in seeing how I could help the town, but as a stranger I would need to prove myself and gain a good reputation before I could join the town guard. This then was logged as a quest for me and several other possible quests were mentioned by the guard as needing doing, locals needing help and the town guard itself.

The music is fairly simple stuff, but most importantly has not annoyed me yet, and that is a success for most background game music. The sound effects are functional and I have no complaints there. The only possible niggles would be the somewhat misguided attempt to include voice-overs for some of the dialogue and incidental comments as you pass by NPCs. The quality of these voice-overs is pretty poor and often changes an amusing text line to something cringe-worthy, or a dramatic line into unfortunate comedy. The other problem is when you have the same person voicing both sides in the same conversation, and he has made no attempt to disguise his voice, making it sound like the PC has gone mad and has begun arguing with himself, or calling out to himself in the street, "don't cause trouble". Thankfully not all the lines are spoken, and you can click past text and VO, avoiding slow torture.

The game also comes with a map editor, which I've only played with long enough to nearly ruin one of the maps, looks interesting.

Overall it seems very promising, is basically complete and now only gets the odd patch, and recently a HUD upgrade. They have a wiki and are looking for suggestions. I am sure that folks here are never shy about voicing an opinion.

Click here to get to the download page.

To play the old retro Freedroid in windows download "Freedroid Classic-1.0.2-win32.zip" (the newest at the time of writing), which weighs in at around 5MB. There are Mac and other versions available for download on that page too.

To play Freedroid RPG download "FreedroidRPG-0.9.12.exe" (newest at the time of writing), this is around 58MB.

Both games are well worth playing for their own reasons. I'll be playing the RPG for a bit more to see if I get bored with it and what I think of it by that point, the classic game I know like the back of my hand.

*you wouldn't believe how tempting it was to put "the combat is turnbased and done in realtime"

EDIT: Been playing a bit more, the combat is pretty flat at times and sometimes quirky and the VO only gets worse. Some of the text is dodgy too, with misspelled words and odd phrases. I'm hoping it'll get more interesting as I get into it, still near the early town.
 

Jed

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2002
Messages
3,287
Location
Tech Bro Hell
Ran across a link for this on the Underdogs today:

Magebane 2 is a 3D single player roleplaying game where you command three monks on a quest to recover the holy Amulet of Yendor. Each monk masters a different school of magic, and you must find a balance in upgrading your skills in order to defeat your numerous enemies. Also, you can find various items to enhance your abilities. You control your characters from zoomable bird's eye view, and you can give orders while the game is paused, or slow down the game to your liking.

It's freeware, so maybe someone with a few extra moments could check it out and post a some thoughts.
 

Avé

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2004
Messages
468
Takeover_Game_Screenshot_1_thumb.jpg

Other then neocron, what's another recent game that had a hacking game like that?

I know I played it recently...

DX:IW?
 

Spazmo

Erudite
Joined
Nov 9, 2002
Messages
5,752
Location
Monkey Island
Anachronox's hacking game (for PAL-18) had you playing a sort of maze game where you'd line up tiles to get between two points on a grid.
 

Avé

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 31, 2004
Messages
468
Spazmo said:
Anachronox's hacking game (for PAL-18) had you playing a sort of maze game where you'd line up tiles to get between two points on a grid.
Nah, it was identical to the screenshot posted, but in black/orange I think, with snazzier graphics...

I think you needed to get 50%+1 of the circles in the middle lit up, and you went on...
 

crpgnut

Augur
Joined
Dec 11, 2002
Messages
337
Location
St. Louis,MO,USA
Yendorian Tales

I haven't played these in a long time but I registered them all several years ago. The website is:

http://www.swgames.com/

I remember almost nothing about the first game but the other two are very similar to the Might and Magic 3-5 games. You have character's arranged on the bottom of the screen and each has a paper doll that you place inventory items on. I had a lot of fun with these.
Okay, back to lurking again....

EDIT: Okay I'm playing the first one again now and thought I'd update this blurb. Yendorian Tales Book 1 is very similar to Ultima VI in looks and play. You create a party of up to 6 characters and wander around the countryside fighting monsters. The game really doesn't have a goal at first. You've just been told by the local governor to fight the monsters that are infesting the mines. Once a single character trains to the 4th level of experience, the plot becomes apparent through a cut-scene. I didn't even remember that games this early had cut-scenes :) The combat is turn-based and the view is top down.
If anyone has any questions about the game, let me know and I'll answer them.
 

Second Chance

Liturgist
Joined
May 26, 2004
Messages
112
Peacedog said:
I assume I don't need to post a link to Spiderweb. . .

Tom Proudfoot has made some fun games: Nahlakh and Natuk. Classic CRPGs (not much in the roleplaying department) they're both really fun. Though good luck getting Nahlakh to run on a modern OS (I could never get it to work right in XP, even though I downloaded some interesting software that might help in that regard I've never gotten around to it).

Nahlakh has some goofiness (your choice of character icon determines starting skills & gear, for example), and is very difficult. The game system is "improve via doing", there are no levels or experience points. You can buy training for ability scores and hp. Pretty nifty magic system, good TB combat (where things like facing come into play).

Natuk is sort of a spiritual sequel where you play a party of orcs bent on revenge for being imprisoned. Similar game system, but there is XP this time around. The "play as orcs" is mostly wasted from an RP standpoint (though the game is a blast). Though you generally do better by being a bully, there aren't alot of opportunities to play wiyh that.

He has abandoned work on Pirates of the Western Sea. I hope he returns to it eventually.

Nahlakh is an excellent rpg imho. The magical system is nice and the combat makes it worth it.


One of my favorites is an oldie called Castle Excelsior phase 1: Lysandia. It's a mix of Ultima 1 with Ultima 5: http://www.nwlink.com/~dberke/ex1.htm

Here's an excellent review ;) http://www.sharewarejunkies.com/8ef3/excelsio.htm

There's also Excelsior 2 from the same site, looks a lot like Ultima 6
 

Spazmo

Erudite
Joined
Nov 9, 2002
Messages
5,752
Location
Monkey Island
There hasn't been a formal announcement yet and there isn't any website either, but okay.

VAULT DWELLER IS MAKING A GAME
 

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